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Recipes from My Vietnamese Kitchen Authentic Food to Awaken the Senses Feed the Soul (Uyen Luu) (Z-Library).epub	Recipes from My Vietnamese What to eat for breakfast Breakfast provides a valuable store of energy for a hard working day. It is usually filled with heat and spice to awaken the senses. After a night’s sleep, the body and mind need to be stimulated by hot chilli, warm spices, lively curries and rich hot broth. Phở and noodle soups such as bún bò Huế are a traditional way to fuel the day ahead with plenty of carbohydrates from the noodles. Rejuvenating ginger or lemongrass broths with zingy lime and an array of herbs fire up your motivation for the new day. And if you don’t feel like noodle soup, you can have curry or beef stew mopped up with a baguette. Meat and pickle-filled baguettes are also eaten, spiced up to your liking, or, for those tamer days, a simple fried egg ( bánh mì trứng ốp la ) with soy sauce and a few pieces of soft French cheese “La Vache Qui Rit” to spread on a light, crunchy and fluffy baguette. People are usually too busy to make breakfast from scratch at home, so it is the norm to eat out at various phở street stalls. The rich and poor from all walks of life gather at their favourite noisy stall or store to eat breakfast. But when the soup arrives at the table, silence falls, the ritual begins and then all you can hear is the sucking of noodles and slurping of broth. Cold breakfasts are rare. If they are eaten, like yogurt and fruit, it is after something hot or warm. Coffee culture is huge in Vietnam, with rows of cafés full to the brim with men reading newspapers, playing chess or watching the hurried world go by. The most popular drink, iced coffee with condensed milk ( cà phê sữa đá ), is served in a tall glass with an individual filter, or the coffee is drunk hot and neat. Like all meals, breakfast should be filling without weighing you down. bánh mì thịt bò nướng xả Bánh mì is a Vietnamese baguette originally inspired by the French and now a staple in Vietnamese cuisine. It has a light, crunchy exterior and a delicately fluffy inside; some describe biting into one as biting into crispy air. As with most Vietnamese food, the lightness of the ingredients you fill it with is vital – no one relishes being weighed down. The dough in the centre of the baguette is removed so that you bite straight through the lovely crisp crust to the filling within. A typical bánh mì contains a flavoursome combination of ingredients, the perfect equilibrium of sweet and sour: crunchy carrot and daikon/mooli, a velvety, umami-rich smear of pâté, pieces of BBQ pork, and cooling, fresh coriander/cilantro and cucumber, all dressed with a spicy chilli sauce. If you cannot buy an authentic Vietnamese baguette, use a regular French baguette. Lemongrass beef or pork baguette Lemongrass beef 100 g/3½ oz. beef, thinly sliced 1 lemongrass stalk, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 1 shallot, finely chopped 1 teaspoon Maggi Seasoning (or soy sauce) 1 teaspoon pork, chicken or vegetable bouillon 1 teaspoon sugar Pickle 2 carrots, shredded ½ daikon/mooli, shredded 5 tablespoons cider vinegar 5 tablespoons sugar To fill 1 Vietnamese baguette or freshly baked, small French baguette butter or soft cheese pork or chicken liver pâté chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own) coriander/cilantro cucumber, cut into 10-cm/4-inch slivers spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced lengthways Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced Maggi Seasoning Sriracha chilli sauce Serves 1 Lemongrass beef Preheat the oven to 220˚C (425˚F) Gas 7. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and marinate for 10 minutes. Transfer to a roasting pan and bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Pickle Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Drain and wring with your hands. To fill Slit the baguette lengthways and pull out the soft doughy inside (which can be used for breadcrumbs). Spread with butter or soft cheese and a smear of pâté. Layer the warm beef and its juices, pickle, chả chiên , coriander/cilantro, cucumber, spring onions/scallions and chillies over the top and squirt over a few drops of Maggi Seasoning and chilli sauce. Enjoy! Omelette baguette bánh mì trứng ốp lết A freshly baked baguette, a tasty omelette and an abundance of coriander/cilantro are one of my simplest but greatest pleasures. I love to eat this greedily on a beautiful sunny morning, quietly and alone to absorb the utter goodness! For an extra dimension, drop the sliced chillies into a bowl of good soy sauce and bruise them with the back of a spoon – this releases the chillies’ flavour and heat. Drizzle over the baguette. Pickle 2 carrots, shredded ½ daikon/mooli, shredded 5 tablespoons cider vinegar 5 tablespoons sugar Omelette 2 eggs, beaten 2 spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon sugar a pinch of salt a pinch of black pepper 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon cooking oil 2 Asian shallots, finely chopped To fill 2 Vietnamese baguettes or freshly baked, small French baguettes butter coriander/cilantro Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced (deseeded for less heat) Serves 2 Pickle Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Drain and wring with your hands. Omelette Beat the eggs in a bowl with the spring onions/scallions, sugar, salt and pepper, and soy sauce. Heat the oil in a frying pan and briefly fry the shallots. Pour the egg mixture into the pan over the shallots and spread evenly. Cook for a couple of minutes until the underside looks golden brown (lift up one edge and check). Flip the omelette over and cook for a couple of minutes until brown. Remove from the heat and cut into strips. To fill Slit the baguette lengthways and pull out the soft doughy inside (which can be used for breadcrumbs). Spread with butter and insert the omelette strips, pickle, coriander/cilantro and chillies. How to eat pho like the Vietnamese Breathe in the beautiful scented broth and taste it, unspoiled by any condiments. Next, squeeze on some lemon or lime juice and add your favoured condiments and garnishes. Mix with chopsticks and a spoon. Pile the ingredients onto your spoon and slurp away, bringing the bowl to your mouth and drinking every last sip of broth. You can go without most of the garnishes but using the right noodles is very important. It is essential to use bánh phở or hủ tiếu flat noodles (also called “ho fun”). There should be plenty of noodles in the bowl but these must be submerged in the broth – only the garnishes are placed on top. In Vietnam, you can order extra noodles. Don’t forget, this is a breakfast dish – its spicy contents wake you up and the carbohydrates keep you going through the day. Garnishes of beansprouts, herbs (Thai sweet basil, coriander/cilantro and sawtooth), lime wedges and freshly cut chillies should be served on the side. Never serve the lime wedges already inside the soup. Popular condiments are hoisin sauce and Sriracha chilli sauce. Whenever I’m in Sài Gòn, I find myself sitting at a kids’ table on a red plastic chair, slurping steaming hot beef phở . Laced with the warm fragrant spices of star anise, coriander seeds, cinnamon and cloves, with top notes of fresh herbs, onions and citrus and brimming with noodles, every mouthful feels nourishing to the body and mind. For me, phở is about home, wherever that may be. As with most Vietnamese, I constantly crave it, especially when I’m away. Whenever I eat it, I am reminded of the love of my mother and her endless quest to make the perfect phở broth. When we first came to England in the early 1980s, it was difficult to find Vietnamese ingredients but the day she discovered where to buy coriander/cilantro, she beamed and made the best pot of phở I’ve ever had. Beef noodle soup phở bò Stock and cooked meat 2 tablespoons sea salt 600 g/1 lb. 5 oz. chopped, boneless oxtail 1.5 kg/3⅓ lbs. beef shin, flank or rib 700 g/1 lb. 9 oz. beef bones/marrow bone 2 litres/8 cups chicken stock 1 large onion, peeled and both ends trimmed 200 g/7 oz. fresh ginger, peeled and halved 1 daikon/mooli, peeled 20 star anise ½ teaspoon cloves 3 cassia bark sticks 2 cinnamon sticks 1 big teaspoon coriander seeds 1 big teaspoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon black peppercorns 2 black cardamom pods 4 pieces of dried orange peel 3 teaspoons rock salt 50 g/1¾ oz. rock sugar 3 teaspoons pork bouillon 4 tablespoons fish sauce 1 phở stock cube (optional) ground black pepper Contents 1 red onion, thinly sliced small handful of coriander/cilantro, finely chopped 2 spring onion/scallions, thinly sliced 4 portions of fresh ho fun noodles, separated and blanched in boiling water; or 2½ packs of flat, dried phở noodles (place in a saucepan with a lid, cover with boiling water, add a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar and apply lid. Leave for 5–10 minutes or according to package instructions. Drain in cold water and separate.) cooked chicken, torn (optional) beef fillet, sirloin or rump/round steak, thinly sliced (optional) Garnishes Thai sweet basil coriander/cilantro sliced Bird’s Eye chillies lime wedges sawtooth (optional) beansprouts (optional) fish sauce hoisin sauce Sriracha chilli sauce chilli oil very large lidded saucepan muslin/cheesecloth and kitchen twine Serves 6–8 Stock and cooked meat Bring a stockpot of water to the boil with the sea salt. Add the meat and bones and boil until scum forms on the surface – about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and discard the water. Wash the meat in cold water, removing any scum, and set aside. This will give you a clearer broth. Meanwhile, wash the pot, add 3 litres/12 cups of fresh water and bring to the boil. Now add the rested meat and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim off any scum and fat from the surface with a spoon. Add the chicken stock. Now heat a stove-top griddle pan over high heat (do not add oil). Char the onion and ginger on both sides. Add to the broth with the daikon/mooli. Put all the spices and the orange peel in a piece of muslin/cheesecloth and tie with twine to seal. Add to the broth with the rock salt and sugar. Simmer for at least 2 hours with the lid on. Check it occasionally and skim off any scum and fat from the surface. After 2 hours, remove the beef from the pot and allow it to rest slightly, then slice it thinly and store it in a sealed container until serving. Leave the bones and oxtail in the pot and simmer for at least 1 hour. After 1 hour, add the pork bouillon, fish sauce, phở stock cube and black pepper, to taste. Contents Mix together the red onion, coriander/cilantro and spring onions/scallions. Place 1 portion of cooked noodles into a big, deep soup bowl with a pinch of black pepper. Place the cooked beef and chicken, if using, on top and sprinkle with the red-onion mixture. To make it special, add raw beef (it will cook perfectly with the hot broth). Bring the broth to boiling point, then pour ladles of it over the noodles to submerge them. Garnishes Serve the garnishes and condiments on the side and add them to your phở as desired. Hue noodle soup with beef and pork bún bò huế My grandmother was a great entrepreneur; in order to support her family, she opened up her front room to sell bún bò huế , the best noodle soup I have ever eaten. It originates from Huế (the city of temples, emperor’s palaces and dynasties in central Vietnam) and is spicy, bold and invigorating. Stock and cooked meat 2 tablespoons salt 1 kg/2¼ lbs. rib of beef 500 g/1 lb. beef shin/flank 600 g/1 lb. 5 oz. chopped, boneless oxtail 2 pig’s trotters (optional) 2 litres/8 cups chicken stock 1 large onion, peeled and both ends trimmed 6 lemongrass stalks, bashed 40 g/1½ oz. rock sugar 1 daikon/mooli, peeled 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon shrimp paste 1 tablespoon pork bouillon 1 bún bò huế stock cube (optional) 4 tablespoons fish sauce 3 tablespoons cooking oil ½ bulb of garlic, cloves separated, peeled and finely chopped 2 lemongrass stalks, finely diced ½ teaspoon chilli powder ½ tablespoon annatto powder Contents 2 spring onion/scallions, thinly sliced ½ red onion, thinly sliced 8 sprigs of coriander/cilantro, roughly chopped (stalk on) 450 g/1 lb. thick rice vermicelli (place in a saucepan with a lid, cover with boiling water and apply lid. Leave for 20 minutes or according to package instructions. Drain and rinse with hot water.) chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own) leaves from 8 sprigs of hot mint (optional) Garnishes lime wedges Thai sweet basil sliced Bird’s Eye chillies beansprouts banana blossom (optional) curly morning glory (optional) cockscomb mint (optional) shiso/perilla (optional) very large lidded saucepan muslin/cheesecloth and kitchen twine Serves 6–8 Stock and cooked meat Following the instructions on page 26 , boil all the meat together for 10 minutes, then wash it and rest it. Wash the pot, add 3 litres/12 cups of fresh water and bring to the boil. Now add the rested meat and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim off any scum and fat from the surface with a spoon. Add the chicken stock. Now heat a stove-top griddle pan over high heat (do not add oil). Char the onion and 6 lemongrass stalks on both sides. Add to the broth with the sugar, daikon/mooli and salt. Simmer for at least 2 hours with the lid on. Check it occasionally and skim off any scum and fat from the surface. After 2 hours, remove the beef from the pot and allow it to rest slightly, then slice it thinly and store it in a sealed container until serving. Add the shrimp paste, pork bouillon, stock cube, if using, and fish sauce to the broth. In another pan, heat the oil and fry the garlic, diced lemongrass and chilli powder. Add to the broth with the annatto powder and simmer. Contents Mix the onions and coriander/cilantro. Put a serving of vermicelli in a big, deep soup bowl. Put the cooked beef on top and sprinkle with the red-onion mixture and mint, if using. Bring the broth to boiling point and pour enough over the vermicelli to submerge them. Garnishes Squeeze lime into the soup. Serve the other garnishes on the side and add them to your huế as desired. Chicken curry cà ri gà Vietnamese curry is fragrant, light and mild, eaten with baguette to kickstart your day. It is more like a stew with chicken, carrots and potato and lots of lemongrass and coconut curry broth to dip your bread in. You can add more heat and other vegetables to your liking. When I was little, my mother so cleverly saved money and time by cooking a delicious and nutritious meal in one pot. When we couldn’t get baguette, she made white bread toast and butter for us to dip in – it’s still one of my most favourite things today. 1 tablespoon cooking oil 1 red onion, roughly chopped 1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped 1 lemongrass stalk, finely diced 2 large chicken legs, cut into bite-size pieces, or 6 whole drumsticks, skin on 3 teaspoons curry powder 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 165 ml/⅔cup coconut milk 300 ml/1¼ cups chicken stock 2 medium potatoes, cubed 1 carrot, roughly sliced 4 tablespoons fish sauce 1 teaspoon sugar ground black pepper ½ aubergine/eggplant, cubed (optional) handful of okra, cut into bite-size pieces (optional) 6 Asian shallots, peeled handful of mangetout/snow peas (optional) warm baguette and butter, or steamed rice, to serve Garnishes (all chopped) Thai sweet basil spring onion/scallion Bird’s Eye chillies Serves 2 Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over low heat. Gently fry the red onion, ginger and lemongrass. Once the onion has softened, add the chicken legs and fry, turning often, until they’re evenly browned. Add the curry powder, stirring well until the chicken legs are well coated. Add the garlic, coconut milk, chicken stock, potatoes and carrot and stir. Cover with a lid and simmer for about 10 minutes. Season the curry with the fish sauce, sugar and a pinch of black pepper, then add the aubergine/eggplant, okra, shallots and mangetout/snow peas. Cook for a further 8–10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Garnishes Garnish with Thai sweet basil, spring onion/scallion and chillies. Serve with a fresh, warm baguette and butter, or a bowl of steamed rice. Beef stew with star anise bò kho Lemongrass and star anise perfume the air when this is stewing on the stove, making any place feel like home. The ultimate comfort food, bò kho is spicy and fragrant enough to awaken the senses at the start of the day. It is a thrifty dish designed to make use of cheap cuts of beef and whichever vegetables you have that need to be used up – my mother loves the simplicity of carrot, potatoes and peas. Stew 2 tablespoons cooking oil 1 teaspoon annatto seeds 1 onion, roughly chopped 450 g/1 lb. braising beef, beef tendons or rib, cubed 2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes/dried hot pepper flakes 1 teaspoon ground cumin 10 star anise 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon paprika ½ teaspoon ground cloves 2 garlic cloves, sliced 2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, coarsely chopped 2 lemongrass stalks (outer layer removed), finely chopped 400 ml/1⅔cups cider (or coconut water, but halve the sugar) 100 ml/⅓ cup chicken or beef stock 2 carrots, roughly sliced 2 medium potatoes, cubed 2 teaspoons sugar 3 tablespoons fish sauce 1 teaspoon cornflour/cornstarch 130 g/1 cup fresh or frozen peas ground black pepper 280 g/10 oz. thick rice vermicelli, cooked, or warm baguette and butter (buttered toast also works) Garnishes (optional) lime wedges beansprouts Thai sweet basil garden mint coriander/cilantro sawtooth Serves 4 Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Fry the annatto seeds for a couple of minutes until the reddish colour is released. Pour the oil into a bowl and discard the seeds. In the same pan over low heat, gently fry the onion until softened. Turn the heat up to high and add the beef. Fry it, turning it often, until browned all over. You may need to do this in batches – if the meat is too cramped, it will stew rather than sear properly. Add the chilli/pepper flakes, cumin, star anise, bay leaf, paprika, cloves, garlic, ginger and lemongrass and pour in the cider, stock and reserved red annatto oil. Stir well. Cover the pan with the lid and cook for about 15 minutes. Add the carrots and potatoes and season with the sugar and fish sauce. Reduce the heat to low–medium and cook with the lid on for a further 30 minutes. Put the cornflour/cornstarch and a few drops of water in a small bowl and stir to mix. Add it to the stew, along with the peas, and cook for 5–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened slightly. The beef should be tender, but the cooking time may vary so braise it for longer if it is still tough. Season with more fish sauce or pepper, to taste, and remove the star anise. Serve with the vermicelli. Garnishes Squeeze lime into the stew. Serve the other garnishes on the side. Sticky rice with Chinese sausage xôi lạp xưởng My mum makes the best version of this in the world! It is great to take on journeys, as it remains moist and sticky in its box or banana leaf and can be consumed hot or cold. Whole train journeys can be spent snacking on fruit, bánh mì and sticky rice. Every Vietnamese I’ve met carries food on journeys from one region to another, to ease hunger as well as to gift to loved ones. 400 g/2¼ cups glutinous rice about 3 tablespoons dried shiitake mushrooms 3 tablespoons dried shrimps dash of cooking oil 3 Asian shallots, chopped 1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced 1 lạp xưởng Chinese sausage (45 g/1½ oz.), thinly sliced (if you really can’t find it, use Italian cured sausage) a pinch of sea salt a pinch of black pepper ½ teaspoon sugar a pinch of pork or vegetable bouillon To serve sliced spring onion/scallion pickled shallots and lotus roots chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own) steamer Serves 4 You will need to start soaking some of the ingredients 1 hour before you begin cooking. Put the rice in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 1 hour. Put the shiitake mushrooms in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 20–30 minutes or until soft. Put the dried shrimps in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 10 minutes. When ready, drain the rice, shiitake mushrooms and shrimps and pat them all dry. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the shallots and spring onion/scallion until softened. Add the sausage, shrimps and mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes. Add this to the rice in a large bowl with the salt, pepper, sugar and bouillon and mix. Get the steamer ready with simmering water. Put the rice mixture in the steamer in a ring shape to allow the steam to rise through the middle. Steam for 30–40 minutes on medium heat, stirring every 10 minutes so that everything cooks evenly. Check there is enough water in the base. Remove from the heat and allow to steam for 10 minutes. To serve Serve hot with spring onion/scallion, pickles and ham. You can also steam the rice in banana-leaf parcels; re-steam them to reheat, if needed. Recipes from My Vietnamese Awaken the Senses Breakfast Recipes from My Vietnamese Hot and sour fish soup canh chua cá Canh chua is one of my favourite dinnertime soups, always best when my mother makes it and we enjoy it together with some steamed rice. It’s a sweet, sour and hot fish soup. It doesn’t take long to cook, which means the vegetables stay whole and crunchy. It always reminds me of my mum’s happy face, the sunshine and being in Vietnam, when the whole family sit together on the floor with a spread of dishes to share. 3 tablespoons cooking oil 1 whole sea bass (300 g/10½ oz.), scaled, gutted and cut in half widthways (keep the head, for flavour) 2 Asian shallots, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tomatoes, quartered 120 g/4 oz. canned pineapple rings, cubed 1 teaspoon sugar 2 tablespoons fish sauce 1 spring onion/scallion, cut into 2-cm/1-inch pieces freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime 60 g/1 cup beansprouts 1 Bird’s Eye chilli, thinly sliced on the diagonal 20-cm/8-inch stick of taro stem/elephant ear ( bạc hà ), peeled and thinly sliced (optional) steamed rice or rice vermicelli, to serve Chilli-fish sauce 1 Bird’s Eye chilli 3 tablespoons fish sauce Garnishes (all chopped) garden mint coriander/cilantro, stalk on sawtooth, Thai sweet basil or rice paddy herb (optional) Serves 2 This dish is all about preparation. Make sure everything is cut and prepped beforehand because hardly any time is spent cooking. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the sea bass for 4 minutes on each side. Remove from the pan and set aside. In the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of the oil and gently fry the shallots and garlic until soft. Set aside. Bring 600 ml/2½ cups water to the boil in a large saucepan, then add the reserved fish head, tomatoes, pineapple, sugar, fish sauce and seared fish. Bring to the boil again and boil for 2 minutes. Add the spring onion/scallion, lime juice, remaining oil and the shallots and garlic. Turn off the heat. Chilli-fish sauce Drop the whole chilli into a serving dish (large enough to hold the fish pieces) and add the fish sauce. Bruise the chilli with the back of a spoon to release the chilli’s flavour and heat. Transfer the fish pieces to this dish. Put the beansprouts, sliced chilli and taro stem/elephant ear in a large serving bowl. Pour the soup in. Serve with the fish, and steamed rice or rice vermicelli. Garnishes Sprinkle the garnishes over the soup and you have a palate-cleansing sweet and sour soup with a dish of poached fish. Mustard greens and tofu broth canh cải bẹ xanh đậu phụ gừng This is a great palate-cleansing soup to be had with an array of dishes at lunch or dinner with family or a few friends. The leaves can be consumed at any time and the refreshing broth can be slurped from your bowl in between rice servings. Sometimes it is great to add ramen to the broth for a midnight snack. 100 g/1 cup cubed fresh tofu 2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, julienned 1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced 1 vegetable stock cube dash of cooking oil a pinch of sea salt a pinch of black pepper a pinch of sugar 300 g/10½ oz. Chinese mustard greens, chopped Serves 2 as a main/entrée, and up to 6 as part of a meal of many sharing dishes Bring 1 litre/4 cups water to the boil in a saucepan. Add the tofu, ginger, spring onion/scallion, stock cube, oil, salt, pepper and sugar. When you are ready to serve the soup, add the Chinese mustard greens to the pan and bring to the boil again. Serve hot by itself as a main meal or with an array of other dishes and rice. Alternatively, you can add spinach, watercress, bok choy or choi sum instead of Chinese mustard greens. It is also absolutely irresistible as a noodle soup base. Just add a portion of dried ramen or fresh udon noodles and cook for 2–3 minutes. Udon noodle soup with fishcakes bánh canh cá thác lác thìa là In Phan Thiết where my mother comes from, the street vendors sell this as a night meal. It is among one of my favourite noodle soups. In this recipe, the chicken-stock broth is flavoured by the fishcakes and fried shallots. Dill, mint and lime brings it together to make it the most enticing yet cleansing thing to eat when the moon shines. This is a very versatile soup, so the broth can be made from any stock, and you can use fish fillets, seafood such as prawns/shrimp, crab and squid, and meat such as chicken and pork. Fishcakes with Dill ( page 100 ), uncooked 3 tablespoons cooking oil 2 litres/8 cups chicken, pork or vegetable stock ½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper 2 teaspoons sugar 2 teaspoons sea salt 1 teaspoon pork bouillon or 1 chicken stock cube (optional) 2 tablespoons fish sauce 800 g/1¾ lbs. fresh udon noodles 2 tablespoons cooking oil 8 Asian shallots, chopped Garnishes storebought deep-fried shallots (optional) garden mint, chopped coriander/cilantro, coarsely chopped garlic chives, cut into 2-cm/1-inch pieces (optional) dill, finely chopped (optional) cockscomb mint, torn (optional) sliced Bird’s Eye chillies lime wedges Serves 4 Take two-thirds of the uncooked fishcake mixture and shape into a patty. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan and fry the patty on both sides until golden. Cut it into thin slices. Pinch off bite-size pieces from the remaining uncooked fishcake mixture and roll into rough balls. Set aside. Put the stock, pepper, sugar, salt, pork bouillon and fish sauce in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a gentle boil. Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan and fry the shallots until brown and crispy. Bring another pan of water to the boil and blanch the noodles for 2 minutes. Drain and divide them between 4 soup bowls. Add the slices of fried fishcake and a generous pinch of the chopped herbs from the garnishes. Add more pepper, to taste. When ready to serve, make sure the pan of broth is still boiling, then add the uncooked fish balls. After a couple of minutes when they have floated to the surface, tip in your fried shallots. Ladle the soup into the prepared soup bowls. Garnishes Scatter the remaining herbs, the deep-fried shallots and chillies over the soup and serve with the lime. Duck congee cháo vịt Cháo is the transformation of small amounts of rice: after prolonged simmering in broth, it turns into a thick porridge soup. This is a great way to use up leftover cooked rice or when you do not have much rice going, as you can make it go a long way. However, this basic dish can be lifted into something much more luxurious by cooking the cháo with duck as a great treat for visitors. It is then served with slices of duck next to the congee and alongside a ginger-based nước chấm dipping sauce. If you prefer, you can use a whole chicken instead of duck. To make life easier, ask the butcher to joint the duck and poach it in pieces instead of whole. Or use chicken stock instead of water and poach pre-cut chicken or duck breast for 30 minutes in the congee broth. 1.5-kg/3¼-lb. whole duck 1 big tablespoon salt 200 g/1¼ cups basmati rice, rinsed 1 teaspoon sugar 1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped 1 teaspoon pork bouillon (optional) a pinch of black pepper Onion pickle 1 red onion, thinly sliced 3 tablespoons cider vinegar ½ teaspoon black pepper 1 tablespoon sugar Dipping sauce 2 garlic cloves, crushed 1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped 2 Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced 3 tablespoons cider vinegar 3 tablespoons sugar 4 tablespoons fish sauce Garnishes (all chopped) garden or hot mint coriander/cilantro Thai sweet basil spring onions/scallions limes fresh ginger Serves 6–8 Bring 2 litres/8 cups water to the boil in a very large saucepan over medium heat. Add the whole duck and the salt and bring back to the boil. Add the rice, sugar, ginger, bouillon and pepper. Cover the pan with the lid and simmer for 75–90 minutes over low heat. Onion pickle Combine the ingredients and leave for at least 1 hour. Dipping sauce Combine the garlic, ginger, chillies and vinegar and leave for about 5 minutes – the vinegar will slightly “cook” the ingredients. Add the sugar and fish sauce. Divide between individual dipping bowls and leave for at least 1 hour. Remove the pan from the heat, take the duck out and set it aside to rest and cool slightly. Now joint the duck, slice the flesh and arrange it on a serving dish. Divide the hot congee between 6–8 soup bowls. Serve with the duck, onion pickle and dipping sauce. Garnishes Serve the garnishes with the congee and duck. Yin and yang Since we were children, my mother has brought us up on a basic philosophy of yin and yang , a principle that shapes everything in the universe, including our health: there are two sides to everything, what goes up must come down, what goes in must come out, and therefore how and what we eat bear consequences on our bodies and minds. The Vietnamese diet is very much based on the general rules of yin and yang. Everything has yin (cold) and yang (hot) aspects to it. Ingredients are either hot, warm, neutral or cold and thereby affect the body and soul, having the potential to make it balanced, too heated or too cool. In a meal, different varieties of ingredients are combined to create a harmony of taste and texture as well as of yin and yang. The two elements complement each other and work in unison, with rice products playing an essential role in the neutral middle. Red meat, onion, root vegetables and exotic fruits grown and ripened in high sun are very hot for the body, as are deep-fried foods. Fish and chicken are warming. Green and leafy vegetables, melon and other fruits are cooling. For thousands of years, this principle has been upheld and food has been treated as medicine. By paying attention to and understanding how our bodies respond to food, the right choices can be made for health, wellbeing and longevity. Naturally “hot” people tend to have restless nights, be thirsty, have headaches, nose bleeds, be irritated, impatient and so on and therefore have to eat more cooling foods, like leafy vegetables. “Cool” people tend to be tired, low in spirits, with a slow metabolism and therefore should eat beef dishes and root vegetables. Understanding how food affects and heals us is a lesson passed down from generation to generation. Crab, tomato and omelette soup bún riêu cua This quick, light, refreshing, sweet and tangy soup can be eaten day or night. The base is simple enough to embrace any herbs and extras such as fried tofu, fishcakes, ham and blood cakes. My mother often made it when we were growing up; she said it reminded her of her home town by the seaside and her brothers and sisters. As a young mother with two children to raise, this was a delicious budget meal as it works well with canned crabmeat. 4 tablespoons dried shrimps 2 litres/8 cups chicken, vegetable or pork stock 4 tomatoes, quartered freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon or lime 2 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons fish sauce 1 teaspoon shrimp paste 240 g/8½ oz. canned (lump) crabmeat, squeezed of excess moisture 4 eggs a pinch of sea salt a pinch of black pepper a pinch of sugar 1 teaspoon cooking oil 2 Asian shallots, thinly sliced cooked rice vermicelli, to serve Optional fillings 1 quantity Fishcakes with Dill ( page 100 ), sliced chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own) Garnishes (optional) lime wedges sliced Bird’s Eye chillies garden mint hot mint cockscomb mint shiso/perilla leaves Thai sweet basil coriander/cilantro banana blossom curly morning glory beansprouts Serves 4 Put the dried shrimps in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 10 minutes. Drain and pat dry. Put the stock, shrimps and tomatoes in a large saucepan over high heat and bring to the boil. Season with the lemon or lime juice, sugar, fish sauce and shrimp paste, then reduce to a medium heat. Put the crabmeat, eggs, salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl and beat with a fork until well mixed. Bring the broth back to a gentle boil. Create a whirlpool in the broth by stirring it around quickly, then pour the egg mixture into the middle. Stop stirring once all the mixture is in. It will rise to the top and form a floating omelette. Meanwhile, put the oil in a frying pan and fry the shallots until golden. When ready to serve, make sure the pan of broth is still boiling, then break up any large pieces of omelette and add the browned shallots. Optional fillings Put the fishcake slices, ham and cooked rice vermicelli in 4 bowls and pour the broth over the top. Garnishes Serve the garnishes on the side. Fish congee with ginger cháo cá gừng This quicker and easier version of cháo is ideal when you are feeling under the clouds. It is light, cleansing and easily digestible. My mother usually makes me eat this if I am suffering from a cold. When you are ill, she says, your body has to do a lot to heal; it shouldn’t have to work hard to digest. This cháo helps to heat up the body with the goodness of ginger and fish and fades away easily with its lightness. 100 g/1 cup cooked basmati rice 1 whole sea bass, seabream, salmon or trout (250 g/9 oz.), scaled, gutted and filleted (keep the carcass) 1 tablespoon cooking oil a pinch of sea salt a pinch of black pepper a pinch of sugar 1 tablespoon fish sauce 1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped Garnishes sliced spring onion/scallion coriander/cilantro sliced Bird’s Eye chilli lime wedges Serves 2 Put 750 ml/3 cups water and the cooked rice in a large saucepan over medium heat and bring to the boil. Add the reserved fish carcass and boil for 20 minutes. Skim off any scum from the surface with a spoon. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a frying pan over high heat and fry the fish fillets, skin side down, for a couple of minutes to brown and cook through. Set aside. Remove the carcass from the broth. Season with the salt, pepper, sugar and fish sauce and add the ginger. Cook for 5 minutes. Divide the broth and fish between 2 soup bowls. Garnishes Serve with the garnishes on the side. Recipes from My Vietnamese Feed the Soul Soups Recipes from My Vietnamese Puff pastry chicken pies bánh patê sô gà nấm và đậu hòa lan The French made a distinctive mark on Vietnamese cuisine and this light puffy snack is one streetfood example. My mother has been making them since she discovered ready-made puff pastry at the supermarket and I sometimes fill them with chicken curry or beef stew! The Vietnamese enjoy pastry snacks like these often. 100 g/3½ oz. skinless chicken breast 1 teaspoon cooking oil 2 tablespoons butter 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped 50 g/⅓ cup garden peas 1 teaspoon pork bouillon 1 teaspoon sugar ½ teaspoon black pepper 1 tablespoon tapioca starch 320 g/11 oz. ready-rolled puff pastry dough, thawed if frozen 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten Sriracha chilli sauce, to serve 6-cm/2½-inch round cookie cutter or glass baking sheet, greased Makes 6 Chop the chicken into 1-cm/½-inch cubes or quickly pulse into pieces in a food processor. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat, then add the chicken, butter, garlic, mushrooms, peas, pork bouillon, sugar and pepper. Fry until the chicken is golden. Put the tapioca starch and 5 tablespoons water in a bowl and stir together. Pour into the pan and stir well. This will thicken and bind everything together. Cook for 1 minute, then remove from the heat and allow to rest while you prepare the pastry. Preheat the oven to 180˚C (350˚F) Gas 4. Unroll the puff pastry dough on a lightly floured surface. Use the cookie cutter or upturned glass to stamp out 12 rounds from the dough. Brush egg yolk over all the rounds with a pastry brush. Put each pastry round on your hand and put a generous tablespoon of fried and cooled filling in the centre. Place on the prepared baking sheet, top with the remaining rounds and press the tines of a fork all around the edges to seal the 2 pastry rounds together. Bake the pies in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes or until golden. Serve immediately, with chilli sauce. Spring rolls chả giò When we first came to London, this was the easiest thing for my mother to make, as most of the ingredients were available from Chinatown. She got everyone she came across, from teachers and neighbours to priests, to fall in love with our family thanks to her spring rolls. They are traditionally eaten hot with herbs wrapped around them and dipped into nước chấm sauce. about 24 fresh square spring roll pastry wrappers, about 14 cm/5½ inches, thawed if frozen up to 3 litres/3 quarts sunflower or vegetable oil Filling 3 tablespoons dried shredded wood ear mushrooms 50 g/1¾ oz. glass (cellophane) noodles 250 g/9 oz. minced/ground chicken or pork 175 g/6 oz. king prawns/jumbo shrimp, shelled, deveined and coarsely chopped 120 g/4 oz. canned (lump) crabmeat, squeezed of excess moisture 250 g/9 oz. white yam, peeled and julienned 2 carrots, shredded 120 g/2 cups beansprouts 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon pork bouillon a pinch of coarse black pepper a pinch of sea salt 2 spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped Dipping sauce and garnishes 2 Bird’s Eye chillies, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons cider vinegar 2 tablespoons fish sauce 2 tablespoons sugar lettuce leaves Thai sweet basil coriander/cilantro hot mint deep fat fryer (optional) Makes about 24 Filling Put the wood ear mushrooms in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for at least 30 minutes. When ready, drain the mushrooms and pat them dry. Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package. Drain, pat dry and cut into short lengths. When you are ready to assemble the rolls, make sure all the filling ingredients are prepared, dry and mixed together. Start to heat up your deep fat fryer, or a large, deep pan half-filled with oil over medium heat. Heat the oil to 140˚C/285˚F or until a cube of bread dropped in sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Place a pastry wrapper diagonally in front of you. Spoon 1 tablespoon of the filling towards the lower corner. Fold the 2 side corners inward over the filling, as if making an envelope, then fold the bottom corner over. Roll up the package tightly, tucking in the filling in a neat cylinder as you roll it towards the far corner. Seal the flap with a touch of oil. Deep fry the roll for 4–5 minutes until golden. Remove and drain on a kitchen paper/paper towel, taste, then adjust the seasoning of the remaining filling if needed. Now assemble and deep fry the remaining rolls in batches. Dipping sauce and garnishes Mix together the garlic, chillies and vinegar in a bowl. Set aside for 2 minutes. This “cooks” the garlic. Now add the fish sauce, sugar and 400 ml/1½ cups water. Wrap each roll in a lettuce leaf with herbs and serve with the dipping sauce in individual bowls. Sai Gon fresh summer rolls gỏi cuốn sai gon This traditional recipe is from Sài Gòn but every region has its own take on fresh summer rolls. Although they are great for special occasions, they are tasty and healthy enough to take to work for lunch – you’ll be enjoying a good herb and prawn salad inside rice paper. 6 rice paper sheets, about 22 cm/9 inches Filling 150 g/5½ oz. pork belly 18 king prawns/jumbo shrimp, shelled and deveined 30 g/1 oz. rice vermicelli 6 lettuce leaves 12 coriander/cilantro sprigs, stalk on, chopped 18 garden or hot mint leaves, chopped 3 cockscomb mint sprigs 18 shiso/perilla leaves 6 garlic chives, halved and head removed Dipping sauce 1 tablespoon cooking oil 1 garlic clove, chopped 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce ½ tablespoon white wine vinegar or cider vinegar 1 teaspoon sugar ½ tablespoon Sriracha chilli sauce 2 tablespoons roasted salted peanuts, crushed Makes 6 Filling Bring a saucepan of water and a few pinches of salt to the boil. Add the pork, cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes or until the juices run clear when you prick it with a knife. Allow to cool, then cut off the skin and very thinly slice the meat. Put the prawns/shrimp and a pinch of salt in a saucepan of boiling water and poach for 2 minutes, or until opaque. Drain and allow to cool. Put the rice vermicelli, a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar in a bowl or pan of boiling water, cover and allow to cook for 5–10 minutes or until soft. Drain and rinse with hot water. Once the pork, prawns/shrimp and vermicelli are ready, put them and the remaining filling ingredients in their own individual bowls in front of you. Pour some warm water into a tray deep and large enough to submerge the rice paper sheets. Use a plastic board as a base on which to make the rolls. Dip a sheet of rice paper into the water and take it out as soon as it is moist all over – do not let it sit in the water. Lay the sheet on the plastic board. Imagine the sheet is a face and now place the filling where the mouth should be: line up a couple of pork slices, 3 prawns/shrimp, 1 lettuce leaf, and one-sixth of the vermicelli and herbs. Fold the 2 sides inward over the filling, as if you were making an envelope. Now fold the bottom corner over the filling. Put 3–4 pieces of garlic chives along the roll with the tips sticking out of one end of the roll. Start to roll up the package tightly, pushing it forward and tucking in the filling in a neat cylinder as you roll it towards the far side of the sheet. Keep in an airtight container or wrap in clingfilm/plastic wrap while you assemble the remaining summer rolls. Dipping sauce Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Fry the garlic until it browns slightly. Add the hoisin sauce, vinegar, sugar, chilli sauce and 1 tablespoon water and bring to a gentle boil. Pour into dipping bowls and sprinkle the peanuts on top. Serve with the rolls for dipping. Chicken salad with hot mint gà xé phay và rau răm My mother never follows recipes; she throws in a bit of this and that and relies on her taste buds to get the right balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot. Every time she makes this, my brother and I eat every last grain and morsel. Onion pickle 1 red onion, thinly sliced 3 tablespoons cider vinegar 1 tablespoon sugar a pinch of sea salt a pinch of black pepper Salad 3 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in 1 chicken stock cube 200 g/1¼ cups basmati rice 1 knob of butter 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 10 hot mint sprigs (or Thai sweet basil), chopped a small handful of coriander/cilantro, stalk on, chopped a pinch of black pepper Dipping sauce 2 tablespoons fish sauce 2 teaspoons sugar 2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped 1 Bird’s Eye chilli, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 1 tablespoon cider vinegar Serves 2–3 Onion pickle Set aside about one-fifth of the onion slices. Combine the remainder with the other ingredients and leave for at least 1 hour. Salad Put 1.2 litres/5 cups cold water and the chicken thighs in a saucepan over medium heat and cover with a lid. Bring to the boil, then skim off the scum from the surface with a spoon. Add the stock cube and cook for 25–30 minutes (but you will need to extract some of the stock 20 minutes into cooking – see below). Wash and drain the rice. Finely chop the reserved portion of red onion. Melt the butter in a non-stick saucepan over low heat and fry the onion and garlic. Add the rice and stir it to coat it in the flavours. Once the chicken has been poaching in the other pan for 20 minutes, take out 350 ml/1½ cups of the poaching stock and pour it into the pan of rice with a pinch of salt. Cover with a lid and raise the heat to medium; this technique will cook the rice beautifully by steaming it. When the liquid comes to the boil, turn the heat back down to low and continue to cook for 15–20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Dipping sauce Mix the ingredients together in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of the leftover chicken poaching stock. When the chicken has finished poaching, remove it from the pan and allow it to rest for 10 minutes while the rice is still cooking. Reserve the leftover stock for another time – allow it to cool completely, then refrigerate or freeze it. Tear the meat from the chicken bones using your fingers or 2 forks. Discard the skin. Mix the chicken with the onion pickle (discarding the pickling juices), mint, coriander/cilantro and pepper. Serve the salad at room temperature with the rice and dipping sauce. Streetfood In Vietnam, the best food comes from the street, where you can buy bánh mì (meat- and herb-filled baguettes), chè (all kinds of desserts), bánh (sweet and savoury cakes/buns), fried bananas and soups – almost anything you would want to eat. The food is homemade, generally by the vendor who usually specializes in the one thing he or she is selling. And he does it well, because the Saigonese are fussy and want everything fresh, done in a certain way. People use the street to sell food in carts, baskets, markets – even living rooms can be opened up to the street to be turned into eateries. Teenagers walk around drumming beats with a spoon on an icebreaker to announce home deliveries. There is an allotted time for street snacks: crêpes in the evening, banana fritters in the afternoon and so on, with seasonal fruits available at all times. The smell of baked coconut custard buns and barbecued meat is enough to entice any hungry passer-by. For city dwellers, life resides on sidewalks. People love to open their entire living rooms to the street and invite friends and neighbours to squat and chat over a refreshing drink or snack, and to play with children, if only to get a breeze from the heat and humidity that lives through the seasons. The front door is an unfenced window, exposed to the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, where there is always hunger or the anticipation of hunger. Today, many people can live without ever needing to cook at home, as what they buy on the street from a favourite vendor is generally cooked at home. Many dishes can be time consuming and expensive to make on a small scale, so it can be easier to buy it ready made and it will always come with all the right garnishes and dipping sauces. Raw fish and chips cá ngừ sống và khoai tây chiên This is my take on my favourite British dish, fish and chips. It got everyone in London talking about my supper club. You can use salmon, too. Fish 2 teaspoons soy sauce 1-cm/½-inch piece of ginger, finely chopped 4 tablespoons orange juice 1 teaspoon wasabi paste 1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced 200 g/7-oz. line-caught, sashimi-grade tuna Chips 1–2 litres/4–8 cups vegetable oil 400 g/14 oz. Maris Piper/russet potatoes, cut into fat matchsticks sea salt Wasabi mayo 7 tablespoons mayonnaise 1 teaspoon wasabi paste deep fat fryer (optional) Serves 2 Fish Combine the soy sauce, ginger, orange juice and wasabi in a bowl. With a sharp knife, cut the tuna against the grain into tidy 2-cm/1-inch cubes. Marinate in the bowl for 15 minutes. Chips Heat up your deep fat fryer, or a large, deep pan half-filled with oil over medium heat. Heat the oil to 140˚C/285˚F or until a cube of bread dropped in sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Deep fry the chips for 3 minutes. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and set on a board. Stab them several times with a fork to create crispy bits. Return them to the oil and fry again for 2 minutes or until golden. Remove and drain on a kitchen paper/paper towel. Season with salt. Wasabi mayo Combine the mayonnaise and wasabi paste. Scatter the spring onions/scallions over the marinated tuna and serve with the chips and wasabi mayo. Deep-fried frogs’ legs ếch chiên nước mắm The Vietnamese love frogs’ legs. This recipe is based on my love of fried chicken wings, which are similar to frogs’ legs. I found inspiration for this during my travels to the American Deep South. Frogs’ legs up to 2 litres/8 cups sunflower or vegetable oil 400 g/14 oz. frogs’ legs or chicken wings 100 g/¾ cup plain/all-purpose flour or tapioca starch 1 teaspoon chilli powder ½ teaspoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon sugar 2 teaspoons pork bouillon 1 teaspoon sea salt 200 ml/¾ cup buttermilk or double/heavy cream Sweet chilli dipping sauce 2 Bird’s Eye chillies, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons cider vinegar 3 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons fish sauce Garnishes sliced spring onions/scallions sliced Bi	142,026
Funny on Purpose The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy Standup + Improv + Sketch + TV + Writing +... (Joe Randazzo, John Hodgman) (Z-Library).epub	Funny On Purpose Part 1 WRITING COMEDY the foundation for the basis of the structure in the center of the comedy At the heart of all great comedy, no matter the language or style, is one core element: a big tubby fatso falling out of his teeny chair face-first into a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs. But there is often a second thing, and that thing, which is also important, is writing. Almost all comedy starts with writing, and scripts provide the blueprint for everything from a one-minute sketch to a feature-length film. The best sitcoms are built in the writers’ room, where ideas are hatched and honed and turned into twenty-three minutes of comedy. The monologues delivered by our late-night talk show hosts are weaned from dozens or hundreds of one-liners churned out by a team of joke writers and contributors. Awards shows, speeches, cartoons, even Geico commercials: All require writers. Writing is where so many Comedy People start out—and where many happily stay—partly because there are more jobs in writing than in being a movie star, and partly because comedy writing is a real craft. Opportunities abound to write comedy outside of film and TV, too. There’s the whole entire Internet, for example, about 98 percent of which is made up of things designed to make people laugh. You can write jokes for other comedians or you can punch up copy for a local furniture commercial. There’s books and magazines and, to an increasingly anemic degree, newspapers as well. Comedy writing is everywhere—but it’s not easy. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it, and our economy would collapse. It’s hard not only because of its technical complexity, but also because of the toll it takes on the writer. It can be dreadfully lonely and frustrating, but if you’re good and dedicated and willing to work like a dog, you can do it. And if you’re not that good at first, don’t worry: that will usually catch up with the second two traits. Funny On Purpose Chapter 22 DEVELOPMENT Development is the process of bringing an idea from concept to production. Sometimes that means working with the creators to refine their concept into a script; sometimes it means reworking what’s already there to make it something that will please investors and audiences. Development people come in all varieties, and their jobs totally depend on their personality, what their bosses want from them, and the project. Whether it’s TV or film—the two kinds of development we are discussing in this chapter—only a small proportion—perhaps 10 percent—of the projects in development ever make it to market. Projects can get killed for any number of reasons, be they creative, financial, or something completely irrational, like an executive’s opinion. Sometimes talent drops out or sometimes a similar project gets greenlit first. But unless you’re making something completely independently, if there’s any money involved at all, you’ll probably work with someone to develop your project. How Development Works Development varies greatly depending on the situation, but it always refers to making changes to a project before it’s been greenlit for production. Sometimes development amounts to little more than pairing the right producer with the right talent. Other times, development is a horrifying series of inane notes seemingly designed to suck all of the life out of a perfectly good script. Generally speaker, however, development is undertaken by two types of entities: production companies and studios or networks. DEVELOPMENT BY A PRODUCTION COMPANY Production companies want to find and develop talent and ideas that they can sell to studios, networks, and distributors. Since profit margins at production companies are so much smaller, their development departments are usually slimmer. More often than not, the people who run the production company are also the development department. However, production companies of any size are always looking for new projects to take on, and they will take the time to develop work if they think you or your idea could fit their particular specialty or concentration. PRO TERM! FOUR QUADRANTS The ultimate prize in movie parlance is a film that appeals to audiences from all four demographic “quadrants”: men, women, and those under twenty-five and over twenty-five. Typically, studios executives and their development counterparts want movies to appeal to at least two, and preferably more, of these quadrants. Movies that involve humor, action, romance, and star power have the best chance to become that elusive four-quadrant comedy. Some examples: The Princess Bride, Ghostbusters, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and The Hangover. For instance, you bring a pilot script to Producer X, who has a development deal with Fox. (This might mean Fox gets a first look at any new projects, or that they are obligated to buy a certain number of pilots each year. It depends on the deal.) The producer will give notes on the script itself and help shape your future episode ideas to be more in line with the kind of shows Fox likes to air. You’ll go back and forth on this for a while until the producer is ready to take the more fully formed project to the development people at Fox. DEVELOPMENT BY A NETWORK OR STUDIO Studios have more money than production companies, and they spend more money on development. Most TV networks and movie studios have a development staff dedicated to working on new projects. Their job is to keep an eye out for new talent and work with them to make something that their bosses are likely to purchase. They tend to be creative people who love the medium they work in, but they can also speak the language of the business people who buy and sell these things. For example, the development executives at Fox might look at the pilot you put together with Producer X and decide that it would fill a hole in their fall programming if the lead character were about ten years younger, and if there was some way to work in a boyfriend character for an actor whom they really want to work with. After those concerns are addressed, they run it up the flag pole hoping their higher-ups will like it enough to order a pilot. Once the script is bought, money is involved, and a whole new development process begins, with notes and concerns and ideas from other executives, too. DEVELOPMENT JOBS Nearly any entity that produces, buys, and distributes content will have jobs in development. Some people come to development from production, some come to it from sales, and some come to it from a different profession altogether. At the entry level, most people start out as assistants and interns and work their way up from the inside. As in many professions, developing good relationships with the people you work with is the best way to earn responsibility and develop a specialty in a given genre. Likewise, keeping a broad range of contacts within the comedy and production worlds is a valuable asset. Another route into development is through the digital world—it’s a much more free-ranging landscape than film or TV, with smaller budgets and less oversight. Tips for Surviving Notes After you’ve sold your script or concept to a massive studio or network and provided their accounting department with your routing number for easy direct deposit, your job may be done. Or, you might be a producer on the show or perhaps your contract specifies that you’ll be involved with rewrites. Whatever the case may be, you are sure to get plenty of notes. Here are a few things you ought to keep in mind during that process. ASSUME GOOD WILL AND LISTEN To writers, the development team can sometimes seem like the “enemy,” but most of the time they are talented, experienced people who really care about the final product and want it to be the best it can be: for the creator, for the studio, and for the audience. Most development executives have been down almost any road you can think of. They know what works in their genre and, more importantly, their company. Their ideas can help unlock a character, reshape a narrative, or turn a decent idea into something that people will actually pay to watch. They want your show or movie to succeed. That said, sometimes (often) their job means representing their boss and trying to predict what their boss will want or like. Those predictions can be wrong or lead to creative conflicts. In the most dangerous scenario, you’ll come across a development executive whose only job is to justify their job, leading them to make arbitrary changes and suggestions merely to leave their mark on a project. This may not happen as often as rumor would suggest, but it does happen. If (when) it happens to you, will need an advocate. IDENTIFY AN ADVOCATE You should always have someone who has your back, be it an agent, a manager, a mentor, or a sympathetic executive—someone you can ask to speak on your behalf and advocate for your point of view. Don’t lean on this person all the time—you should be your own best advocate—but an outside opinion can be helpful for both sides. Ideally, of course, you will charm and win over the development department, who will become your advocates, as you work together. PREPARE FOR THE WORST All of the most horrible things you’ve heard about development are true. The process can be an absolute nightmare with backstabbings, lies, deceit, careless decisions, idiotic notes, and general creative murder. All of those things can really happen. So be prepared for the fact that your project might not wind up being what you started out with at all. If you can approach the process with that in mind, it will be such a pleasant surprise when things don’t go nearly as badly. PREPARE FOR THE LONG HAUL The development process can go through countless unforeseen twists and turns. It can go on, literally, for years. In fact, a project may be shelved—and still technically be in development—and never get made at all. DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY The decision to move forward with something or not is made for a million reasons in a million different moments. Most often, decisions have more to do with the people making them, internal studio politics, or a simple matter of mathematics than it does with you or your project. That’s the business part, and it’s just business. A network may decide that they have enough family comedies already, or that they’d rather work with David Alan Grier. It can be anything, or it can be nothing. Try not to let it destroy you. An Interview with Kate Adler “In the most simple terms, you need sustained conflict.” Kate Adler is the executive vice president of comedy development for CBS Television Studios—the creative arm of the CBS network that produces and develops properties to sell to the corporate side. As a development exec and producer, she’s worked on such shows as The Millers, Ed, Survivor, Late Night with David Letterman, and Ellen. On What She Looks For What delights us in a pitch is novelty, something that feels somehow fresh or free of cliché, or uses a cliché in a good way. Something that feels genuine, that comes from a real place of having something to say about the world. There should be an agenda, as opposed to just saying, “Well, my agent wanted me to come up with a few ideas.” You have no idea how often we get pitched “Somebody leaves something to someone and they’re stuck with it.” If your uncle left you a casino in Vegas, and you didn’t want to go run a casino in Vegas, you would hire a lawyer to sell it for you. It’s the ultimate shortcut for a writer that you don’t even have to explain anything. We get so many of those. We avoid anything too on-the-nose. Like a show about the host of a children’s show who hates children. Or a life coach who’s completely lost. Or a dating expert who is perpetually single and lonely. Those kinds of reversals are too black and white for most of us. What’s interesting is the gray area. On Characters and Conflict Any good show usually starts from character. We’ll get a lot of phone calls where people say, “Would you be interested in developing a show at a car dealership or an all-girls’ school?” And for us that’s just a setting. What makes it interesting is: Who are our characters? What are they trying to say? And what are the obstacles in their way? What is compelling? Developing TV is very different from developing a feature because we need to develop something that’s going to be compelling to people for years and years and years. So when we hear a pitch, the most important thing we think about is, is this going to be something that’s sustainable as a story engine over a long period of time? In the most simple terms, you need sustained conflict. If it’s a very surmountable problem—oh, she can just move out! Or she can just get a divorce—then it’s going to be very hard sustaining it. If what a character wants is very clear, and the obstacle is also very clear, then that seems to be the best way to sustain conflict and create story. On Disappointment Unlike a writer who is going through this for the first time, we go through this many times a season, and we’ve been doing this for a long time, so we’re aware going in of what the chances of survival are. That each network, out of sixty comedy scripts, is going to order this many pilots, and of those pilots, this small percentage will make it to air. It’s a little bit like buying a lottery ticket. On Starting Out I worked at a boutique production company that was represented by CAA, so I got to know some agents at CAA and realized that being an assistant there would be like going to graduate school in television development, which was where I felt like I fit in. I knew I didn’t want to write, but I wanted to be as close to writers as possible. So I worked at CAA for a year and a half, and then my boss bought me a nice suit, which at the time meant shoulder pads. It was a navy Donna Karan suit that she bought at Barney’s, and they set me up with some interviews, and I wound up in my first job at Disney in comedy development. On Diversity I’m happy to say that I work in a very diverse environment, and I’d even venture to say that it’s female-dominated. CBS has four comedy development executives, and all four are women. The president of CBS is a woman. Development in general, drama and comedy, is heavy on women. Don’t get me wrong: there’s tons of sexism out there, but at least compared to other industries, in this industry, I feel like I’m in a very protected place. Funny On Purpose Part 5 THE BUSINESS OF COMEDY No jokes here, all business. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to observe a focus group watching videos we’d made for a comedy website called Thing X. The entire situation called to mind a sci-fi medical procedure: we sat in a small observation area, looking through a one-way mirror, surrounded by screens and computer modules. One by one, the group of carefully selected demographic representatives walked in, all of the same approximate age, income level, and sex, and timidly took their places at a round table. They placed the headphones over their ears, as instructed, and began consuming the media. Then they were asked what they thought. And they thought it was terrible. They all thought it was really, really terrible. They tore apart every detail, from the site design to the quality of the comedy. Our stuff was too long, they said. The jokes were unclear. Our subject matter wasn’t relatable. Once they got the punch line, they didn’t need anything else. Hearing that, and reflecting on it ad nauseam over the next couple of days, had a profound impact on me. I realized something more concretely than I had at any point in my career, and that something is this: Comedy is a product. Yes, comedy can be art, and yes, it can be thought-provoking and profound— and it should be —but it’s important for anyone wishing to make a career in comedy to realize that comedy is also a product. It’s like a refrigerator: it needs to function well. It needs to look good. There are customers who know what they like, and they expect it to be packaged and delivered to them in a form they find satisfactory in relation to the time or money they’ve given in exchange for it. Comedy has value, and it is your job to provide that value. When considering the business of comedy, these are the core questions: • What are you selling? • Who will buy it? • What do they want from it? • How does it compare to everything else in the marketplace? These questions are worth asking yourself about everything you do if you wish to function in the professional realm. But you don’t have to ask them alone. There are people whose job it is to think about this stuff, to help the left brain meet the right brain, to make deals, develop ideas, and manage finances. They’re the businesspeople. Funny On Purpose Chapter 16 ILLUSTRATION & COMICS For a time, the most powerful form of political commentary was the editorial cartoon. It could shift public opinion or make politicians into household names. They were wildly popular and the art was often incredible: vibrant, emotional, and sharp. They could communicate complicated ideas in a single panel drawing (though many are also famously obtuse and convoluted). Nowadays, political cartoons are less influential, as they have to compete with programs like The Daily Show and the seven million GIFs and memes that explode out of the Internet each day. Gone, too, are the days of glorious, full-color illustrations that once graced the covers of glossy magazines. The New Yorker is one of the only major periodicals that still commissions such work, and across the board, publications are doing it less and not paying as much for the work they do hire. Yet there is hope! Those who specialize in static drawn images will always find avenues and venues through which to be seen. Each web page is a visual canvas longing for expression, and niche publishing of books and comics allows artists to reach audiences and put out work that would have been impossible in the past. Illustration Most illustrators make their living doing commercial or editorial work—that is, the little doodles, magazine covers, album art, and advertisements that you see nearly everywhere you turn. Few are able to support themselves solely by their personal art, so most turn to commercial assignments. It’s not all bad to work for someone else to pay the bills while putting out your own work on your own terms and with less pressure. GETTING STARTED IN ILLUSTRATION Some who are active on the opinion-sharing sectors of the Internet believe that the freelance illustration industry is dead. Clients are no longer willing to pay a living wage, and less-experienced illustrators can do less-sophisticated work more quickly, which is sometimes all that matters. Others say there’s more work than ever before—you just have to be more clever and responsive. Either way, the landscape is constantly changing, and if you want to work in this field, and you have the talent, you can. Here are a few things that can help. DEVELOP A UNIQUE STYLE Even if you are capable in multiple styles, try to hone one that you can use for commercial work. It not only makes you easier to identify and reference, but it can help get you work if you are in the same basic genre of a better known, and more expensive, illustrator or artist. Cynical but practical! DO COVERS AND POSTERS Illustrate book covers, album covers, and posters as much as possible. This helps you gain experience and possibly some exposure. You can also offer your services to local newspapers or organizations that otherwise don’t have the budgets to commission work as good as yours. BUILD A PORTFOLIO Accumulate all of your best work in the style that you’ve chosen to focus on, and put it in one place for prospective clients to see. If you don’t have any actual commercial work yet, do your own. Scour your favorite magazines and redo the illustrations in your own style. It’s usually recommended that a portfolio include about twenty-four images, with the strongest material at the beginning and the end. MAINTAIN A WEBSITE Even people with no talent, skills, or products/services to offer have their own websites, so you should certainly have one, too. Make your website simple, easy to navigate, and reflective of who you are. WORK ON STUFF YOU HATE Since you will often be paid to illustrate subjects you have no interest in, get some practice by doing it of your own volition. Do illustrations for Asian commodities markets and country music awards. If you can make a study on the efficacy of new pituitary gland medications look whimsical, you can make almost anything look whimsical. BE MULTIDISCIPLINARY Back in my day, kids could play stick-ball in the streets and never have to worry about getting hit by a car. These days it’s all Adobe Illustrator and Cintiq 24HD monitors. Cartooning and illustrating will always boil down to the basic pen-to-paper dynamic, but being able to work in various formats with multiple applications is a must. BE GOOD TO WORK WITH Be nice. Be courteous. Be prompt, thorough, and professional. No matter how good your stuff is, if you’re difficult to work with, people will eventually stop working with you. SELL YOUR WORK One advantage illustrators have is that they can sell actual physical things. They can adapt their art into greeting cards, mugs, vibrators, pillow cases, or those weird plastic sheets that you put on cars and buses to advertise energy drinks or whatever. ONLINE STORE Your website should have a merch section where you can offer LIMITED EDITION prints or made-to-order objects. THIRD-PARTY SELLERS Having someone else sell for you has advantages: they reach a wider audience and they’ll handle fulfillment, shipping, and processing—but they will also take a percentage of your sales. The major options include Etsy, Fab, eBay, Amazon, and Art.com , though others are always coming and going online. TRADE SHOWS As an artist, fairs, trade shows, conventions, and festivals are a great way to connect with fans and expose your work to consumers. Flea markets and craft fairs are always interesting because you never know who will walk up, and it’s fun to reach customers who weren’t necessarily seeking comic or illustrator art. An Interview with Lisa Hanawalt “There’s a lot of dumb advice floating around out there so: be cautious!” Lisa Hanawalt is one of the funniest, most interesting illustrators in the world, she created the visuals and character designs for the Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman , and her book My Dirty Dumb Eyes is a visual revelation. She mixes the personal and the surreal and is fearless in her willingness to expose her own fears to the reader in a sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking way. How did you get started? I just kinda did it! I’ve always drawn. I never thought, “I am starting to be an artist . . . NOW!” Who were your favorite cartoonists growing up? I was raised loving the Sunday funny pages: Gary Larson, Bill Watterson, and, not going to lie, I was really into Garfield , too. Steve Martin and Weird Al Yankovic were the funniest people in the world to me. Ren & Stimpy . How does one make money in your field? Here’s what I did last year: I wrote and illustrated articles, designed book covers, sold comic books and zines/prints/T-shirts, made a web comic, sold original art, designed the characters and backgrounds for a TV show pilot, then that sold and I got hired as an art director. What’s the hardest part about breaking in as an illustrator today? There’s so much fresh talent coming out constantly, it’s easy to feel lost! I think a lot of illustrators also struggle to find a unique style. Finding creatively fulfilling jobs that also pay well and aren’t soul crushing is tricky. What advice would you have for someone starting out? Try to actually finish things. Feel comforted that there isn’t one path to “success.” Try to create something new-ish, instead of just doing the same things the same old way that everyone else is doing them. What’s your favorite publication to work for, and why? Lucky Peach magazine, because they send me fun places and feed me great foods. How did the deal for My Dirty Dumb Eyes come about? Drawn and Quarterly asked me if I wanted to make a book and I said yes. It was just like a high school prom should be. How important is merch to the overall Hanawalt brand? It’s fun having a few Hanawallets and Hanawal-T-shirts out there in the world, but I’m not incredibly invested in merch. It feels like a nice bonus to the job, not an end goal. That said, I’d love to work more with textiles. Underwear with my patterns on them? What’s the worst advice you’ve ever gotten? I can’t think of anything specific, but there’s a lot of dumb advice floating around out there so: be cautious! Comics Today, the term comics covers a broad spectrum of styles and types, from the mainstream syndicated daily and weekly cartoons in newspapers to one-off book ideas to indie and web comics, where just about anything goes. All in all, though, the number of jobs available in comics is, as you might imagine, extremely finite. SYNDICATED CARTOONS For traditional, one- or four-panel cartoonists, the good news is that a very specific set of steps exists for getting comics syndicated. The vast majority of such comics are distributed by King Features, which describes its role this way on its website: “A syndicate decides which comic strips it thinks it can sell best. Then it signs a contract with the cartoonist to create the strips on a regular basis. But most of all, the syndicate edits, packages, promotes, prints, sells and distributes the comic strip to newspapers and other publications around the world.” To be considered for syndication, here’s what your submission package to a place like King Features should typically include: • A one-page cover letter describing your strip with your contact info. • Twenty-four daily comic strips on eight-by-eleven paper. • A character sheet with a one-paragraph description of your major characters. Expect eight to twelve weeks for a response and check the website for the most recent submissions requirements. BOOKS The best-selling original books tend to be compilations of work by widely syndicated cartoonists, but there are still a lot of original titles that do well. Chronicle Books, who published this book, has published the cartoon volumes All My Friends Are Dead, Zombies Hate Stuff, and Darth Vader and Son. While not strictly “comics,” per se, they are humorous, drawn, and follow a story or character. Other publishers also produce comic-based books. For advice on finding a publisher, see chapter 7 . INDIE COMICS Indie comics have always formed the backbone of alternative comedy in any genre. They’ve given us Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, and Chris Ware. Many of the best original indie comics were self-published, on the cheap and uncompromising in every way. Indie comics are as close as dorks can get to punk rock, and it’s getting me all worked up just thinking about it. Because indie publishers don’t have to worry about reaching a wide, or tasteful, audience, they can afford to be much more daring—though smaller runs and audiences mean smaller paychecks for artists. The two top indie publishers for comics artists are Fantagraphics Books and Drawn and Quarterly. WEB COMICS As soon as people started putting things online, web comics started appearing. Artists immediately found the lack of oversight, the freedom from conventional forms, and the general sense of being able to do whatever the hell they wanted to be exhilarating. Today there are thousands of web comics spanning every imaginable genre, form, and level of quality, though only a small percentage of them are commercially viable. The reason has to do with supply and demand: that same lack of restriction also ensures proliferation. But the creative rewards have been high, with wholly new styles and genres making use of clip art, animated GIFs, and pixel art. This has helped usher in the age of Nerd Culture. A lot of the most popular web comics have historically catered to that very Internet-y series of interests and obsessions—from tech specs to Star Trek —that the mainstream used to consider uncool. WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL WEB COMIC Drawings. You can make these by hand, on the computer, with Photoshop—whatever the heck you want! Just make them! They’re really important. A scanner. Most paper sizes won’t fit into your computer. Use a scanner. Quality. The purest way to stand out is to have a really good web comic. There are other ways to generate website traffic (e.g., “search engine optimization,” or SEO), but the main way is to offer a product that people want to read and look at, that they find entertaining and funny and different. But don’t worry if your web comic is not amazing at first. Quality will come in time. Regularity. Your comic needs to be published consistently and on time. You’ve got to build good habits in yourself before you can expect them in your audience, and once you start gaining an audience, they will want more. That’s why it’s called an “audience,” from the Greek words audi, meaning “to really, really want,” and ence , meaning “more web comics.” This will give you an advantage over artists whose quality might be higher but who lack discipline. Community. Web comic artists are a specific breed, to be sure, and the community is passionate. As in any group, there is pettiness and judgment, but there’s support and inspiration, too. Connect with your fellow artists. Talk with them and read their stuff. In the end you can choose to support the community as little or as much as you want, but eschew it at your own peril. Expression. Please, at the very least, do something you want to do. Be daring. Fuck something up. Be weird. Create something you’ve never seen. An Interview with Michael Kupperman “A career is the belief that you have a career.” Michael Kupperman is the probably least-known best-known comic artist in the world. His work, including Tales Designed to Thrizzle and Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010, is widely beloved in the comedy community, and he counts Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel among his biggest fans. But he doesn’t enjoy wide popularity, partly because his work is so specifically, brilliantly insane, but also because he has consciously decided to work outside the corporate system. This creates a natural tension for the modern merchant-artist—especially one who’s already prone to tension, like Kupperman—but in so doing, he’s been able to create a vast, intricate nebula of work, totally unencumbered by any outside oversight. I learned to draw in a very academic, fine art-y way at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and then I felt like I had to sort of go back and deconstruct that. Part of it was going back into drawing as an adventure: you’re going into the page and you could be surprised by what happens. Which is part of the reason why, unlike a lot of other cartoonists, I don’t have a style, really. It’s more like a shifting dialogue with drawing. My early inspiration was from underground comics and Raw —a book-slash-magazine that Art Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, created. That was where he showcased Maus. It was the greatest marriage of comics, art, and design, probably, ever. Then underground comics such as Zap also inspired me. Robert Crumb, Robert Williams. All of these had profane subject matter, so they were freeing on the artistic front, and the humor front, and my mind was blown, so to speak. Art and humor are at their best for me when they’re about freedom: freedom of surprise. Freedom of release from expectations. I was very poorly prepared for life and had no idea how to ask questions such as, “What is my motivation in life?” I didn’t even know. I’d been drawing since I was a small child, so it was a language that I was familiar with. It was not hard to learn how to draw; the hard part is putting yourself inside the drawing, to where it’s an actual expression of yourself, rather than a mechanical action. The great cartoonists of the 1950s had careers at a time when they were supported, when people would give them the opportunities and give them the proper environment for them to really develop as artists, and have a satisfying career. We don’t have that now. It’s a wasteland. It’s postapocalyptic, as far as what I do! It’s really about what you believe you can make happen, as much as anything. Getting commercial approval is sort of an all-at-once deal: you get that one thing that gets you that notice, and then you don’t have to worry about it that much anymore. If there’s any worth to my work, it’s that it’s not the same shit. And part of the thing about my humor is that the ball bounces in a different direction than you expect it to. And you either enjoy that or you don’t. Funny On Purpose Afterword HOW ALL OF THIS RELATES TO YOUR INEVITABLE DEMISE In short: Before too very long, we’ll all be dead. That’s okay. Everyone who came before us has done it, and they’re all fine, so far as we know. We’ll survive death. But until that time, we are here, doing this thing. Sometimes it feels wonderful and full of possibility. But it often seems unbearable, hard, and meaningless, too. At its worst, perhaps, life is just boring and dumb. So what are we supposed to do with that? What are we to do in those times when it feels like none of this is worth it? Like life is stupid? We should think about death. Most of us do it without much trouble anyway. There’s a proud tradition of death-obsessed comedy, from Groucho Marx to George Carlin, from Oscar Wilde to Tig Notaro. For a people who have a tendency toward anxiety, few things inspire more anxiety than inevitable oblivion. But I think some of us are missing the point. Death is not a thing to be avoided: it’s the thing that gives us shape. It gives us meaning. It gives us a deadline. In a job and way of life that is designed in many ways to destroy us, perspective is the most important skill we can possess. Having the ability to see that everything changes, that everything passes, that one job or one standup set are not the end of the world, is sometimes all that can keep us sane. I do a little thing when I get frustrated about work: I imagine myself on my deathbed, surrounded by loved ones. I try to really be there, to feel the moment, and I ask myself if my current petty annoyance will even register as anything worth remembering as I draw my last breaths. That usually shuts me up. By the same token, the knowledge that your body is going to rot someday should provide some impetus for Doing Good Work. You now have a standard for yourself, and that is, what will your name mean when you’re not around anymore? Will you be satisfied to have just gotten by? To have never quite given it your all because, what if you fail? What does one failure have to do with eternal darkness, I ask you! Take yourself to your deathbed once in a while, and imagine looking back on the work you created. Does it make you proud? Now, not everybody can be Mark Twain but, then again, fuck that—why can’t they? If Mark Twain hadn’t tried to be Mark Twain, then we never would have had Mark Twain. As Mr. T used to say, “Be somebody,” and be guided by the knowledge that you don’t have forever to accomplish that. Lastly, while we’re lying here together looking back on it all, there’s one other thing worth considering, and that’s all the human beings in our lives. We may have written books and shot TV pilots and drawn wonderful drawings, but without other people, all of those things would literally—not figuratively, literally —be useless. In fact, if it weren’t for other human beings, we wouldn’t even exist at all. The work we do will stand on its own for as long as it does, but tastes and sensibilities change. Digital formats change. The thing that will outlast all of that is how we’ve acted. How we’ve been, as human beings, in the world. There’s nothing wrong with ambition and ego. It is a big part of why you’re reading this and why I wrote it. But cemeteries are filled with ambitious, prolific, talented, groundbreaking people. What is truly remarkable is to be remembered not just for how prolific or talented or groundbreaking you were, but to have been all those things while still making space in your life for other people’s well-being. This way, too, if it turns out that we’re not that funny after all, at least they can still say something nice about us. Funny On Purpose Chapter 5 WRITING SKETCH COMEDY Sketch may well be the purest form of comedy, but like that game Othello and probably a bunch of other stuff, it can take a lifetime to master. Sketches are short, tight, packed full of jokes (or one incredibly well-earned joke), and often grouped together as part of a larger show. Some sketches are absurd, some are parodies, and some are musical, but all sketches are essentially one premise, explored and stretched and taken to the farthest degree possible—in the shortest possible time. In the great arc of human history, there’s only been a handful of successful sketch comedy shows: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The State, The Kids in the Hall, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Mr. Show with Bob and David, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle’s Show, Key & Peele, The Tracey Ullman Show . Sketch comedy is a noble pursuit but very difficult to pull off with any regularity. Even the cast and writers of Saturday Night Live only have to do it twenty times a year, and it’s hard for them to maintain a decent batting average. Each sketch needs to exist as a complete piece all on its own, and it has to do so in three to five minutes, and in such a way that it is unlike any other sketch in that particular show. Moreover, in the case of SNL , most of the sketches need to be accessible to a national audience, incorporating recognizable personages, events, and trends—and all of it should be, you know, funny. Where to Write Sketch Comedy There are very few jobs dedicated to writing sketch comedy, but most comedy writers have written sketches at some point or another, usually while in college or as part of a sketch team at a local comedy theater. It’s a great way to start out, since it teaches you about economy and structure, and it offers opportunities to explore many different genres, from fake commercials to period pieces. Naturally, most of the sketch comedy writing that happens on college campuses and in local comedy theaters is unpaid. TELEVISION The best way—although not the easiest way—to get work on a TV sketch show is to write and produce your own sketch show. The Kids in the Hall were discovered by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels this way, and The State was picked up by MTV based on their live performances. The Whitest Kids U’ Know sold their show to Fuse after winning awards at a comedy festival. The few sketch shows that do exist will accept submissions in the same way as any other show (see chapter 6 ). Usually you need an agent, though it never hurts to contact a producer (just watch the credits!) and inquire about the show’s policy. RADIO England has a legacy of radio sketch comedy that doesn’t exist to the same degree in America (at least not since the 1970s). In Britain, the League of Gentlemen got their start on radio, as did Peter Serafinowicz (see page 58) and Robert Popper of Look Around You fame. Plus, the BCC’s Radio 4 continues to produce sketch comedy shows. In America, there’s not much more than a handful of NPR programs. Sketch comedy podcasts, however, are a growing genre, where you have creative freedom and a forum for attracting attention. For instance, Comedy Bang! Bang! started as a podcast before it was developed into a TV show on IFC. LIVE Surprisingly, you can make money performing live sketch comedy! Some clubs feature sketch nights, and there are paying gigs if you wind up on a sketch team at Second City or another prominent theater’s touring company. Likewise, successful local sketch shows are not unheard of: the group Kasper Hauser has been doing shows for years in the San Francisco area, and The Thrilling Adventure Hour —a monthly staged reading in the style of an old-timey radio play—has consistently sold out in Los Angeles. An Interview with Seth Reiss “I hate laziness, and I hate when people lack passion.” Seth Reiss has written for The Onion, Comedy Bang! Bang! , and Late Night with Seth Meyers . He was also a member of the New York–based sketch group Pangea 3000, and he is one of the most focused and intense people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He’s a lunatic, honestly, but a funny one. A good sketch needs a good, solid, interesting concept. A great idea. And the sketch executes that idea perfectly. That’s not to say the idea can’t be simple. Even better when it’s interesting and simple. I really dislike when one person is acting crazy and the joke is other people commenting on how crazy that person is acting. People acting weird is great, but not when everyone else is completely sane. Then I wonder why the weird person isn’t in a mental institution or why the sane people don’t just say, “Yeah, I gotta go,” when the weird person comes onstage. I don’t like when jokes come from conflict or arguing. I like when everyone is on the same page, carrying out the concept of the sketch together. Conflict-free sketch comedy. I also don’t like anything that feels like this: “An intervention, but instead of alcohol, it’s for . . .” Shit like that is the worst. Any writer who comes up with that idea needs to say, “No, this is not funny or original. It mathematically works as a sketch, but it’s not worth my time.” I hate laziness, and I hate when people lack passion. It translates when the group is onstage. The performance lacks energy. And, by the way, passion comes in all forms. Some people are quietly passionate, and that’s equally as effective, if not more so, than being loudly passionate. I also always think I am an inch away from being the laziest person in the world. Questions to Ask About Your Sketch WHAT’S FUNNY ABOUT IT? You should be able to describe in one sentence what it is that you— you —find funny about your sketch, and then strive never to veer too far from that. Your sketch needs a strong central premise, but to me, that is secondary to the thing about it that makes you laugh. The premise may be that there’s a scientist who doesn’t know math, but what you may find funny is the way in which the scientist overcompensates by loudly identifying math whenever he sees it. IS IT GROUNDED IN REALITY? Most great sketches, no matter how bizarre, have at least some connection to a relatable situation. It can be a small detail (an alien bounty hunter who needs coffee in the morning) or the framing context (a wedding for dolphins), but without something to relate to, the audience has no subvertable expectations. There’s no real reason for anything to happen, which creates a general lack of reality. The sketch may be funny, but it will leave everyone feeling a little cold. DOES IT HAVE A BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END? Who cares? A sketch doesn’t need to follow traditional storytelling structures. All it needs to do is get something funny across in a surprising, committed way. The more it breaks structural conventions and lives in a territory just beyond description, the more memorable it will be. CAN IT BE SHORTER? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French aristocrat, writer, and founding member of the sketch comedy troupe the Horny Rhinos, wrote that perfection is only achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. It has never been said that a comedy sketch was too short. As you write, strip away anything that is not in the immediate service of the main joke or that does not propel us toward the end. Anything that you can do in four pages is twice as funny in two pages. That’s just good math! HOW DOES IT SOUND OUT LOUD? Read your sketches out loud, preferably as you write them, to experience them as your future audience will. Untold oodles of comedy are discovered through the rhythm and pace of the spoken word, and lots of jokes that sound funny and natural inside your head do not translate outside of it. WHAT IS THE BIGGEST JOKE? This may not be the biggest laugh. The biggest joke is the moment the whole sketch builds toward. Locate that joke and you’ve found your ending. At that point, it doesn’t matter how you get out, just do it fast. Your audience will appreciate an abrupt but perfectly timed ending more than a logical one that stretches the sketch beyond its big joke. IS YOUR SKETCH A SKETCH? Sometimes what you’re creating is better served by another format. If you’ve written seven pages and could keep going, you might actually be writing a screenplay. Or you might find that you don’t know how the main character should act. This one might be a one-panel comic. Sometimes, that great idea might actually just not be very good. Let it slip into a coma in your notebook, and when you are famous, you can publish all that shit and sell it to the fans who have come to love and admire you for work that was good enough to finish. An Interview with Neal Brennan “Look at how crazy the world is if you’re not white.” The cocreator and cowriter of Chappelle’s Show , Neal Brennan is a director, voice artist, and standup comedian. Neal met Dave Chappelle while working at a comedy club, where he’d offer Chappelle and other comedians ideas for taglines to use in their acts. He talked about that and having a moral compass in sketch comedy. On Influences I started arguing with adults when I was six, and they weren’t pulling punches. They were like, “You’re a faggot! You’re an idiot!” You know? There were no holds barred. It was full-contact, Irish, angry-male adult standard. I’m argumentative as hell as a result. People say, “Stop yelling!” And I go, “I’m not even yelling at all. What are you talking about? That’s just my tone.” Being raised Catholic and going to Catholic school is a real primer for hypocrisy. It’s like, “Oh, this is just constant bullshit—you’re all full of shit! You’re a molester. You’re going to church, but meanwhile you’re a horrible person.” So I feel like I strive for social justice, and that was the special sauce of Chappelle’s Show . It was this deep sense of, hey, look at the world from someone else’s point of view for once. Dave Chappelle just happens to be one of the smartest dudes on earth who also happens to be black, but still, just look at how crazy the world is if you’re not white. On Chappelle’s Show It was the first personal sketch show. That was the magic of Chappelle’s Show. There was Tracey Ullman’s show, but Tracey Ullman was never actually Tracey Ullman. Chappelle’s Show was sketches from the point of view of one person. I mean, there were two of us, and sometimes we’d take outside ideas, but the filter was one guy. It wasn’t a troupe. We talked about “real” a lot. The difference between what’s advertised versus what real life is really like. A lot of our formula was, “We’re gonna do the real version of (blank).” The real movies. Like, Pretty Woman for real. It’s taking the bullshit and going, “No, no, no. You’re glossing over something here. Like, really, are all gangs interracial, moviemakers? Is there always a shifty-eyed white guy in a ski hat? Stop insulting our intelligence.” There’s a sketch where Dave is playing George Bush, and he doesn’t do anything different. I fought him on this, saying, “You’re not doing an impression of anything. It’s like a school play.” And he was like, “It’ll be funny.” So he was just him. And it was like, you think George Bush looks crazy? Imagine how he would look if you were black looking at him. Here’s how it would look, white people, if someone who wasn’t white said, in the middle of the Gulf War, that we need to go to Mars. It’s insane. On Collaborating I like writing with people. It’s the difference between fishing alone or fishing with somebody. It can be really fucking lonely fishing by yourself. I like it because it’s social. I’m a talker. I think that there’s a big element of feeding off each other. Dave once described he and me as thrill-killers. Where he’d stab somebody, and I’d be like, “Chop his fucking head off, Dave!” Then he’d be like, “You think so? You think I should chop his fucking head off?” And then he’d chop his head off, and he’d be like, “You should eat his fucking head!” And I’d be like, “Yeah, I should eat his head!” He’d write, and I’d write, and we’d turn to each other and try to entertain or impress the other person. That’s part of writing with somebody: you don’t have to imagine an audience. They’re just right there. On Dave Chappelle It was one of those freaky things where Dave and I just have similar aesthetics. Even cinematically, it’s like—the Rick James character is an Errol Morris movie. No one knows that, but that’s what it is. Chappelle can do all of [former Defense Secretary] Bob McNamara’s monologues from The Fog of War because he’s just watched it over and over again. He can do a really good Bob McNamara, too. It’s weird. Dave was a guy who grew up around white people and black people. His dad was the first black student at Brown University. That’s fairly significant. So when you look at that, it starts to make sense. All these guys, Kevin Hart, Kanye, Dave: their parents were all academics. There’s something to that. I don’t know what. They were coming out of the 1970s black power movement and civil rights; these guys are all an extension of that. So	476,597
God, If Youre Not Up There, Im Fucked Tales of stand-up, Saturday Night Live, and other mind-altering mayhem (Darrell Hammond) (Z-Library).epub	God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m Fcked Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live , and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Darrell Hammond God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Dedication To the boys from Hell’s Kitchen: Marty Hennessy, Bobby Spillane, and Big Mike Canosa And to Myrtise God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Author's Note Prologue Chapter One The Hall Chapter Two The Golden Years Chapter Three There’s Something Wrong Here Chapter Four From Hell to Hell’s Kitchen Chapter Five It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times Chapter Six God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m Fcked Chapter Seven Blood on the Floor Chapter Eight What You Didn’t See Chapter Nine You Want Me To Go Where ? Chapter Ten I’ll Show You Multiple Personality Disorder, Pal Chapter Eleven I Saw What You Did, and I Know Who You Are Chapter Twelve A Host of Hosts Chapter Thirteen Politics for Dummies Chapter Fourteen My Welcome Outstayed Me Chapter Fifteen The Golden Years Redux The Last Chapter I Mean It This Time The Real Last Chapter Honest Acknowledgments Photographic Insert About the Author Credits Copyright About the Publisher God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Prologue Westchester County, New York November 2010 Y ou know what’s worse than being in rehab? Being in rehab over the holidays. You know what’s worse than that? Being in a rehab that doesn’t allow smoking. I mean, what the fuck? Addicts smoke. If we can’t drink, we can’t shoot up, and we can’t ride the lightning bolt, at least we can smoke. I was sent to the Sanctuary, a few miles north of New York City, via ambulance in the fall of 2010 after getting drunk and trying to cut my arm off with a large kitchen knife. It is one of the best psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities in the country. I was put in the “celebrity ward,” which drew its share of boldfaced names—award-winning actors, sports stars, European royalty—but there are also wards for specific mental illnesses—depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders—and a criminal unit filled with dealers, streetwalkers, thieves, and assorted other miscreants who were there by order of the court. Deprived of my freedom, separated from my family, I was one of the lucky ones being given yet another chance. It sucked. I’ve been hospitalized or shipped off to rehab so many times that I’ve honestly lost count. But each one had its own particular brand of hell. The program at the Sanctuary proudly boasted of its success in bringing addicts back to health while generously providing all the butter-laden cookies and cream-filled pastries we could cram into our alcohol-starved, sugar-craving mouths. Hell, I put on twelve pounds in the first three weeks trying to get “healthy.” Meanwhile, the ferret-faced floor wardens were always looking to bust us for any infraction. There was one nurse there, an attractive, muscular woman in her forties who we called Strap-On because she was constantly reaming someone for some petty crime. She and one of the “tough love” counselors busted us for smoking numerous times. Each room had its own bathroom, and when she caught me hanging out the window of mine with a lit cigarette, she announced it loudly to all within earshot, “He’s smoking in the bathroom!” as though she’d discovered Satan carving his initials in a church pew. So to avoid her wrath, and if it wasn’t too cold or snowing, the smokers would wander out of the building, down a flagstone path that wound across the finely manicured grounds, to The Tree, the worst-kept secret in the place. An ancient cedar encircled by a layer of dead butts like some weird white-and-tan mulch, it was wide enough and tall enough and just far away enough to hide a grown man getting his nicotine on. By Thanksgiving Day, I’d been in this rehab for three weeks, and I’d run out of cigarettes. My family wasn’t speaking to me, and my friends were all doing their own thing for the holiday, so no pumpkin pie and stuffing for me. Some of the other patients were spending time with their loved ones in the glassed-in sunroom, awkwardly trying to act “normal.” I figured I’d take a stroll by The Tree to see if any of the other smoker derelicts were there, so I tiptoed past and out the door. Bingo. Annabelle, a stunning mocha-skinned hooker from Philly, was sucking on a Marlboro Red. Annabelle’s lawyer had convinced a judge when she got done for possession that she needed a doctor more than a jail, so she wound up here instead of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, where such lovelies as Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita who shot her lover Joey Buttafuoco’s wife in the face, have done hard time. Annabelle had been at the Sanctuary about a week. “Hey, Joe.” Everybody knew me as Joe. I hadn’t been on TV in a while—my last appearance on Saturday Night Live , a cameo as Arnold Schwarzenegger on “Weekend Update,” was a year earlier—but I wasn’t in the mood to be recognized while I got myself sorted out, so I checked in under a false name. Unlike certain celebrities who like to share their meltdowns with Matt Lauer or TMZ, I prefer to bring the heavens crashing down around me in private. “Hi there,” I said. Gorgeous as she was, I couldn’t take my eyes off her cigarette. Annabelle caught me looking. “You want a drag?” I took the butt from her extended hand. The cherry red lipstick on the filter was definitely not my color, but I didn’t care. Those two puffs were about the best I ever had. “Thank you,” I said. “I owe you.” I noticed her hand was trembling when she took the cigarette back from me. From the cold or withdrawal, I couldn’t tell which. “No problem, Joe,” she said. Then, smiling, “Now say it like Bill Clinton.” God, if You're Not Up There, I'm Fcked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem CHAPTER ONE The Hall Studio 8H, 30 Rockefeller Center New York City 1995 T o say it’s intimidating to walk into 30 Rockefeller Center to audition for Saturday Night Live is one of the century’s greatest understatements. The building itself, once known as the RCA Building until GE bought the company and NBC along with it, is one of the city’s great landmarks, built during the Depression in classic Art Deco style. You could get dizzy looking up at the Josep Maria Sert mural Time on the ceiling above the main entrance. Thank God it was summer, because if the enormous Christmas tree had been up out front, I’d probably have passed out. Trying to ignore the hordes of tourists lined up to take the NBC tour, I checked in at the security desk— Yes, Mr. Hammond, here’s your pass, go on up, they’re expecting you —and stepped into the same elevator that for two decades had ferried a seemingly endless cavalcade of comedians to stardom. I got out on the eighth floor and was escorted to makeup, where a lovely young lady dabbed me with powder to douse the shine of nervous sweat on my forehead. At least I had a few months of sobriety under my belt, so I didn’t have withdrawal shakes. Although I could have killed for a slug of gin right about then. When I’d been sufficiently fluffed and primped, I was led into the theater that I’d fantasized about forever, Studio 8H, or the Hall, as I call it, where legends like George Carlin, Buck Henry, and Andy Kaufman had performed, a few feet from where the Rolling Stones and David Bowie have played, and where Lorne Michaels, who hatched this comedy phenomenon a generation earlier to replace weekend reruns of The Tonight Show , was sitting on a chair in front of me. I almost said, “You know what? I’m thirty-nine years old. I’m on lithium. Do you know what lithium is for? If I may quote the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health: Lithium is used to treat and prevent episodes of mania (frenzied, abnormally excited mood) in people with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder; a disease that causes episodes of depression, episodes of mania, and other abnormal moods). Lithium is in a class of medications called antimanic agents. It works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain. “So yeah, it’s too late, and I’m too fucking scared, and apparently I have abnormal activity in my brain. Thank you. Good-bye.” Lorne looked at me and said, “Are you okay?” “I think so,” I lied. Then he smiled at me. Fuck it, now I have to go through with it. I had been asked to do ten minutes, which is an eternity. I proceeded to peel off every impression, like Phil Donahue speaking Spanish, that I could pull together in the short amount of time that I’d been given to prepare. But really, I’d been preparing for the previous twelve years for a moment like this. When I left, I thought, If my life ends right now, it’s okay. I was in that theater. Lorne Michaels was there. And I performed well, despite my terror. Whether I was any good or not was immaterial. I knew I wasn’t going to get called back. And yet I was. Lorne wanted to see if I had any more impressions, so I came up with Ted Koppel in German and another ten or so and did it all over again a week later. I guess I did okay, because then Lorne wanted to see me move on my feet. He took me to the Comic Strip. Fuck, that place? Really ? I’d been dismissed by a lot of New York clubs, but the Comic Strip held a special place in my pantheon of rejection. When I auditioned there in 1990, I had as great a set as I’d had up to that point. I totally killed. Afterward, Lucien Hold, the manager of the club, who was renowned for having discovered comic greats like Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler, sat me down in a booth up front. “How old are you?” he asked. I told him I was thirty-four. He didn’t flinch. He pointed to pictures on the wall of comedians who had worked there. “Look at these faces. They’re stars. That’s what we’re about here. Stars.” Lucien was smiling at me. “They have it .” Could my luck be changing? “And I don’t think you have it ,” he said. Apparently my luck wasn’t changing in any way whatsoever. “I don’t see any reason why you should come back here or call here again.” He stood up and walked away without so much as a “Good-bye, thanks for coming.” I went home with absolutely no reason to believe that I was ever going to make it. I had only enough money for a subway token. It was one of those horribly cold February New York nights, and I took the train back to my hovel in Brooklyn. I even slipped on the ice on the sidewalk outside my apartment. It was perfect, going home without hope. I sat in the dark, smoking cigarettes. If I’d had any money, I’d have gotten drunk. It was kismet that, five years later, Lorne would have me go there for part of my audition, unwittingly giving me a dose of cosmic payback. With Lorne watching and Lucien Hold hovering nearby, I got onstage and, once again, I killed, although with so many performances and impressions since then, I no longer remember exactly what I did. As much as I would have liked to tell Lucien what I thought of him, I figured that performance for Lorne was as much of a fuck-you as I needed. The next challenge was dinner with Lorne and his producer, Marci Klein, Calvin Klein’s daughter, who to this day works as a producer on Saturday Night Live as well as with Tina Fey on 30 Rock . Marci had chosen a restaurant over on the West Side near Broadway. It was a casual evening, and we just swapped stories. The problem is, the highlight of one of my stories might be, “And then when we got to the store, they didn’t have any long-handled spoons!” and Lorne’s would be something like, “When I was sitting on the Berlin Wall with Paul McCartney . . .” I was never going to be able to compete with his material, but somehow I made it through the evening without humiliating myself. A few weeks later, I was lying on my futon on the uneven floor of my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, where the night before a small furry creature had run up the side of my head, stomped on my face, and then run back down the other side. My wife was with me when the phone rang. I don’t know why, but we looked at each in that meaningful way they do in the movies. It was my manager, Barry Katz, and my agent, Ruth Ann Secunda, calling at the same time, which never happened. I got the job. Holy shit. My wife and I decided to celebrate by opening a bottle of champagne and dancing in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. Okay, no, we didn’t. What we really did was run like crazy from my apartment on Forty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue down to Forty-fifth Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway to the Imperial Theatre, where Les Miz was playing. I loved that show. I’d seen it about ten times. I couldn’t get enough of it; we bought the most expensive tickets they had left. I reckoned that play is my life story—unjustly treated by life, resolutely angry, but things kind of work out, and along the way there’s a little bit of love and light and, not for nothing, a couple of bucks in it too. That’s my Tenth Avenue synopsis of one of the great literary works of all time. A few days later, I was having dinner at Umberto’s Clam House down in Little Italy, and I ran into Colin Quinn, whom I’d met years earlier when I’d been hired, then fired, as his warm-up guy on the MTV game show Remote Control , which he hosted in the late 1980s. “Hey, what’s up?” “I just got Saturday Night Live !” “Me too!” O n Monday, September 25, 1995, I reported to work for the twenty-first season of Saturday Night Live . As I walked through those halls and saw those photos on the wall of the greats who had worked there—the late John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Chris Farley; Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Molly Shannon—I couldn’t wrap my lithium-quenched mind around the fact that this was really happening. Two decades of comic genius and me ? It was tremendous validation, and yet I was certain it was a cosmic joke of some kind. Maybe the antidepressants were making me hallucinate? I was assigned an office on the seventeenth floor with, who else, Colin Quinn, who had been hired that year as a writer and featured player. We hung out there until an intern knocked on the door and yelled, “Pitch!” The pitch meeting in Lorne’s office down the hall is a little bit tradition and a little bit meet-and-greet, where whichever legend of stage or screen or music or sports or politics is hosting that week is welcomed by the writers and the cast. Lorne sits behind his desk, the host sits in a chair by the desk, and everyone else sits wherever they can squeeze in, including the floor. Lorne’s office was plenty big, but it’s a shitload of people who crammed in there. Lorne’s right-hand men in these festivities, alongside Marci Klein, were SNL producers Mike Shoemaker and Steve Higgins. These guys had, and still have, to be able to do all the jobs on the show—like a restaurant manager who can cook, wait tables, and make a nice Caesar dressing. They had to know how to write a joke, manage people, craft a sketch, and above all they had to be fucking funny. Higgins is great with impressions and helped me build almost every impression I would do on the show. Mariel Hemingway was the host of my first show. I remember thinking at the time, She’s had a conversation with Woody Allen, hell, she’s kissed Woody Allen, and I’m sitting just a few feet from her. And she’s more beautiful than anyone has ever been in the history of people. Do my socks match? Fuck. Even major stars are often a little intimidated when they walk into those offices, but Lorne makes sure the SNL crew around them is very hands-on in the most unintrusive way possible. Everybody is extremely welcoming, and any thought the host might have, the slightest grievance, the slightest knitted brow, is addressed clearly and immediately. And the host has tremendous say in what the show will be that week. During the pitch meeting, everybody throws out ideas to the host about what they might like to do for that week’s show. If you don’t have an idea, it’s entirely okay to make up something, even if it’s hideous. The staff laughs, but often the poor host sits there thinking, What? Grecian Formula 44 on toast? What? I tossed out a crazy idea for a cold open—that’s the sketch at the start of the show that always ends with, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night !” The show had been receiving a lot of criticism for not being as funny in recent seasons as the nation thought it should be, and Lorne was being battered a little bit in the press for the way the show had gone downhill. So I had this crazy idea of doing a Wizard of Oz sketch in which the bad press was just a dream. It was completely ridiculous, although everyone was very kind about it. I t was the first of nearly three hundred weeks I would spend at SNL , and lithium isn’t exactly Ginkgo biloba when it comes to memory, so I’m going to admit the details of that first week are a bit murky all these years later, but here goes. After the pitch meeting the cast and writers, per custom, spent some time with Mariel, chatting, swapping compliments, and drinking coffee. Some writers started to work on the sketches that got the nod during the pitch meeting, and the rest of us went home. On Tuesday, people started coming in around noon. Tradition dictates that the host visit with the writers in their offices to talk about proposed sketches. A lot of the writers are Emmy winners, and it’s really an honor for the host as much as anything. Meanwhile, the writing began in earnest, so a lot of people would end up staying all night working, including Lorne. The cast members conferred with the writers, and each one participated in putting together anywhere from five to ten sketches. My role on the show was a little different from the rest of the cast’s. I wasn’t very good at coming up with sketch ideas, but that’s not why I was there. I was a field-goal kicker. You need a voice? I was the guy who could kick that football. I didn’t know how to punt, pass, or tackle, but I could kick. So I came in on Wednesday mornings around 10:00 a.m. Sometimes I’d have gotten a call Tuesday night that would be a tip-off: “Can you do this guy?” But lots of times they would simply assign a role to me, and I would walk in having never heard the voice. That first week they gave me Ted Koppel in a Nightline sketch in which Koppel interviews Republican presidential candidates Colin Powell (Tim Meadows) and Bob Dole (Norm Macdonald). I usually had four or five hours to study videotapes I got from the research department and cobble together some semblance of a voice before read-through with all the cast and crew, which happened Wednesday afternoon. You know how they open the gate at a rodeo and the bull comes out seething with energy and fury? That’s the kind of mindset you have to have at read-through, because that’s how hard it was. But it was all part of it, and as a performer you wouldn’t have it any other way. A tennis player expects Wimbledon to be tough, and it is. Anywhere from thirty-five to fifty sketches were presented, which is three or four times what we’d end up with. It took a few hours to get through them all. After read-through, Mariel complimented me on my Koppel impression. I thought, This is all pixie dust. Right after the meeting, Lorne and the head writer and the producers met with Mariel to make the first cut, based chiefly on how many people laughed at each sketch during read-through. Lorne and the host had the last word on what stayed in and what got tossed. Between read-through and picks, you might find yourself loitering around with hosts like: Robert De Niro, Senator John McCain, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Sir Ian McKellen, Snoop Dogg, and Derek Jeter. For starters. Later that night, an intern came by all the offices and yelled, “Picks!” That’s when we found out which ten or twelve sketches had survived. It was always a drastic cut that day, and, per usual, a few people took a hit to the solar plexus, but there was no time to nurse hurt feelings. Costume and makeup started getting designed Wednesday night after picks. On Thursday, the writers revised or reworked the sketches that needed it. “Weekend Update” started to get pulled together based on what was in the news that week. On Thursday and Friday we blocked the show—that’s figuring out the physical part of the performance, where everybody stands and how they move—while the writers oversaw the costuming and set design of their sketches. The writers also worked on Mariel’s monologue. Saturday afternoon we did a run-through for Lorne, during which the writers made notes for further changes—to dialogue, costume, blocking, and set design. The cast was usually in at least partial costume—wigs and costume, if not full makeup. In the two or three hours between the end of the run-through and the dress rehearsal at 8:00 p.m. (which is done in front of a live studio audience, although not the same one that will be seated for the live show at 11:30), the sketches were tweaked yet again, and new scripts distributed; each version of a script was a different color so everyone knew which was the most current. Sometimes the order of sketches was changed; often, sketches were cut. I went back to my dressing room to refine my Koppel impression and grab some dinner and a nap. For dress, the cast got into full costume and makeup. The writers paid a lot of attention to how the audience reacted. The show was running at two hours, so when dress was over at ten o’clock, everybody headed up to Lorne’s office on the ninth floor and waited for “Meeting!” to be called. This was when Lorne and the writers made the final cuts to get the material down to ninety minutes, as well further tweaks to the surviving sketches. When the meeting ended, it was nearly eleven o’clock, so the cast hustled back downstairs to get back into hair and makeup (to make sure we didn’t ruin the costumes or the handmade hairpieces, we would take them off between performances throughout the day). The writers got to work on making the changes. A posse of interns hits the bank of copy machines to churn out the revised scripts. It’s incredibly confusing, and the frenzy continues all the way until 1:00 a.m. If the show is running long, further sketches might be cut while we’re on air. And adding to the stress, for me at least, was the constant presence of seriously famous people who came by to say hello to Lorne and watch the goings-on from a discreet spot on the floor. Over the years, a who’s who of boldfaced names stopped by, but the audience can’t see that Paul McCartney is standing right in front of you, watching you do your sketch, or that Yankees All-Star A-Rod is there with Kate Hudson, looking at you with an expression that says, Be spectacular. Be like us. The audience also doesn’t know that you may not have seen the script before now, that it might have been rewritten on the way downstairs from the ninth-floor meeting to the eighth-floor studio. Not everyone can take it, but Lorne picks people who can operate in this biosphere. He doesn’t just hire talented people, he hires fast people. Some really fabulous players were on for only one year, and some fabulous people didn’t make it even that far. The late Bernie Brillstein, who was my manager as well as Lorne’s, once told me that Lorne has the greatest mind in comedy. And the truth is, at the heart of the show’s greatness is a mystery that really only Lorne understands. Intimidated as I was, I was deliriously happy to be along for the ride. D uring Mariel Hemingway’s monologue, she wandered backstage to introduce both new and returning cast members. I was one of several new people that year, along with Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Cheri Oteri, and Nancy Walls, plus returning players Norm Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, and David Spade. Mariel had recently had a guest-starring role as a lesbian on The Roseanne Show , so in this bit she breezed by all the men and kissed all the women full on the mouth, even the show’s new director, Beth McCarthy. It was pretty hot. Right after the monologue, there was a pretaped gag commercial for A.M. Ale that had me sucking down a 40 with my breakfast. How fitting for my first day on national television. Later in the show I debuted my Ted Koppel, which, regardless of Mariel’s lovely words after read-through, didn’t get a single laugh on air. I got his voice dead right, but it turned out that was exactly the problem: I did it as a straight impression. Most of the voices I’d learned over the years had been in the context of obvious jokes, but I was intimidated by the seeming seriousness of the Nightline sketch. Lorne used to say, “Start accurate, and then exaggerate the impression to make it funny.” By the time we reached the good nights, it felt like I’d been through a year of my life in the last twelve hours. There were hundreds of hurdles and little pitfalls and artistic souls littering the halls like umbrella carcasses along a New York street after a hard rain. But it didn’t matter. This was nirvana. Standing on the stage next to Mariel Hemingway at the end of the show, waving to the studio audience, I thought, This is just as good as playing for the Yankees. I was so revved up that I went right back in to work Sunday morning, when the offices were empty, and worked on my Koppel. I didn’t know if I’d do him again, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The following Saturday, I was in my first cold open. I played sportscaster Bob Costas, although I didn’t say “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night !” I had the flu and it didn’t go as well as I wanted, which he needled me about good-naturedly the first time I met him. Mariel Hemingway must have had a great time when she hosted, because she came back for a cameo that week (she served Lorne coffee). When I took the stage with my fellow cast members and original cast member Chevy Chase, who was hosting, for the good-nights at 1:00 a.m., it was my birthday. I was forty years old, older than most people when they left the show; this was just the beginning for me. A couple of weeks later, I did my first Bill Clinton on air. It was during a sketch about Halloween in New Hampshire during primary season, and all the candidates showed up at someone’s door during trick-or-treating hours to pitch themselves. Norm Macdonald did his killer Bob Dole. David Koechner did Phil Graham, and diminutive Cheri Oteri did her hyper Ross Perot. When it was Clinton’s turn to ring the bell, I grabbed handfuls of candy and shoved them in my pockets. I had no idea at the time that this was the character that would largely define my time on SNL . All I could think was how I was bloated from the lithium, but I guess that made for a convincing pre–South Beach Diet president. It’s hard to say why that character hit so well. I think part of it is that the guy himself is so endearing in his charm and obvious human frailty—thank you, Paula Jones. Clinton was brought back the next week in the cold open. The sketch, written by the current junior senator from Minnesota, Al Franken—I didn’t see that coming either—had me sitting in the White House kitchen in the middle of the night, stuffing my face with whipped cream from a can and hot-fudge-covered hot dogs while calling people to apologize for being a failure. I could relate, and I guess I got a little carried away during dress. Afterward, Lorne said I was taking too much time with the eating. “This needs to pick up. It’s not a one-act play.” Clinton’s self-esteem was so low, he asked the pizza delivery guy, played by Tim Meadows, to yell “Live from New York” for him. I finally got to yell that famous line in the seventh episode, in character as Jesse Helms. I would go on to do it more than sixty times over the years, more than any other cast member in the show’s history. (Dana Carvey held that title before me.) But the first season was pretty tough for me. I had to learn how to be on the show. (I wasn’t there long before I was given my own office because I had to practice, and Colin had to write.) What I found really unnerving was that sketches could play well at read-through, get a lot of laughs, and still not make the cut. Since I was new to live television, I had no idea there are a million reasons, technical reasons, why something might not be chosen for air. But time went by, I kept showing up, and I watched other cast members to see if I could pick up any pointers for SNL survival. I was also going to the Comedy Cellar pretty regularly to try out new impressions. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I’d go downtown to work on Donahue or Clinton or whomever I was expecting to play in upcoming shows. It was at the Cellar that I first tested out Clinton biting his bottom lip and giving the thumbs-up, and it was a hit. The first time I did it on air, the audience loved it. After that, any time I got a Clinton script, it would include a note, “Does the thumb and lip thing.” For the record, I never actually saw Clinton do those at the same time. I made it up. I didn’t really start making it on the show until writer Adam McKay, now one of Will Ferrell’s partners along with Chris Henchy and Judd Apatow in Funny or Die, the brilliant comedy video website, took an interest in me. When failed presidential candidate Steve Forbes hosted in April 1996, Adam wrote a sketch in which I played Koppel interviewing Forbes, playing himself, about whether he was the author of an anonymous political novel in which the lead character is a handsome ladies’ man named Teve Torbes. At one point, after Forbes, in a fit of giggles, denies yet again that he is the author, I ad-libbed, “C’mon!” Ad-libbing was verboten as a rule—as Lorne has said, it’s hard enough putting a show together in six days without introducing surprises—but the audience applauded loud enough that I had to pause for a moment before saying my next line. Suddenly I had this half-assed sense: I think I have a hit character . In total that season, I managed to establish a number of impressions good enough to recur: Phil Donahue, Koppel, Clinton, Richard Dreyfuss. When I did Jesse Jackson on “Weekend Update” the first time, Norm Macdonald, who was anchor then, broke up when I yelled at the end of a largely nonsensical rant, “Say it with me: Yabba Dabba Do!” It was one of the few times something I wrote made it into the script and on air. I even got a little make-out action that first season. I did one cold open as Jay Leno performing for the troops in a USO show. During the bit, I brought out Tim Meadows dressed in drag as RuPaul. Leno starts to say how beautiful RuPaul is, then goes in for a big lip lock. Tim runs offstage in mock horror (at least I think it was mock), and I turn back to the audience, my face covered in his smeared lipstick. In another episode, I played veteran 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs, who ends up pulling coanchor Barbara Walters, played by Cheri Oteri, behind the desk in a hot clinch. Veterans and newcomers spent all season trying to figure out how to work together as an ensemble. Toward the end of the year, we started having great shows. It took time to turn it around, but suddenly SNL was happening again. I got a call from someone at NBC saying, “Great year. We look forward to having you back.” I thought, Impossible. I could not have gotten here from where I started. God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem CHAPTER TWO The Golden Years Melbourne, Florida The 1960s W hen I was very little, maybe four or five years old, I used to sit in our little one-story house on Wisteria Drive, overwhelmed with the sense that I was surrounded by evil. When the sun started to go down in the late afternoon, I was filled with foreboding, and everything was scary—the walls, the furniture, the rug, the very air was scary. I’d hear the branches of the hibiscus bush outside the kitchen window thump thump against the glass and feel something was coming to get me. Outside, the trees, the grass, the asphalt in the driveway, seemed alive and threatening. I had to make it through the night until our maid Myrtise arrived in the morning. My mother described Myrtise as looking like a young Cicely Tyson. I only knew her from a small child’s perspective: she smelled like the wind and wore sleeveless dresses that showed her arms, which were pretty, surprisingly strong, and—significantly, in the largely racist neighborhood where we lived—brown. I was entranced by the sight of my little white hands in her warm, encompassing brown ones. I knew that we lived among people who used the N-word, but I didn’t know that my father’s grandfather had belonged to the KKK and ran moonshine back in Georgia during Reconstruction. It was very confusing for me because I adored Myrtise. The only real affection I got during the first few years of my life was from her. How was I was supposed to disparage her at the same time? I only knew that when Myrtise held me, I was safe. Melbourne in the late 1950s and early ’60s was a long way from the colorful playground of Disney World or swank Miami Beach. But Melbourne is one of those places—Florida is filled with them—that’s not really anywhere. Squeezed up against the Atlantic Coast, with big brother Orlando to the northwest and the “real” city of Palm Bay just to the south, in those days Melbourne only impersonated a real city. Nevertheless, it somehow manages to pack in a cool 75,000 people, most of whom have jobs and spend their weekends heading out to the beach, or the barrier island that manages to keep the worst of the ocean weather at bay, literally. If you wanted to, you could drive the whole barrier island all the way down Route 1A—it’s nearly 100 miles of beach road, dotted here and there with fun things like cuddly Patrick AFB and my personal favorite, Big Starvation Cove. I guess the highlight is that Melbourne is smack in the middle of the Space Coast, less than an hour south of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, which was established the year I turned seven. That’s where the Apollo moon missions, the Hubble Telescope, the space shuttles, and the International Space Station were all launched. Nearby Cocoa Beach is where Major Tony Nelson lived with Jeannie Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. (If you’re under age ninety, you probably didn’t get that, but bear with me.) I think it was thanks to my love for Myrtise that I was always oddly proud of the fact that Melbourne was founded by slaves after the Civil War. And the fact that freed men established my town seemed to offset the fact that it was boringly named after the first postmaster, an avowedly white Brit who actually spent most of his life in Melbourne, Australia. His actual name was Archibald Corncraker McTavish; or maybe it was Tarquin Bartholomew Bungle. No, no: Kevin. That was it. Kevin. Okay, no, it was really Cornthwaite John Hector, and I’m sad that more people aren’t named Cornthwaite. But living in Melbourne was more like living in the Deep South of my ancestors than in the Florida of picture postcards. The people lived lives that were all but prearranged—marriage, mortgage, kids, church—and they all seemed to suffer a kind of lower-middle-class desperation. My parents were no exception. In those days, especially in the South, if you were a woman with aspirations, you might as well be a whore. My mother, Margaret, who looked a bit like Annette Bening with luxurious auburn hair, was trapped in that world, which dictated that she become a wife and mother. She told me on my wedding day years later that she only married my father, Max, because her own father had threatened “to beat the living daylights” out of her if she didn’t. Wisteria Drive sounds a lot more picturesque than it was. Our house was one of many one-story tract houses on small plots lined up one after the other. Most people tried to keep a lawn, but in the Florida climate most of the lawns were sad, sandy affairs sporting more brown than green. A few people put up white picket fences, but mostly the yards were left to the elements. The Florida East Coast Railway, a 350-mile stretch of freight line between Miami and Jacksonville, ran right behind our house. My parents kept up appearances and did what they were supposed to do. They had children: first, a little girl, and then, a couple of years later, a son. My dad ran a Western Auto store with his father. My mother belonged to the First United Methodist Church a couple of miles down the road in downtown Melbourne. She made us breakfast in the morning before my sister and I went to school. We ate dinner together as a family every night. My mother talked about Jesus and participated in church functions along with people who made cookies for bake sales, donated clothes for charity drives, helped a neighbor in need. On the surface, everything looked just as it should, very Ozzie and Harriet. (Again, under ninety, sorry.) But that was just for the neighbors. Before I was old enough for school, each morning my mother and I drove to pick up Myrtise. We had to cross a bridge to get there, and every time we did, my mother would swerve as though she were going to drive the car right off. I was never convinced that she wouldn’t do it some day. On Sundays throughout my childhood, I went to church with my mother, but when I was little I asked questions that got me in trouble. If it was seven days to make the world, how long was a day? Was a day an hour? Was there a sun yet? If there wasn’t a sun, how long was a day? One time I made the mistake of referring to the “ghost of Jesus,” which was blasphemy. “He’s a spirit , not a ghost,” somebody said angrily to me. What’s the difference, they’re both gaseous? At four or five years old, what the hell did I know about the Holy Trinity? M y father didn’t go to church much; his religion was the United States of America. Tall and blond, he had a Cary Grant–esque dimple in his chin and shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway. He’d gone to military prep school just as the United States was joining the Allied effort in World War II. Under his junior year photo in his yearbook, Max Hammond had written that it was his dream to go to Duke, play baseball, then go on to law school. This was in the days when baseball was king; aside from boxing, there wasn’t much else in professional sports—no football, no basketball, no hockey—so every kid played baseball. My father’s high school team was top-notch; one of his teammates was Al “Flip” Rosen, who would become a four-time All-Star for the Cleveland Indians in the 1940s and ’50s. But by the time my father was a senior, the caption under his yearbook photo said his dream was “To serve my country the best way I can.” He was sent to Germany an eighteen-year-old second lieutenant, the youngest commissioned officer in the history of the U.S. military at the time, or so he was told. I never learned all the details of his service, but he came home with a lot of medals and a tortured soul. Armed conflict ruined him. My father used to tell me about one battle when almost everyone in his company had been killed, and the Germans were looking to shoot survivors. There was a guy lying next to him, the top of his skull blown off. My father reached over and scooped out a handful of brains and smeared it over his own face, and lay there pretending to be dead so the Germans would pass him by. “You do what you have to do to survive,” he’d say. Once in a while, my father would sit at the dining room table, getting drunk on gin. Staring off into space, he would sometimes begin speaking to his men as if they were going into battle: Some of you won’t be coming home tonight. I might not be coming home tonight. You have to remember that you’re part of something that’s bigger than you. This is about fighting evil, not someone who’s angry or going through a phase or disgruntled, but someone who’s crossed the line between sick and bad. They want to stop the country we live in, to stop us from being able to choose the color of the paint on the wall or a career or what clothes you wear. You can be sure that God will be coming into battle with us. God has an interest in what happens here today, and some of us may go with Him. But when these cocksuckers are fucking with us, they’re fucking with God. Over the years, I heard that a lot. He still harbored plans to play professional baseball and go to law school after the war, but then he and my mother got married in Sylvester, Georgia, in 1947, so he had to work to support his wife. Three years later, he was called back for duty in Korea. A week after he shipped out, he was in another war zone, this time in the Far East. How do you go back to civilian life after that? One minute he was a trained killer, and, as his medals reflect, a damn good one. The next he was supposed to be a hardworking family man, then they sent him back to kill again. He’d lived in a world with bombs and guns and shattered corpses everywhere, and then next thing he knows he’s sitting in a lawn chair drinking a martini with our Siberian husky at his side. Sometimes when he sat at the table with that glass of gin in front of him, he would cry, muttering that after what he’d done, he couldn’t be loved. Perhaps that was why whenever I caught his eye, he always looked away quickly. I don’t know if it was his military experience or simply how he was raised back in Georgia, but my dad took shit from no one, and he wasn’t shy about telling people what he thought of them. One day a Jehovah’s Witness came to our door. Unfortunately for the poor bastard, my father was the one who answered it. When the guy was done with his glory-of-God spiel, my father looked at him for a long minute before he said, “You’re not worth shit, are you, son?” And he slammed the door in the man’s face. On a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon, my father was in the yard when a car came speeding down the road. He stepped out to the curb and waved it down. “You’re driving too fast, son. Do it again, I’m gonna bounce ya, and I’m gonna bounce ya good.” More than once I saw him walk up to boys he didn’t know and say, “Cut your hair, son.” And to one kid who had a ring through his lip, he said, “You didn’t turn out too good, did you, boy?” One night during dinner, my sister told us the veterinarian was threatening to put down her dog because of an unpaid bill. My father got up and went straight to the phone to call him. “My daughter said you’re talking about destroying her dog.” I could hear “blah blah blah” on the other end of phone. “Well, if you touch the dog, you’re gonna get killed, son. Do you understand me?” More “blah blah blah.” “No, no, this is not about what’s right or wrong, what the police will do, or what they can do, or what God would want. This is about what’s gonna happen. And what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna get killed, son.” He scared the fuck outta the guy, and then we ate. S ometimes he turned his rage on us. We’d be at the dinner table, and my sister or I would inadvertently say something that upset him. “What in the goddamn hell!” he’d say, then he would get up and walk over to either my bedroom door or my sister’s bedroom door and kick in a hole, then walk back to the table and sit down. We lived for years with those holes in our doors. My father bought crude squares of aluminum that he pasted over some of them. I’d be in my bedroom and hear this crash at the door and my father yelling, “I’m going to bash you halfway through that wall.” I believed him. My father kicked or punched my bedroom door so often, it eventually gave way. He once said to either my mom or my sister, “Why don’t you just kill me? Why don’t you just get yourself a gun, put it right up here, temporal lobe, squeeze the trigger, blow my brains out, end my life, get me off of this earth? Because that’s where we’re going.” M y mother was at once more subtle and more sinister. I remember my hand being slammed in car doors and thinking it was my fault. But she wasn’t trying to break my fingers; she was saying, “See what I can do? See what I think of you?” She used to recount cheerfully the time she beat me with her high heel and I began to bleed in front of everyone in the park in Jacksonville. “I beat you bloody!” she’d say, her hand on her stomach to contain her chuckles. I used to wake up in the morning wanting a mom. Not my mom, but a mom. I wanted mothering, the magic I noticed in the hands and the voices of other mothers. Instead, my mother told me that if I ever saw anyone in my room at night, it was ghosts, and I’m not talking about the friendly Casper variety. She was more interested in her church and her friends and playing piano. Her favorite piece of music was Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, which I picked up by watching her and imitating the movement of her fingers. When I was about seven years old, I finally discovered a way to connect with my mother. I noticed that if I could get her talking about certain people in the neighborhood, she would become enraptured doing impressions of them. She would tell stories and do the voices of Coach Davis, Betsy Whatshername, Maggie Turnbull, and she did them all expertly. Doing my best to copy what she did, I learned to do voices too. If for nothing else, she seemed to love me for that. We had a recording of Dickens’s Christmas Carol read by the British actors Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield, and my mother and I learned all the parts. If I wanted to get her attention, I would say, “Let’s do Merry Christmas, Uncle!” We were especially fond of the conversation at the beginning of the story between pre–ghost visitations Ebenezer Scrooge and his rosy-cheeked nephew, which we acted out without the descriptive bits that Dickens had written into the original: “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” “Bah! Humbug!” “Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don’t mean that, I am sure?” “I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” “Bah! Humbug!” “Don’t be cross, uncle.” “What else can I be, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!” We used to say that last line all the time, even when we weren’t doing the whole scene, just because it was so fun to say. For my money, if you’re going to tell someone off, do it in a posh British accent. It’s way more effective. I always wanted to use the words “vomitorious” and “oblivion” in the same sentence. As I got a bit older, I decided to take the entertainment power of impressions farther afield. I started doing Porky Pig saying his trademark line, “That’s all, folks!” and Popeye doing his chuckle, which made me an instant star among my friends at school. A pattern for learning new voices quickly emerged: When I listened to a voice I wanted to imitate, for instance a recording of Popeye scat singing, the voice came to me as a color first. In Popeye’s case: blue. Then I saw all the letters in my head— skee da bee dat doh skidibit day id ibit duh bug da yee da doh . In the same vein, Porky Pig was yellow. Voices still come to me as colors first. Despite what you’re thinking right now—which I’m guessing is something along the lines of, Aha! That’s where he got it!—I wasn’t destined for, or even interested in, a life doing impressions. What I was really supposed to do was play baseball. I think all human beings on this earth deserve three golden years like the ones I had beginning at age twelve when I started playing Little League. For me, a tsunami of joy was unleashed with every stroke of the bat. The thrill of hitting a ball well was mind-bending, watching it rise up, the sun glinting off the horsehide, outfielders running back toward the fence. It made the constant sense of foreboding at home fade into the background. Even the smell of the cigar smoke coming from the wizened old men from the neighborhood who’d come to watch was delicious. They didn’t know anybody or have any kids in the league, but it was a baseball game, and, for that night at least, we were all playing for keeps. And the sound track to the late 1960s was glorious—Motown at its best. People brought their transistor radios to the games. Someone put a turntable in the announcer’s booth at Wells Park, and some guy would go up there and call the game. There was a guy named Damon Johnson who brought Motown songs. While we were getting ready for the game, he’d play the Four Tops, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye’s “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” the Zombies’ “Time of the Season,” the Jackson Five’s “Stop! The Love You Save,” the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup,” “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),” the one-hit wonder by E	408,387
How to Be Funny The One and Only Practical Guide for Every Occasion, Situation, and Disaster (no kidding) (Jon Macks) (Z-Library).epub	Unknown ALSO BY JON MACKS Heaven Talks Back From Soup to Nuts: The Cannibal Lover’s Cookbook Fuhgeddaboutit: How to Badda Boom, Badda Bing, and Find Your Inner Mobster HOW TO BE Funny JON MACKS Simon & Schuster Paperbacks New York London Toronto Sydney SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2003 by Wild Bronco Productions, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2005 SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com. Designed by Laura Lindgren Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 The Library of Congress has cataloged this title as follows: Macks, Jon. How to be funny / Jon Macks. p. cm. 1. Wit and humor—History and criticism. I. Title. PN6147 .M124 2003 817.009—dc21 2003050665 ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-0472-9 ISBN-10: 0-7432-0472-7 eISBN-13: 978-1-451-60347-7 To Julie, Daniel, Samantha, and Ricky Acknowledgments To David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, Tara Parsons, and all the people at Simon & Schuster who inspired and guided me through this. To Jay Leno, the best boss anyone could have and the funniest person I have ever known. To James Carville, who came up with the idea for this book, and to Mary Matalin, for her words of encouragement throughout this process. To Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, David Steinberg, Gil Cates, Don Mischer, Lou Horvitz, Michael Seligman, Jeff Margolis, Gary Smith, George Schlatter, Henry Winkler, Michael Levitt, Pat Lee, John Moffitt, Bruce Vilanch, Tom Bergeron, and Jay Redack, all of whom gave me a start in comedy writing or a break along the way. To all the people, some of whom are mentioned above, who contributed their wisdom and humor to this book: Garry Shandling, Conan O’Brien, Rita Rudner, Arsenio Hall, Carrie Fisher, Buz Kohan, Paul Begala, Bob Ellison, Stefanie Wilder, Gilbert Gottfried, Eddie Driscoll, Dave Barry, Paul Harris, Jeffrey Ross, and Andy Breckman. To Dave Boone and Bob O’Donnell for their friendship and support. To all the writers at The Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares who show the world every day what funny really is. To Jack Dytman, Bob Myman, Les Abell, and Mike Klein, who handle the behind the scenes for Wild Bronco Productions. To the makers of Valtrex. To my parents, Albert and Sylvia, my brother, Adam, his wife, Susan, and my nephew, Jeremy. To my new baseball team, the Cobras. For those who follow this, this is my sixth team in ten years and I’m not being traded because I’m good. To Bill Kernochan, Bob Benton, and Mike Justice, who step in and cover for me when I blow off my sports coaching obligations. To the makers of Bombay Sapphire gin. To Josh, my personal trainer, who in two years has turned a 165-pound weakling into a 164-pound weakling. To Senator Herb Kohl, Senator Tom Daschle, and Senator John Kerry, who are great public servants and even better human beings. To the makers of the EPT home pregnancy test. To the Agoura Cyclones and the Agoura Bronco AA’s. To Fang and Bridget, Denise, Dennis, Katie and Kara, Bob and Beth, Rob and Kaye, whom I mention by name so they will actually buy this book. And finally, to that special person out there who wasn’t mentioned by name, but you know who you are and what you’ve done for me. Or is it what you’ve done to me? HOW TO BE Funny 1. Introduction This book has one aim—to teach you how to be funny in everyday life. It won’t help you become a standup comic, and it won’t help you become a comedy writer. It won’t help you repeat other people’s jokes, and it definitely won’t increase your chances of recovering the $20,000 you lost in WorldCom last year. But if you read this book from front to back, follow the advice, and work at being funny, you will learn to use humor to: improve your public speaking; end an argument; avoid getting beaten up; get a raise at work; make people think you’re smart. You will see that being funny can make you more popular, enable you to pass the time in prison without being violated by large, angry men (especially useful for you CEO’s out there), and help you get selected as a contestant on a game show because the producers look for amusing extroverts on these shows, not Harry Potter—obsessed introverts. In short, this book can help you ridicule and diminish your enemies, handle your kids, and deal with idiots in everyday situations; it will enable you to make a point, and ruin a rival’s big moment—and all of this for only $12. Historically the male book buyer is the hardest to entice. (Unless the book has a lot of pictures and a centerfold.) So if the above-mentioned reasons don’t inspire you, how about the fact that this book will help improve your sex life? If there is one thing that is certain in life, it’s that the number-one trait women look for in deciding whether to have sex with someone they just met is a sense of humor. So if you have a big expense account, a six figure income, plus a sense of humor, you’ve got it made. One thing to remember as you begin your journey to funny: A lot of this book is repetitive. A lot of the advice from the pros is repetitive. This is not because I get paid by the word. It’s so you will realize that to be funny, there are a few basic fundamentals of comedy that you need to learn, absorb, and try, repeatedly. CAVEAT: You don’t need the “comic gene” to be funny, although I have to admit, there are people who are born funny. But these techniques and advice will not work if you have the unfunny gene. And we all know people like that. They just don’t get it. They are marching to the beat of a different drummer and the drummer is Pete Best. By the way, I used Pete Best to make a point—outdated references fail in the world of humor. Always use a fresh topical reference. However, since my list of drummers who are total losers begins and ends with Pete Best, we’re stuck with him … although one more stint in rehab for Ringo and he could once again replace Pete. But I digress. There are people who are just genetically unfunny, who can’t deliver a joke because they don’t know what a joke is. A classic example—Russian president Vladimir Putin. Or Joe Piscopo. So if you are a comedically-genetically-deformed person, return this book and get your money back. However, if you are not in this infinitesimally small group, read on…. 10 REASONS WHY BEING FUNNY IS IMPORTANT Funny people have more friends. There are three ways in life to become popular: be rich, be beautiful, or be funny. Everyone likes being around witty, entertaining people who can make them laugh. It’s why you rarely see pictures of Osama bin Laden sitting at the head table of a bar mitzvah. Funny people get noticed at work. No, we’re not talking about the idiot who photocopies his buttocks in the mailroom, or the moron who wastes valuable Internet time forwarding non-original e-mails to everyone all day. We’re talking about the employee who can keep people’s interest during a presentation by being funny, the supervisor who can build loyalty and a sense of camaraderie through the bonding that comes with the sharing of a joke, or the security guard who can get a chuckle out of the angry, disgruntled employee. Funny people make more money. It’s a proven fact that people who can make others laugh make more money. It’s the reason the president only makes $400,000 a year, while Carrot Top pulls down $17 million. Funny people don’t get wedgies in high school. Sheer physical bulk can prevent the humiliation of being given a wedgie by a gang of cretins. So can a sense of humor. A quick wit and the ability to get the leader of the cretins or the “Head Heather” to laugh can turn a tense high school confrontation into a fun-filled bonding situation. Or, you can just give them your lunch money and run. Funny people get better service in stores. Face it, the life of a sales clerk is not easy. It ranks somewhere between proctology assistant and Jennifer Lopez’s wedding planner. So who are these vessels of failed dreams going to be more responsive to: an angry trailer-park mom in curlers beating her kids upside the head in aisle 7 of K-mart while demanding to know where to find the size 44 polyester stretch pants, or you, someone who can make them laugh? Funny people live longer. George Burns, funny, lived to be one hundred. Milton Berle, funny, lived to be ninety-three. James Dean, not funny, dead at age twenty-four. I rest my case. Funny people are smarter. Maybe it’s a direct link. Maybe to be funny, you need to be smart. You certainly need to be well read, able to connect seemingly unconnected events and pull topical references out and use them at the drop of a hat. And even if funny people aren’t really smarter, they still seem that way. I really don’t know if Bill Maher is smarter than President Bush but I do know this—Maher is funnier and certainly seems to have a better grasp of the economy. Being funny can cover up a multitude of sins. People might have been willing to overlook some of Saddam Hussein’s human rights violations if he were killing at the Baghdad Chuckle House on open mike night. I know I would be a lot more forgiving. Funny people have more sex. I mentioned this above as a key reason to buy this book. In the end, we all know it’s true. If you can get someone to lower her barrier against laughter, you are more likely to get her to take off her clothes. Being funny is obviously important enough to you that you bought this book. So with that in mind, let us begin. HISTORY OF EARLY COMEDY Here’s a quick sketch of comedy up until the beginning of the modern era. 3500 B.C. : A twenty-three-year-old cave dweller in the south of France accidentally spears a neighbor in the buttocks while hunting antelope. Hilarious laughter ensues as comedy has its first victim. Moral: weird use of everyday items is funny. Fifth century B.C. : Aristophanes writes a series of comedic plays in ancient Greece, gets to perform them in the amphitheater, kills with his opening joke of “Two members of the Hebrew tribe walk into a bar. They buy it.” 1387: Geoffrey Chaucer invents the medieval comedy Canterbury Tales, which consists primarily of dirty jokes, double entendres, and people laughing at how he spells “Geoffrey.” Late 1500s: Shakespeare uses subtle wit and wordplay in his early works. Since 98 percent of commoners can’t read, this goes nowhere and he goes back to his bread and butter—insult humor: “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.” Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene i. “This sanguine coward, this bed presser, this horseback breaker, this huge hill of flesh.” Henry IV Part One, Act II, Scene iv. 1600-1923: No comedy; people are too preoccupied with the pox, plague, and overthrowing colonial tyrants. 1924: The Marx Brothers. 2. The Building Blocks of Being Funny THE 13 RULES (A Joker’s Dozen) Be Smart, Be Topical The number-one rule at the top of the comedy pyramid, the one thing you need to get from your investment in this book, is to be smart and topical. Because if you are smart and topical and always prepared to react with that smart, topical observation, you will be funnier than you are right now. To do this, you have to know what is out there that is funny. Read a newspaper, watch Headline News, buy a tabloid, read People magazine. You need to know what people are talking about, thinking about, and what’s “in” in the pop culture. When it’s summer, hot jokes are in; when we’re fighting terrorists, camel sodomy jokes are in. You need to read the newspaper, watch the news, and be informed so that in any situation, you are ready to key in on a word and deliver a killer line. You need to work on it every day. You need to associate seemingly different unrelated topics (hence the word topical ) and connect the dots in your mind so that funny words and phrases come rolling off your tongue like sweat off of Martha Stewart’s stockbroker. Here’s an example of being current and topical. Let’s say you are ready to deliver a line about someone’s intelligence—remember, even though he may have set the all-time standard for public dumb, Dan Quayle has been unemployed and out of the news since 1992. Keanu Reeves, Mr. Matrix himself, is still working, still making movies, and he is still dumb. There’s a time lag in the publication of any book but here are some good current event references from January 2003: DRUNK: in, Ozzy Osbourne, Diana Ross; out, Jan-Michael Vincent QUEEN BITCH: in, Martha Stewart; out, Kathie Lee NUTS: in, Michael Jackson, once again; out, Farrah Fawcett and Anne Heche SLUT: in, Christina Aguilera; out, Madonna GAY: in, Liza’s husband, one of the New York Mets; out, Siegfried and Roy FAT: in, Anna Nicole Smith; out, Liz Taylor and Marlon Brando MALE SLUT: Look, I know he’s an old reference but Bill Clinton is the Michael Jordan, John Elway, Wayne Gretzky, and Babe Ruth of hounds. TOPICAL CELEBRITY REFERENCES: CAREER VERSUS PEAK VALUE One of the smartest, funniest men I have ever read is baseball statistician Bill James. One of the tools he uses in explaining his evaluation of players is the concept of peak value versus career value. A classic example for pitchers would be Sandy Koufax compared with Don Sutton. Koufax had a huge peak value for a few years but his career was relatively short; Sutton at his best was nowhere near the pitcher Koufax was, yet for over twenty years, year in and year out, Sutton had real value. The same is true of comedy references. These are the people you can use in your jokes or people you can make fun of in conversation. The peak-value references are those who, during their prime, dominated the news and office lunch conversations. Those with great career value became human commas, shorthand for the problems and mistakes we all make in our pathetic little lives, mistakes that they made on the big stage. Some, like John Wayne Bobbitt, have a high peak value for a few weeks or months; others, like Ted Kennedy, are consistent for laughs year in and year out. Here are the top references of my comedy lifetime. Peak Value John Wayne Bobbitt: peak years 1993-94. There are those who would argue his porn movie career in the late 1990s should count toward his peak value. I figure, if Fox doesn’t think he’s good enough for Celebrity Boxing, then he’s not good enough to move up on this list. Joey Buttafuoco: peak years 1993-95, 2002. His name alone earns him a spot on this list. Celebrity Boxing brought him back briefly last year. Bob Dole: peak years 1994-96, 1999-2001. I knew Bob Dole as a war hero and a good senator. My daughter thinks he’s just some old guy who took Viagra and made a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears. Heidi Fleiss: peak years 1993-95. She could have moved up on the list if she had named names. Nice Jewish girl. Not married. I guess she just hasn’t found the right NBA team. Charlie Sheen: peak years 1991-2002. Charlie’s chance to become an all-time career hall-of-famer was cut tragically short by a happy marriage. Frank Gifford: peak years 1996-98. When you think of Frank, do you think of his hall-of-fame football career? Do you think of a legendary Monday Night Football broadcaster? Nah, you think of Frank balls deep in a middle-aged flight attendant. Paula Jones: peak years 1992-98. She beats Frank Gifford by a nose. Monica Lewinsky: peak years 1997-2003. How many people’s names have become synonymous with a sex act? She’s Heidi Fleiss without the brains and naked ambition; she’s Anna Nicole Smith without the acting ability and TV show. But most of all, she’s a woman who kept a dress with a stain on it. Tonya Harding: peak years 1994-2002. What’s great about Tonya is she keeps reinventing herself. She’s gone from white trash figure skater to white trash honeymoon video girl to white trash drunk to white trash Celebrity Boxer. It’s a long shot but with just a few more arrests, she could make it up there on the all-time career list. TIED WITH Mike Tyson: 1990-2002. I don’t count the years when Mike was actually winning fights. I consider Mike’s peak years when he lost huge fights to Buster Douglas and to Robin Givens. Plus, he bit a man’s ear in a heavyweight championship fight. Enough said. Anna Nicole Smith: peak years 1994-2003. She’s white trash, she’s got giant breasts, she has an IQ of sixty, she’s got her own TV show, she’s a gold digger, and she married a ninety-year-old. There are a few worthy people who just missed the cut, like Pamela Anderson, Pee-wee Herman, Boy George, Anne Heche, Darryl Strawberry, and Robert Downey Jr. Each of them could do something in the next few years to reestablish their peak value but at this point, they are more likely to end up on Celebrity Mole than in this list of legends. Career Value Hugh Hefner: 1954-present. Pretty one-dimensional but when you think of out-of-control hormones and juvenile, teenage lust, you think of Hef. Plus, he’s seventy-seven and still dating twins. Keith Richards: 1964-present. Drug users like Robert Downey Jr., Steve Howe, Marion Barry, and Darryl Strawberry didn’t make it on the list because they became sad and pathetic. They took all the fun out of recreational drug use. Let’s be honest—Keith Richards is the kind of substance abuser who always brings a smile to your face. Martha Stewart: 1990-present. Thirty seconds on her cell and she went from the peak-value list to the career-value list; from the woman all men and a few women love to hate to a woman the SEC loves to hate. Madonna: 1984-present. Her relatively peaceful marriage to the father of baby number two has marked the end of her tramp era. Name another celebrity who has had sex with people ranging from Warren Beatty in a hotel suite to a busboy in the backseat of a Chevy. At one point J. Lo showed promise but she’s too high-class. Sadly, there are no great tramps out there to take Madonna’s place, although with one more video like “Dirty,” Christina Aguilera could make a run at the title. And just when Madonna was in danger of being relegated to the peak-value list as a reformed slut, her experimentation with mystic Jewish religions and incredibly bad acting ensured that she ended up one of the all-time greats. Hillary Clinton: 1991-present. We’ve gone from Madonna the tramp to Hillary the anti-tramp. It’s still too early to tell whether she could move up on the chart. Maybe it’s a vast right-wing conspiracy that’s keeping her off. Keep your fingers crossed that she runs for president. The royal family: A.D. 1215-present. For almost eight hundred years, these people have indulged in incest in the guise of love, inbred, sponged off the taxpayers, sucked their financial adviser’s toes in public, committed adultery, and ruined a once great empire. You’ve got to love them just for their longevity. I bet Copernicus was telling jokes about them. Ted Kennedy: 1962-present. If the Corleones are America’s most famous powerful fictional family, the Kennedys are the most powerful real family … and Teddy is the Fredo. The only difference is when Teddy went into the lake, he came out alive. He’s larger than life. In fact, he’s larger than Monaco. Kathie Lee Gifford: 1980s-present. From her early days as a Hee Haw Honey to her reinvention as a TV star to her perfect marriage to her soap opera with Frank to her running that sweatshop, she has been the woman even Martha Stewart fans love to hate. Michael Jackson: 1970-present. We’ve watched Michael grow from an extremely talented young African-American male from a dysfunctional family to a middle-aged white woman who lives with a chimp, llama, and giraffe and who likes young boys. Let me mention some other weirdness—the bones of the elephant man, the Klingon general’s uniform, the glove, the surgical mask, the nose falling off, and dangling the baby. And that was just on one weekend. Bill Clinton: 1988-present. What else needs to be said? Use Funny Words and Sounds Woody Allen once wrote a great piece that consisted solely of funny words. They’re words that just sound funny the minute you read them. The standard rule of comedy is that k words are funny (and who hasn’t laughed at the word kike ?), but there are plenty of other words that work. Try them out and see. These are all good words to use: tramp, shtupping, imbecile, pants, breeder’s hips, chicken, loin, melons, hooters, kinky, slut, bimbo, male whore, buffoon. Whenever I work with Billy Crystal, we always try, if at all possible, to work the word sheetcake into his routine. You don’t just make an offer he can’t refuse to Marlon Brando, you make him an offer of brisket and a sheetcake. I once told a joke about a Disney-style theme park opening in Iran that ended with the comparison of Mickey Mouse to their mascot, “Hezbollah Mouse.” I don’t know why, but if you say the words Hezbollah Mouse out loud, it makes people laugh. “Painting a vivid visual picture with words is funny. It was a very obvious toupee. It had a zipper.” —Rita Rudner And in choosing words, always remember that specific is better than general. The specific product Durashears is a better word to use than the generic item scissors . Saying you went to Hooters is always funnier than just saying you went to a strip club. Gilbert Gottfried was asked a question on Hollywood Squares : “What is the best thing to do for a hairy back?” Gilbert’s answer: “I close my eyes and pretend she’s wearing an alpaca sweater.” What made the joke work? The word alpaca . In addition you can always use sound effects. That’s right, you’re your own foley artist. Whenever comic Eddie Driscoll talks about sex, he pretends to open up his pants with a zip-flop sound effect. Understand the Hidden Truth Anything you say that is funny will, to some degree, have a hidden truth behind it. Jerry Seinfeld recently told Time magazine that “every great joke uncovers something.” One of the reasons I wanted to write for Jay Leno was that the first time I saw his act, with every story and joke he told, I immediately identified with it and with his point of view. I saw the hidden truths, the common “What’s stupid about this?” that I (we) can all recognize. “Every comedian knows that the embarrassing incident they had and the thoughts they had afterward are shared by 80 percent of the people in the audience because our DNA is so similar. Funny people say out loud what the rest of the world is thinking.” —Andy Breckman For fun, once a week on KTRS in St. Louis, I do a ten-minute segment of “What is pissing Jon off this week.” It’s my hobby, a non-standup version of Jay’s “What’s my beef” or of Dennis Miller’s rants. I take really stupid stories in the news and point out the ridiculousness of the truth. I did this one bit last summer when I heard on the radio that a California health official was suggesting the way to prevent West Nile virus was to bring more mosquito eating bats into the state. I made the point that only a public official would think a good solution to West Nile is the spread of rabies. Not only that, this is the worst possible combination for California—Ozzy Osbourne and two million bats! Have a Target And now for the one thing about being funny that civilians are in denial about—all humor has to have a target. Comedy isn’t pretty—the reason comedians say they kill is because there is a victim. The victim can be you, it can be someone not present in the room, it can be a common close enemy or a distant, foreign enemy. It can be a small target like a waiter who annoyed you or a big target like the government or terrorists. But in the end if you want something funny to hit its mark, you need a target to aim at. So in any situation, in any conversation, know who you want to make fun of and make sure he or she is a worthy target. As you’re practicing, as you’re out there flexing your funny muscles, there are easy targets you can always nail. Sure, they’re layups. But layups still count as two points. Easy Targets States: West Virginia, Arkansas, New Jersey, Florida, or the state bordering your home state on the south or west Safe stereotypes: Blondes, lawyers, ex-lovers Celebrities: (see peak- and career-value list, above) Cities: New York, L.A., Kabul, Detroit Sports teams: Cubs, Bengals, Red Sox People with boring jobs: accountants, government employees “People in positions of power making stupid mistakes is funny—i.e., George Bush and his problem with multisyllabled words.” —Rita Rudner “The butt of the joke should always be fictional, yourself, or someone powerful.” —James Carville Have a Point of View This is really a corollary of the last two rules—you need to take a chance to be funny. You need to be willing to expose the bitter truth about a situation or person, target that victim, and deliver your take on it. You need to be willing to “risk the crickets” for the reward of getting the laugh. “Crickets” is what we call it at The Tonight Show when someone tells a joke and there’s dead silence in the room and all you can hear are crickets chirping. I don’t know how many times that the politicians and corporate leaders I write for say, “Give me only jokes that work.” Well, I don’t know what will work; God doesn’t know that. I give them the best jokes I can come up with and cross my fingers that they work. Plus I make sure to get paid in advance. Jay Leno reads and writes some fifteen hundred jokes a day to get twenty for that night’s monologue, and on any given night, there are one or two that might not get a laugh. He’s the best there is and if he occasionally gets crickets, so will you. It’s okay, you’ll live. Just understand that no one bats a thousand. Surprise Them “Surprise in any form is always funny—overstatement, understatement, cruelty, comparatives.” —Rita Rudner One key element to being funny is surprise. There are at least five ways you can surprise people with humor. The first three are self-evident. The two that I think work the best I’ll explain in more detail. You can say something funny in the middle of a serious conversation or situation. You can say something funny in response to a person who is expecting a serious answer to a question. You can say something funny in a location no one expects humor (like a funeral home or an elevator). You can say something outrageous with a deadpan delivery. “Don’t be afraid. Once you get used to doing it, it’s like throwing a switch, so you can go from being very serious to suddenly dropping in a joke and then back to being serious. My audiences get confused and usually can’t tell which is which. But that’s another problem to discuss another time.” —Garry Shandling Garry is one of the best at using a deadpan delivery. In any conversation with him, he can go from being serious to delivering a great joke and then immediately back. That’s his real personality and his onstage persona; for you, being deadpan is not your comic persona, but rather a way to get a laugh by using a surprise technique in your delivery. I find a deadpan delivery works great in response to someone sharing a completely useless fact or after someone has uttered some stupid cliché or phrase. For example, if someone says, “It was raining at our company picnic, can you imagine anything worse?” answer with something like “How about being sexually assaulted by an aroused goat? That would be worse.” A few months ago I was walking down the hall at NBC Burbank when a newswoman dropped something, said, “Oh, shit,” and then, seeing me, said, “Pardon my French.” My response was to say in a very informative, know-it-all voice, “Actually in French it’s le gran crape .” You can say the opposite of what’s expected. EXAMPLE: Whenever someone has to change an appointment, and this happens all the time in L.A.—for example, when the hairdresser bumps you for a more important client—I’ll always say something the next time I go in. Something like “Sorry about the change in time, I hope I didn’t cause any problems when I had to rearrange things to accommodate your schedule because after all, you’re paying me. Wait a second, I’m sorry, I have that backwards, I pay you. My bad.” ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Eighty-four-year-old Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell was being interviewed for a news story on his retirement at Comerica Park in Detroit last summer. A number of fans were watching him being interviewed. He turned to them and said, “These camerapeople are from HBO. We’re doing a segment for Sex and the City .” The Key to Comedy … Timing For the professional comic, the timing within the structure of the joke is of critical importance. For the civilian, there are two different elements of comedic timing. The first involves putting the funny at the end . You remember the rule “Never end a sentence with a preposition”?; also remember to always put the funny words at the end. Whatever you do, do not drag out and dilute the punch of your punch line … by adding words … at the end … that drag out … the point … you are trying to make. Get it? Really, do you? RIGHT WAY: VH1 planned a TV show about Liza Minnelli and her husband. It’s called Queer As Folk . WRONG WAY: There’s a new TV show being planned about Liza Minnelli and her husband. Queer As Folk is the name of it and it’s on cable television. For the other type of timing, let’s go to an expert for his take. Jeffrey Ross is considered the top roast and insult comic in America. You’ve seen him on the Comedy Central roasts of Hugh Hefner and Drew Carey. He performs at all the top comedy clubs in the country and has been on The Tonight Show, Conan, and Hollywood Squares . “The truth is, when you’re sitting around with friends and you think of a funny line, don’t blurt it out. Hold a funny line to the right moment. You want to be patient so you can get a good clear shot, when people aren’t talking and the focus is on you and your line. It can turn a B line into an A.” —Jeffrey Ross Tag the Joke and Do a Run A tag to a joke in The Tonight Show monologue occurs when Jay gives the setup, the twist, and the joke and then adds an afterthought, a second punch line. A run is an entire series of similar jokes on the same subject. JAY’S EXAMPLE OF A TAG JOKE: Did you see Anna Nicole Smith’s new show on the E! channel? I think E stands for “enormous.” TAG: Forget E!, it should be on the Food Channel. A tag for a civilian can also mean a quick response to finish someone else’s thought. Your job as a funny person is to decide if the situation is ripe for a joke, take the serious statement someone has made, and tag it. It usually works when someone has uttered a cliché and tried to pass it off as wisdom. CLICHÉ: He’d give you the shirt off his back. TAG: What would I want with a sweaty size-48 shirt? CLICHÉ: At least he’s not suffering anymore. TAG: What if he’s burning in hell? CLICHÉ: My mom used to say, feed a fever, starve a cold. TAG: And Valtrex for everything else. A run is when you think of a joke and then keep coming up with a series of tags. EXAMPLE: Someone asks you if you have ever seen an adult movie. Your answer—“Sure, I’ve seen all the classics. Forrest Hump; Schindler’s Lust; Dude, Where’s My Vibrator; Sweet Ho Alabama; Star Whores; Mr. Holland’s Anus …” EXAMPLE: This is a run of some of the Hannibal Lecter jokes Jay did when the movie Red Dragon came out: What does Hannibal call a supermodel from Wisconsin—a quarter-pounder with cheese. What does Hannibal call a van full of senior citizens—meals on wheels. What does Hannibal call Strom Thurmond—a stale cracker. What does Hannibal call the singer Meatloaf—meat loaf. EXAMPLE: At the taping of the ABC Fiftieth Anniversary Special, I was backstage in a very crowded area when a production assistant suggested I stand on the giant C used in the ABC prop they had been using on stage. The C was wobbly and when she said “Come stand by the C” I went into a play-on-words run: I can’t, I get C-sick. Most women don’t want a C-section. Get Gavin McLeod over here and we have the old man and the C. This is my first C since math class. Not a great run but a quick run that worked because it was just so stupid. Keep It Short Leave it to Bill Cosby to tell a funny fifteen-minute story. Your goal is to deliver a short, punchy remark—thus the term punch line. Perhaps the best example of this is on Hollywood Squares . I’ve written for the show for the past five years and what works is when Tom Bergeron asks a star a question and he or she delivers a short one-liner. You can always tell the stars who aren’t comics—they add unnecessary words to the joke, stretch it out, and don’t realize that people have disconnected in that fifteen seconds from the setup (the question). At that point, seeing that they’re losing the audience, they commit the cardinal sin of bailing on the joke, not getting the laugh, and making its failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Actually, most cardinal sins nowadays involve a cardinal and Cub Scout pack 257, but that’s for my next book.) Note the exception is a comic who can really perform the lines—a Brad Garrett, Ellen DeGeneres, a Gilbert Gottfried, Arsenio, or a Martin Mull. They don’t need to give a short, quick joke because they are masters at playing the audience. For civilians, stick to the short, tried and true. Let’s take a look at some classic Hollywood Squares questions and their jokes. These are from shows that ran in September 2002. QUESTION TO JOAN RIVERS: True or false? Ladies who would like to return to their youth can pay a doctor $3,500 for an operation to be revirginized. JOAN’S JOKE: Save money. Turn off the light and leave on your panty hose. QUESTION TO TRIUMPH THE INSULT COMIC DOG: Who is the only dog to ever make People magazine’s best-dressed list? TRIUMPH’S JOKE: Sally Jessy Raphaël. QUESTION TO NICOLE SULLIVAN: What popularized the saying “Strong enough for a man but made for a woman”? NICOLE’S JOKE: k.d. lang. Hit a Triple Baseball players hit home runs. Funny people want to hit triples because things are funnier in threes. Think of the first jokes you ever heard—there’s a reason so many jokes begin with “a priest, a minister, and a rabbi.” Triples for a civilian work best when prepared and delivered in a speech. “Today we gather to honor the person who has made this company what it is today [1]: someone who is the driving force behind our success [2], someone who has the brilliant ideas and vision our company is known for [3]. But Jack’s wife could not be here today … so instead we honor Jack.” But a triple can also work in a run or in a story. All you need to do in your preparation is think of three points. TWO TRIPLES I LOVE: The first is from The Tonight Show . “Today is the anniversary of the Watergate break-in. When you think about it, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had a lot in common. They both had ethics problems, both faced impeachment, and both were nicknamed Tricky Dick.” Another triple is from Billy Crystal’s roast of Rob Reiner. “Rob is now Mr. Inside Politics. Rob calls the president Bill. He calls the vice president Al. And he calls Domino’s five times a week.” Last year at the Emmys, on a taped piece in the middle of a very serious tribute to Oprah as she was receiving the first-ever Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, right in between all these big, serious speakers like Coretta Scott King, Julia Roberts, and Tom Cruise, Chris Rock went the other way and combined two things—surprise (by using humor where no one expected it) and a triple (actually he hit a triple and then brought it home with a tag). “I watch Oprah. I read Oprah magazine. I use Oprah toothpaste. I even use Oprah hair care products.” —Chris Rock Sell the Joke This is the corollary to keeping it short. SELL THE JOKE. Know that you are funny, know that what you say is funny, and don’t bail at the end … Take It to the Next Step/The What-If … You can be funny by giving a simple reaction to what someone else is saying. But you can be really really funny if you take it to the next step. This is what I call the “what-if.” My favorite current what-if on television is the show Monk, written by my friend Andy Breckman, whom I’ve worked with twice on the Oscars when Steve Martin was host. Andy’s what-if involved this: What if the smartest and best detective in San Francisco was obsessive-compulsive? The result? One of the best shows on television. Don’t think on just one level, take it to another dimension. If someone is talking about UN efforts to modernize and rebuild Afghanistan, the quick, easy response is to say they’re shipping over thousands of tons of brand-new rocks. The what-if is to ask, “What if we help them build modern strip malls? Can you imagine a strip mall in Kandahar? What’s the Blockbuster like over there? The number-one movie is Dude, Where’s My Camel .” EXAMPLE: There was a story in the news of how England is suffering a huge shortage of sperm donors and as a result, we are shipping over sperm. My what-if added the factor of “What if we were helping them the same way we were helping feed the people of Somalia and Afghanistan? Can you imagine if it was like those food drops? We’re airdropping sperm. And you thought people in Kabul hated being hit in the head with some frozen corn.” Always Ask, What’s Stupid About This? I put this at the end of the chapter that began with the Golden Rule of “Be smart, be topical” so that you begin with the most important rule and you end with the one surefire question to ask yourself to help get you thinking funny. It’s the best comedy question of all time, it gives you a target, it enables you to take things to the next level or to the absurd conclusion. Take a look at a situation and ask, What’s stupid about this? EXAMPLE: Last October I flew back to Philadelphia to see my parents. As I was driving through my hometown and getting acclimated to it again, I saw a project with the names of members of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Taskforce— spray-painted on the wall of a building . You see that and you have to ask—What’s stupid about this? TYPES OF HUMOR Self-Deprecation “I would never want to belong to a country club that would have me as a member.” —Groucho Marx “I remember the first time I realized I could make people laugh. It was in the third year of my show.” —Conan O’Brien Self-deprecating humor may be the single most important technique a public speaker can use. It’s an instant way to establish a rapport with an audience, a way for someone powerful—and if you’re holding the microphone, you are automatically perceived as powerful—to let everyone know that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Even if the topic is serious, it’s a great way to signal that you understand that underneath our clothes, we’re all naked and one day, we all end up dead. Or in the case of Ted Williams, frozen. Self-deprecation is also a useful comedy tool for the everyday person making everyday conversation because the ability to make fun of yourself is a way to open up to someone and let him or her into your space and world in a way that you control. In a strange way, it also shows great confidence, that you are comfortable with who you are and strong enough to not take yourself too seriously. To some, Carrie Fisher is Princess Leia; to those who know her and her work since Star Wars, she is an incredibly gifted wordsmith, one of the highest-paid “script doctors” in the world, and one of the funniest people I have ever talked to or exchanged e-mails with. “One way to be funny is to talk in public about yourself like you’re talking behind your own back. Self-deprecation has the great advantage of looking like self-awareness covered with the charm of humility. Whenever you can talk about the absurdity of yourself as a human being, it’s funny.” —Carrie Fisher Bob Ellison, whose credits include writing for the Emmys, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Rhoda, says that to him, the key is this: Rather than put someone else down, put yourself down; it makes you more human and it gets people on your side . EXAMPLES OF CELEBRITIES WHO USE SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR Terry Bradshaw is a great motivational speaker who begins his remarks by making fun of his hair, his marriages, his mom, and his intelligence. It’s a great way for Terry to establish a rapport with the audience and to play off some of the things he’s known for. The truth is, if Terry were really that dumb, how did he end up being the only NFL quarterback to win four Super Bowl rings? Rather than brag about himself, Terry starts every speech with a few jokes. It connects him to people in the room and it shows he can laugh at himself; and, if you can laugh at yourself, people can laugh with you. Every celebrity who is a good public speaker knows how to win over the audience with self-deprecating humor: Arnold Schwarzenegger begins his speeches with jokes about his accent, his acting ability, and his marriage to a Kennedy; Roseanne and Tom Arnold used to introduce themselves as everyone’s worst nightmare, white trash with money. One of the more remarkable examples of effectively using self-deprecating humor came from a time I saw the not-yet-famous James Carville giving a speech. Before James became the legend he is today, his track record in campaigns was probably about three wins and fifteen losses, but everyone could tell he had the charisma and intelligence to become a star. One day I watched him speak at a convention of political consultants. For three hours, consultant after consultant got up and bragged about how many winning campaigns they had run, how smart they were, how unblemished their records. Then came Carville. He started his speech by saying what an honor it was to have been invited to be with such great consultants. He said he figured the reason they invited him was because he was the one they had been beating all those years. This one remark did two things—it made James the only likeable person in a group of pompous asses, and second, it immediately threw some doubt on the credibility of what had been said before. Imagine how much more sympathetic a character Martha Stewart would be right now if for once in her life she had admitted that the three-story house she built from rubber bands, mulch, and two-day-old bread didn’t turn out quite the way she expected. It would make her fleecing of ImClone all the more bearable. My Experience I used self-deprecation in the first speech I ever gave, to an audience of lawyers, all of whom were Ivy League types. I opened by telling them I had graduated from Villanova Law School, which has a lot in common with Harvard. Specifically, the letters V and A . TIPS • Make yourself part of the group that you are addressing but set yourself apart by divulging a setback or disaster that happened to you. • Make fun of the obvious about yourself if you are well known by your audience. • If you’re rich and people know it, admit it. President John F. Kennedy once told an audience that his father offered to buy him a win in the West Virginia primary, not a landslide. Joan Rivers handled her obvious new face-lift by telling the audience that her grandkids call her “Nanny New Face.” • If you are not known by your audience, tell them a fact about yourself so you can make fun of it. • Surprise them by setting them off in one direction, where they think you’re going to inflate your own balloon, and then deflate it yourself. Arnold Schwarzenegger tells a great joke about how he has lived the American dream, that he is proof that any immigrant can come here and become rich simply by perseverance, working hard, and marrying a Kennedy. WARNING: Self-deprecation does not mean self-flagellation. Spending fifteen minutes berating yourself doesn’t say that you’re funny, it says you are a loser. A classic example is Al Gore making fun of himself for being stiff. One or two jokes are funny. Ten jokes are too much— and, repeated over and over, they only served to remind people that he really is a stiff. THE POINT TO REMEMBER In a crowd of blowhards and braggarts, the ability to take a funny shot at yourself sets you above the crowd. YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT Think of something you are well known for. Make up two jokes about yourself that reference that fact. Exaggeration “One billion people around the world are watching the Oscar telecast tonight and they’re all thinking the same thing—we’re all gay.” —Steve Martin “American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh is supposedly gay. Do you know what that means—the Taliban is more tolerant than the Boy Scouts.” —Jay Leno Let’s say you’re out with friends and talking about an idiot coworker. Saying he has an IQ of 105 doesn’t make the point. Moderation isn’t funny. Overexaggeration is funny, for it enables you to make a serious point in a memorable way. If two women are talking and one says she bought her husband a Sharper Image Turbo Groomer for his nose hair, that’s a fact. If she had to buy him a weed whacker—now that’s funny. EXAMPLES: When James Carville gives a speech, he always makes fun of LSU. It actually took James a few extra semesters to get through there, but saying it took him five years to graduate doesn’t make his point. That’s why he always tells the audience he set a scholastic record at LSU. He got fifty-four hours of F’s. When Paul Reiser was the emcee at the 2002 City of Hope Spirit Awards, he spoke to an audience of record company executives who were there to honor the six presidents of the movie studio music divisions. Here is his run, which ended in exaggeration. As an exercise, see if you can count how many different types of jokes he uses. “The six people we are honoring tonight sold something like 185 million sound tracks this year. There are approximately five billion people in the world. Let’s do the math because not all of them buy sound tracks. My mother has never bought a sound track of anything. I have never bought one and neither have any of my friends so now we’re down eleven. No one in China has ever bought any because they make bootleg copies of everything. No one over forty-nine really buys sound tracks and no one under twenty-five has bought them because they’re busy downloading them for free. So that means this year, each of you in this room has bought 47,000 units. What makes this so funny? Here’s the analysis: • “so now we’re down eleven” (self-deprecation). • “they make bootleg copies of everything” (hidden truth). • “busy downloading them for free” (hidden truth). • “each of you in this room bought 47,000 units” (exaggeration). In that one sequence ending with an exaggeration, Paul Reiser used three different types of jokes. My Experience I had a girlfriend who was kind of easy. When I described her post-breakup, I let everyone know we had a problem because she slept with her boss. And she worked for the Vatican. She used to date the Oakland Raiders but only because there are only fifteen players on a hockey team. She bought her condoms at the Price Club—in bulk. TIPS • Exaggeration can work in any and every funny situation. • It works not only as the punch line, but in making each part of a story stand out. WARNING: At some point in using this to be funny, you will overexaggerate so that the person focuses too much on your example and misses the humor. If James Carville said he had six thousand hours of F’s at LSU, you’d spend too much time trying to figure out how many years that is. Fifty-four hours of F’s makes the point. THE POINT TO REMEMBER Exaggeration involves taking something true and embellishing it to make it funny YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT Take a failure or setback from your day, e.g., traffic on the way home from work. Tell it to a friend with exaggeration. Sarcasm “The Center for Disease Control has announced some tips for avoiding West Nile virus. They’re telling people not to pick up any dead crows. There goes my weekend plans.” —Jay Leno Skip this chapter. Anyone who went to a state school like you did is not going to get it. Okay, just read slowly. That, my friends, is an example of sarcasm. Sarcasm is both an attitude and a willingness to use a joke and make a point. It’s the stating of a truth in such a way that it counts as social commentary. To be funny and sarcastic, you always need to be on the alert for that moment when a government official, a salesperson you deal with, a coworker or estranged family member, says something stupid that needs to be ridiculed. It is your tool to make a social comment and be funny. EXAMPLES: Jay did a great joke when L.A. officials announced they were opening up “baby dropoff centers,” which are places where, for seventy-two hours, women can drop off their babies if they don’t want them, no questions asked. Jay’s joke: “That’s what I love about California. You get seventy-two hours to return your baby if you don’t want it, but if you buy a car you don’t like, you’re stuck with it.” SITUATION: The CEO of your company, who makes $2 million a year, lays off five hundred workers but takes a $5 million end-of-the-year bonus. SARCASTIC LINE: “I support him. It’s tough to try and scrape by on two million dollars a year.” SITUATION: Jeb Bush’s daughter gets arrested for illegal prescription drugs. SARCASTIC LINE: “At least someone in the Bush family has a prescription drug plan.” My Experience My local school district suspended two students for having sex at s	176,910
How to Talk to Anyone About Any Topic Master Small Talk, Make Real Friends, Understand Self Confidence and Develop Deep... (James Collins) (Z-Library).epub	Unknown How to Talk to Anyone About Any Topic Master Small Talk, Make Real Friends, Understand Self Confidence and Develop Deep Relationships By James Collins Unknown PUBLISHED BY: James Collins © Copyright 2021 - All rights reserved. The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated, or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book, either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up to date, reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaged in the rendering of legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book. By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, that are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. Unknown Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Self-Awareness Chapter 2: Benefits Of Communication Chapter 3: Confidence, Courage, Perseverance Chapter 4: The Basics of Communication Chapter 5: Essential Body Language Chapter 6: Listening Skills Are A Superpower Chapter 7: Mastering Small Talk Chapter 8: Starting A Conversation With Anybody Chapter 9: Preventing Awkward Silences Chapter 10: Developing Your Charisma Chapter 11: How To Captivate Listeners Chapter 12: Being Interesting Chapter 13: Making Meaningful Connections Conclusion Thank You References Unknown Your Free Gift As a way of saying thank you for purchasing this book, I would like to give you a free copy of one of my best-sellers. To get instant access go to: jamescollinspublishing.com/free Inside this FREE book, you will discover: Important rules on how to master small talk A list of very powerful conversation starters to break the ice Master how to sustain a conversation with ease and keep the momentum going How to start a conversation with anybody in your daily life And lastly, how to build the courage and confidence to walk up to anybody and talk to them without it being awkward Unknown Introduction “Friendship is based on the oldest and most intrinsic human awareness that there is more to life than just ourselves.” — Christopher Hansard When I was a child, I had no friends. It may sound strange to a lot of you. What does a life without friends look like? To be honest, it was pretty lonely. I would go to school, get work done, come home, study, go to bed, and the cycle would repeat, day after day, in a ruthless monotony that refused to let up. A year back, I met one of my closest friends (yes, as I grew, I learned to make them) for lunch. As we were sipping our sangrias and enjoying a scrumptious Italian pasta bake, she looked at me and laughed. Surprised, I asked her whether there was sauce on my face (Italian food is so delicious, but I can be a bit messy when I am too involved in my meal!). She smiled and said, “No, no. It’s not that. I was just thinking how you were a decade or so back! I absolutely hated you, and if my past self would have known that we would become such good friends, she would be shocked!” I stared at her for a full minute, surprised out of my eating daze. “Really? What was so different about me then?” “You didn’t know? I would have guessed that it was intentional on your part because you didn’t have friends!” I huffed, a bit annoyed. “Well, yes, but I thought that had something to do with being a lonely kid who didn’t know how to talk to others.” “No, silly,” she laughed again. “How would we know that you had troubles being socially confident or friendly? We all jacked it up to the idea that you were too proud and that you always felt you were better than the rest of us. You’d come to class, give all the correct answers, make us feel like dimwits, then leave without even so much looking back or trying to make conversation. We thought you were like this on purpose!” Dear reader, believe me, I was shocked. It had never struck me that the issue, somewhere, was with me and how I projected myself . I simply thought that the problem lay with the society at large, that people were mean and unkind, and no one cared about me. I did not stop to think that I had any role to play in this. It was as if a whole new world had opened in front of my eyes, a world in which I understood that there are far too many out there who have suffered, or are suffering, the very plight that I did. At that moment, I knew that I had to reach out and help, however I could. So, here we are. Let me ask you something. Are you someone who wants to engage more productively within your social circles, but you have no idea where to begin? You look at others who seem to have all the friends and all the limelight, and you wistfully wonder what is it about these people that makes them so lovable and so prone to being accepted, while you are left in the shadows, feeling awkward and unsure of how to make even one good friend. In its simplest and most rudimentary form, communication involves the act of transferring information from a source to a recipient, in a cycle that activates a productive interaction between both parties. When you think about it, communication is not just dependent on the words you speak. You may be the best speaker in the whole world, but you will not have a single friend unless you are able to mold your body language into something that draws people in. True communication requires you to establish connections not with just words, but with your whole body, including your facial expressions. Learning to communicate effectively is one of the most important life skills you will ever instill. Unfortunately, they don’t teach you these things in a conventional academic curriculum. Schools and colleges will not teach you how to speak well, how to mold your body language so that people don’t find you hostile, and how you can learn to truly communicate. These are skills that are learned, from our families, from the environment surrounding us, and from our own reluctance or receptiveness to whatever is going on around us. If you look at the wider arena of life, you will see that each and every aspect of it is touched by communication. From your professional lives to the interactions and relationships you form in your personal lives, everything is mandated on how you communicate. A simple difference in body language can help prevent a fight between friends or partners or a tiff at work, or can worsen it. Good communication skills are important for any project where you need to communicate and cooperate with others because they will help you to put forward a vision to your goals and to help prepare for everything in advance. If you work in the service industry, the importance of communication comes through in how you interact with your customers and other individuals. For example, if you are in the healthcare industry, communication is a key agent in establishing a trustworthy relationship between your patients and you. Even when you are interviewing for a job, good communication skills play a significant role in ensuring that you come across as someone who is self-assured, committed, and worthy of the post. If you are in a business environment, communication is important for you to build good relationships with different hierarchies, motivate those around you, and work toward success as an organization. Broadly speaking, there is no part of life or social relationships that can thrive without communication. Communication helps you to build your listening skills. Knowing how to listen carefully is an important skill for effective communication. It's your capacity to demonstrate empathy, to be open-minded, and to provide constructive criticism in response to what you've heard. Your personality, attitude, and nonverbal communication abilities will also help you be effective in dealing with the people of your team. Trust grows when there is open communication. Being able to actively listen and accept many points of view allows your colleagues to believe that you make the best choices for everyone in the group. By embodying the qualities you want to see in others, you will encourage your subordinates to trust their other team members, which will make them more likely to carry out their tasks competently. Communication helps in resolving any underlying issues. If you want to avoid fighting with others and remain conflict-free, it is critical to be able to communicate well. To reach a successful conclusion, stay collected, ensure everyone has their say, and find an option everyone likes. Communication helps in building direction and focus in your workplace. To provide your team proper direction, you need to communicate to them well. Helping coworkers with areas that need improvement in a positive manner should include pointing out methods to make things work and giving constructive criticism. Understanding both their own assignments and the duties of their other players can assist minimize misunderstanding and, therefore, decrease disputes. Communication is important for forming stronger interpersonal connections. For both personal and professional relationships, better communication is important. Giving excellent comments while listening attentively helps others feel heard and understood. Mutual respect is fostered; therefore, a healthier relationship is developed. Communication increases participation. Feeling better about what they are doing and what they have to accomplish makes individuals more enthusiastic about their jobs in general. By focusing on clear communication, you will be able to drive up interest among your team members and improve satisfaction with your company. Communication increases output. Team members know what to do when they know what is expected of them, what responsibilities they have in the workplace, and what the other team members do. Conflicts are more easily addressed via improved communication, allowing workers to better manage their workloads and reducing distractions. This means your staff is going to be more productive, since you'll have access to these advantages. In the workplace, communication encourages collaboration and team building. When everyone communicates better, they will be able to rely on one another more often. Everyone will feel like they have a fair load to bear, so nobody will become frustrated. This better division of labor will enhance team connections and motivate team members, creating more job enjoyment and productivity. Excellent communication skills may improve everyone's job experience, since it builds confidence in their abilities. You increase the positive atmosphere in your work environment by making others feel heard and appreciated. There is no aspect of life which cannot benefit if you learn the skills of communicating well. And now, you may be wondering why a self-proclaimed awkward weirdo, who had trouble making friends, is here, writing this book and sharing this with you. Because, dear reader, I know. I know what it feels like to be in the shoes of an awkward, gawky teenager, a lonesome employee, a confused college student, and a depressed human being, who thought that they would never be able to establish a real connection with anyone. I have been in all these shoes, and I have learned from them. I have spent years learning to emerge from my shell and to finally approach people in ways that will enable them to look at me not as an adversary but as someone who can be there for them, who can listen to what they have to say, and who can share parts of themselves and their insights with them. For me, the next step in becoming an effective communicator fell naturally in the hands of this book. It is my labor of love, my call for you to understand that you are worth much more, you are capable of much more, and a whole world of opportunities is waiting for you out there. All you need to learn is how to reach out and open yourself to it. Let me show you how. Unknown Chapter 1: Self-Awareness “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” — John Dewey At the onset of every journey you take, you have to ask yourself why it is important for you. What are you hoping to achieve? Is there something in your life that isn’t working the way you want it to? Many times, the problem that we think exists in the external environment is nothing but a reflection of our own resistance. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I always thought that people refused to communicate with me because they were snobbish and I was better than all of them. You see how defensive that sounds? I never stopped to think of what I was doing to contribute to this issue, and whether there was a reason as to why others avoided seeking my company. The first thing I did when I decided to work on myself was to practice self-awareness, which simply put is something that helps you really look at yourself. We all make mistakes, and we all do things that sometimes defy the basic nature of what we want. An innate resistance in human nature refuses to work toward positive change. Self-awareness helps you to look at the source of this resistance, and to reflect on why it exists, and how you can work on it. Tasha Euric, an organizational psychologist and executive coach, wrote an interesting article on self-awareness for the Harvard Business Review in 2018. She rightly pointed out that self-awareness has become the new it word, and there are plausible reasons as to why. She goes on to note that there is research backing the concepts behind self-awareness, and that once we have become fully aware of who we are, we become more confident and ingenious. We become capable of strong decisions, we make better relationships, and we communicate much, much better (Eurich, 2018). While all of us have a basic idea of what self-awareness constitutes (knowing who we are, knowing our boundaries, understanding our issues, and yada yada), few of us can say where the notion of self-awareness originated. In the wild, there exists the self-awareness theory , which states that you are not the result of what you think; rather, you are the being that is observing what you think. You are the thinking being, completely apart from the subject of your thoughts (Duval & Wicklund, 1973) . This necessitates the presence of self-evaluation, which means that while we may have deviant thoughts, we don’t have to act upon them. The capacity to know how your emotions influence your performance is called Emotional Self-Awareness. You understand what your feelings are telling you and why they are there, as well as how they affect what you are attempting to do. You are able to identify how you are seen by others, and as a result, you create a self-image that conforms to reality. You are fully aware of your own talents and limits, which leads to a realistic confidence in yourself. You will be more determined since you have a greater sense of purpose and know what your values are. Being a leader means you can be straightforward and unpretentious about your ideas. Being emotionally self-aware isn't something you accomplish, then you never have to worry it about again. Every moment gives you the chance to become aware of yourself or ignore yourself. It is a continuous effort to be aware of one's self, a purposeful choice to do so. Practicing it makes it simpler. Let me explain this with the help of a simple example. Let’s say that you are sitting with a group of people. The topic of discussion is not something you agree with, and all the while, you are thinking of how silly and unreasonable the others are being. This is your thought. But as a fully functional being, you are separate from this thought. When you learn self-evaluation, you will question why you are thinking this way, and whether you need to be more accommodating of others. When you reach this stage, you become more tolerant of others’ opinions, which is a foundation for a good communicator. So, when we exercise self-evaluation, we can map the things we are thinking to our acceptable standards and the standards of the society around us. This gives us a measure of how correct our thoughts are, in the circumstance that we are in. Keeping these standards in place is also a great way of learning the tools behind self-control, because we begin to understand whether our thoughts are conducive to, or an obstruction to, the goals that we have in sight. Taking the hypothetical situation above, if you understand that you want to win over this group, regardless of not agreeing with what they are saying, your self-evaluation and self-control mechanisms will tell you to tone down and modify what you put into words. This does not mean that you have to go against your ethics when you speak. It simply means that you will say what’s on your mind but in a more conversational manner—not with gestures or words that will make you a perceived threat in the eyes of the group. Conventionally, the theory of self-awareness suggests that when we are able to compare our actions against those of others, we usually arrive at two conclusions. We either find that our actions are aligned to the actions of the person we are evaluating ourselves against, or we find that there is a difference in the way we think and act, and how they do the same. If there is a difference, the next step is to either look for a middle ground, or to skirt around the topic of discrepancy completely. This ultimately depends on our conception of the outcomes of said interactions. When we learn how to master communication, we can wield our body language to suit the outcomes we want. Let’s understand this from a simple perspective. When we are aware of ourselves, we are also consciously pursuing success. Human beings are conditioned to align themselves with things that produce productive returns. If we find that being self-aware is leading to the benefit of having a successful conversation with someone else, we are likely to make a habit out of it. With this being said, are there any clear-cut advantages to developing self-awareness? Yes, there are. Self-awareness gives you a visual of who you are. Your mind becomes a mirror of your understanding, and you begin to realize how your thoughts, feelings and behaviors work, and how they may influence your interactions with other people. This helps you to get a grip on how your actions reflect on others, how others consider you (depending on your verbal and non-verbal cues), and how you can modulate your responses to them so that you have a hold over the conversation that is happening. Here’s another thing. A lot of what goes on in the outer world is not in our control. So, let’s say that we are in a group discussion, and someone is behaving in a tawdry fashion. In this scenario, we may not be able to control them or the way in which they are communicating. But if we are self-aware, we can make our opinions known and heard and bring positive change. Being self-aware allows us to identify exactly what it is about their way of communicating that is offending us, and when this happens, it becomes easier to voice our discomfort or let our stance be known. Unknown How To Practice Self-Awareness During Communications Armed with what we have just learned, let us now look at some ways in which we can implement self-awareness in communicating with others. Firstly, talk in first-person as much as possible. Don’t be ambiguous when you are communicating. If you want to share something, be transparent about it so that there is no room for confusion or misunderstandings. For instance, if your friend has shown up late to a dinner, try to say something on the lines of, “I understand you had trouble, but I would also prefer it if you called me beforehand to mention you would be late,” instead of “some people have been waiting hours for others to just show up.” The latter is simply passive-aggressive, and it makes the speaker sound like a whining child as opposed to a mature adult. Use your body to your advantage when communicating. All of us don’t quite know this, but as humans, we are expressive beings. So, if we are praising someone by telling them how nice they look and also rolling our eyes up and laughing, they are going to think that we are being sarcastic and insulting them. We don’t want that. So, when engaging in a conversation, look out for how you express yourself. Use your hands to convey your emotions, smile, nod, and show how involved you are in the discussion. Make your feelings known. If you are not vocal about what makes you uncomfortable, you run the risk of bottling up anger and hurt toward others until you cannot communicate at all when they are around. Stand up for yourself, and if something is hurting you, make it known by saying something, such as, “this particular thing that you said made me uncomfortable because…” and state why it made you feel bad. Finally, try to be non-judgemental in your communications. This is difficult, because as humans, we are all equipped with expectation radars, and we end up judging others the minute something falls short of what we expect. When we begin to learn self-awareness, one of the first things we have to practice is how to stand up for ourselves without judging others. For all we know, they may not have understood why a particular action on their part offended us. If someone is interrupting you in the middle of a conversation, try to say something like, “Can you give me a minute to wrap up what I have to say?” instead of passing them off as attention-seeking or selfish. When I was growing up, one of my biggest issues was lack of awareness about myself and my capabilities. Since I had so little faith in my own self, I began using others like crutches. A time came when I could not make a single decision by myself because I thought that everything I decided would be wrong. Dear reader, it took a lot of time for me to move from that place to one where I found more comfort: to a place where I learned to look at myself first, then to rely on others if needed. That is the main goal of learning self-awareness and self-reflection. When you trust yourself, your communication with others automatically improves because you are no longer relying on them for validation, and neither are you afraid of their words hurting or injuring you. You have the faith to let your voice be known, and you know that you can always fall back on yourself. Reflecting helps speakers not just because it helps them feel understood, but also because it provides them the chance to organize their thoughts. Your ideas will be more directed as a result of this, which will in turn inspire you to continue speaking. With this in mind, here is some food for thought before we move on to the next chapter, which discusses the benefits of being a good communicator. ● Prior to communicating with someone, make a note of what it is that the person has to be told and how you can do it in a way that will not hurt their feelings. ● Next, think of the options you have to communicate with the concerned individual. Are you comfortable discussing it with them in-person? Does it need your physical presence in order to be discussed? Will it be sufficient for you to call, text, or mail them? ● Think of what you are planning to say to the concerned individual as if you are in their shoes. This requires a degree of self-reflection and awareness. Is the tone of your speech making you uncomfortable? If it makes you uncomfortable, imagine the repercussion it will have on someone else! This measure will help you to tailor what you have to say. ● Be confident and self-assured when you communicate with someone. You have gone through all the above steps, so now you know that you can comfortably say what needs to be said. Don’t hesitate and don’t fumble with your words. Practice speaking in front of a mirror if need be, this can work wonders! ● Maintain eye-contact when talking to someone. A self-assured person will never shift their eyes away when putting a point across because it makes you appear uncertain. ● Practice being calm in your conversations. The topic being discussed may be something that you are passionate about, but try to not let it overwhelm you. Instead, think of it as something to which you can contribute constructively. In order to do that, you must be calm and collected. It's essential that you, regardless of being the communicator or the listener, see eye-to-eye on the matter of whether or not you have a correct understanding of what was stated. You get the capacity to hear your own thoughts and to concentrate on what you need to say or feel when you participate in self-reflection. You will also be more prepared to demonstrate that you are attempting to see the world through the eyes of the audience and that you are making every effort to comprehend their messages. In the coming chapter, we will look at the different benefits of being a good communicator. Be it in your personal or professional life, communication skills can help with everything. Unknown Chapter 2: Benefits Of Communication “Communication is the lifeline of any relationship.” — Elizabeth Bourgeret It may not be immediately apparent, but good communication skills are essential in all walks of life. It's human nature to interact with one another and seek companionship. Individuals play a variety of roles on a regular basis, relying on the situation in which they find themselves. The ability to clearly and effectively communicate is always a need when it comes to interactions. Being able to communicate effectively will result in the opportunity to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships as well as an increase in confidence when interacting with people in a social setting. These advantages may be critical in obtaining a job or establishing long-term connections with friends, colleagues, and family. It is only when communication is successful that all parties involved are left feeling pleased and accomplished. Clear communication eliminates the possibility of misinterpretation or modification of messages, thus decreasing the likelihood of conflict between parties. The ability to communicate effectively is critical to ensuring that conflicts are handled in a courteous way when they do occur. Unknown Trust The first advantage of becoming a good communicator is that it allows you to build trust and transparency in your relationships with others. A few years back (a fun way of looking at this is to consider the term BP or Before Pandemic) in 2016, the Psychology Today ’s blog published an article where Russell listed the characteristics of a workplace where communication is healthy and wholesome (Russell, 2016). ● There is open and free dialogue between employees. ● The goals of the organization are mandated on healthy contribution, cooperation, and ingenuity. ● Colleagues are not interested in bashing each other; rather, they communicate between themselves to meet collective ends. ● There is a healthy flow of feedback and constructive criticism. ● There is respect for one another and consideration, where everyone is eager to chip in when it's needed, and people even do things without being asked because they like one another's company. Let me write down a scenario for you. You have learned effective communication skills, and you are now a member of a friend circle. One day, one of your new friends shares a secret with you because the two of you have built trust with each other. This can go two ways. Either the trust remains because you honor your friend’s secret—this becomes an excellent way for you to be seen as solid communicator, or you belch out everything that your friend has shared with you, break their trust, and subsequently, the whole group considers you as unworthy of hanging out with them because they cannot trust you. So, trust and communication are two sides of the same coin. Without one, you cannot have the other. If the people you wish to communicate with do not trust you, your communication will never be fruitful. Our reliance on others creates a need for trust in our relationships. There are many occasions in our lives when we rely on people to assist us in obtaining what we desire, to provide us with support when we require it, and to lead us if we are confronted with difficulties or a crisis. In social relationships, trust is extremely important. To determine whether someone would trust another, they must feel their success is reliant on that person's conduct. They must believe that they will see results from their efforts. And they must also believe that there are ways for them to reduce their susceptibility. When the flow of communication between two or more people is easy, it is almost certain that there is established trust between the members of the group. Unknown Problem Prevention/Resolution How many times have you been the subject of a horrible thing known as misunderstandings? Learning the skills of proper communication is doubly important when you have to make sure that what you are saying isn’t interpreted in a way that will hurt the listener and cause you more harm than good. Misunderstanding often comes in a package deal with it’s sister, miscommunication. When these two are combined, there can be a literal war of words. Miscommunication is often caused by a mismatch of overt and covert meaning between the source and the destination, which results in misunderstanding. Some individuals are direct, while others want you to interpret their words in a more subtle manner. Miscommunication may be avoided by wording your thoughts in a clear and concise way. The use of a third party is advised in high-stakes situations or when you are unfamiliar with the other individual. For instance, if you are attending the first day of a new school or university, you would want to keep your communication as simple and frank as possible—if you choose to use complicated jargon from the get-go, there is a chance that others will look at you as difficult company to keep. So, how does communication prevent or help you in solving problems and misunderstandings? ● Communication allows people to resolve pent-up anger: Miscommunication leads to frustration, and the opposite is also true. Anger may be reduced if you are able to communicate effectively about your issues and if both sides are ready to make a compromise. Often, when two people get together and talk about their issues, it is possible to reach a place of compromise where both parties feel that they have been heard. ● Some individuals have a tendency to hold resentment or to get enraged by things that happen to them. Occasionally, these same individuals will not divulge to the other person precisely what it is that is causing them the greatest frustration. Communication may assist in bringing such hidden difficulties to light, which can aid in resolving those issues. ● It goes without saying that good communication skills make you empathetic anytime someone expresses their underlying problems. You become more open to the understanding that every individual is unique and comes with their unique issues. ● Relationships become more solid as a result of communication. Consider your relationship with your family; no matter how minimal, you communicate with them every day. If you did not converse with at least one person, you would end up feeling alienated. This is harmful to the mind and the body, because as humans, we are social beings. We need the company of others so that we can share our thoughts and self with them. Something to try : Take some time out of your day to sit down with a loved one and have a meaningful discussion about their lives. You will be astounded at how much this may assist you in resolving your difficulties. To allow your communication to be meaningful and geared toward problem-solving, there are some things that you can do. ● Acknowledge the existing issues between the listener and you. Do not devolve into belittling each other and do not address complaints with more complaints. Instead, just listen to what they have to say, and rather than countering them, say what is on your mind that has caused you grief or discomfort. ● Understand the likes and dislikes of the listener. This is essential for communicating and solving underlying issues. An issue that does not matter to us may have been important to them, and unknown to us, we involuntarily hurt them by talking offhandedly about this issue. Maintain silence when they speak, so that they understand you are willing to listen to them. ● Apologize where necessary. The world is big, and there is room for everyone to exist peacefully. ● Discuss how you can ameliorate the situation so that both of you can coexist harmoniously in the present moment. Try to come out of what has happened in the past. ● Take a break if the conversation gets heated, and say that you are willing to continue the dialogue, but only if all parties are respectful of each other. ● Finally, Make sure to clearly communicate verbally and physically. Relax, believe in the process, be involved in the discussion, and maintain consistent eye contact. Unknown Providing Clarity Clarity is one of the most important things that defines constructive communication. Each party involved in the exchange of information has some level of responsibility for what they have communicated. When responsible for communicating a specific message, we must make every effort to ensure our message is understood by the recipient. And when in doubt, the recipient must ensure he or she understands the message and questions any sections that are ambiguous. The first step toward effective communication is to be clear in your own thoughts about what you want to communicate. Why is clarity so important? Simply, clarity provides connection for what we are trying to say. Without clarity, the only thing we have is a jumble of words and phrases that do not make any sense. When we add clarity to this jumble, we have a context and a meaning. It is at the heart of all communication because it makes the exchanges between two people meaningful. If you think about it, the channel of communication is pretty straightforward. ● You speak a string of words as a collective message. ● The statements are absorbed by the other person, who understands them in their own interpretation based on their own opinions, sentiments, and so on. ● The other person responds by formulating an answer and sending it back to you. ● After receiving the answer, you interpret it into meaning and importance for yourself. ● You respond by sending back your answer. During the sending out and getting back of messages, a lack of clarity at any step will create confusion, misunderstandings, and generally inadequate coordination with each other. This has happened to me so many times in my workspace! Online meetings, especially, create ambiguity in what a person is saying. The listener ends up interpreting it in their own way and does something completely different to what was asked for! Good communication ensures that this will not happen. When you are communicating with clean and precise words, meaningful body language, and are clearly addressing any questions that may be asked of you, you leave little room for ambiguity. Why are we, as people, so drawn to subtitles in films and television series? It’s simple! They provide clarity! They help us to understand what is going on and whether we have misheard something. In the same way, if we humans came with subtitles, it would be far easier to interpret situations. However, since all we can rely on is the power of our speech and the way we use our body language, good communication skills become an essential quality for establishing clarity. Unknown Make More Friends Whenever we speak about the things we need in order to be happy, relationships are always on the list. In our world, partnerships often revolve around romance. We believe that just finding the perfect person will result in us being happy and satisfied. However, our friendships are perhaps just as, if not more, essential to our psychological well-being. The people in our social circles significantly increase our level of happiness and make our lives infinitely better. It is no secret that friendships have a significant effect on one's emotional health and well-being. Friendships, particularly close ones, alleviate stress, serve as a comfort, and provide happiness. Good friends also insulate individuals from loneliness and isolation. Close social ties may boost your overall physical health, in addition to impacting your emotional and mental well-being. Smoking, excessive drinking, and living a sedentary lifestyle are all risk factors, and a lack of social connections may contribute to each of these, mostly because we turn to these addictions when we do not have any social support or any other person to share our thoughts and feelings with. Friendships are even associated with longer lifespans. But you cannot just develop intimate friendships. Many of us find it difficult to meet new people and form meaningful connections. This is exactly where you need to focus on building good communication skills. The reverse can be quite damaging. Because you don't have the chance to learn how to deal with others, you can't become better at interacting, which hampers your chances of building satisfying personal connections. Communication skills are essential for establishing and maintaining friendships as well as for creating a strong network of support. They also assist you in meeting your personal requirements while being considerate of the requirements of others. People are not born with excellent communication skills; instead, they must be acquired via trial and error and commitment to lifelong learning, just like any other skill set. We often take the power of communication for granted, and believe that it is something that happens naturally. It is not so. Communicating with others is a skill, a genuine exercise in understanding and gauging human behaviors and responding appropriately to a particular social situation. It is not something that just happens. So, what are some of the most important communication techniques you may use to help you create more friends? ● First and foremost, learn to communicate effectively by allowing people to speak for themselves. In order to effectively communicate with our audience, we must first ask them questions about themselves, what they enjoy and hate, and enable them to share aspects of their life with us. ● Discuss their hobbies, interests, and other accomplishments that they are proud of. ● Plan methods to impart information in a manner that does not come across as snobby or as if you are saying things to demonstrate how much you know and how little others do in order to seem knowledgeable. To do this, start the conversation with something like, "Did you know what I discovered?" or, "I did not know this myself, but I happened to read this book, and I discovered that..." and always finish your statements by asking the listener for their thoughts. ● Finally, invite friends and family to social gatherings that you find enjoyable. We all like a little me-time every now and again. However, try not to allow this to become the defining feature of your daily life. Gather information about people you meet, get to know them, and take inspiration from the way they handle their interpersonal interactions. The more you pay attention to how other people communicate, the more you will gain knowledge about how to communicate effectively with them. Unknown Becoming More Successful Human civilization is rooted in communication, where human beings work together and help one other. To really stand out from the crowd, you must be able to express your viewpoint, while also showing that you respect the opinions of others. Take, for instance, the case with being successful in your work environment. In order to start a successful profession, it is necessary to have exceptional communication skills, and this ability is vital for the success of one's career in today's fast-paced world, whether that means finding a student job or working in an enterprise. It also provides us with the capacity to exert influence on others. It is a link that connects two different entities. People who have strong communication abilities tend to advance more quickly in life than others. Even in the midst of everyday living, effective communication between families may help to build positive connections. A major cause for dysfunctional family relationships is that there are misunderstandings between parents and children, which happens when communication is ineffective. Similarly, communication breakdown has obvious consequences in any job, and it has the potential to impede one's advancement in their profession. Let us look at some qualities that are fostered with good communication skills, and that are essential for success. ● It is much easier to get your ideas heard and understood when you have good communication skills, because your clients and supervisors understand that you are committed to the organization, the product, and the ends you are representing. You have an ability to articulate your thoughts and convey them in a way that makes it straightforward. You are able to effectively interact with your customers and explain to them the benefits of the products or solutions that you are providing. It is possible that your communication abilities will make the difference between a happy and a dissatisfied client. ● Listening to others is much easier when you have effective communication skills. Communication is a two-way street when it is done properly. Not only must one be a good speaker, but one must also be a good listener. The art of listening needs more patience than the art of talking. ● Customers' needs and requests must be carefully listened to in order for them to be effectively met by a group or organization. As a result, listening is just as essential as speaking when it comes to communication. Without listening, one cannot provide accurate answers to questions, and the entire communication process will be rendered ineffective if these two processes do not operate in tandem. You need to be a good listener in order to be successful in your workplace. ● Body language that is supportive is a sign of effective communication. Good communication is built on learning to manipulate your body language so that the listeners see how involved you are and do not perceive you as a threat or an obstruction. This is an important tool for success in the workplace. Imagine if your supervisors considered you to be a stiff, unyielding personality simply because of problems with your body language! That would impede the road to professional success. ● Clarity is built on the basis of effective communication. Good communication involves speaking what is necessary without rambling on or deviating from the primary topic, which may alter the mood of the audience in a negative way. When communicating, it is important to convey the purpose for which the conversation is taking place. It is important to consider what you really want to say before you express it. No misunderstanding will arise throughout the discussion, and business as usual will continue without interruption. ● Finally, effective communication fosters confidence, which is critical for achieving success. Communication necessitates the presence of confidence, which is an essential component of it. In order to connect with people effectively, one must feel confident in one's abilities. It is best not to make comments that seem like inquiries. In order to avoid seeming arrogant or confrontational while speaking or expressing their views, one must exercise caution. Every time you have a disagreement with your boss or a client, it is critical that you understand and appreciate their perspective as well. A competent communicator should enter every communication scenario with an open mind and be adaptable in his or her approach. Once this is accomplished, you will be able to conduct a fruitful discussion. Unknown Employability and Communication Finally, good communication is just what you need for that promotion, that better job opportunity, that employability skill. Here's the thing: When you do not learn to communicate, your body language and the way in which you speak with others often comes across as awkward, clumsy, and contrived. It either seems as if you are trying too hard or that you aren't trying at all. This isn't conducive because you want a balance. You want others to look at you as a problem-solver. Let me tell you a personal story here. When I was fresh out of college and looking for a job, I wasn't much of a communicator. Truth be told, I was shy and still disliked being around people. I'd come out of my shell somewhat, but I truly realized how far I had to go when I sat down to my first interview. Looking back at it, I'll laugh because it was a comic disaster. I was so nervous that I could not look at my interviewer's eyes. I knew the answers to what he was asking me, but I had no idea how to put them across. So I ended up giving blunt one-line replies, my palms shaking and sweating. He noticed how ill-prepared I was to tackle social settings, and this is key. If you do not know how to communicate, your supervisor or interviewer will look at you as someone who is incapable of handling difficult social settings, which comes in every job. You may be faced with a tough client. You may have to pitch a product to an international board. There may be ten different situations, some based on contingency, where you must show presence of mind and clear communication skills. Your employability is hinged on this. So, when you look at it, communication is something that you need . It is unfortunate that it isn't taught in conventional academic curricula because it is a lifelong skill that contributes to your wellbeing and your chances of being better accepted in society. Growing up, I went through a phase of thinking that I didn't need anyone else. To hell with others! But, dear reader, this was nothing but me lying to myself. Everyone needs someone. We all need to be seen, to be loved, appreciated, told that we are indispensable to someone. Humans are social creatures. We may rejuvenate in solitude, but we thrive in the company of others. Communication is like a map, giving you the directions, telling you what you have to do. If your journey is social acceptance, it is something that you must follow. Unknown Chapter 3: Confidence, Courage, Perseverance “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.” — Vince Lombardi Jr. Let me share a little secret with you. You can plot and plan, make schedules and mark dates, and do a hundred other things. But, life is still going to find ways to throw you out of the curve, to surprise and question you, and to compel you to think on the spot. Does that mean that you stop having faith in yourself and what you are capable of? No. It means that you turn around, summon your energies, learn the tools of confidence, courage, and perseverance, and use them to bounce back. Failure doesn’t come because something unexpected happened or something went awry. Failure is the result of you giving up on yourself. At the start of this chapter, let us talk about confidence. Before we begin, we need to check in to make sure we are on the same wavelength. Confidence and conceit are diametrically opposed to one another. Being too prideful and egotistical about your abilities, although admirable, may be annoying to others around you. Being self-assured is an important element of being a competent, functional human being. Pomposity, on the other extreme, is detrimental to your image. It is an illusion, a method of deluding yourself in order to compensate for underlying insecurities. Arrogance is a show put on for the benefit of others. It is not beneficial to you. It is critical for us to have faith in our abilities to complete tasks and actively engage if we are to be successful. It is possible, though, that if we get complacent, thinking, "I've accomplished this a billion times before; therefore, everything will be cakewalk," that we will become sloppy and not pay attention to what we are doing. Finding out how to be comfortable with yourself and your skills, while being vigilant and careful not to think that success will be guaranteed without hard work and effort, is important. Excessive self-assurance is seldom rewarded with respect and trust. Their peers regard them to be difficult to relate to and talk to. On the other end, those who lack confidence, despite the fact that they are generally accessible, may	177,341
Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners (Corey Martin Craig) (Z-Library).epub	Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Corey Craig Cool Beans Comedy Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Copyright © 2020 Cool Beans Comedy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 9798617867949 Typesetting: Roger Nikunen Cover Design and Photos: Marc Wood Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Special thanks to the Cool Beans Comedy community including: Matthew Moore, Improv For The People, Dessa Craig, Jack Sullivan, Roger Nikunen, Marc Wood, Andrew Cornelius, Torrance Hill, Alexandra Catalano, Candida Rodriguez, Stevie Rae Dominguez, Howard Aronin, Roxy Cook, Max Karz, Mike Karz, Kathleen Duncan, Gabrielle Nevaeh Green, Chinguun Sergelen, Lex Lumpkin, Mike Knox, Denise Wax, James Spadafore, Stephanie Diane, Harrison Leahy, Quentin Gauge, Veronica Pacheco, Daniel Garza, Alexis Shafira, Joaquin Garay III, Ai Yoshihara, Megan Thomas, Nicole Burch, Audrey Stewart, Nicole Cunningham, Alan Weiss, Kevin Mosansky, Ernie Enriquez Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Contents Title Page Copyright Dedication Why Stand-Up Comedy? Who Am I? What is Cool Beans Comedy? Creative Brain Understanding Joke Structure Crafting with the Critical Brain Tools for Performing Keys to Success Next Steps in Your Comedy Career Comedy Recap Cool Beans U The End About the Author Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Why Stand-Up Comedy? Because stand-up comedy is not just about finding your funny. It’s about finding yourself. This is one of the best art forms for building self-confidence. Confidence comes from connection, from owning your flaws and insecurities, and showcasing your scars and imperfections. If you bare all, raw and vulnerable, you will become confident in much more than comedy. You will find confidence in who you are as a person and recognize that what you say has value. Real comedy is all about finding your voice and giving voice to others. Your point of view matters and audiences want to hear open and honest reflections of one-self through personal stories and self-deprecating humor. Through empathy and relatability, audiences connect to the comic’s voice and can see themselves in the performer’s stories. This specific style of comedy is thriving and can be a gift for audiences, as it is for the comic alike. There is no better time to find your funny. Comedy is flourishing and everyone deserves to have humor in their lives. This book is for those new to comedy and are hoping to learn the art form. This book is also for the experienced comic determined to learn something new on their journey to their Netflix special. This book is also for the fan of comedy wishing to learn more about the comic’s journey. Laughter is a universal bond. My goal is to breakdown stand-up comedy from a multitude of angles. We will start by exploring lessons from our stand-up comedy course. Then provide you with tools and insight to help you accomplish your wildest dreams, or simply learn about the process of stand-up comedy. Whether you choose to make a career out of this or not, I highly recommend everyone try stand-up comedy at least once. Public speaking is the number one fear across the globe. Stand-up comedy only multiplies that fear with the added pressure of making someone laugh. It’s no doubt that this is the most challenging art-form to attempt in show business. Most individuals allow fear to dictate any potential pursuit. We have seen students come through our school who have contemplated comedy for over 20 years. Other students have shown up to class one with such anxiety that they are petrified even to hold the microphone. Through positive encouragement and support, these fears eventually fizzle out. I have personally seen comedy work wonders for a variety of individuals. It helps actors have improved comfortability in an audition room. It has helped accountants who desire improved poise with co-workers in large group meetings. It has even been an outlet for stay-at-home moms who want to step out of their comfort zone. This book aims to teach you how to be a student of comedy by exploring comedic timing, joke structure, and the art of writing, performing and re-writing. Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Who Am I? My name is Corey Craig, and I’m a prime example of taking tragedy and translating that into comedy. Growing up in Nebraska, I was loud, obnoxious, and suspended over 30 times between middle school and high school. I was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, Tourette Syndrome, and given medications to “fix” my behavioral challenges. Good news (enter irony): the medication did not make me less hyper, nor did it calm my nerves or stop my vulgarity. It did, however, help me gain 45 pounds over one summer break. Did I get picked on from my medication’s side effect of ‘dramatic weight gain’? Yes. Did I cry (and eat my feelings)? Yes. Did I turn my pain into humor? You better believe it. In hindsight, I was just an energetic kid searching for acceptance. To date, I have no symptoms of the disorders above. In my darkest days, what I wanted most from others was to be heard. In 8th grade, I found theatre and acting, which saved my life, literally and figuratively. I had a reason to wake up every morning: to make it to 5th-period Theatre class. We studied comedy, played improv games, and I used self-deprecating humor about my weight and appearance to get my classmates to laugh with me daily. I took my power back with the help of humor and started to feel good about myself for once. It was my artistic awakening, and I followed that yellow brick road of the arts to this very day. Residing in Los Angeles, I am an award-winning producer and director. I’ve helmed comedy specials such as Normal Behavior for Samuel J Comroe ( America’s Got Talent ), Love at First Cousin for Delanie Fischer (FOX), Never Been Kissed for Nicole Burch (HBO), Dumb is Gooder for Jeff Dye (NBC), and received special thanks on Showtime’s Tone Bell: Can’t Cancel This . I’ve directed comedic shorts for America’s Got Talent’s Drew Lynch, including Service Dog Bodyguard co-starring Brandon Rogers and If People Acted Like Dogs co-starring Preacher Lawson. I’ve recorded comedy albums for the likes of Francisco Ramos (Last Comic Standing), Kane Holloway (Laughs), Steve McGrew (Comedy Central), and Jerry Rocha (Conan). I have also produced thousands of live comedy shows and events through my critically acclaimed comedy brand, Cool Beans Comedy. Frequent performers include Taylor Tomlinson (Netflix), Amir K ( MADtv ), Alonzo Bodden ( Last Comic Standing) , to name a few. As a comic, I have performed across the country. As an acting and comedy coach, I have worked with performers from ages 8 to 80. I’ve also coached performers onto series regular roles for Nickelodeon and more. I believe the key to my success comes from empowering individuals through positivity and growth-mindset beliefs. My approach to life and helping others is to inspire and give back, while laughing along the way. Anyone has the ability within themselves to laugh at their past. Life is to be lived to its fullest, and nothing should hold us back. It’s time to talk about that pain and make it your gain. Give yourself permission to go there, to open up fully, and to stifle those feelings of fear. If we can’t laugh at the pain, what else is there? Lean in and love your labels, embrace your curves and jagged edges, and look at each day as an opportunity to create a masterpiece. Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners What is Cool Beans Comedy? Founded in 2009, Cool Beans Comedy is a comedy brand that exists to elevate artists and our community through education, art, and activism. The origin of which started when I was dared by a television producer at Warner Bros. to try stand-up comedy. Never one to back down, I enrolled in a class at the oldest comedy club in America: The Ice House Comedy Club in Pasadena, California. At the end of class, the instructor presented an opportunity to produce our own show in the smaller room of the club. I thought producing a live comedy show could be a great tool. I could learn the ins and outs of comedy, forge relationships with hilarious up-and-coming comics, and foster a supportive comedy community in an otherwise dark and depressing comedy circuit. I jotted down the details, submitted my proposal for Cool Beans Comedy, and was thankfully selected. I settled on a Thursday night and booked the show with comics who I enjoyed from the open mic circuit. We delivered a respectable first show, and I had a decent individual set. The quality and audience turnout were enough to be asked back for another show the following month. Eventually, the show became monthly, and my comedy improved. A few years later, Cool Beans Comedy moved over to the Main Room because of our growth and continued success. Many of the comics who performed on the show in the early days have gone onto wild success, including Jerrod Carmichael ( The Carmichael Show ), Melissa Villaseñor ( Saturday Night Live ), and Michelle Buteau ( The First Wives Club ). Cool Beans Comedy prides itself on audience appreciation and building a community of positive collaborators and comics. It has become a gold-standard in comedy. We have multiple monthly shows and productions across the greater Los Angeles area, including West LA at The Pico and continued shows at The Ice House. The Cool Beans Comedy podcast interviews feature comics, writers, casting directors, and more, which offer an insider’s journey into the life of a comedy professional. Cool Beans U is the educational branch of the brand, teaching multiple classes, workshops, and providing seminars for organizations such as SAG-AFTRA. Our Stand-Up Comedy Intensive takes individuals of all ages from classroom to stage in six weeks, transforming students into performers. We also offer online coaching and courses. Cool Beans U aims to make a positive and safe community for all. We strive for diversity, inclusion, and illuminating as many lives as possible. It is a gratifying experience to see someone perform comedy for the first time in front of a live audience. The fulfillment and commitment to the class is the secret to the community that is Cool Beans Comedy. We rise together and focus on a communal bond rather than competition. One person’s comedic style doesn’t detract from another. We consistently have great shows which come from the combined contributions of our individual comics. Graduates of the Cool Beans U: Stand-Up Comedy Intensive have landed series regular roles on Nickelodeon, appeared on America’s Got Talent , Comedy Central, Showtime, comedy festivals and clubs across the country, and have even been featured on SiriusXM. Without further ado, let’s get into some beginning writing. Grab a pen and paper, or power on your laptop. Let’s start exploring all the amazing qualities that make you unique. The aim will be to have your writing continue throughout the book in the same way we approach class. We will amass a collection of possibilities for you to develop, and then continually refine as we come to understand comedy structure. We will then uncover proper performance techniques to support your writing further. The goal will be to have a few solid minutes of material that are authentically yours and undoubtedly funny by the time you finish. Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Creative Brain Mining Material from our Life’s Experiences First and foremost, writers become writers by writing. You need to write daily and try to think of 5 or 6 new ideas to say a week. If we think about it, as a stand-up comic, you are essentially crafting a humorous one-hour speech. You write it line by line, over many years. Thus, it is crucial to write and to re-write. Some people find their discipline by writing at the same time every day and creating that routine. Others take walks to formulate ideas, and then jot those down along the way. Some people write at a computer, while others are the pen-to-paper type. The determining factor should be what makes you feel most comfortable. The emphasis of this section is to form the habit of writing. While science can’t prove why a joke works or doesn’t, science has proven that habits take 21 days to form. Get started on developing your positive writing habits today. Remember writing doesn’t have to be fully formed jokes, you can write ideas down and let the punchline come to you days or weeks later. The important thing is to focus on consistency until it becomes habitual. Writing Part One: Starting Block Writing Exercises As audience members, we want to know about the comic. The more open and vulnerable you are onstage, the more relatable you will be with your audiences. Be brave, be bold, and take 5-10 minutes for each section and write down your stream of consciousness. These are exercises to glean material from your life to uncover new ideas. Grab some paper or a notebook for your writing. Once completed, go back through, see what sticks and has potential, and what topics you enjoy. Circle those, and continually craft them into hilarious material as we work throughout the book. Start Writing Free Flow 1: Unique to You . What makes you unique? We only get one life, and we can only be the best version of ourselves. So, write everything that comes to your mind. Examples: I’m double-jointed; I was born on a farm in Alaska; I have a twin; I was suspended over 30 times in middle school. Free Flow 2 : Relationships . This is not solely restricted to romantic relationships. These are any relationships that have meaning to you. Examples: I had a helicopter Mom; my postman is a real jerk; my grown husband doesn’t clean up after himself; my first date on Tinder became my wife; my pet squirrel was my best friend growing up. Free Flow 3: Embarrassing or Closeted. Again, the more vulnerable you are onstage, the more relatable you will be with an audience. This idea was born from reading Kevin Hart’s book: I Can’t Make This Up . If you’ve not read it, it's a must. In the book, Kevin reflects on winning comedy competitions early in his career. But he repeatedly heard from his comedy mentor that he was not ready for bigger stages. It wasn’t until Kevin started opening up about his father, growing up poor, and his relationship issues that he was able to get on bigger stages. That vulnerability is when his career took off. The one caveat to this writing exercise is you need to make sure you are absolutely mentally over something and ready to talk about it onstage. If something is too fresh, or you’re still in the trenches of the emotional pull of a situation, wait until you are completely healed to talk about it. Take good notes in the moment and jot down specifics about how you feel. By documenting it, you can always come back to it when you are ready. Once ready, art can be a beautiful vehicle to help overcome any embarrassing or painful situation. You can use the art of stand-up even to educate and inspire others. If we lean into the truth of our past experiences with full honesty, the possibilities are endless. Comedy is tragedy plus time. Examples: I was a former fat kid (my own example with picture proof); I got a divorce from my wife because it turns out I’m gay; I got food poisoning on a packed subway; I pulled a massive prank on the wrong house and was arrested in the process; I told the girl of my dreams that I loved her at the top of a mountain, only to learn that she started seeing someone else. I then had to drive us 25 minutes back down the winding road in silence... while holding back my tears. Free Flow 4: Life Memories. To find your comedic voice, Louie Anderson says to write down all of your life’s memories from as early as you can remember. The idea is not to be funny, but rather mine for real potential to see themes that may become your voice onstage. Examples: When I was four, my dad taught me to ride a bike on a gravel road. I learned quickly, so I’d stop falling over and getting scrapes; when I was six, I got a Dalmatian, and we went to the neighborhood fire department to take a photo next to a fire truck; when I was seven, I asked my mom for a sip of her beer. I hated the taste and never drank beer again because of that memory; when I was 13, I ran through a glass window and had 57 stitches. Free Flow 5: This next session has multiple, 5-10 minute writing exercises. Look at each one, write what comes to mind, and then start another. The idea is to write until the timer stops. The more you allow yourself to go into that grey, unknown area, the better! No examples needed here, just get to it. - What makes you mad? - What makes you sad? - What makes you happy? - What’s wrong with the world? - What’s wrong with yourself? - Things you wish you could change about your body? - Things you like about your personality? - Things you don’t like about your personality? - Things you wish you could change about others? Free Flow 6: Wikipedia Roulette: The name says it all. Steve Martin suggests that the more you know about the world, the more material from which you have to draw. Go to Wikipedia, select your desired language, and in the left hand column, click on ‘Random article.’ Keep clicking until you find something interesting or bizarre, and then write down five to ten facts that you didn’t know before. Free Flow 7: Brain Dump: Without stopping, take 20 minutes and write all of your thoughts down in a brain dump. Get it all out! Joke ideas will organically pop up because this form of writing does not allow you to stop and censor yourself. When finished, take a well-deserved break. Later, examine all of your ideas. Circle the material that has the best opportunity for you to explore through stand-up comedy. Free Flow 8: Walk It Out . If you’ve exhausted all writing exercises and are still searching for that perfect material or are simply at a writer’s block; go on a walk. It’s as simple as that. Take a notebook with you and write down any ideas that formulate. By walking, you are putting yourself in motion, which activates your creative brain. This tool has been the foundation of many great writers and minds: Beethoven, Dickens, Darwin, and even Bill Gates. American poet, and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Tips, Tricks, and Tools Put yourself in a positive writing environment and allow the muse, or your source of inspiration as a creative artist, to come to you. Further, write in a way that feels best for you. Sit at a table with paper and pen, or take it old school and dust off your typewriter. And make sure to carry a notebook with you everywhere you go - a Moleskin in the back pocket, or a notes app on your mobile phone. Just make sure to always capture any inspiration that springs to your mind. Don’t assume you’ll remember it later. The key is to capture the idea so you can mine it for material later. As a writer, you need to find ways to not be intimidated by the process. One half of your brain is creative, and the other half is critical. Try to write and edit on different days. If you do both at the same time, you will paralyze your creative flow. Let your creative muscles do the work and tell your judgmental voice to quiet down until it is needed. As a reminder, difficult circumstances lend themselves to comedy. Put yourself in a corner and get out of it comedically. When it comes to insult comedy, make sure to knock yourself first before going after others. Then put a strong focus on making sure you are still likable. Insult comics like the late Don Rickles used phrases like ‘I kid’ throughout his bits to make sure everyone in the audience knew it was just comedy. Finally, when it comes to vulgarity, it is important to learn early on that clean comedy has a much larger opportunity for comedians to perform. There are cruise ships, churches, and colleges. If you need to curse, make it serve the joke. If you watched Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable , she cusses just one time in the entire special. A rule of thumb is that a well-placed curse word is your friend, a salt shaker full is not. Further, strive to avoid gross topics such as bowel movements or bodily functions that could make a person cringe or gag. Some audience members order food at shows. The last thing you want to do is tell a joke that makes them reconsider having another bite of their chicken tenders. An easy way to remember this is that if it can come out of you, we don’t want to see it come out of you onstage. Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Understanding Joke Structure The goal of a joke is to lead to a laugh. The element of surprise delivers this involuntary response comprising of a chuckle, giggle, or howl. Comedy is heavily reliant upon irony, such as calling a stupid person clever. Understanding proper technique will help improve your writing and delivery. Joke-telling is fulfilling the audience's expectations with a twist. You first establish the information that sets the joke off on its course, and then increasingly build tension. The goal should be to use minimal wording to get to the payoff as quickly as possible. A good metaphor for tension is to think about blowing up a balloon as hastily as possible and popping it promptly with a nail. At the core of all great comedy is tension and release. For comedy to work properly, you must stay ahead of the audience. If you tip the joke by indicating where the punchline is heading, you lose the element of surprise and, subsequently, the laughter. The good news about comedy is that once you understand it, you can then start to learn how to make it work for you. Comedy can be presented in a multitude of ways: energetic or dry, loud or soft, and the presentation will always be unique to each and every comic. Here we will look at the components of a joke which will lead to a better understanding of the stand-up comedy art form: Joke Structure Part One: The Premise or Set-Up The premise sets up any information that needs to be understood for the joke to achieve its end-goal: to get a laugh. A premise can be presented as a statement or in question form and is arguably the most crucial part of the joke. If this is not set up correctly, the audience may lack understanding and miss the eventual payoff. Chris Rock said that if a joke was not landing, he knew he had to go back and re-examine the premise. An easy way to understand this is to think of the comic as a tour guide. You, as the comic, are telling the audience what they are going to be hearing about. You clearly set their expectations, only to have those same expectations turn later on. ‘Alright audiences, now we are going to be talking about blank.’ Then, when it’s time to move on, you begin the next premise. When laying out the premise, only introduce elements that will directly tie into the payoff. Keep it simple, on topic, one thought at a time, as to not confuse the audience. The moment your audience starts going into an inner dialogue, trying to understand what you are talking about, you have lost them. An audience can get stuck on the simplest of words, so make sure you have laid it out properly and spent enough time creating your entry point into the joke. Make sure your premise is specific and grabs the attention of the audience until the punchline is delivered. Make it interesting, and if it is a general thought that many of us have had, present the idea in a fun and unique, new way. For a beginner comic, think of your premise in question form. The start of the question will be ‘Do you know what’s...’ followed by a fulcrum word (the adjective that the premise teeters on) about _________? Generally speaking, you will want to choose an ironic word that sets up the joke: ‘Do you know what’s delightful about divorce?’ Delightful is the fulcrum word. It is an ironic choice because divorce is heartbreaking. Further, the premise is peppered with alliteration using delightful and divorce, two words that both start with the letter D. For a premise in statement format, here is an example: ‘I’d like to get married at Costco.’ It’s a funny thought, and we want to hear more on where this is going. Joke Structure Part Two: The Funny This portion focuses on your point of view and punchline. Once you have a solid premise, now it’s time to inject humor with your unique, comedic perspective on the situation. This should be complete with a clear attitude, thought, feeling, and position. Here is where you generate laughter. It’s not a joke if there is no punchline and ensuing laughter. The punchline should be funny and have the element of surprise. Further, this pay-off should equal the set-up. Meaning, the laugh should equal the time it took to get there. A long story should have a big laugh, whereas a one-liner could be a quick chuckle. The main idea to remember is that the punchline should not be too far removed from the premise; this holds the audience’s attention until you hit them with a surprise. If we use the Costco example, ‘I’d like to get married at Costco...,’ we can immediately pay off that with: ‘My fiancé told me that I was in charge of the venue. She said she wanted the wedding to be catered... Every aisle is a sample. Check. She said she wanted to hold a lot of people... We could fit 350 in their dairy section alone. Check. And she said she wanted an open bar... easy. Just pick and pop. Check, check, and check. Now, I just have to get our guests’ memberships...’ Joke Structure Part Three: Act-Outs and Tags This last portion of the joke structure is optional but is highly effective when used properly. The art form of Stand-Up Comedy relies heavily on act-outs to heighten the hilarity of the humor. An act-out shows the audience what you just talked about. This can be accomplished by changing your voice to imitate a character that you introduced, or you can think outside of the box and use your surroundings: the microphone stand could easily become a vacuum, the microphone could turn into an ice cream cone, or the stool could become a tent. Let your imagination take over. For our Costco joke, we could mime an attendee eating shrimp cocktail and saying, ‘What a beautiful reception.’ Additionally, a tag can be used to milk the joke for more laughs. A tag is simply an additional thought, facial expression, or sound you make to add one more laugh to the end of a completed joke. Sometimes it could be more than one tag, or it may not be needed at all. It is entirely up to the comedian, and sometimes can be found by performing onstage while in the moment. More times than not, the audience helps you craft these. As they are laughing, you may think of a quip to sprinkle in. Robin Williams was a fantastic example of a comic using act-outs for comedic effect. He could riff in and out of characters that served to expand the laughter. Other comedians to observe for act-out illustrations include Maria Bamford and Sebastian Maniscalco. Both feature great physicality in portraying different characters and scenarios for a humorous response. Don’t be afraid to try new ways to present the same jokes until you get that Netflix special. Your material is a work in progress. Keep exploring. Start with a kernel of an idea and develop it out. Look at multiple paths for the joke and see which is the funniest. Consider taking the joke further by an act-out or funny retort to get a little more from your audience. It’s perfectly acceptable to offer an alternate and differing thought, or simply to call attention to the audience’s response. Your personality and comedic flair come alive here. I have heard many Spirit Airline jokes that revolve around the same concept, but I never see the same act-out or tag. Therefore, lean into your unique personality and comedic lens. Joke Example: Question Format Premise: Do you know what’s amazing about traffic in LA? Point of View: I get to save money on therapy while sitting on the 405. I just close my eyes and meditate from the driver’s seat. Act-Out: (pretending to watch in the mirror as the car behind maneuvers around) BEEP-BEEP, move it jerk! (Now, back to yourself meditating, and seeing the car whip by, wave your arm and say...) Namaste. Joke Example: Statement Format Premise (concise statement): I just spent 45 minutes in the airport parking lot looking for my car. Punchline (unpredictable twist): Turns out, I took a shuttle. Tag (taking it further): And I don’t own a car. One-Liners Versus Storytelling There are multiple styles of comedy, and one size doesn’t fit all. For joke writing, one-liners to storytelling cover both ends of the spectrum. In essence, these two variations carry the same rules as above. The only difference is that the amount of time it takes to set up the joke should equal the payoff. Meaning, one-liners can be quicker with lighter laughs while longer stories should have bigger pay-offs with bigger laughs. One-liners are basically set-up and punch. Mitch Hedberg was an incredible one-liner comedian with impeccable observational humor. He relied on misdirection: ‘I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.’ This example leads the audience down one path, only to have a surprise turn for the punchline. Mitch also excelled at observational one-liner humor: ‘Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.’ Another fun illustration of one-liner humor is to incorporate wordplay. Steven Wright has a terrific example of this: ‘I named my dog Stay, so I can say, Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!’ One-liner joke writing focuses on quick pay-offs. It is an excellent exercise for any comic in understanding joke structure in its purest form. Try your hand at two generic examples of the beginning of a one-liner joke. See if you can find a payoff to the set-up that is clever and concise: They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, well... (finish the joke). I was searching for happiness in all the wrong places. Turns out... (finish the joke). Storytelling can take several minutes or longer to deliver the big payoff. Mike Birbiglia, a masterful storyteller, states that you should know your ending and then reverse engineer back to the beginning. Start with the facts first and then enhance with colorful details. An example of reverse engineering can be explored in a story I told about finding a lost cat on Thanksgiving. The eventual payoff is that I safely returned the cat to the owners and received a $500 reward. The humor comes from the fact that I’m severely allergic to cats. I had to wear gardening gloves and clip a dog’s leash to the cat’s collar until the owners drove back home to retrieve their prized pussycat. Now, I know where the final laugh is coming from. I know it will be a funny image and be a humorous climax. So, it’s time to add in the hilarious details which slowly lead to the reveal, from the end, to the beginning: - The big reveal of the way I looked while giving back the rescued cat - Taking my dog home and racing around the neighborhood listening for the sound of the cat’s bell collar - Stumbling upon the poster and reward - Taking my dog for a post-dinner walk - Putting the plate back in my car only to find a cat jump from the bushes with a bell on his collar that made a ding-a-ling sound - Eating dinner and having it get dark outside - Setting up the story with going over to my mom’s for Thanksgiving dinner and bringing over a fruit plate. From there, I would pepper in sneezing and finding the gardening gloves, and add fun act-outs of hearing the ‘ding-a-ling’ from the bell. I would also sprinkle in the cat’s name that I made up for him (Boots, because he was a black cat with four white paws). Finally, I would consider inserting a final turn at the end to help pay off this long and hilarious story. The point of this reverse engineering system is to know your beats and make sure you play them out sequentially. Further, storytelling uses a string of smaller jokes to keep the audience engaged. It is essential to string together these lesser laughs leading up until the final punch to retain audience engagement. If there isn’t laughter until the final pay-off, it would simply become a monologue. Writing Part Two: Joke Construction We just learned about the premise, point of view, and act-outs. We looked at one-liner jokes and discussed storytelling. Now, it’s your turn to take your material you mined during the brainstorming writing exercises and start crafting it. Get your notes back out and determine what lends itself to the three-part structure, and what would be better served through a one-liner or longer story. Next, put it through the appropriate formula and see what you come up with. Writing is rewriting, so this does not have to be perfect. Just give it your best attempt. We will continue to look at the material throughout the upcoming chapters. For now, your goal should be 5-10 question premises with your point of view and possible act-outs, 3-5 one-liner jokes, and 1-2 stories. Take some time on these, enjoy the topics in which you’re writing about, so that it becomes fun! And know that again, we will continue to craft as we progress! Tips, Tricks, and Tools Plosives (stop consonants): Hard K’s, P’s, and T’s are funny. Anything that sounds “foreign” to an audience’s ears will make them laugh. These plosives land sharply on an audience’s ear and, therefore; create funny-sounding words. Kathy is funnier than Heather, and Derek is much more fun than Sam. The Rule of 3: Comedy is not a science. It’s trial and error. This is never more present than in big-budget comedy films. Many comedies have been written, acted, directed, and edited by hilarious individuals only to fall flat and leave audiences questioning the humor. Comedy is always a risk. What’s not a risk is knowing that comedy comes in 3’s (and odd numbers). We may never know why (unless Bill Nye, the Comedy Science guy, delves into this) but trust me, it does. One good example to look at is patterns. This is where you set up two similar items and then introduce a third item that is absurd, inappropriate, disconnected, or out of place (1, 2, Banana; Red, Green, Giraffe.) When we identify patterns, the audience is already thinking about the next item on the list, so when the odd choice comes, there is a surprise. That is the key to laughter. Example from Chris Rock: ‘There are only three things women need in life: food, water, and compliments.’ Misdirection: We are using the same principle from above. We want to take the audience in one direction and then surprise them by going in a completely opposing direction. When the surprise happens, it is known as the turn. Your job is to make sure that everything leading up to the reveal is set up clearly, as clarity is crucial to landing the surprise element. This example comes from Cool Beans U co-instructor Matthew Moore: “I was on a date with someone much younger and the bill came. I grabbed my wallet and opened it up, and a card fell out. I scrambled to pick it up, but my date got to it first. I was mortified because he was about to find out how old I was. He examined it and looked at me and asked, ‘What’s Blockbuster Video?’” The misdirection here is that we were all expecting him to say his AARP card, or the audience might think he dropped his driver’s license. Reversals: This is a super sharp turn with the audience. Here, you set up a definitive fact, only to reverse it for a comedic spin. Example: ‘Hell no, I would never go on a date with Kathy! Never! Kathy? Vomit. NEVER... GOING... TO... Happen! (slightest of pauses, and then...) So I was on a date with Kathy...’ Juxtaposing: Good old comparing and contrasting. Take two ideas and insert the funny: Los Angeles versus New York, young versus old, men versus women, and so on. These are universally relatable and audiences love to be part of the joke, especially when you are on their side. Example: talking about New York but favoring Los Angeles, since you are performing in L.A. Simply put, you mirror two ideas together and present the same set-up for both. Example: ‘In Nebraska, I’m a 10. In Los Angeles, I’m a 4.5. And that’s on a good day.’ This is a great tool to consider in your joke writing. Callbacks: This is an extremely effective tool that can be used over and over. This is when you bring something back from earlier in your set (a punchline, funny object, word, etc.), either by tying it into a later joke or simply calling it back. If done in a shorter set (5-7 minutes), it makes your set look clever and wrapped up neatly with a tiny little bow. An example here comes from a Cool Beans U student. He opens his set by reading from a notebook: “Hi, I’m Jack Sullivan. Thirty years ago, I was in a really bad car accident that left me with short term memory issues.” He turns the page and reads: “Hi, I’m Jack Sullivan” again. This delivers an instant callback right off the top. Later on in his set, Jack will flip to another page of his notebook and say, “Hi, I’m Jack Sullivan” once more to get another laugh. He then ends his set with “Knock, knock” and waits for the audience to reply with, “Who’s there?” He then delivers his go-to line: “Hi, I’m Jack Sullivan” for a final laugh and callback. If used effectively and spaced out properly, a callback can be a simple, yet powerful tool in your arsenal of tricks. Heighten the Stakes: Comedy is all about tension, so when setting up a joke or story, take comedic liberty and heighten the stakes. Your story has much more weight if it’s not just a random Tuesday, rather the most important Tuesday of your entire life. This is the Tuesday you have family and friends flying in from all over the country to surprise your girlfriend at a dinner proposal. This specificity adds so much more to the story. The stakes are heightened, and because of that, the audience is more invested. As a comedian, mine for tension because this directly plays into the release, which is the laughter. Everything always works better if the stakes are at their highest. Play to extremes and take an ordinary day and comedically invest into making it an extraordinary one. Alliteration: This is a potent tool used with thoughtfully appointed words to add more hilarity. Select words that have the same beginning sound to give more depth to your writing: instead of Charles was eating a salad, consider Charles chomped chard. Be the Loser: Master storyteller Tone Bell always emphasizes this: the comic should be the loser of a joke. The audience wants to see you get yourself into trouble, and then ultimately, lose. It’s just plain funnier to be the butt of the joke than the victor. The only time when this is not the case is if the other person in the story has earned what is coming to them. Some examples could be a bully that you finally stood up to, a cheating spouse, or even a thief who tried to run off with your purse. All of these examples deserve to be on the losing side. Segue: If the tail end of a joke leads seamlessly to another joke or subject, then you did your part to deliver a powerful segue. An example would be having a joke about your girlfriend complaining about your communication skills. You deliver ironic illustrations, get laughs, and have a big payoff by revealing that you now own a dog because your girlfriend brought one home without even asking first. So much for communication going both ways. The segue could then be “So, now we have a dog: Juan Carlos,” preceding countless jokes about the new dog and your fun adventures together. A bad example would be finishing a series of jokes about working out at the gym, and then segueing over to babysitting by saying: “Speaking of babysitting, this last week...” You run into trouble anytime you voice the generic, “speaking of...” All too often, comics spend an excessive amount of time trying to craft the perfect segue when there is also the option not to have one at all. Simply deliver your joke, pause, and start with a new topic. This is dealer’s choice, so try both methods and see what works for you. Stand-Up Comedy for Beginners Crafting with the Critical Brain Now that you have the basis of some solid joke foundations, it’s time to engage the critical brain and edit, edit, edit. Again, all writing is rewriting, and stand-up is no different. Start with the truth and then take creative liberties and embellish for the sake of comedy. Simply put, feel free to lie until it’s funny. Punchlines are often found when stretching the truth. The goal should be to average 4-6 laughs per minute. Be Original: Search for originality and specificity. What details can you add that no-one has ever done before? Color in your material with specific information. Use unique names, exact locations, etc. Instead of ‘socks,’ make them ‘roller skating dinosaur knee-high socks.’ Instead of ‘My dog peed in the house,’ make it more specific with: ‘Kinky Doodles peed on the futon.’ (And yes, Kinky Doodles was the actual name of a Cool Beans U student’s dog). Economy of Words: When it comes to comedy, less is more. Think of every word as costing you $5 and try to save as much money as you can. Your goal should be getting to the funny as quickly as possible, and that is accomplished through word selection. If you can tell a 60-second joke in 10 seconds, it is a 10-second joke. Everything else is padding. Further, expository is not needed unless it serves the story. The tension of the joke dissipates and fizzles if it becomes verbose. Here is a great editing exercise: Examine a joke you’ve written by crossing out any words that don’t need to be there. This is guaranteed to simplify your joke and get you thinking sharper and funnier. If you are struggling with this idea, write like you are writing for Twitter. Give yourself only 140 characters for each joke. This is an excellent practice for trimming and tightening your jokes. Put the Funny at the End: Make sure to put the funniest part, phrase, line, or word at the end. When you tell a joke, in a way, you’re presenting the audience with a puzzle to solve. You’re giving them clues, if you will, into what’s supposed to be funny. At the same time, believe it or not, you’re also creating and storing tension. This tension wants to be released and, if you do your job right, will be released in the form of a laugh when the puzzle is solved. By putting the funny word last, you allow the puzzle to be solved all at once. This triggers the biggest explosion of laughter. For example: ‘because, Derek, I don’t like to speak to you’ is less funny than ‘because I don’t like to speak to you, Derek.’ Set Hierarchy: As a general rule, here is a way to think about structuring jokes and stringing them together: a joke comes first, a string of likeminded jokes become a chunk, and multiple chunks craft your overall, longer set. As you develop longer sets, you can utilize callbacks more and more, referencing an earlier joke or part of your set. This adds more layers and dimensions to your act. Think Outside of the Box: If you are looking to enhance a joke, consider implementing a look or a gesture, grounded in your point of view. A funny pause with a perplexed look on your face can be a great addition to a joke. Additionally, an audible sound or effect can lend itself to the funny. Examples of this are Gabriel Iglesias with his sound effects or Dave Chappelle laughing and then hitting himself on the leg, causing the microphone to make a ‘pop’ sound. That same effect has been used by Kat Williams to make the sound of a gunshot. And again, consider the stool and mic stand. The stool could become a giant water bottle, a car seat, while the mic-stand could become a sword, a metal detector, or what have you. The point is to make full use of your surroundings to keep your material active. If you can show us with an act-out, do that instead of telling us about it. Visuals hold an advantage over words alone. Write your Truth: The truth is always the funniest. Always. Be authentic and write what you know. The best writing comes from life experience and your own emotional life: embarrassing moments, uncomfortable situations, times of anger, fear, sorrow, and delight. These are all comedy treasure troves waiting to be mined. Look at meaningful moments from your life and use them for inspiration. Become okay with getting vulnerable. Being vulnerable allows you to be relatable with an audience. The more open you are, the more vulnerable you will be, and the more relatable you become with your audience. Open up about your scars and embarrassing moments. If you need a jumpstart here, it’s only fair that I start with some of my flaws: I’m a momma’s boy, my biggest fear in life is squirrels (I blame America’s Funniest Home Videos ), and the worst thing I ever did in school was to smash my backpack through my principal’s glass coffee table (he may or may not have deserved it). Let’s start with a kernel of truth and carve out the comedy. If we take the last example from above, let’s attempt to morph that into a longer bit: “I was suspended over 30 times in high school. One time, my principal laughed at me for having to miss the school dance because of a suspension. I desperately pleaded to go, and became so mad that tears started to flow down my chubby cheeks. I picked up my backpack and raised it over my head and smashed it through his glass coffee table. Little glass shards went everywhere, and he got scared. He grabbed his walkie-talkie and said, ‘Security, we need an escort.’ And I grabbed the walkie-talkie and said, ‘Security, you can screw yourself.’ And then he muttered, ‘Corey, you’re going to remember this!’ And I muttered, ‘Oh yea? Well, you’re going to remember that!’ And I pointed to my backpack that I left next to his broken coffee table. I flipped off security as they raced in, and escorted myself off school property. I walked the long stretch home... only to get to my door, and realize my house key was inside of my backpack.” The best comedy is honest, vulnerable, and utterly unique to the writer/performer. Your goal in comedy (and in life) should be to become the best version of yourself. Judd Apatow stated that stand-up gets funnier when people get more personal. Meaning, nobody can beat you at being the best YOU. Write what you know, and the funny will follow. You should be comfortable being yourself. The more truthful you are, the better. Audiences know if you are telling the truth and can be on your side for the journey of the joke, or can just as easily tune you out if they get a whiff of a phony. We have an innate sense of who people authentically are, and are more receptive to honest, human behavior. To take it one step further, Tone Bell ( Can’t Cancel This one-hour comedy special on Showtime) always says ‘make it real, make them feel.’ He believes that anyone can make an audience laugh, but hitting an audience with something that makes them think and feel, that’s what it is all about. He wants the audience to be driving home thinking about his jokes, and reconsider their stance on a certain feeling or situation. His art mirrors life, and he uses his craft to affect others. First Impressions: Unless you are already wildly famous, the audience is sizing you up and judging you from all angles from the moment you walk onstage. They are determining if they like you based on your appearance, perceived confidence, stage persona, and how you handled the microphone and mic stand... all before you ever say a word. A comic’s energy and confidence are almost tangible. In theory, you could close your eyes while a comic is introduced and taking the stage. If you kept your eyes closed, you could make a judgment on whether you think they will be funny or not, based solely on their energy. To cut this tension and get the audience on your side from the beginning, try opening with who you are and a quick, self-deprecating joke. Ryan Hamilton has a Netflix special named after this notion: Happy Face (if you haven’t seen it, you need to). Known for his comically big smile, he comes out onstage and immediately opens with, ‘Should we start with my face?’ If you’re struggling to find that perfect opener, an exercise that we utilize at Cool Beans U is having a performer go onstage and stand there. We then ask the other students what their initial observations are. We take those identifiers, try to flip them, and use them to the performer’s advantage. Feel free to make fun of your large nose, your lisp, or delightful Dad-bod. The quicker you can get the audience on your side and let them know a little about you, the better off you are. Your vulnerability will allow the audience to relate to you and set the foundation for the remainder of your set. It delivers a quick, self-deprecating laugh, and opens up the possibility of calling back that opener later on. Current Comedy Climate: More times than not, women control the room. Think about it, and you will come to understand this to be true. If you look around a comedy club or showroom on any given night, you are bound to find a handful of couples out on a date. If you can make the women laugh, the men will feel comfortable to laugh too. The date can continue with their fun evening. Conversely, if the men laugh when the women do not approve, the date could take a turn for the worse. In the current climate of our society, comedy audiences are incredibly sensitive. We are living in a politically correct culture, and that is reflected in art. Some com	127,377
Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy - Revised Edition (Greg Dean) (Z-Library).epub	Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-1 Cover & book design: Kurt Reichenbach ISBN: 978-0-9897351-9-3 © 2010, 2019 Greg Dean Published by Be Funny Inc. Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-2 Dedication For my mother, Dona Dean-Silvers. I can still hear your laughter. Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-3 Table of Contents Dedication Foreword Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Secrets of Joke Structure Chapter 2: Joke Writing Chapter 3: What to Write Jokes About Chapter 4: From Funny to Funnier Chapter 5: Assembling a Routine—Routine Builder Chapter 6: Act Outs—Scene Work Chapter 7: Rehearsing Chapter 8: Greg Dean's Rehearsal Process Chapter 9: Microphone Technique Chapter 10: Peak Performance Chapter 11: Fearless Performing Chapter 12: Getting Experience Chapter 13: Making a Good Show Great Glossary of Stand-Up Comedy Nomenclature About the Author Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-4 Foreword H ow-to books about comedy are a dime a dozen. I’ve written two of them myself. But some are better than others—the present volume, for example, by Greg Dean. A good many of the points on which Dean offers instructions are lessons I had to learn the hard way. I wish books of this sort had been available in those days. Actually, most of us wouldn’t dream of offering professional advice to a TV repairman, a brain surgeon, or a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears, but we apparently see ourselves as fit to offer advice to Eddie Murphy, Jackie Mason, or Dennis Miller. Greg Dean is different. He knows the territory he’s writing about and provides a wealth of nuts-and-bolts advice regarding the kinds of stories that audiences will interpret as funny. Steve Allen Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-5 Acknowledgments I am grateful to so many people for putting up with me and my obsession for modeling joke structure and the fundamentals of stand-up comedy. I know I’ve driven many people crazy by calling them at all hours of the night with questions, ramblings, and incoherent theories. My favorite aspect of uncovering these techniques has been the long walks and talks with my friends. In particular, I wish to deeply thank my dear friend and co-comedy theorist Frank Miles (who is responsible for some of the techniques and some of the rewriting of this book), Gayla Johnson (the love of my life), Andy Davis (who’s been there from the beginning), Bill Fulco (the only one who out-walked me and out-talked me), and the members of the Friday Night Movie Group: Bennett I. Goldberg, Jeff Weakley, and Derek Loughran. I’m grateful for the support of my assistant teacher, Fernando Rivera, also to Jay Douglas, Dan Goldman, Will Patrick, Allan Murray (the love of his life), Ricky Patton, Tyrum Dean, Dona Silvers (Mom), Michael Davis (It Got Done), Frank Olivier, and Mark Whalen. I wish to offer sincere thanks to Judy DeLozier, Phil and Norma Barretta, and Buddha for their inspiration and encouragement. And much thanks to Ingrid Reese and Ashley Strosnider for their proofreading and editing. I also want to thank Victor Raskin, whose Semantic Theory of Humor is the inspirational breakthrough on which much of my comedy model has been based. A special thanks to John Grinder and Richard Bandler for co-founding Neuro-Linguistic Programming NLP. Without an already established mental map o which to base my own, my work would not have been possible. I especially acknowledge the contribution of John Grinder, who gave me personal guidance while I was forming this comedy model and the ensuing exercises. On the business end, this book has been much improved due to the valuable suggestions from my literary agent Scott Edelstein and to my graphic designer Kurt Reichenbach. And lastly, but not least, I want to thank all of my students for allowing me to learn from them while they were paying me. Thank you all! Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-6 Chapter 1 Secrets of Joke Structure W hat is a joke? Funny question, you could say. Most people would define a joke as something one says or does that makes others laugh. That statement, though true, doesn’t really tell us what a joke is. It just describes the desired effect. What about jokes that get a roar of laughter in one situation and a hush of silence in another? If a joke doesn’t get a laugh, does it suddenly stop being a joke? Interestingly, people usually recognize a joke whether it makes them laugh or not. Why? Because there is a consistent, intrinsic structure that everyone identifies in a joke. Until now, no one has presented this structure in an understandable manner. That’s about to change. Explaining joke structure to you is exactly what this chapter is all about. ONE-LINER JOKES Setup and Punch Let’s begin with what most people already know about one-liner jokes. Traditionally, they comprise two parts: 1. Setup 2. Punch Take this old joke for an example: “My wife just ran off with my best friend. I expected more loyalty from my dog.” To help explain joke structure, I’ve designed a visual representation called the Joke Diagram . Let’s depict the above joke with Diagram 1, so you can clearly identify the setup and punch: The setup and punch are usually defined in this way: The Setup is the first part of a joke, which sets up the laugh. The Punch is the second part that makes you laugh. Those statements are great except for one small problem: they don’t really explain anything. Let’s see if we can do better. WHAT JOKES DO Expectation and Surprise The setup and the punch are directly related to expectation and surprise . Let’s continue with the same joke. Notice how the setup causes you to expect something, and then how the punch reveals a surprise on Diagram 2: In order to work, a joke has to surprise you. The trick is that you cannot be surprised unless you’re first expecting something else. That’s what a joke does. It causes you to expect something, and then it reveals a surprise. So, here’s our new definition: The Setup creates an expectation . The Punch reveals a surprise . It isn’t enough to know what a joke does. You need to know how a joke does what it does. And I’m going to explain that right now, just because I like you. HOW JOKES WORK 1 st Story and 2 nd Story You now know that the setup and punch create expectation and surprise, but how do they do that? The answer came to me when I read a magazine article titled “Jokes” (Psychology Today, October 1985). In it, Victor Raskin offered a “script-based semantic theory of humor” which proposes that a sentence joke has two scripts. However, because it is a semantic theory—dealing only with words and their implications—its application to physical and nonverbal comedy was limited. So I altered Raskin’s term from script to story , which made it possible for me to apply the concept to all forms of humor, not just language-based jokes. Through Raskin’s insight I found the first piece of joke structure. The evolution of my Joke Mechanisms began with this discovery. SECRET 1 A joke requires two stories. The setup to a joke creates a 1st story in our minds that leads us to expect something, and then the punch surprises us with a 2nd story that’s compatible with, yet is somehow different from, what we’re expecting. The setup creates a 1st story: A man is unhappy because he misses his wife. We expect the story to continue along that theme, so we’re surprised when the punch reveals a 2nd story: A man is unhappy because he misses his dog. Depicting this joke with Diagram 3 will give you a visual representation of the setup and punch creating and revealing these two stories. If a joke doesn’t have two stories, it’s not a joke . So, if the punch doesn’t have a 2 nd story, what you’ve got is a sort of single story, but it’s not a joke. For instance, this version: “My wife just ran off with my best friend. I expected more loyalty from my wife.” Not exactly a knee-slapper… It starts off as a story about a man missing his wife, and it ends up the same way. There’s no 2 nd story, so there’s no surprise, and since there’s no surprise, there’s no joke. Setup and 1st Story I’m often asked, “What’s the difference between the 1 st story and the setup?” The answer? These two elements fulfill very different functions within joke structure. As the first part of the joke, the setup only comprises the words and/or actions used to get the audience to expect something . Whereas, based upon the setup, the 1 st story is the detailed story imagined by the audience to be true. Let me illustrate this with another joke, this one by my student Anthony Jeselnik: “Yesterday I accidentally hit a little kid with my car. It wasn’t serious—nobody saw me.” When Anthony says, “Yesterday I accidentally hit a little kid with my car. It wasn’t serious—” that, and only that, is the setup. From hearing this setup, the audience imagines a much more elaborate 1 st story. Since it’s created in the minds of the audience, I can’t say exactly what the 1 st story would be for any individual, but here’s my conception, in Diagram 4. That’s more or less the 1st story people would conceive. As you can see, the 1st story bears considerably more detail than the setup. So where does all that detail come from? The larger story has been built by the audience’s assumptions about the information in the setup. Making assumptions allows us to make sense of things when we have limited information. Based on our own life experiences, we constantly make these kinds of speculative leaps. So naturally, the 1st story contains much more information than the setup. Punch and 2nd Story The relationship between the punch and the 2nd story parallels that of the setup and the 1st story. As the second part of the joke, the punch is the set of words and/or actions used to surprise the audience . Then, based on the punch, the audience uses assumptions to imagine a detailed 2nd story which is compatible with the setup, yet unexpected. Still using Jeselnik’s punch— “nobody saw me”— here’s my version of the 2nd story in Diagram 5: Again, the 2nd story is a much more detailed scenario than the punch, and it’s mentally constructed from assumptions. You may have imagined a slightly different scenario, yet the general gist about the story will remain fairly consistent from person to person. What I want to emphasize is how much of the information that resides within a joke is not stated in the setup and the punch— information we add by making assumptions. What exactly are Assumptions? I’m sorry, I assumed you knew. Assumptions could be any thought based upon taking something for granted, presupposing, conjecturing, presuming, forecasting, projecting onto, theorizing about, speculating upon, or accepting that something is as it’s always been. If that doesn’t help, try this definition: SECRET 2 Everything you imagine exists but cannot directly perceive is an assumption. That’s deep. But it’s true. Anything you currently cannot see, hear, feel, taste, or smell exists only as an assumption. The chances are that it does exist, but since you have no direct evidence that it does, you’re making an assumption. Take this book for an example. You know that it’s a book because of your past experience with other books. Now, since your perspective or point of view limits the information your senses can experience directly while you’re reading one page, you can’t see the other pages. This is a fancy way of saying that it’s impossible to experience everything all at the same time. But, because you have a mental model of what this and other books are like, you assume that it doesn’t end at the bottom of this page. You assume that the writing will be in English. You assume you’ll continue to read from left to right. You assume everything about the book that you don’t directly perceive right now. We do this because sane human beings, as a rule, have a profound need for things to make sense. If something doesn’t make sense, we’ll fill in the information so it will make sense…and we do that by making assumptions based on our past experiences. Doing this is not bad. In fact, it’s absolutely necessary. Imagine a world without assumptions. You’d have to carefully test each step you took to make sure the floor would hold your weight. You’d have to peek behind everything to find out whether the backs were actually there. You’d have to look in a mirror to make sure you’re still human. You’d have to call the IRS every year to determine if they still wanted your money. Get the idea? It’s a fact that our perspective limits the information we can experience directly, and that we fill in that remaining void with assumptions that allow us to be surprised by anything other than what we assumed. It is this mental phenomenon that makes jokes possible. The setup and the 1 st story and the punch and the 2 nd story are very different but necessary elements of joke structure. All of these show how a joke works. So, now you know how to write a joke? Bump. To write a joke, you’ll need to understand the three mechanisms for constructing and connecting the 1 st story and the 2 nd story. THREE MECHANISMS OF JOKE STRUCTURE Before I explain what the mechanisms of a joke are, let me take a moment to explain why we’re bothering with all this eye-glazing intellectual analysis. When we examine how a joke works, we’re looking for the exact mechanisms it uses to achieve its effect. Not a particularly amusing process, I admit, but it is the only way that I know to showcase a deeper understanding of what goes on inside a joke. This understanding will soon lead you to being able to use my step-by-step joke-writing system —The Joke Prospector . So far, you’ve learned that the setup creates a 1 st story, which leads to certain expectations, and then the punch reveals an unexpected 2 nd story that creates a surprise. But how is this accomplished? TARGET ASSUMPTION AND REINTERPRETATION Two Interpretations of One Thing The first two mechanisms of joke structure are what I call the target assumption and the reinterpretation . These are related mechanisms, with the target assumption being the key ingredient of the 1 st story and the reinterpretation being the pivotal component of the 2 nd story. I say “related mechanisms” because each represents a different interpretation of the same thing . The target assumption presents an expected interpretation of that thing and the reinterpretation reveals an unexpected interpretation of that same thing . We’ll tackle these terms one at a time. TARGET ASSUMPTION Jokes With Performed Setups Jokes with performed setups are the traditional one-liners. As we discussed earlier,when we see or hear a setup, we build a 1 st story by making a great deal of assumptions. One of these assumptions will be the target assumption . What sets the target assumption apart from the other assumptions is that it fulfills two criteria. 1. The target assumption is the key assumption on which the 1 st story is built. Of all the assumptions you must make to imagine a story, one key assumption gives the 1 st story its specific meaning. That is to say, if you don’t make that key or target assumption, you’ll imagine a very different story than the one required to make the joke work. 2. The target assumption is the assumption directly shattered by the punch. Every joke with a performed setup is designed to manipulate an audience into imagining a 1 st story by making assumptions. The punch then reveals an unexpected 2 nd story that surprises the audience by targeting one key assumption and making it wrong ...that’s the target assumption. For instance, of all the assumptions you made about the setup of the example joke, only the target assumption— the best friend is a male human —was directly shattered by the punch— “I expected more loyalty from my dog.” Check it out on Diagram 6: REINTERPRETATION Jokes With Performed Punches We know that the setup creates an expectation when the audience builds a 1 st story by making assumptions; the punch then shatters a key assumption (the target assumption) and reveals a 2 nd story. The punch does this by presenting an unexpected interpretation of something in the setup. This unexpected interpretation is called a reinterpretation . The reinterpretation must adhere to two rules described below: 1. The reinterpretation is the idea upon which the punch and 2 nd story are based. The setup and target assumption create the bogus 1 st story. The reinterpretation is the idea for the punch and the 2 nd story. “My grandfather died peacefully in his sleep. But the kids on his bus were screaming.” The reinterpretation is that he was sleeping at the wheel of a bus which is the basis for the 2 nd story— that the grandfather died in a bus wreck after falling asleep at the wheel, which caused the kids to scream . This following story is communicated as the punch, “But the kids on his bus were screaming.” 2. The reinterpretation is an unexpected interpretation of the thing in the setup or in the shared knowledge that caused the audience to make the target assumption. Within the setup or shared knowledge, there’s somet hing about which the audience makes the target assumption. If you investigate Diagram 8, you’ll discover that in the setup, the term “best friend” caused the audience to make the target assumption— the best friend is a male human . “Best friend” is the same element in the setup that became the reinterpretation— the best friend is a dog . Diagram 7 shows where the reinterpretation fits. These two interpretations of one thing are required to make a joke work. When a punch presents a reinterpretation, the audience is confronted with an unexpected yet compatible interpretation of the thing within the setup or shared knowledge. This makes them review their assumptions until they identify which of the interpretations is wrong, thus shattering the target assumption. SECRET 3 The aim of the reinterpretation and punch is to shatter the target assumption. Shattering the target assumption with an unexpected reinterpretation is what creates surprise. When your joke shatters people’s assumptions, they laugh. Now we’re back where we began: expectation and surprise. Only now, you understand how the mechanisms of target assumption and reinterpretation cause them to occur. Where Do Reinterpretations Come From? First, you must understand that everything has many possible interpretations. Any interpretation other than the assumed one is a possible reinterpretation. To create a reinterpretation, funny people use a twist, satire, the derailing of a train of thought, a quip, a wisecrack, a bend but not a break, mockery, a hoodwink, a lampoon, a pun, jesting, making fun of, prank, sending up, kidding, parodying, teasing, spoofing, jibing, and taking off to find a payoff for a joke. Reinterpretations come from the kind of mind that notices what others assume, then uncovers or invents alternative interpretations. To do this, comedians must be able to interpret one thing in at least two ways. CONNECTOR One Thing Interpreted in at Least Two Ways At the center of joke structure is a third mechanism, which I call the connector , defined as one thing interpreted in at least two ways . Interpreting the connector in one way provides the target assumption, and interpreting it in another supplies the reinterpretation. Notice that the definition of the connector includes “in at least two ways.” Connectors can have many possible interpretations; two is simply the minimum required to construct a joke. When a connector can be interpreted in several ways, it can result in a joke with multiple punches. Remember, the connector is always in the setup or in shared knowledge. This is very important if you wish to understand one-liner jokes and jokes without performed setups. All jokes require a connector. This brings us to the connectors’ requirement: 1. The connector must be only one thing . Let’s put the connector on Diagram 8: As you can see from the diagram, the connector—which is “ best friend”— has two interpretations. One is the expected interpretation—that is, the target assumption which is male human . Two is the unexpected interpretation, the reinterpretation dog . At the center of all comedy, humor, and jokes is the fundamental of two interpretations of one thing. Can Jokes Have More Than One Connector? Yes. I call these compound jokes . Compound jokes have enough information or ambiguity in the setup to support two or sometimes even three connects in one joke. It takes a rather sophisticated punch to include multiple reinterpretations. More often than not, compound jokes are much funnier than single-connector jokes. The mind is doubly misdirected with the setup and then doubly surprised by the punch. Compound jokes have more power to the punch. Take this joke for instance: “For Father’s Day I took my father out. I shot my priest.” In Diagram 9, I’ll only focus on the target assumption, connector, and reinterpretation to keep my point clear. Knowing this joke model helps you understand joke variations like compound jokes. SHARED KNOWLEDGE JOKES In this section I’ll explain non-one-liner jokes. For clarity I chose to teach the mechanisms using one-liner jokes because they’re easier to explain. What about all the other jokes that aren’t one-liners? I call these shared knowledge jokes because they’re based on existing information that certain groups have in common. Here are the two categories: Jokes Without Performed Setups There’s a whole class of jokes that seem to have no setup whatsoever. These jokes have setups, but they are not part of the performance. The setups for this style of jokes are built from existing information in the form of shared knowledge. This means that the majority of the joke, which includes the setup, target assumption, and connector are things we already know about. Some of the shared knowledge styles of comedy are satire, parody, topical monologues, information in the immediate environment, comments on current statements, and more. All of these styles rely upon people knowing the idea being made fun of. You must have something to satirize to do satire. Hence, there is no need for a performed setup because the target assumption and connector already reside in the minds of the audience . As a comedian or comedy writer, the distinction between a one-liner joke which has a setup and jokes without performed setups is essential. This allows you to identify the mechanisms even when the majority of the joke structure exists as shared knowledge. If you’re not aware of this, then they are invisible. Let me illustrate this with something that actually happened to me. I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant in China Town. It was a very authentic establishment, and some of the other patrons were Asian immigrants. Some spoke little or no English. They had a TV up in the corner of the room showing a Gallagher concert. Gallagher made his entrance riding a bicycle with a square back wheel, and everybody watching cracked up laughing because regardless of language or cultural differences, everyone knows the basic form of a bicycle. This joke has no performed setup because everyone already knows how bicycles work, which includes the target assumption that a bicycle’s wheels are round . To make a joke, all he had to do was think up a reinterpretation of using a square wheel , and then present it as the punch, (Gallagher rides a bicycle with a square back wheel) to get the laugh. Seeing the bicycle with a square wheel caused the audience to reevaluate the target assumption that a bicycle’s wheels are round , and it shattered that assumption. No matter how silly, a bicycle cannot have a square wheel . When you shatter an audience’s assumption, they laugh. Check out this joke on Diagram 10: Many jokes have target assumptions that everyone already accepts based on physical laws, societal biases, cultural and national presuppositions, accepted definitions, stereotypes and familiar environments, just to name a few. On a daily basis, every one of us makes tens of thousands of assumptions without realizing it. It’s these unconscious assumptions that are the basis for jokes without performed setups. Whenever anyone assumes anything, you have an opportunity to make a joke. To write a joke without a performed setup, you must learn to recognize already accepted assumptions and then identify or invent a reinterpretation. Jokes Without Performed Punches It may seem odd, but there are many jokes that don’t require an expressed punch. An example of such is the following joke where the setup leads to an obvious punch: “I went to this expensive restaurant that had a waiter for everything. The water waiter gave me water. The food waiter gave me food. The head waiter…” How did you complete the punch? Me too. Let’s look at this joke on Diagram 11: This type of joke requires a specialized setup that manipulates the audience to a specific and singular reinterpretation and punch. In this case, the rhythm of three consistent “gave me” phrases set the audience up to continue with that pattern. So based on the connector head, the audience was lead to the inevitable reinterpretation oral sex , and laugh at the not-performed punch “gave me head,” which shattered the target assumption boss . Notice that even though this joke allows the audience to supply their own punch, the mechanisms of target assumption, connector, and reinterpretation are still present in the structuring of this joke. The most common misunderstanding of the connector is that it must be only words . Some students even misremember the definition of the connector as, “one word with two interpretations.” I use mostly word connectors in this book because they’re clear examples. Other types of connectors usually require lengthy explanations. Yes, words are often used as connectors in one-liners where the setup creates misdirection with an ambiguous word or phrase. But the reason I defined the connector as “one thing with at least two interpretations” is that it can be any thing in the universe. Open your mind and expand your comedy. Since anyt hing can be a connector, the challenge is in recognizing it. As we discussed in the previous section on reinterpretation, words and objects lend themselves to multiple interpretations, so they make excellent connectors. In order that you don’t think that all jokes are constructed with only words or phrases, here are several examples of jokes with nonverbal connectors. Let’s begin with one from a silent movie comedy using only body language as a connector. Picture this scene: A wealthy drunkard in his parlor finds a note from his wife saying that she’s left him and won’t return until he stops drinking. He turns away from the camera and walks to a counter. He hangs his head, and his shoulders begin to shake up and down. He’s sobbing, right? Crying his eyes out over losing her? Nope. He turns around, and he’s shaking a drink in a martini mixer. Let’s look at this on Diagram 12. This is a perfect joke structure using the connector of body language (of the shaking of his shoulders) . That motion is the thing that causes you to make the target assumption that he’s crying . Then the shaking of his shoulders is reinterpreted to reveal that actually, he’s mixing a drink . By the way, that scene is right out of a Charlie Chaplin film called The Idle Class . Here’s another example of an unusual use of a connector in the acted-out scene by Eddie Izzard, in his concert Dressed to Kill : Eddie: “His name changed from Jerry Dorsey to Engelbert Humperdinck! I mean, I’d just like to be in the room when they were working that one through.” Agent: “Zinglebert Bambledack! Yingeebert Dangleban! Zanglebert Dingleback! Winglebert Humptiback! Fuck Bunwallah!” Jerry: “What?” Agent: “All right, Kringlebert Fishtibuns! Steveibuns Buttrentrunden…” Jerry: “No, Jerry Dorsey! I like—” Agent: “No, we can’t… let’s see, we have Zinglebert Bambledack, Dinglebert Wangledack, Fuck Bunwallah, Klingibum Fistlbars, Dinglebert Zambeldack, uh … Jerry Dorsey, Englerbert Humptiback, Zinglebert Bambledack, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dinglebert Wingledank …” Jerry: “No, no, go back one!” To me this is an extraordinarily original routine. Most of the humor is constructed using the connector of the cadence in the name Englbert Humperdinck. This connector between each of those terrible names is what makes them jokes. Izzard just repeated the same structure over and over with different examples of unacceptable names. Without understanding the three mechanisms, especially the connector, the joke structure would be invisible. Here’s this bit on Diagram 13: If all he did was make up randomly stupid names without this cadence connection, they would not be good jokes or jokes at all. Maybe he’d get some laughs because the names would be odd or unexpected. But to really make each of these names a joke, they must have the connector as cadence of the name Engelbert Humperdinck. The exceptions are the names, “Fuck Bunwallah” and “Jerry Dorsey.” Yet they also have perfect joke structure, but not the connector, which is the names’ cadence. The punches were the two names that broke that pattern. Let’s examine this variation in Diagram 14: Now I know that you may be saying to yourself, “That’s great, but these three mechanisms can’t be applied to all forms of comedy, humor, and jokes.” I disagree. These mechanisms are required for all comedy, humor, and jokes on the planet. It is how the human mind processes and comprehends what’s funny. SECRET 4 At the center of all comedy, humor, and jokes there’s one thing with at least two interpretations. It doesn’t matter whether the laugh emanates from a witty literary story, a clown’s pratfall, a remark in a situation comedy, a dirty joke, an accidental humorous irony, an off-handed comment at a party, a funny riddle, a comedy scene in a movie, or a gag without a performed setup or punch. The underlying structure of “one thing with two interpretations” is always present. The challenge is recognizing these mechanisms, because there are so many variations to comedy, humor, and jokes. This structure is often masked by the nature of the comic character, hidden deep within cultural or national presuppositions, obscured by layers of implication, hidden in shared knowledge, based upon the story being told, within information in the immediate environment, and disguised by individual styles of expression. Yet, no matter the variation, the 1 st story and target assumption, connector, 2 nd story and reinterpretation are required to construct all comedy, humor, and jokes on the planet. In time, you’ll become more proficient at identifying them, and a whole new understanding of joke variations and possibilities will open up to you. In this chapter, we’ve discussed the many elements of a joke—beginning with the setup and the punch and how they relate to the 1st story and the 2nd story. Then we went into the three mechanisms of joke structure, and how at the center of it all is the connector with the target assumption being an expected interpretation and the reinterpretation being an unexpected interpretation, which shatters the target assumption. When you shatter people’s assumptions, they laugh. It’s imperative that you thoroughly comprehend these mechanisms of joke structure before moving on. If you don’t understand them, reread this chapter until you do, because these are the tools needed to dig into my joke writing system— The Joke Prospector. Step_by_Step_for_ebook_FINAL_no_cover-7 Chapter 2 Joke Writing B efore we get into this chapter, I have to answer one question that I’m asked regularly: “Can anyone learn to write jokes?” Yes! For some reason, there seems to be a forbidding aura around joke writing, as if it’s some mystical art that only those blessed by Thelia, the Muse of Comedy, can accomplish. Everyone is funny sometimes, even if only by accident. Just because you don’t know how you’re creating a joke doesn’t mean you’re not creating one. So, I’m going to show you how to make those wonderful accidents happen whenever you want. Still have doubts? Fine. (If you don’t have any doubts, you’re probably a little too trusting. Stay away from those late-night infomercials). Consider this: In the previous chapter, you learned that all jokes have a knowable structure. If joke structure is knowable, it stands to reason that joke writing is doable. One final note: Every joke-writing system lends itself to writing one-liners. (Why they’re called one-liners when they actually have two lines, I’ll never understand.) Interestingly though, the vast majority of jokes in the world are based on shared knowledge in the form of jokes without performed setups. But jokes without performed setups are nearly impossible to teach without first understanding the makeup and composition of jokes with performed setups. Therefore, the Joke Prospector writing system deals exclusively with jokes with performed setups. Once you comprehend the complex nature of jokes with performed setups, it’ll be much easier for you to write jokes without performed setups, which will eventually evolve into comedic storytelling. But for now, I’d like to introduce you to— THE JOKE PROSPECTOR Joke Map and Joke Mine The Joke Prospector is an original joke-writing system that takes you step by step from a joke topic to a completed joke. I named it the Joke Prospector because it consists of two distinct phases, the Joke Map and the Joke Mine. The Joke Map is designed to help you decide on a topic, define a punch-premise, and form a setup-premise, then from that idea write a series of setups. The Joke Mine digs into each setup by using the target assumption, connector, and reinterpretation to create a punch. Because this is a step-by-step system that models how jokes are formed in the mind, it requires a bit of explanation. Be rest assured, however, that once you get the basic gist of how the Joke Prospector works, the jokes will flow. You’ll be working with the two parts of the Joke Prospector in reverse order. From teaching the system, I’ve found that the process of joke construction is much clearer when you begin by writing punches for setups, so we’ll start in this chapter with the Joke Mine. Once you learn how the Joke Mine works, you can practice writing some punches for the setups I’ve provided on the exercise sheets. When you’ve gained some competence in doing that, it will be much easier to learn how to use the Joke Map to help in choosing a subject for your material and writing some setups. This, in turn, will lead you right back to the Joke Mine to write punches for those setups. Now let’s enter the Joke Mine. THE JOKE MINE Exploring the Secret Passageway Digging into the Joke Mine, you’ll learn to write jokes by going through a secret passageway that leads from setup to punch. Most people don’t know about this passageway, and even when they do get to know about it, its many twists and turns will still take them to the most unexpected places. That’s the fun of a journey through the Joke Mine. Like Alice in Wonderland; when she went down the rabbit hole, you’ll find a world that gets “curiouser and curiouser.” How do you explore this secret passageway? SECRET 5 Explore joke passageways by asking questions. Asking questions is the best way to stay focused on your search for a good tunnel. Beginner joke writers often get stuck saying the same things in their heads over and over again, such as; “What’s funny about this? What’s funny about this?” or “Where’s the joke? Where’s the joke?” That gets you nowhere. If you’re ever going to find a tunnel that leads to pay dirt, you have to hunt around the mine a little, not just stand in one place scratching your nuggets. Your mind needs a constant supply of new information to sift through in search of humor. This flow of information stops when you’re stuck in a self-talk loop. But asking questions forces you to come up with answers, and each answer will take you farther along your way or even lead to a completely different tunnel. You can’t know ahead of time which tunnel will lead to a punch you’ll like, so the trick is to ask lots of questions. If a particular answer doesn’t lead to a joke, at least you’ll know that you examined that tunnel and decided not to go in that direction. Any exploration is better than being stuck saying the same thing over and over again. Any exploration is better than being stuck. . .you get the point. I’m bringing this up because in order to get the raw material you need to complete the steps in the following chapters, you have to ask questions. One or more questions accompany each step. Others you’ll have to make up for yourself. Most comedians are not even aware that they’re asking themselves questions. But on some level, consciously or unconsciously, they are. How else could they continually come up with new information and ideas from which to develop jokes? So I want you to begin asking questions consciously. When you learn to do that, you may excavate some deeply buried riches that will surprise you as well as your audience. THE JOKE MINE The Joke Mine, the second part of the Joke Prospector, is a five-step joke writing method that lets you dig down from any setup through the comic passageway to a punch. Each step requires you to answer an accompanying question (you can make up some of your own as well). Each answer will take you further down the passageway until you finally emerge with a joke. We’ll go over these steps one by one, learning how and why they work and creating some original jokes along the way. Next are the steps in the Joke Mine. THE JOKE MINE 1. SELECT A SETUP, THEN LIST THE ASSUMPTIONS. “What am I assuming about this statement?” 2. PICK A TARGET ASSUMPTION, AND IDENTIFY THE CONNECTOR. “What is the thing that caused me to make this target assumption?” 3. LIST SOME REINTERPRETATIONS FOR THE CONNECTOR. “Other than the target, what other interpretations are there for my connector?” 4. CHOOSE A REINTERPRETATION, AND COMPOSE A 2ND STORY. “Relative to the setup, what specific situation could explain my reinterpretation?” 5. WRITE A PUNCH THAT EXPRESSES THE 2ND STORY. “In addition to the setup, what information is needed to communicate my 2nd story?” From Setup to Punch Before we enter the Joke Mine, I’d like to state one thing loud and clear. If at any time in this process you think of a joke, write it down. The purpose of this system is to help you generate material. A good joke is a good joke, no matter how or when you compose it. It doesn’t matter if it’s the result of going through all the steps of the Joke Mine, or just doing one step, or even having a random thought. If you think it’s a good idea or joke, write it down. Let’s enter the Joke Mine: 1. SELECT A SETUP, THEN LIST THE ASSUMPTIONS. “What am I assuming about this statement?” “This morning I got up and ran five miles.” Though you may not be aware of it, you’ve already made assumptions about this setup. To find out what they are, examine the details of the 1st story that you imagined. Any difference between what the setup actually says and that 1st story are assumptions. Now ask this step’s question: Q: What am I assuming about this statement? A: I’m assuming. Assumptions: a. He ran to get exercise. b. He’s not exaggerating the distance. c. He’s running outside. d. “I ran” means jogged on my own feet. These assumptions aren’t the only ones that could be made, and they’re not the “right ones.” They’re just the ones that were most obvious to me. Whenever you work with any of the step’s questions, be sure to write your answers down. Don’t try to keep them all in your head. Many people automatically come up with jokes by just gleaning assumptions. If you do, write them down, too. 2. PICK A TARGET ASSUMPTION, AND IDENTIFY THE CONNECTOR. “What is the thing that caused me to make this target assumption?” My impulse is to go with (a) He ran to get exercise because it’s the most obvious. If it’s an obscure assumption that not all people would instantly make, then it’s possible that those same people won’t get your joke. Target assumption: (a) He ran to get exercise When pondering which assumption to pick as your target assumption, take into consideration the one that might lend itself to the most humor. If you find yourself instinctively drawn to a particular target, trust your intuition, or if you notice a target that indicates a reinterpretation with comical possibilities, go for it. Often, the most obvious assumption is usually the best choice for the target assumption because it’s the one everybody will make when you deliver the setup. Remember, you want to eventually shatter an assumption held by your audience. That won’t be possible if you choose an obscure assumption that most of the audience members won’t make. Once you’ve picked your target assumption, you need to identify the thing that you made the assumption about—the connector. This is the most important and difficult step in this system. After you’ve identified your connector, all of the following steps are an extension of that choice. Take the time to evaluate your mental process up to this point. Some essential ingredient in the setup caused you to make your target assumption—what was it? The best tool you have for identifying it is the question for this step: Q: What is the thing that caused me to make this target assumption? A: If my target assumption is “ he ran to get exercise, ” then I made this assumption about the reason he ran. Connector: the reason he “ ran ” In the next step, we’ll think of some alternative reinterpretations for the connector, the reason he “ran,” which will illustrate just how a connector can be interpreted in at least two different ways. As we go along, I’ll continue putting our information on the Joke Diagram. It will help you see how doing each step opens a tunnel in the joke’s passageway. Diagram 15 shows you what we have so far: 3. LIST SOME REINTERPRETATIONS FOR THE CONNECTOR. “Other than the target, what other interpretations are there for my connector?” What we’re looking for are alternative interpretations for the connector, the reason he “ran.” The more contrasting the reinterpretations are from the target assumption, the better. Try imagining different scenes. Start by asking the step’s question. Q: Other than the target, what other interpretations are there for my connector ( the reason he ran )? A: Other possible reasons for his running five miles could be: Reinterpretations: a. Dropped out of a longer race. b. He was being pulled against his will. c. His car was rolling away. d. His dog was pulling him. Keep in mind that these are neither the only reinterpretations nor the “right ones.” We could have made a longer list I’m sure, and no doubt you could come up with plenty I didn’t think of. Also, if some of these sound goofy, bizarre, or implausible relative to the setup, it’s all right. When you’re prospecting, not everything will yield ore. 4. CHOOSE A REINTERPRETATION, AND COMPOSE A 2ND STORY “Relative to the setup, what specific situation could explain my reinterpretation?” In this step you select one of the reinterpretations from the list, and it becomes your joke’s reinterpretation. Ask the step’s question. I’m choosing: Reinterpretations: a. Dropped out of a longer race. This reinterpretation by itself isn’t usually a punch, but it is the central concept for the 2nd story. Note that the reinterpretation derives its meaning and humor relative to the setup. “This morning I got up and ran five miles.” Dropped out of a longer race. It is important to check the reinterpretation because not all reinterpretations are plausible ideas for a punch. To devise a 2nd story, you’ll need to search through various situations that will help explain or justify the reinterpretation. The question from this step may be sufficient to enable you to do this, or you might have to ask a bunch of questions, or the idea might come without your asking any questions at all. If suddenly you think of a punch that works, write it down. However, it’s best to be prepared to keep digging with questions until you find the situation and scene you need. Let’s start with the step’s question: Q: Relative to the setup, what specific situation could explain my reinterpretation? 2 nd story: He’d been working out for months to run a marathon, but he wasn’t in a good enough shape to finish it, so he dropped out after only five miles. If you come up with a different scene, that’s fine as long as it believably explains why he dropped out of a race that was longer than five miles. In joke structure, the audience hears the punch, and then imagines a 2nd story. But in joke writing, the 2nd story happens in the writer’s mind and then must be distilled into a punch. Diagram 16 shows all the information we have up to this point. Now we’re ready to excavate a punch. 5. WRITE A PUNCH THAT EXPRESSES THE 2ND STORY. “In addition to the setup, what information is needed to communicate my 2nd story?” There are many ways to communicate the 2 nd story as a punch. In addition to deciding what the punch should say, you’ll need to experiment with how it should be phrased or acted out. Asking questions is the best way to come up with ideas, so begin with the step’s question, and then keep digging with more questions until you unearth a gem. Q: In addition to the setup, what information is needed to communicate my 2 nd story clearly? A: At five miles is when he decided to drop out of a marathon. This is the information that the punch has to get across. It must do so effectively but at the same time concisely. That’s why writing a good punch is sort of like solving a puzzle. The solution is to say only what’s needed to communicate the 2 nd story clearly. “This morning I got up and ran five miles. And that’s when I decided to drop out of the marathon.” Extra Credit: This punch has a few too many words in it. Figure out which word I’ll take out before looking at the example. “This morning I got up and ran five miles. That’s when I dropped out of the marathon.” So how do you decide on the exact wording for a punch? Let your sense of humor be your guide. Try many different versions, and then go with the phrasing that sounds funniest to you. Diagram 17 shows the final version of our joke. Look through all of the steps and observe the comic logic that takes us through the passageway from setup to punch. If you have the acting skills to make the audience envision the scene from your physical enactment alone, that’s all they’ll need to put the 2nd story together. That’s what I mean by there being no single “right way” to write a punch. I can tell you quite honestly that when I started writing this joke, I had absolutely no idea where it would end up, but the punch isn’t bad at all. That’s the rabbit hole for you, and speaking of rabbit holes, I want to show you how you can come up with different punches by exploring different tunnels. JOKE MINE OPTIONS Exploring Other Tunnels What happens when, no matter how you try to phrase it or act it out, you don’t like the joke you come out of the passage with? Or what if you get stuck in a tunnel and can’t find a way out, no matter how hard you try? What do you do? Well, there are always jobs available in the food service industry, and you have a few other options as well. When you get stuck or come up with a joke you don’t much care for, don’t panic. Just return to Step 4 and choose another reinterpretation until you find one that makes you laugh. If you’re still not happy, go all the way back to Step 2 and pick another target assumption. Each alternative represents another tunnel that could lead to a joke you like. GO BACK TO STEP 4 Choose a Different Reinterpretation For this variation, I’m going to streamline my explanation. This method can provide plenty of unexplored tunnels to search whenever you feel the need for change of direction. This is the setup sentence: “This morning I got up and ran five miles.” And here’s the information from the first three steps: Target assumption: He ran to get exercise. Connector: The reason he “ ran ” Reinterpretations: a. Dropped out of a longer race. b. He was being pulled against his will. c. His car was rolling away. d. His dog was pulling him. 4. CHOOSE A REINTERPRETATION, AND COMPOSE A 2ND STORY. “Relative to the setup, what specific situation could explain my reinterpretation?” This time, let’s choose (b) from the list of possibilities. Reinterpretation: He was being pulled against his will. Now we’ll ask the step’s question: Q: Relative to the setup, what specific situation could explain my reinterpretation? A: He could have been pulled along by a train. After asking a number of questions in an attempt to build a story that would make sense of this reinterpretation, I came up with this: 2 nd story: While riding on a train, he fell out of the sleeper car, got hooked to the door, and had to run alongside the train. 5. WRITE A PUNCH THAT EXPRESSES THE 2ND STORY. “In addition to the setup, what information is needed to communicate my 2nd story?” In answer to this step’s question, I wrote this punch: “This morning I got up and ran five miles. While riding on a train I rolled over in my berth and fell out of the sleeper car, and my pajama top caught on the door.” In my professional opinion, that sucks. It’s not believable, and I wouldn’t perform it or even admit to anyone that I wrote it—except to you, of course. But it does serve to demonstrat	377,117
The Eight Characters of Comedy A Guide to Sitcom Acting and Writing (Scott Sedita) (Z-Library).epub	ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank fellow sitcom aficionado Jim Martyka for his dedication to helping me research, edit and self-publish this book. Special thanks to all the teachers at Scott Sedita Acting Studios for helping to make the studio the success that it is, especially my funny wingman and sitcom teacher extraordinaire Tony Rago. I also would like to thank Frank Salamone, Rob Locke, Manny Basanese and Kathryn Schorr for their great book notes. I would like to thank my “Immediate Family” for being a real-life sitcom, and my “Family of Friends” for all their love, support and humor. Finally, my sincere gratitude goes to all of my students who inspire and challenge me, day in and day out, to become a better teacher, a funnier person and a more creative human being. You all make me proud, make me laugh and make me remember why I’m doing this in the first place. One last heartfelt thanks needs to go out to all those wonderfully talented actors and writers who have made generations laugh in the beautiful medium of situation comedy. APPENDIX 1 SITCOM AUDITIONING TIPS HERE ARE A FEW HELPFUL HINTS FOR AUDITIONING: Download your sides; read the breakdown and the full script if available. Do all of your homework. Read the script three times, WOFRAIM it, follow the words and punctuation as written, and identify all the jokes first (The Turnarounds, the Triplets) and the funny words (i.e. Operative Words, Key Words, etc.). Decide which of The Eight Characters of Comedy best suits the role and which traits from the Characteristics List would be best to play. Memorize your sides as best you can. If you’ve worked on your sides long enough, you’ll naturally memorize it. Leave your homework at home. Dress like the character would dress, but don’t ever wear a costume. Give an “essence” of how the character would dress. Imagine you’ve already booked the job and you’re now playing this character. BE ON TIME! You don’t need the added stress of running late to an audition. Remember, “Early is on time. On time is late. Late is unacceptable.” Don’t “chat up the waiting room.” Use this time to prepare mentally, emotionally and physically for your audition, rather than chatting with the other actors. Don’t psyche yourself out, and don’t let others psyche you out either. Stay focused. Walk into the casting room with a good attitude; not desperate to get the job. Be friendly and charming with the people in the room, but don’t talk too much. A nervous actor will ramble on and end up with his foot in his mouth. Your script is your best friend. Be off book, but hold it in your hand. Don’t rumple it, roll it up, or shove it in your back pocket. Make eye contact with your reader, but don’t stare him or her down. Be confident. Know that this is your time—you were asked to audition and you’ve earned the right to be there. So enjoy it, because if you’re having fun, the casting director will have fun. Remember to stay in the moment, listen and be confident in your silence. Sometimes your silent, inner thoughts speak volumes. And sometimes they’re the funniest part of your auditioning (remember The Patient Stare). If you feel like you’re off to a bad start, politely ask the casting director if you can start again. But if you’re midway through, refocus and finish the audition. After your audition, you can sometimes ask (if it feels right), “Is there anything else you’d like to see?” If the answer is “No,” you say “Thank you” and leave with a smile. Even if you think it didn’t go well, don’t leave the audition looking defeated. It will only leave a negative impression with the casting director. Whether your audition was good or bad, the only question to ask yourself is “Did I do my best?” Then, forget about it. Learn from your experience, pat yourself on the back and get ready for the next one. Auditioning is like “surfing.” If you miss this wave, there’s always the next one. Whether or not you get the role (for whatever reason), treat each audition as a learning experience. Think of each audition as a small victory, a step closer to booking the job. Stay positive. Have fun. EXTRA TIP! Don’t get discouraged if a person auditioning before you is in the casting room a while. The length of time an actor occupies a casting room has no bearing on whether or not they get the part. For all you know, they could be talking about a sports score, where they got their shoes, or the fact they both come from the same home town or college. Also, sometimes, the walls at casting offices are so thin you can hear the actor before you auditioning. Don’t listen! Focus on your own sides, your own character. Move away from the door, if possible. If you hear laughter coming from the audition room, don’t get discouraged and say something negative to yourself (or anyone else in earshot) like, “I’ll never be able to follow that.” Instead, think positive like, “Good, they’re warming up the casting room for me.” Go to any live taping of a sitcom and there will always be a warm-up act (most likely, a stand-up comic) whose main purpose is to loosen up the crowd and get the audience laughing. Therefore, use the actor auditioning before you as your warm-up act. APPENDIX 2 WHO SAID THAT? (PLAY THE CATCH PHRASE GAME) Dialogue is such an essential ingredient in “bringing the funny” to sitcoms. Sometimes that dialogue, paired with the delivery of a talented actor, gets ingrained in our social consciousness and pop culture, making for the much-loved “catch phrase.” See if you can match up these famous catch phrases with the appropriate character and show. Some are easier than others, but see how much of a sitcom buff you are. Answers are on the next page (DON’T CHEAT!). 1) D’Oh! A) Maude Findlay, “Maude” 2) How you doin’? B) Archie Bunker, “All in The Family” 3) Missed me by that much. C) Laura Petrie, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” 4) Stifle! D) Erkel, Family Matters 5) To the moon, Alice! E) J.J. Evans, “Good Times” 6) Oooh, Rob!! F) Mork, “Mork and Mindy” 7) God’ll get you for that, Walter. G) Joey Russo, “Blossom” 8) Weeell?! H) Homer Simpson, “The Simpsons” 9) Nanu Nanu! I) Fran Fine, “The Nanny” 10) I’m comin’ to join ya, Elizabeth J) Joey Tribbiani, “Friends” 11) Dyn-O-Mite! K) Barney Stinson, “How I Met Your Mother” 12) Shazam! L) Fred Flintstone, “The Flintstones” 13) Marcia! Marcia! Marcia! M) Maxwell Smart, “Get Smart” 14) Ayyy! N) Cliff Clavin, “Cheers” 15) Woh! O) Chandler Bing, “Friends” 16) Lucy, yoo got some ‘splainin’ to dooo! P) Gomer Pyle, “Gomer Pyle USMC” 17) Looking good! Q) Samantha Stephens, “Bewitched” 18) Suit up R) Bart Simpson, “The Simpsons” 19) Could you BE … S) Ricky Ricardo, “I Love Lucy” 20) Oh, Mr. Sheffiiieeeld T) Arnold, Diffrent Strokes 21) Whatchoo talkin ‘bout, Willis? U) Chico Rodriguez, “Chico and the Man” 22) Don’t have a cow, man. V) Jan Brady, “The Brady Bunch” 23) It’s a little known fact … W) Ralph Kramden, “The Honeymooners” 24) Yaba daba doo!!! X) Fred Sanford, “Sanford and Son” 25) Did I do that? Y) The Fonz, “Happy Days” 26) Yadda, yadda, yadda Z) Elaine Benes, “Seinfeld” WHO SAID THAT? ANSWERS 1 – H 2 – J 3 – M 4 – B 5 – W 6 – C 7 – A 8 – Q 9 – F 10 – X 11 – E 12 – P 13 – V 14 – Y 15 – G 16 – S 17 – U 18 – K 19 – O 20 – I 21 – T 22 – R 23 – N 24 – L 25 – D 26 – Z APPENDIX 3 GLOSSARY (FINDING THE FUNNY) Acting Gene – Found in YOU, next to the Funny Gene. It represents your natural, innate ability to act; to pretend. The Acting Gene is a necessity for being an actor. Beat – In scripts, it gives you the direction to take a pause (a beat), before delivering the next line. But beyond that, a beat is also the point where your thought, intention, or attitude will change in a scene. See (THEN). Blow – The big joke at the end of a scene. Most often found at the end of an act right before the commercial break. Button – Similar to a “blow,” the button appears at the end of a scene, but is often a smaller joke. Callback – A joke, piece of dialogue, or physical action that refers back to an earlier joke, piece of dialogue, or physical action. Catch Phrase – An Operative Phrase that appears repetitively over the course of several episodes and becomes identified with a particular character. See the “Who Said That?!” Appendix. Classic Triplet – A Classic Triplet goes like this: Setup – Setup – JOKE. See Triplets. Cloud Nine – Where many In Their Own Universe characters come from. These are the ITOUs who are born a little strange and carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Think Michael Scott, Phoebe Buffay, and Jack and Karen. Comedic Note – Otherwise known as your comedic niche, it is the one thing about you that will separate you from other actors. It is where your strengths as a comedic actor lie. It is where you are different, where you are funnier and how you will market yourself. Comedic Timing – Comedic timing helps you identify and deliver the jokes, and work within the rhythmic structure and pace of situation comedies. Comedic Toolbox – The tools and techniques to help you “bring the funny.” It includes sarcasm, verbal jokes, spit takes, double takes, slow burns, pratfalls and sight gags, to name a few. Consciously Oblivious – An important trait of The Lovable Loser. It describes how the character desperately wants something so badly, that they will consciously put blinders on and, therefore, not realize that what they’re doing is pretty dumb. It’s a positive twist on being “in denial.” Think Ralph Kramden or Lucy Ricardo. Conviction/Contraviction (The Turnaround Joke) – A technique used by actors to deliver a type of joke called The Turnaround Joke. It requires an actor (character) to say a line with complete and total conviction, THEN “turnaround” the intention, thought, or attitude and say something completely opposite and unexpected with just as much conviction. See Turnaround Joke. Deadpan – Showing absolutely no emotion when delivering a line or a joke (also great for playing poker). GLOSSARY Double Take – A double take occurs when a character looks at something he sees (or hears), doesn’t process it, so he looks away only to whip his head back to see it for what it really is. “Did you just say what I think you said?” “Did I just see what I think I saw?” Watch Jon Cryer on “Two and a Half Men,” or any of the actors playing “mortals” on “Bewitched.” Exit Line – The moment in a scene when a character will deliver a joke and walk out the door. Think Carla, tray in hand, walking by Norm, insulting him and exiting into the kitchen. Extended Triplet – Setup – Setup – Setup – (THEN) – JOKE. See Triplets. Family of Friends – Sitcoms are based on two different concepts of “family.” One example is a Family of Friends, where each person takes on the roles of a family, including the patriarchal figure, the maternal caretaker, the troublesome kids and others. Often found in Workplace sitcoms like “The Office,” or Ensemble Cast sitcoms like “Friends.” See Immediate Family. Fish out of Water – A storyline concept for either a character or an entire cast. Using the “fish out of water” formula, the comedy comes from a person from a different land, universe, etc. trying to make his or her way in “normal” society. Think Mork or “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Funny Gene – It’s your innate and natural ability to have a sense of humor and a sense of what’s funny. A must for all comedic actors and writers. Half-Hour Comedy – Another term for situation comedies, it is mostly used by agents, managers, directors, networks and studios. Handles – Unscripted words (or sounds) actors put before their sentences. Most common handles are Look, Listen, Like, Well and I mean. Holding for Laughs – What you (the actor) must do in order for the laughing audience to hear your next piece of dialogue. During the hold, you must stay in character, while keeping your intensions and thoughts alive. When the laughter dies down, you can continue the dialogue. Illogical Logic – THE defining characteristic of the In Their Own Universe character. The ITOU uses logic that makes absolutely no sense to anybody listening, but makes perfect sense to them. Think Kramer and Phil Dunphy. Immediate Family – Sitcoms are based on two different concepts of “family.” One example is an Immediate Family that features a patriarchal figure, the maternal caretaker, the troublesome kids and others (with the roles often being reversed to create more comedy). Think the Cleavers to the more dysfunctional Bundys. See Family of Friends. Joke – A joke on a sitcom is anything funny that can be seen or heard. It can be a line of dialogue, a word, an expression, a sound, or a physical action. See Punchline. Key Words – A Key Word is a word (or words) that appears in a section of dialogue that requires a special emphasis or delivery. It is a notation from the writer to emphasize this particular “ WORD” in your dialogue. The writer is putting a flag up, telling you that there is a joke present. Louder, Faster, Funnier – One of the Golden Rules for performing situation comedy. Multi-Camera Comedy – A show that is shot using four (quad) cameras on a soundstage in front of a live studio audience, like “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory.” GLOSSARY No-Holds-Barred Attitude – Think of this as The Bitch/Bastard’s philosophy on life. They say what they want to say and do what they want to do, no matter what! Operative Phrase – An Operative Phrase is a specific sequence of words—either a sentence or a portion of a sentence—found in a section of dialogue or spread throughout a scene. They can be repeated by a single character, or by two or more characters. Just like Operative Words, Operative Phrases help establish the rhythm by setting up the joke, or becoming part of the joke, and are usually repeated at least three times to produce an even bigger joke. Operative Word – Operative Words are found in a section of dialogue or spread throughout an entire scene. They are funny words that help form the rhythm, either by setting up the joke or being the joke. Operative Words are usually repeated at least three times to gain their full comedic effect. Over-Extended Triplet – Setup – Setup – JOKE – BIGGER JOKE. See Triplets. Patient Stare – A patient stare occurs when a character stares at someone who has just said something ridiculous and absurd. In the Patient Stare, they hold their tongue (and their intention), “patiently” waiting and gathering their thoughts to address the other character’s foolishness. The patient stare is then usually followed up by a sarcastic piece of dialogue. Watch Julie Bowen, Jason Bateman and Patricia Heaton. Picking up the Cues – Comedy is funnier when it’s faster, so keep the pace, thus helping to keep the rhythm. To pick up your cue, you need to take out pauses (or breaths) between the lines of dialogue, except when holding for laughs. 320 THE EIGHT CHARACTERS OF COMEDY Pratfall – A pratfall occurs when a character stumbles over a piece of furniture, slips on a banana peel, falls off a ladder, or trips on their own two feet (to name a few). Watch “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “F Troop” and “Modern Family.” Punch – To punch (or hit) the joke is to make it better and funnier. The actor needs to emphasize the word, or piece of dialogue, that is the joke (or punchline), either by speaking clearer, more emphatically, or louder. Punchline – The payoff to the joke in a sitcom (not part of the setup). See Joke. Rhythm – The melody of comedy which you need to follow. Rhythm is made up of words, actions, punctuation and jokes. Sight Gags – A sight gag occurs when a physical object in a scene becomes part of the humor, like something blowing up, something breaking, or something catching on fire. Or it occurs when a character can only rely on physical actions and reactions to something happening in a scene (making a shocked face, wild arm movements, the sign of the cross, a slash-the-throat gesture, a dagger in the heart, a happy dance, etc.). Watch “I Love Lucy,” “Frasier” and “Will & Grace.” Single-Camera Comedy – A show shot (like a film) using one camera in various interior and exterior locations like “MASH” or “Modern Family.” Slow Burn – A slow burn often appears immediately after a patient stare and before the sarcastic retort. A slow burn occurs when a character hears another character say something ridiculous and s-l-o-w-l-y turns their head, giving an incredulous look that says to their spouse, best friend, or roommate, “Are you kidding me?” Watch Bea Arthur on “Maude” and “The Golden Girls.” Spit Take – A spit take occurs when a character takes a drink just as they hear something outrageous, causing them to “spit” out the liquid in an exaggerated way. Watch John Ritter or Michael Richards. GLOSSARY Stakes – What matters to you in a scene. When approaching a scene, you need to consider what the stakes are for your character, what you want, how important it is that you get it, and what will happen if you don’t. There are three levels of stakes – Stakes (the immediate need for the scene), Higher stakes (how the scene and your need plays into a bigger picture) and Highest stakes (how it all fits into your life plan). Straight Man – Essentially, this is the person who sets up the humor in a show. They are the voice of reason. The Logical Smart One is almost always the straight man, even though they are played mostly by women. Teaser – The short scene at the beginning of a sitcom that usually sets up the theme or storyline of that week’s show. Also known as the “cold open.” (THEN) – Works the same as a “beat.” (THEN) is an indicator that the actor should take a physical pause when delivering a line of dialogue. Beyond that, it’s a point where the actor needs to readjust his or her thoughts, intentions, or attitude. See Beat. Thoughts – They are your silent thoughts, your subtext, your inner dialogue. They are what your character is ACTually thinking during a scene. Remember, it’s not always what’s on the page. Triplets – Good comedy comes in threes, and Triplets are a writer’s and actor’s tool in holding to that rule. A Triplet includes dialogue, actions, or jokes that set up the BIG joke. See Classic Triplet, Extended Triplet and Over-Extended Triplet. Turnaround Joke – One of the most-used comedic techniques, The Turnaround Joke requires the actor to say a line with a strong intention and then “turn around” and say something completely opposite and unexpected with an equally strong intention, thus getting a laugh. “I hate your haircut. (THEN) But it does make your head look smaller.” See Conviction/Contraviction. Want – Your objective and goal in a scene or script. Every character in every scene “wants” something. They usually want it desperately and are determined, against all odds, to get it. How they go about getting it and the obstacles that get in their way are the basis for the situation comedy. WOFRAIM – An acronym that encompasses basic acting techniques. It is a tool that you can use to examine, breakdown and personalize any scene or audition material. When looking at a script, consider you Want, Obstacles, Feelings, Relationships, As If, Intentions and Moment Before. It only takes ten minutes. DO IT! For a detailed description of WOFRAIM, and much more, check out my ACTor Audition App. About the Author Scott Sedita is an award-winning, highly in-demand Acting Coach and Motivational Speaker. Scott is the author of the bestselling books, “The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting and Writing” and “Scott Sedita’s Guide to Making It in Hollywood: 3 Steps to Success, 3 Steps to Failure.” Scott is also the first acting coach to develop an iTunes App, called “Actor Audition App.” Scott was seen on the Showtime series “La La Land,” the VH1 reality series “New York Goes to Hollywood,” as well as MTV’s “My Perfect Life.” In the past, he’s starred in the E! series “Fight For Fame,” USA Network’s “Character Fantasy,” Fox Sports Network’s “Helmets Off,” MTV’s “Adventures In Hollyhood” and Bravo’s “Faking It.” A graduate of Boston University’s Film and Television program, Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry. He began his career in New York as a talent agent, where he helped launch the careers of many of big stars, including Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Teri Polo, Christopher Meloni, Dylan Walsh, Jerry O’Connell and Vincent D’Onofrio, to name a few. In 1990, Scott relocated to Los Angeles where he worked as a sitcom writer for Howie Mandel, Bobcat Goldthwait and others. In the mid-90s, Scott worked as a casting director for Danny Goldman Casting, until launching his Scott Sedita Acting Studios in 1998. Today, Scott and his staff teach the craft of acting to the hundreds of actors, who walk through his doors on a weekly basis. Scott has worked with many of today’s top stars, including Emma Roberts, 50 Cent, Josh Duhamel, Chace Crawford, Paula Abdul, Kevin Alejandro, Michael Weatherly and Brant Daughtery. He has also taught many “hot” new actors who have become series regulars on such shows as “Glee,” “The Middle,” “American Horror Story,” “90210,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “True Blood,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Weeds,” “Suburgatory,” “Teen Wolf,” “The Americans,” “Shameless” and many more. “The Eight Characters of Comedy” has become a textbook for colleges and universities, and a “bible” to comedy writers and producers all over the world. Scott is a Comedy Consultant on sitcoms in the United States and Canada. Scott has appeared on numerous TV talk shows and can be heard on radio stations around the world as the “Hollywood Expert.” He’s been the featured story in such publications as The Hollywood Reporter, Soap Opera Digest, Inside TV, Backstage and TV Soap, among numerous others. He has also appeared on “CNN,” “On the Red Carpet,” “Entertainment Tonight,” “Extra,” and “Access Hollywood.” KTLA Channel 5 did a story on Scott entitled “Where Young Hollywood Goes and Studies” and referred to him as “one of the hottest coaches in town.” CHAPTER 1 WHO’S FUNNY? Being aware of what makes up your personal “funny,” finding the comedy in yourself and your everyday life, is vital to becoming a successful comedy actor or writer. As I just mentioned, in order to be funny you must tap into your Funny Gene. And where does your Funny Gene come from? Your sense of humor has a number of influences, which include your family and your environment. Let’s begin with your family. You inherited your sense of humor either from your mother’s side of the family, your father’s side, or both. If you can’t look back into your biological family history, look to your environment (your upbringing) as it also plays a major role. Whether your sense of humor was inherited or comes from your environment, or both, it all starts with family. So look to the family that raised you. Is your mother funny? Is your mother’s mother funny? Is your father funny? Is your father’s father funny? Do you have an aunt with a wicked sense of humor, a cousin who plays practical jokes, a flamboyantly bitchy uncle, or a shameless sibling who “marches to the beat of their own drum?” Or do you have all of the above? Who made you laugh? It’s important to know. Because funny starts with your family and it goes back generations. But what is the primary source of their humor? Where does it all ultimately start? Well, comedy starts with pain. That’s right, comedy comes from conflict, desperation, oppression, repression and persecution. It comes from unadulterated, horrific, deep-seeded pain. What?! Stay with me. It is a fact that many of yesterday’s and today’s top comedians and comedy writers come from generations of disenfranchised and persecuted people, be it for their cultural differences, beliefs, customs, or philosophies. The history of the world is made up of groups of people who have faced oppression at some point in time (some more than others). One way to deal with that pain is with a strong sense of humor. The idea is either “you die, or you laugh about it.” They could have chosen to be miserable and depressed about their situation or their individual and ancestral experiences (some have and continue to do so). Others chose to find the humor in their hardship. This can be said for any group of people that has faced generational repression and persecution. Every race and culture has something painful in their ancestry that can be tapped for comedy. Our sense of humor doesn’t just come from our ancestral pain. It also comes from the pain we experienced growing up and the pain we feel on a daily basis. Our individual sense of humor comes from our environment, our upbringing and our personal experiences. All of these play a major factor in how we perceive life, death, family, society, ourselves…all of those wonderful comedic topics. I had two parents who were funny. I had a mother who was smart and sarcastic, and a father who was a well-intentioned, overgrown child. Before they were divorced (the second time, that is), I remember them constantly arguing. It wasn’t funny to me as a child, but looking back now as an adult, it’s hysterical. If I were to pitch my family to a network as a sitcom, I would say my childhood was kind of a cross between “Maude,” “The Middle” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” It was at times tumultuous, but there was always humor, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. At no time was this more evident than during the holidays. Oh yes, those wonderful holidays! In my family, Thanksgiving and football did not go hand in hand. One Thanksgiving, my Dad, once again going against my Mom’s very strong wishes, not only insisted upon watching the game but actually rolled the TV set into the dining room! Upon seeing the TV, my mother got so upset that she picked up the whole cooked turkey and hurled it across the dining room…breaking it into pieces. My father’s response? “Well, at least now I don’t have to carve it.” Funny, huh? But it came out of pain…my mom’s pain, my dad’s pain and my pain (the hungry participant, observer and future storyteller). My parents were funny characters and they helped me form my own sense of humor. Humor became my weapon, my way of dealing with my pain, and it derived from my parents and from my upbringing. Think of your own life. What’s funny about it? What about your childhood was funny? What’s funny about your life now? Who in your family is funny? Who among your friends is funny? Combine all of that with a Funny Gene, some ancestral and personal pain, and you have your sense of humor. You also have the source of where all sitcoms begin… CHAPTER 2 SITCOM HISTORY Throughout this book, you will see examples from several generations of situation comedies. Whether you’re watching re-runs of “I Love Lucy” or the latest episode of “Modern Family,” you’ll see some fascinating similarities in characters, jokes and storylines. As the sitcom continues to move forward, there is a lot to be gained by examining the past. The origins of the situation comedy can be traced back to the early days of vaudeville. Old vaudeville acts, like Abbott & Costello, Fanny Brice, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and Burns & Allen, performed sketches and skits that incorporated funny, snappy dialogue, physical humor and specific types of characters. These acts also introduced and honed the classic setup/punchline type of joke. Their humor touched on a number of topics including love, life, and all those miserable things which comedy comes from (pain, oppression, persecution, etc.). There was a certain art form which was developed in these vaudeville acts. The jokes, dialogue and characters used in vaudeville shows (and later by stand-up comics in New York’s Catskills Circuit, and black comics in the South’s Chitlin’ Circuit) became so popular that they carried over into radio, when that became the new entertainment standard. Hit radio shows like “Amos & Andy,” Ozzie and Harriet,” “Life of Reilly” and “My Favorite Husband,” starring Lucille Ball, are considered the forefathers (or mothers) of sitcoms. Using simple but effective plots, funny character archetypes and specific joke-telling techniques, these comedy radio series had listeners planning their dinners around them. These radio programs, and many others like them, were produced and sponsored by advertisers, who required a certain amount of time in each 30-minute show to sell their products. Therefore, in order to work around their sponsors’ commercials, radio comedy writers had to be economic in their storytelling. They had to produce short, engaging, funny “plays” with fast-paced dialogue, quick-witted humor and identifiable characters, in a limited amount of time. When television emerged as the main entertainment medium, producers took hit radio shows and turned them into televised sitcoms with commercials (either with single or multiple advertisers). They adapted a similar formula to work within a 30-minute format: 22 minutes of story and eight minutes of commercials. This basic format is still used in today’s situation comedies; whether it’s a multi-camera comedy like “The Big Bang Theory,” which is shot using four (quad) cameras on a soundstage, or a single-camera comedy like “Modern Family,” shot (like a film) using one camera in various interior and exterior locations. BASIC SITCOM FORMAT Credits Story (teaser or cold open) Commercial Story Commercial End of story Commercial Credits Considering television is a visual medium, early comedy writers had to find funny actors who looked like the “characters” they envisioned. Plus, they had to write storylines, characterizations and jokes that a large audience could universally identify with and, more importantly, find funny. Those struggles continue today. It’s all about Family It is said that many of our television dramas hold a mirror up to everyday life. Sitcoms hold that same mirror up, but at an angle so it appears funny. Most of that humor comes from a skewed look at life within the dynamics of a “family.” What kind of family? Well, whether it’s one’s relatives or a group of friends, it’s a family that loves each other, has great conflict with each other and ultimately stands by each other. And each “family” has different personalities within their structure: maternal ones, optimistic ones, controlling ones, naïve ones, cynical ones, pampered ones, flirtatious ones, and just plain odd ones. Situation comedies are essentially comprised of two sets of families: an Immediate Family and a Family of Friends, and the funny situations they get themselves into (and out of) week after week. We follow them as they experience the joy, frustration and disappointment that life with your loved ones has to offer. The Immediate Family sitcom consists of a mother and father with kids (think “Father Knows Best,” “The Cosby Show” and “The Middle”), or a single parent with kids (think “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Alice” and “Suburgatory”). The Immediate Family sitcoms also often include the “other” member of the family, which could be defined as an in-law (“King of Queens”), a housekeeper (“Gimme a Break!”), a butler (“Benson”), a nanny (“The Nanny”), and even an alien (“Alf”). The Family of Friends sitcom takes the roles of the Immediate Family (the mother, the father, the kids, etc.) and places them into a group of friends. These friends can be roommates, bar patrons, neighbors, co-workers and so on (think “Friends,” “Cheers,” “Seinfeld” and “The Office”). In each Family of Friends sitcom, there will inherently be a maternal or paternal figure (think Monica and Jerry), feuding “siblings” (think Dwight and Jim), and various odd, eccentric relatives (think Phoebe, Cliff and Kramer). No matter the structure, you can trace the theme of family in every show dating back to the birth of the sitcom. Sitcoms of the 50s Situation Comedy is born and given a name! Over this decade, it learned to crawl, walk, talk, and say and do a lot of funny things. In the 50s, TV sitcoms introduced the Immediate Family in shows like “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Make Room for Daddy,” “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show.” These shows made simple humor out of everyday situations in what was considered to be a “normal” household. They had a patriarchal, working dad, a smart and patient stay-at-home mom and innocent, yet precocious children. They reflected the birth of the Baby Boomer generation, a decade where America returned home from two wars to settle down, raise a family and live the American Dream. These Immediate Family shows created the foundation for all other Immediate Family sitcoms to follow. This decade also introduced the Family of Friends sitcom, the most notable also being the most popular sitcom of all time, “I Love Lucy.” In these shows, the roles of the Immediate Family were often reversed and shifted. As such, Lucy and Ethel were the childlike enthusiasts who were always getting into mischief (due to Lucy’s crazy ideas), while Ricky and Fred played the patient but exasperated parental figures. In “The Honeymooners,” the roles were reversed. The husbands, Ralph and his buddy Norton, became the “kids,” the dreamers who got into trouble week after week, while their wives, Alice and Trixie, were the patient, often wise, maternal figures. Much like the Immediate Family shows of the 50s, both “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” built the foundation for all other Family of Friends shows to follow. Other popular Family of Friends shows were “Our Miss Brooks,” “The Phil Silvers Show” and “Love That Bob.” Sitcoms of the 60s Situation Comedy is nicknamed “Sitcom.” It enters its teen years and shows its first signs of rebellion. Mirroring the changing times of the 60s, the depiction of family took a more realistic approach, opening itself up to different types of Immediate Families. Shows like “The Andy Griffith Show,” “My Three Sons” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” featured a widower. “The Brady Bunch” featured stepchildren. “Julia” featured a single, black mother. “Family Affair” featured an uncle raising his deceased brother’s kids. Some writers gave the Immediate Family a “fish out of water” twist with shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Some 60s sitcoms gave the concept a more “fantastical” twist. This was, after all, the decade that gave us “Bewitched,” “The Addams Family,” “The Munsters,” “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Mr. Ed.” There were also many Family of Friends shows that had unique locations. “Gilligan’s Island” had a cast on a deserted island. “Green Acres” put a Park Avenue couple on a rural farm. “Hogan’s Heroes” took place in a concentration camp (of all places). There was also “McHale’s Navy” set on a warship, “The Flying Nun” set in a convent and “F Troop” set in a remote Army outpost in the Wild West. The 60s also introduced a successful hybrid, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which allotted Rob Petrie equal time at home with his Immediate Family (Laura and Ritchie) and at his workplace with his Family of Friends (Buddy, Sally and Mel). “The Dick Van Dyke Show” set the standard for these two types of families merging and interacting with each other, thus creating an even bigger “family.” Sitcoms of the 70s The Sitcom moved into adulthood. It was ready to shake things up and find its place in the world. The 70s sitcom brought a new meaning to what was considered funny, as taboo subjects such as politics, race, religion and sex appeared for the first time on television. And there is one man and one show to thank—Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” This revolutionary Immediate Family comedy never held back from hitting the issues of the day and brought a new realism to sitcoms. Headed by a curmudgeonly bigoted father, Archie Bunker, “All in the Family” is still considered one of the most revered (and controversial) sitcoms ever made and one that epitomized the turbulent times at home. Other Norman Lear-produced Immediate Family sitcoms also dealt with ground-breaking topics in their premise, including “Sanford and Son” and “Good Times” (struggles of a poor black family), “Maude” (struggles of a feminist wife and mother), “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” (struggles of a modern housewife), “One Day at a Time” (struggles of a divorcee raising kids) and “The Jeffersons” (struggles of a newly rich black family). The Family of Friends sitcoms also had their share of irreverent humor. Nothing personifies that more than “MASH,” a funny and smart sitcom about a group of military doctors stationed behind the lines of The Korean War. This was also a decade that moved the Family of Friends into Workplace Sitcoms, like “Barney Miller” (a police station), “Taxi” (a garage), “WKRP in Cincinnati” (a radio station) and “Chico and the Man” (an auto repair shop). The 70s also boomed with other types of Family of Friends shows like “The Odd Couple,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Three’s Company,” “Welcome Back, Kotter” and “Mork & Mindy.” In the 70s, we also saw interesting hybrids on the family theme with some of the decade’s biggest hits. “Happy Days” prominently featured both the Immediate Family (The Cunninghams) and a Family of Friends (Ritchie, Fonzie, Potsie and Ralph) in their storylines. “The Bob Newhart Show” took place both in Bob’s psychiatry office (with friends Jerry, Carol and Mr. Carlin) and in his Chicago high-rise (with wife Emily). Meanwhile, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” showcased two different Family of Friends ensembles: Mary’s friends at the WJN newsroom (Lou, Murray, and Ted) and her friends at her apartment building (Rhoda and Phyllis). Sitcoms of the 80s The Sitcom became a little wiser, a little edgier and a lot more honest. The Immediate Family sitcoms of the 80s, most notably “The Cosby Show” and “Roseanne,” featured storylines, characterizations, jokes, and even acting styles that were less heightened and more realistic. These shows, as well as shows like “Family Ties,” “The Hogan Family,” “Kate & Allie” and “Growing Pains,” dealt with the real issues of raising an 80s everyday family. The decade also featured a number of Immediate Family shows where “non-relatives” became part of the Immediate Family like “Mr. Belvedere,” “Benson,” “Webster,” “Diffrent Strokes” and “Who’s the Boss.” The decade also introduced Family of Friends shows that featured more adult storylines, suggestive humor and risqué dialogue. Enter “The Golden Girls,” a series about a group of mature women sharing their lives (and stories) around the kitchen table while eating cheesecake. The 80s had its share of interesting locations for these Family of Friends shows to take place, like a Boston bar (“Cheers”), a lodge in Vermont (“Newhart”), a network news program (“Murphy Brown”), the office of an interior designer (“Designing Women”) and a school for young women (“The Facts of Life”). Sitcoms of the 90s The Sitcom matured, becoming more confident in the possibilities of what it could do…and displayed a great deal of angst about doing it. The 90s Immediate Family sitcom (thanks to “Roseanne”) became more cynical, brash and brazen. Shows like “Married…With Children” and “The Simpsons” became the antithesis of previous Immediate Family sitcoms. These provocative shows pushed the boundaries of the traditional family roles. The parents and kids were outspoken and unfiltered in expressing their frustration, bitterness and disappointment in their lives. Other Immediate Family shows of the decade were a little less extreme, but certainly had more attitude than shows of the past. “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” sent a street-smart teen to live with his affluent relatives, “Home Improvement” took a snarky look at the average suburban family, and “Everybody Loves Raymond” featured a cross-generational feuding family in suburban Long Island. The most popular shows of the 90s took a step away from the Immediate Family, focusing on the dynamics of a group of “friends.” I believe the 90s was a time when Americans questioned and challenged the meaning of family and what makes up a family. With an emphasis on disenfranchised families, extended families, single parents and gay relationships, the idea of “family” took on a broader and deeper meaning. Once again, television mirrored this with ground-breaking megahit Family of Friends sitcoms like “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” “Sex and the City,” “Martin” and “Will & Grace.” A nice hybrid of the decade was “Frasier,” whose storyline was split between his life with his father, brother, and caretaker Daphne in his condo above Seattle, and his radio station colleagues at “The Dr. Frasier Crane Show.” Another interesting type of hybrid was “3rd Rock from the Sun,” which featured an extraterrestrial Family of Friends who came to Earth and posed as an All-American Immediate Family. Sitcoms of the 2000s The Sitcom hits its mid-life crisis! It searches to redefine itself…again. In the early 2000s, the sitcom seemed to take a step back to reflect on where it had been and where it wanted to go next. As such, sitcoms (particularly single-camera comedies), took a sometimes darker, sometimes quirkier and sometimes more subversive approach. It seemed that both Immediate Family and Family of Friends sitcoms removed the “filter” for what was appropriate and inappropriate for characters to say and do (think “The Office”). In the Immediate Family sitcoms, or should I say, the Immediate dysfunctional Family sitcoms, we witnessed this shift with shows like “Malcolm in the Middle,” “Family Guy,” “Everybody Hates Chris” and “Arrested Development.” These shows allowed family members to be brutally honest with each other, no matter how innocently inappropriate or downright mean-spirited their remarks were to one another. In the sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” you could say there was no filter when it came to the topic of SEX! There has never been such a popular network show so blatant in its sexual innuendos, double entendres and racy humor. There were other Immediate Families shows that weren’t as dysfunctional but still had some “edge,” like “According to Jim,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” “8 Simple Rules,” “My Wife and Kids,” “George Lopez” and “My Name is Earl.” It seems the “filter” was also lifted from Family of Friends sitcoms, like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Extras” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” There was also “How I Met Your Mother,” a sitcom about a family of “best friends” helping their buddy find the love of his life…and ultimately, the mother of his children. The Family of Friends sitcoms also exposed life behind the scenes…of a sketch comedy show (“30 Rock”), a hospital (“Scrubs”), a movie star’s life (“Entourage”) and the basement of pot-smoking teenagers (“That 70’s Show”). Sitcoms of the 2010s The Sitcom is BACK! And it’s rested, re-charged and ready for a new challenge. The sitcom is in its sixties! It has learned from all its past experiences, influencing the shows we watch today on our TVs, computers and mobile devices. In these modern sitcoms, you will see the essence of the past 60-plus years of popular sitcoms reflected in everything from storylines, to characters, to jokes. While the sitcom is always evolving, it seems to reflect on its past as it moves into its future…and what a future it has! In the fall of 2009, “Modern Family” premiered, ushering in the beginning of a new decade and the next phase of the situation comedy. “Modern Family” depicts three segments of an extended Immediate Family being followed by a documentary crew, and the day-to-day challenges they face as a… modern family. Other sitcoms showcasing this modern Immediate Family theme include “The Middle,” “Raising Hope,” “Last Man Standing,” “Mike & Molly,’ “Suburgatory,” “The Goldbergs,” “The Millers,” and “Mom.” The Family of Friends theme has also remained strong with the continued success of “The Big Bang Theory,” which debuted in 2007 but continues to grow in its popularity. Other popular Family of Friends shows of the decade include “Community,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Happy Endings,” “Anger Management,” “Louie,” “Wilfred,” “Cougar Town,” “Glee” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Some of the other Family of Friends shows have given us a big dose of (much needed) “girl power” in TV comedies with shows like “New Girl,” “2 Broke Girls,” “Girls,” “Veep,” “Nurse Jackie” and “The Mindy Project.” What’s next? While the situation comedy format has remained the same, sitcoms themselves have gone through (and continue to go through) a perpetual evolution. But what remains constant is that networks, studios and producers are always scouting for new sitcom writers and comedic actors, to write or star in that next funny series that will live on in syndication. Now that you have an understanding of the evolution of sitcoms, let me show you what makes a sitcom successful, or what I call, “The Three Pillars of Comedy.” CHAPTER 3 THE THREE PILLARS OF COMEDY (WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL SITCOM) A successful sitcom is like a big house filled with funny, topical storylines, memorable, identifiable characters and a plethora of laugh-out-loud jokes. Just think of “I Love Lucy,” “Friends,” “All in the Family,” “Seinfeld” and “Modern Family,” and how hysterically these sitcoms are written and acted. But what holds up these houses of humor? Well, like a house, a sitcom needs strong, structural support beams to hold it up, keep it sturdy and reinforce the funny storylines, characters and jokes for years to come. I call these support beams, The Three Pillars of Comedy. As comedy comes from pain, The Three Pillars of Comedy are derived from Conflict, Desperation and The Unpredictable. For actors and writers, these darker components will shine a bright light on helping you write a funnier storyline, create a funnier character and deliver funnier jokes. CONFLICT Storyline – Every storyline needs conflict—and lots of it. Without conflict, there is no drama and, without drama, there is no comedy. That comedy comes from the conflict in the storyline, which centers on the clashing of two opposing sides (their beliefs, cultures, philosophies, personalities, cupcake recipes, etc.). In every sitcom episode there has to be at least an A storyline and B storyline, where a character specifically wants something but faces what I call External Obstacles. These External Obstacles are clearly defined in the story as a “force to be reckoned with.” It’s that person, place, or thing preventing the character in the A or B storyline from getting their Want. And it’s that obstacle, however absurd, that creates the conflict (the funny) in the story. Characters – A character without conflict is boring. In every storyline, characters must either face conflict as they pursue their Want, or be the conflict for another character’s Want. If there are two characters in a scene, each of them will have a Want, and each of their Wants will be the other character’s external obstacle. You can also find conflict within your character, what I call Internal Obstacles. Internal obstacles are defined as those conflicting thoughts and emotions such as doubt, insecurity, embarrassment and fear, which try to self-sabotage the character from getting their Want. As an actor or writer, infusing this source of conflict within your character will make that character funnier and more complex. Also, at one point or another, every character will be the source of conflict for another character, thus becoming the “voice of reason.” There is one character of the Eight Characters of Comedy who is a living, breathing source of conflict, and that character is the Logical Smart One. It’s also important to note that conflict arises from putting two of The Eight Characters of Comedy together (such as the Neurotic and The Dumb One, or The Womanizer and the Lovable Loser). But more on that later… Jokes – Conflict gives birth to a very specific type of joke that has been around since the vaudeville days. Conflict plays a major role in the creation and performance of what I call The Turnaround Joke. The Turnaround Joke is when two pieces of dialogue, which are in direct conflict with each other, come together. When a positive piece of dialogue or action is followed by a negative piece of dialogue or action (or vice versa), the clash of these conflicting forces produces a spark. This spark is the joke that makes us laugh. More on the development and the performance of The Turnaround Joke in Chapter 5… DESPERATION Storyline – Desperation is what drives the character’s Want in an A storyline and B storyline. The storyline will revolve around a single character desperately wanting something, the obstacles they face and the clever, humorous tactics they use to try and get their Want. I call these storylines the Lovable Loser Storyline. It comes from The Lovable Loser character’s defining trait of desperation. Any of The Eight Characters of Comedy who are driving the A or B storyline will step into a hopeful, desperate Lovable Loser Storyline. The greater the desperation in a character’s Want, the more conflict the character will be in, and the funnier the story. Whether the character wants to find true love, a better job, a new apartment, courtside seats for the Lakers, or just peace, they pursue their desperate attempts wholeheartedly, with great optimism. At the end of the storyline (or episode), the character—more often than not—fails in getting their Want. Sometimes, however, their desperate attempts pay off and they do get their Want. If they do succeed, they’ll find they didn’t want it (or need it) after all. Either way, they learn something from it. But that doesn’t stop them from trying a new approach (equally desperate) the following week. There is something inherently funny i	488,859
The Science of Likability Charm, Wit, Humor, and the 16 Studies That Show You How To Master Them (Patrick King) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Unknown Chapter 15: How to be credible and trustworthy. Who was the last person that you thought there was something ‘off’ about? You might not have been able to explain it, but you just got a ‘bad vibe’ from them and subsequently didn’t feel like you could trust them. Scientifically speaking, there are a wealth of tiny and subtle signs that can either increase someone’s credibility and trustworthiness, or tank it. If you’ve had any media training, or simply watched a politician interact with the media, you’ll know that credibility doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s a finely-tuned science that can literally make or break people. There are specific indicators that subconsciously signal that this person isn’t a threat, and in fact should be followed and listened to. Credibility can only occur if these different signs show up. With credibility comes trust and all other positive benefits of friendship. What is a credible person? As recently as 1999, Gass and Selter sought to study credibility. What causes it? They discovered a host of subtle indicators of credibility, as well as a host of signs that undermined credibility. Before we go into the signs that have to be present for people to view you as credible, it's worth noting that credibility is context dependent. You may be viewed as trustworthy in one situation. However, if the situation changes, you might be viewed as completely incompetent. Credibility enhancers. Here are the signs that need to be in play for people to think you're credible. In other words, these signs build up your credibility. Highlight your past experience and your qualifications. People are looking for some sort of objective indication that you know what you're talking about. At the very least, they want to see facts that would support a conclusion that whatever judgments or decisions you make are based on something real. This is important for most people because if you've already seen something in the past, chances are you know the right things to do. You would know the right kind of information so that the right decisions are made. If you don’t have relevant experience, it’s still possible to spin a related experience into a relevant angle. Display how much you care. If it's obvious that you truly care about the other people and have their best interest at heart, they are more likely to trust you. You simply wouldn’t act in any other way except to help them. However, if people can sense that you're simply looking to get a sale or line your own pockets, they are less likely to trust you. There is a conflict of interest here. They might feel that you are just too busy trying to benefit yourself instead of actually looking out for them. Similarity. When people see that you are similar to them in terms of dress, body language, speaking style, as well as mother tongue, they are more likely to view you as credible. This should not be a surprise – in fact, there is an entire chapter devoted to this phenomenon already. People tend to like other people who are like them. This is especially true if it appears that you share the same values as the people you're trying to impress. They’ll believe you because people automatically trust those similar to them, such as their family. Appear assertive. If you are very assertive regarding your positions and you quickly and rationally destroy counter-arguments, this makes you look like an expert. This means that you know what you're talking about. Chances are people can trust your judgments because you know the other side of the argument and can convincingly make those arguments go away. In other words, the more decisively you act, the more credible you appear. Gain social proof. When other credible people recommend you, chances are people will be less suspicious of you. If people they know and trust as experts recommend you, then you are essentially riding on the coattails of those people. You don't have to convince people because people they trust already open the doors for you. This is an extremely important competitive advantage. Unfortunately, not everybody can tap into this. This is what’s behind every introduction, ever. People will take a chance on you because someone vouched for you, and that’s a powerful statement. Credibility destroyers. There are certain signals you can send out that can erode your credibility. If you contradict yourself, that's a red flag. If you speak in a very hesitant manner where you are always saying Ummm, Ahhh, Uhhh, and other verbal ticks, this can give people the subconscious impression that you're lying to them. At the very least, it may give them the impression that you don't know what you're talking about. If you are caught telling a lie or an obvious exaggeration, this can vaporize whatever credibility you've built up. If you're unsure about a certain assertion, follow this simple rule: when in doubt, leave it out. You have to remember that people will always ask you a lot of questions, and in many cases, you don't have answers to those questions. Instead of trying to look like a hero and come up with an answer that you guessed, you would be better off simply telling people you don't know or you'd get back to them. People love to say the phrase "I guess". It has a way of keeping the conversation going and filling potentially awkward silences. The problem is when you say that phrase too frequently, it undermines your credibility. You have to remember that there is a big and wide gulf of difference between knowing something and guessing something. You'll do yourself a big favor by eliminating this phrase from your vocabulary. Finally, avoid being overly polite. Surprised? By being excessively polite and brownnosing, you come off as weak and tentative, which means that your opinions will also be taken as such. You have to remember that people are looking for people they can listen to and follow. If you are so busy walking on eggshells around them, you're sending off the wrong signals. When we apply for jobs, we make sure to include all of these factors and pay special attention to them. But credibility is just as important in the social arena, so it pays to be aware of what will subconsciously shift you into a person that others will seek to listen to. Unknown Table of Contents The Science of Likability Charm, Wit, Humor, and the 16 Studies That Show You How to Master Them Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: How to influence people’s moods. Chapter 2: How to read people like a book. Chapter 3: How to make friends out of enemies. Chapter 4: How to never be taken advantage of. Chapter 5: How to instantly become a close friend. Chapter 6: How to negotiate anything and be persuasive. Chapter 7: How to instantly bond with someone. Chapter 8: How to make people trust you. Chapter 9: How to get into someone’s inner circle. Chapter 10: How to be endearing to anyone. Chapter 11: How to make people do what you want. Chapter 12: How to be a leader that anyone will follow. Chapter 13: How to avoid judgment and assumptions. Chapter 14: How to make people want you around. Chapter 15: How to be credible and trustworthy. Chapter 16: How to win a majority vote. Conclusion Cheat Sheet Citations Unknown Chapter 7: How to instantly bond with someone. To many people, bonding with others is a process that takes a long time as well as some luck. That can certainly be true if you don’t understand human psychology and what actually makes us likable to others. Yes, it will be difficult to bond with others if all you do is say hello to them and ask them about their day. I’ve come to realize that some even think that bonding happens inevitably as a measure of time. This is not always the case. You can be in a dentist's chair undergoing a root canal. Sure, you are spending a good amount of 'alone time' with your dentist, but this is far from bonding. You can find yourself in a situation where you would be alone with somebody and could be going through a tough time together, and the end result is far from bonding. If you want to bond with someone instantly, read on. The science. In 1971, Byrne discovered what we all instinctually already knew. We like people that are similar to us, both in background and thought process. The more similar of attitude we have to someone else, the more attracted we are to them in general. Obviously, the vice versa is true, so the more similar you can appear to people in any regard possible, the more they will like you on both a subconscious and conscious level. This means that an extremely effective way to create an instant bond is to mirror other people – and not just in body language and mannerisms. Expert sales people know all about the power of mirroring because it gets them trust, and ultimately sales. You start saying things the way they say things. You start repeating certain things that they like to say. In other words, you try to bounce back certain signals that remind them of themselves. You are trying to send them signals that they see in themselves. The power of familiarity. Why does this work? Human beings like familiarity. We are comfortable around people who look like us, act like us, talk like us, think like us and ostensibly have the same values as us. On the other hand, we tend to be uncomfortable with people who think, talk, act, and otherwise go about their business in ways that are profoundly different from how we do things. It is easier to bond with people who you think are similar to you compared to people you view as strangers. It is crucial for you to understand how to mirror others properly if you want to tap the power of familiarity to boost your overall likability. I use this example often because I think it illustrates this phenomenon so well – let’s say you were born in a small town in South America. Now you live in London. How excited would you be at the prospect of meeting someone else from that same small South American town? So what does this mean for you in your daily life and becoming likable? If you can appear more similar, in mannerisms, beliefs, background, thought process, and even likes and dislikes, you will be able to create instant bonds out of nothing. This isn’t about lying or manipulation, or simply telling people only what they want to hear. That’s dishonest and eventually extremely transparent. Start small. Ask lots of questions to figure out what people are about, what they like, and how they think. Then dig deep into yourself to find small commonalities at first, such as favorite baseball team or alcoholic drink. Through those smaller commonalities, you’ll be able to figure out what makes them tick and find deeper commonalities to bond instantly over. Just as you’d be thrilled to meet someone from that small South American town, you’d be thrilled to meet someone who shared a love of the same obscure hobby as you. It doesn’t take months or years, and it doesn’t take a special circumstance like going through military boot camp together. It just requires you to look one level deeper inside yourself and others, and see the commonalities that all people possess but aren’t always aware of. When you find that commonality, conversation will probably flow there and this is an extremely effective icebreaker. After all, this is probably the natural process of how you developed the friends you currently have – a shared interest or experience that served to bond you. People at the most basic level are usually pretty similar and have similar attitudes about things. Find them and use them! Unknown Chapter 13: How to avoid judgment and assumptions. If you don’t know much about someone, it’s natural that we fill in the blanks with information that is largely drawn from stereotypes. For example, if you meet someone that plays tennis and belonged to a country club, you might assume that they were rich growing up, lived on an estate, and haven’t had to work very hard in their life. While it may be accurate, it’s not fair and not always a positive thing. In fact, it’s usually negative to have assumptions made about you, and this is something you want to avoid. How can we avoid being judged by people? The science. In 1989, Hilton and Fein set out to find out the cause of people’s judgments, assumptions, and stereotyping. The cause was by and large a lack of information about a subject, which caused them to fill in the gaps with stereotypical, assumed information. To prevent stereotyping and being instantly judged, Hilary and Fein found that simply providing details about the subject, completely unrelated to the stereotype in mind, diluted the stereotype and made people more likely to trust and like others. What does this mean for us? There is no such thing as Too Much Information ( TMI ). You can make people like you more, stereotype you less, and emotionally invest in you more by providing seemingly useless and nonsensical details about your life. People like to make fun of TMI, but the reality is that TMI can ultimately make you more likable! Oversharing can actually make people emotionally invest in you more. You become less of a threat and more of a known quantity. People become less suspicious of you and are more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. By seemingly sharing trivial information about your past, you develop a high degree of familiarity. And again, it doesn’t even matter if the details are relevant to your identity, career, non-threatening nature, or life. You can share your preference of glasses brand, your favorite color, and perhaps where you went to school. The more information about you that is out there, the less readily people can judge and stereotype you, simply because you won’t fit those stereotypes and assumptions anymore. For example, what if we learned that the person that plays tennis and belongs to a country club was poor growing up, and went to college on a tennis scholarship? Does that change your view of them? We certainly wouldn’t stereotype and make more assumptions about them like we previously did. People suddenly become three dimensional, and not the static character biographies that we see in movies. They are humanized, and we eventually realize that all humans are complex amalgamations. In reality, you really haven't given anything profound. You really haven't given any detail that's fundamentally important or useful. But that’s not the point. Oversharing to maximize likeability is to get people to feel that they know different sides of you. People will reciprocate. When you just spout out all sorts of details about your life out there, it's very easy for people to feel drawn to you and feel that they know you at an intimate level. They’re getting a glimpse into your inner workings. In reality, you're simply spouting out harmless information that is neither here nor there. However, in the minds of people around you, they feel that you trust them enough to share these intimate details that they can't help but be drawn to you. They can't help but reciprocate that feeling of trust by liking you more. At a fairly shallow level, this works because it makes you look human. It makes you easier to relate to because you have all these details and you are being vulnerable and open about it. As I have mentioned earlier, an air of vulnerability gets people to like you more because in their minds, you are easier to approach. When you are easier to approach, it's easier for them to identify with you and approach you. Overcoming stereotypes. Let's face it, stereotypes surround us. We all make all sorts of prejudgments about each other that arise from physical and personal attributes. This is not necessarily bad. In fact, I would argue that the reason why human beings automatically stereotype each other is that it flows from our survival instincts. Stereotyping lions and lion-shaped creatures was probably helpful to survival. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with stereotypes per se. However, when we use stereotypes to cut people out and dismiss people, it becomes harmful. These people might exactly be the type of people we need to meet. These people might be the type of people we need in our lives to enrich our personal experience. You can defeat stereotypes people have about you by oversharing. When you throw out a lot of details, a lot of the mutual suspicion goes down and people feel more at ease around you. If the information you send out there is consistent and seem to paint you in a vulnerable light, people might even become emotionally invested enough in you to want to protect you. After all, enough nonsensical detail eventually paints a fairly accurate picture about who you really are. Unknown Chapter 11: How to make people do what you want. A key element of likability is that people will listen to your opinions and act on them. In other words, you have influence over people’s actions and can make people do what you want them to do. Regardless if you’ve reached that level of likability, you can still assert a level of influence over people simply because of how the human psyche works. The science. In 1976, Pennebaker and Sanders sought out to study a theory of behavior called reactance. Reactance is essentially reacting in the opposite manner of what is presented. They confirmed it - when subjects were told to do something, they felt a strong impulse to do the opposite to preserve their perceived freedom of choice. This confirmed the phenomenon of reverse psychology, which uses reactance in the opposite manner to get a desired reaction from the subject. What does this mean for us? It means that people strongly value their free will and freedom of choice. Even if it isn’t something they necessarily want to do, they may do something just to prove that they can, and to prove that they won’t be restricted. For example, we see this all the time with parents and children – if a parent places too strong of a restriction on a child, this makes the child rebel even harder… but sometimes the parent can achieve a desired reaction by doing this artfully. If you are aware of this phenomenon and are willing to play the role of the parent, making people do what you want becomes easy. Reverse psychology. Reverse psychology is something you’re probably familiar with. It’s about telling people to do something, and then seeing them do the exact opposite, which is often the result that you wanted. Reverse psychology is all about sending signals a certain way and hoping that these signals do not have the normal effect. If you're practicing reverse psychology, you're actually intending the opposite act. Most of us have seen reverse psychology in action. In many cases, our first experience with reverse psychology is with our parents. It can be as simple as a parent saying that she doesn’t want the child to vacuum, and forbids the child from it. Obviously, this will make the child vacuum, fulfilling his sense of freedom and fulfilling the parent’s intelligent laziness. Another example of reverse psychology: according to studies, the children of parents who don't make a big deal out of alcohol or drugs tend to not abuse these substances. In contrast, parents who made a big deal out of alcohol and drugs and specifically forbade them tended to have children that were likely to abuse them. The reason that reverse psychology works is that people don't like to be boxed in. People don't like to be told what to do. When someone tells you to do something, your natural reaction is to do the exact opposite. Knowing this is the case, people who use reverse psychology to their favor would say certain things intending the opposite effect. Therefore, to get people to do what you want, insinuate any one of the following: that they can’t do it, are forbidden from doing it, are incapable of doing it, aren’t allowed to do it, cannot handle doing it, or simply don’t want to do it. Reverse psychology works because of people's rebellious impulse. There’s a certain “F*ck you, I’ll do what I want!” aspect. This is reactance at its finest. It all boils down to forbidden fruit. Whenever you tell somebody that something is off limits, the perceived value of that activity increases. Human beings are curious animals. We are often drawn to things that we can't have. We're often excited by things that we're not supposed to do. Reactance and influence. The best way to use reverse psychology is to champion the opposite of your actual opinion. In other words, you play devil's advocate and gently guide the conversation to your desired reaction. When you argue the other side, it's not uncommon for people to push back and find the true value in the side that you’re advocating against. This is a great psychological trick in getting people to look at your position without browbeating them. You don't come off as a bully. Instead, you appear thorough, and you are able to subtly and gently guide people to your side. For example, you want to convince someone that dogs and superior to cats. You would gently explore relatively small benefits of cats, and then compare those to relatively large benefits of dogs. The framing is important is here, and it is very likely that the other person will point out the flaws of your logic (that the large benefits of the dogs are of course far superior to the small benefits of the cats). They will prove you wrong, and come to the conclusion themselves that dogs are superior. This works on two levels – first, you are telling them that cats are superior, which automatically makes them want to disagree. Second, you are allowing them to come to the conclusion themselves, which makes them believe in it far more than if you were to outright tell them. People value their freedom of choice and independence, and reactance is a strong reflection of that. Fortunately, the awareness we now possess of reactance can help us influence people to any direction we want. Unknown Chapter 8: How to make people trust you. Trust is tricky because almost everyone has a different definition of it. Most people also differ on how exactly they give trust. For some, people start with zero trust in others and it is slowly earned through their actions. For others, people start with a full meter of trust in others and it’s up to them to prove that they are worthy and not lose it. Regardless, trust is not a universal quantity… except for what was proven in 1950. The science. Festinger, Schachter, and Back in 1950 studied the simple phenomenon of trust. They noticed that people that lived near each other trusted each other more unequivocally, and simply liked each other more, such as neighbors. Their findings were also simple: the more repeated exposure you have with someone, the more trustworthy and likable you are to them on a subconscious level. The level of interaction wasn’t important, it was just the frequency of occurrence that engendered the feelings. What does this mean for us? It means that trust, unlike many other things in life, actually works on a linear basis. The more you show up to a certain extent, the more trust will ultimately be built. This manifests in even tiny ways in our daily life. The more you see a certain barista at a café you frequent, the more you feel like you know and trust them. The more you see a neighbor, even if it’s just while you are both taking out your trash, the more you feel like you understand who they are and trust them. Again, the level of interaction isn’t important, it’s simply the repetition that creates trust. Let’s think about how salespeople use this to their advantage. A typical sales cycle depends on trust, because if a prospect doesn’t trust the salesperson, they simply won’t purchase. So what does a salesperson do? They become like white on rice. They email, call, text, and make sure that you have so many points of contact with them that they are always in your ear. And oddly enough, this makes you trust them more because if they are that present in your life, and you have accepted this, they ought to be trustworthy, right? Obviously this would be overkill for a friendship, but it’s undeniable how salespeople are able to gain our trust through simple exposure and mirroring. If you are trying to get people to like you and become their friend, you are essentially selling yourself, and repeated exposure helps make the sale. Simply showing up creates trust. Festinger proved that the whole key to this entire trust process is to simply show up. That's right, just be visible. Spend time with people. Be around. In the human mind, simply being visible makes them feel that they know you. This is why in the world of advertising, there is a rule called the rule of seven. According to this rule, a particular brand or marketing message has to be shown at least seven times for prospects to take action on that particular commercial message. This happens all the time. If you see an ad for a new soda, chances are you won’t jump out of your seat to buy that soda the first time you see the ad. You would have to see the ad several times for you to feel that the product being sold is legitimate. Once you mentally accept this, then the product has successfully branded itself on your mind. In other words, it is worthy of becoming a potential choice. This stage is all about filtering threats and potentially harmful people who might not have your best interest in mind. This is purely defensive. Once you clear that stage, a certain force of habit kicks in and you gain trust, credibility, and people constantly coming back to you. This does not mean that they automatically choose you. What this means is that you have become a legitimate choice. If you are looking to build trust with people, simply showing up gets the ball rolling in getting people to trust you. By being visible and gaining maximum exposure with people you are trying to impress, you set in motion the battle for likability and trust. How did you meet your current friends? If you look at your set of close friends, you would realize that a lot of those friends became friends of yours almost accidentally. For the most part, you did not seek them out. You did not consciously come up with this idea that you will be friends with this specific person, and put in a lot of effort to get that person to like you. In many instances, a lot of your good friends became your good friends because they simply just showed up in your life frequently. They were at the right place at the right time and they did the right things. Maybe you went through elementary school and high school together, and were neighbors for years. Proximity rules. There is huge value to simply showing up and showing your face. You would be surprised as to how powerful the exposure effect can work in your favor. Simply showing up, sending off positive signals, and becoming part of the solution instead of the problem can go a long way in you becoming good friends with people you want to gain the trust of. Unknown Chapter 10: How to be endearing to anyone. Perfect people are actually not the most attractive people. We’re uncomfortable around it, and it makes us self-conscious in ways we never thought possible. To illustrate, let’s think about why Batman and Spiderman are far more popular than Superman. Superman is literally, well, a super man. He has almost no weaknesses, and it just doesn’t seem very interesting when we all know that he could just punch one of his nemeses into outer space at any given moment. He is rarely actually challenged, and it takes considerable work to make him vulnerable. Batman and Spiderman on the other hand, are powerful yet deeply vulnerable characters. They’re not perfect by any means, and they both have to overcome challenges that usually seem too great for them. Turns out it was a great move to make Batman and Spiderman deeply flawed, because humanizing them made it easy for people to relate to them and love them. What does this have to do with anything on the science of likability? Not being perfect is endearing to people. Don’t pretend that you’re perfect. In fact, display the opposite. People are drawn to other people who show vulnerability. We are drawn to each other’s weaknesses because it reminds us that we are human. It shows deep confidence to openly show vulnerability and the chinks in your armor. As an added bonus, vulnerability is one of the most attractive traits in the dating game. The science. Aronson, Willerman, and Floyd in 1966 discovered an easy way for people to like you, but not feel threatened. In fact, this method is used by politicians carefully all around the world, as it is important that they are relatable and non-threatening. The scientists discovered that perfection was not endearing, and that those who made mistakes and who generally showed themselves to be human were far more likable, approachable, and relatable. In the context of the experiment, it was shown that subjects liked people who had knocked over a cup of coffee more than those who did not. This was called the Pratfall Effect, presumably named after someone named Prat who continually fell. Perfection is intimidating. It is very hard to be friends with somebody who is perfect. It is very hard to be friends with somebody who has everything. If you are spending a lot of time with somebody who is flawless, it can actually be quite an intimidating experience. It might feel that you are walking on eggshells when you are around that person because they will judge you for not being perfect. You are trying to compare yourself to that person and obviously you are going to fail. This is why it is very hard for people to relate to perfection. Nine times out of ten, perfection does not exist in any practical sense. Somebody may look like they have a perfect life, but behind closed doors they might actually be struggling with alcoholism, their marriage might be falling apart, or they might have a serious addiction. This is why it is really important to note that people actually get this. This is why most Americans are looking for that flaw of humanity that they can attach to and relate to. Your imperfections are what make you more relatable and likable. Your friends are drawn to you because you are sometimes clumsy, and you are goofy or otherwise imperfect. If you have a quirk or eccentricity, it is probably the reason why a lot of your friends are drawn to you. They like you not because you do not have any warts or imperfections. They like you because of your imperfections. I’d feel a lot more comfortable around Heidi Klum if she tripped and fell on her face to break her façade of beautiful model queen. Relatability is crucial to likability. It is very hard for people to like you if they feel that they cannot relate to you. If you are just so unreachable and so perfect in your flawlessness, people will not even bother. It makes them feel intimidated because they know they cannot measure up. In many cases, it is easier for people to hate perfect people. You become some sort of caricature to them. If you are honest with your vulnerabilities and your weaknesses and shortcomings, it is easier for people to relate to you. They know that you are not perfect in the same way that they are not perfect. As a result, they do not feel self-conscious around you. They do not feel that they have to watch everything that they say. Most importantly, they do not feel that you are going to judge them because they have fallen short. You yourself suffer from their shortcomings and insecurities. Balance. Both literally, and figuratively. How can you use this knowledge of lack of imperfection and vulnerability in daily life? There are any number of ways to make your appearance slightly goofy and less polished, which we know makes us a bit more endearing to others. For example, you can stumble a bit when you use stairs, exaggerate a yawn, wrinkle and rub your nose, drop something you’re carrying, snort while you laugh, walk into the corner of a table or door, drive onto a curb while parallel parking, stub your toe, get hit by a tree branch while walking… the list is endless. You can also make self-deprecating jokes, and immediately call out when you have made a mistake. Finally, you can make sure to freely bring up or admit embarrassing things about yourself, such as your past love affair with ice cream or that you broke your leg chasing an ice cream truck. These are the things we all do in privacy, and these acts just make you human. They disarm others and make them relax. But don’t overplay it. It all boils down to the following: wouldn’t you rather grab a beer with someone that you can be in sweatpants with, instead of having to try all the time to keep up appearances? Unknown Chapter 12: How to be a leader that anyone will follow. As much as we would like to pretend that we are all 100% in charge of our own destinies, the truth is most people are looking for a leader. We don't come out and admit it, but we are looking to be led and for someone to make decisions for us. A shepherd is a valuable and comforting presence. We might think that we want the freedom of choice, but while we theoretically want it, we don’t often know what to do with it and want clear direction. This is even true when it comes to emotions – don’t your friends ask you your opinion on their love lives, and if they are justified in their reactions? Even every friend group has an unofficial leader, someone that people will look to whenever there is a decision or plan to be made. People don’t always trust their own judgment, and need to take cues from others to feel validated and accepted. Even emotionally, it's much easier to simply go with the flow and follow the lead set by other people. At the very least, it takes less thinking and less personal insight and self-exploration. It’s easier than you think to step into the leadership role among your friends, or at work. It’s not the struggle or burden that many leaders complain about – they’re simply acting inefficiently, and perhaps unaware of what Daniel Goleman discovered in 2000. The science. Daniel Goleman, a thought leader in emotional and personal intelligence, identified six distinct types of leaders in a 2000 study. Each type of leader caters to a different type of intelligence and primary motivator – after all, not all of us are motivated or driven in the same ways. The visionary leader paints a picture of inspiration, and motivates through grandeur. The coaching leader focuses on developing individuals, which coincides with organizational goals. The affiliative leader motivates through creating at atmosphere of affection and support, and motivates through addressing emotional needs. The democratic leader builds consensus and motivates through the subsequent investment. The pace-setting leader leads by example and literally shows people what is possible to achieve. Finally, the commanding leader simply commands and orders, expects compliance, and motivates through negative consequences. Unsurprisingly, different people have different needs, and respond to different kicks in the ass. Placing people into one of the six categories can help you skyrocket your efficiency and effectiveness as a leader. The round hole gets the round peg, and the square hole gets the square peg – and the benefits are limitless. The visionary leader. This type of emotional leader moves others towards a shared vision. This shared vision is, of course, an ideal. This leader tells the group about the vision they should all share, but doesn't really tell them how to get there. This person sets the priorities, but doesn't really lay out a step-by-step plan. This type of emotional leadership is powerful because laying out a broad vision enables people to coordinate by sharing information, and also puts them in a position to motivate each other as they struggle towards that goal. The main drawback of the visionary leader is that this style of emotional leadership often falls short when trying to motivate experienced team members. When you're dealing with experts, you're dealing with people who have their own vision. You're dealing with people who have seen alternative paths or know alternative paths. It takes a lot more convincing power to motivate these people. In many cases, the better approach with people who have clear alternative visions is to invite them to the table. Get them to feel that they have 'skin in the game' by working with them to fit their existing experience and vision to the grand vision you have in mind. The best situation to apply this type of emotional leadership is when your group needs a new direction. If your group has tried a lot of different ways to get somewhere or has tried many different goals and hasn't gone anywhere, a visionary approach works the best. This leadership technique is effective because it has a strong impact on the climate surrounding your team. In practical terms, this emotional leadership approach works best when you're dealing with a friend who is confused or distracted. This person is just looking for direction and would be very open minded to ideas and directions you have. As long as you are clear as to the benefits this person would gain, your confused friend shouldn't have a problem following your emotional lead. The coaching leader. The coaching leader is really a facilitator. This person connects personal wants of team members to the goals of a particular organization. This person facilitates conversations that go beyond the specific issues facing the team in the workplace or at school. Instead, this person helps team members dig deep within themselves to identify weaknesses and strengths, and how these can tie in to their personal goals as well as their ways of doing things. Coaching leaders are also great at delegating assignments, and they are very demonstrative of the faith that they place on team members. A coaching leader style of emotional leadership often produces a high degree of loyalty. Whenever you show trust and faith in somebody, they can't help but reciprocate it. The drawback of this emotional leadership style is that it can easily come off as micro-managing. By digging so deeply into the personal lives of your friends and associates, it may seem like you are prying or directing people regarding minute life details. It is too easy to be misunderstood as a busybody or 'know it all' when you use this emotional leadership style the wrong way. The best use of this type of emotional leadership is when you're dealing with somebody who is immature. If you're dealing with people who are a long way off from reaching their full capabilities, a coaching leadership style works great. This approach is very effective because this has a very positive impact on the climate of your relationships. The affiliative leader. The affiliative leader is somebody who focuses on harmony. This is a person who tries to get all team members or friends more deeply connected with each other. The hope is that once these connections are made, people would collaborate because they have become emotionally invested in their connections. This person works primarily to get people to open up instead of necessarily getting stuff done. When performed badly, this leadership method doesn't get to the bottom of things. You have to remember that when you're building emotional networks and you're trying to build connections among people, you have to deal with distressing situations like negative feedback. You simply cannot avoid them. You need to look at them straight in the eye. Unfortunately, bad implementations of the affiliative leader approach focuses so much on making people feel good that negative yet crucial feedback is often swept under the rug. People are often given the wrong impression that the key to solving issues is to constantly talk and talk about it. This can lead to serious problems down the road. At the very least, you can turn a lot of your friends into annoying whiners with this emotional leadership technique. The best use of the affiliative leader approach is to pair it with a visionary style leadership. In other words, lay out a grand vision and then work on building emotional connections. The secret to success is to get people emotionally invested in the grand vision for the team. The affiliative leader approach works well if you're trying to patch things up with friends. If your friendship went through a rough spot and people got mad at each other, this emotional leadership approach is a great way of healing rifts and getting the team united so that they can successfully survive stressful situations. The democratic leader. The democratic emotional leader is very big on process. This person works to get as many different inputs as possible from team members. If you are trying to be the emotional leader of your group of friends and you're trying to use the democratic leadership approach, your focus isn't necessarily on finding the right answer. Instead, your focus is on simply getting people to participate by sharing their point of view. You have to be a really good listener because the stuff people will tell you will often be a mix of both good news and bad news. The secret to this emotional leadership approach is really execution. It all depends on how you perform. If you do it badly, it looks like you're simply listening to a lot of people but very little is being achieved. You have to understand that people don't like to waste their time. When people share, they share because they want to achieve certain objectives. They share because they want to get certain things done. If you get so caught up in the whole democratic leadership method and you define it narrowly as simply listening, you might end up making people feel that they just wasted their time. Instead of resolving issues or uniting people, they might feel that speaking up and sharing their input is useless. The best use of the democratic leader approach is to employ it to get people to buy into a grand vision or goal. Also, if you don't already have a preset agenda or a preset answer, this is a great way to gather information. Other than that, you need to approach this leadership style with caution. You might be creating more problems than you are solving. The pace-setting leader. The pace-setting leader creates goals and sets up challenges for the team. This person would set up certain objectives and set the standard for excellence. These leaders are effective leaders because they exemplify their standards. They show people how to get stuff done because they themselves live out their goals. In other words, they act as models for the team. In terms of emotional leadership, people who use this leadership style identify friends who are going through a tough time and sit them down. They push these people forward by demanding more of them. They know that people who have a tough time reaching certain goals are simply slacking or not expecting enough out of themselves. By sitting people down, demanding more of them, and offering to work with them, they motivate them to get going. They motivate their friends to get their house in order. The most common downside to this type of emotional leadership is that it tends to be light on guidance. You don't really break things down for people so they can do what you want them to do. In many cases, you just tell them that they need to get their act together and you expect them to know what that means. You set up a destination and you expect them to instinctively know how to get there. This can be a serious issue. When you're dealing with your friends, you might get short-term results that get them out of emotional ruts or depression. But over the long haul, this type of emotional leadership might put a lot of strain on your friendship. You might even reach the point where your friends would consciously seek to avoid you because they feel you expect too much from them. Simply put, bad implementation of this emotional leadership style betrays a lack of emotional intelligence and compassion. In many cases, being an overly pace-setting emotional leader may make you look like you don't have much self-management or self-control skills. This emotional leadership style works best if you're dealing with somebody who is already competent and motivated. In other words, you're dealing with somebody who knows that they have a problem and they know how to get there. They just need motivation. They just need people to place trust in them and to model or exemplify success. However, if you're dealing with somebody who is not really all that motivated or is quite unclear as to where to get from point A to point B, pace-setting leadership doesn't work. It can often poison the climate of your friendship and send the wrong signals. Instead of motivating somebody, done badly, the pace-setting leadership style may appear like you're judging your friend. The commanding leader. The commanding leader emotionally manages people by soothing their fears, giving them clear direction, and telling them what to do. This leadership style is very problematic because you have to have a high degree of self-control to pull this off. Otherwise, you can come off as cold, distant, and uncaring. Of course, when you're trying to sooth a friend and get your friend going again, the last thing you want to do is to come off as cold and distant. The commanding leadership style really works best only in one particular circumstance. If your friend is going through a personal crisis and simply just needs rapid action, this type of leadership approach might work. Also, it works with people who can't seem to respond to other types of emotional leadership. Suffice to say, this is an emotional leadership style that should be a last resort. If done badly, it can cause more problems than it solves. By understanding the six major emotional leadership styles, you can position yourself to adapt your emotional leadership approach to each person and each situation. Different people have different needs. These needs and preferences often change with time. By being aware of these different emotional leadership styles and the circumstances in which they work best, you can put yourself in a position to become exactly the kind of person your friends need at a certain time. This obviously makes you not just likeable, but in many cases, emotionally indispensable. It all boils down to how you classify circumstances and how you read the receptivity of your friends. Unknown Chapter 6: How to negotiate anything and be persuasive. Most people think they know a thing or two about how to negotiate what they want. Unfortunately, people who think this way are often mediocre or outright lousy negotiators. They either end up giving away too much or committing too early… or they simply don’t understand what makes a successful negotiation. In other words, they often end up getting the bad end of the deal. The secret to effective negotiation is actually simple and can be summed up in one sentence. Each party just wants to feel like they got a good deal and a win. That’s it. If the other party is happy with what they’re getting, then they will be all too happy to give you what you want. The problem with that is that we usually don’t want to give them what they want, because it will be too big of a cost to us – not a win. So it’s up to you to find out what they actually value, or to re-frame your proposition to them in a way that makes them feel like they got a good deal. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what is important to you is important to the other side. Oftentimes, this isn't the case. In fact, in most cases, the other side doesn't at all care what's important to you. To get a better deal from any negotiation every single time, you need to focus on two key techniques. These techniques involve shaping the expectations and assumptions of the party you're negotiating with, and they have been proven to work time and time again. They are called the door in the face technique, and the foot in the door technique. Surprisingly, they are essentially converse to each other, but work in predictable ways when you put them into the context of human psychology and desire. The door in the face technique. The “door in the face” technique, was confirmed by Cialdini et al. in a 1975 study. Here’s the gist – you ask for a huge and somewhat unreasonable favor upfront, and then follow up with a smaller ask that was actually the intended goal in the first place. The recipient of the ask feels like he has done well in the negotiation because he has successfully brought down the asking price substantially, not knowing that the original starting point was nothing but a foil. This technique involves you starting negotiations with a very big but unreasonable offer. The whole point is you are expecting to be rejected. Nine times out of ten, your unreasonable offer will be turned down and rightfully so. Of course, your first offer is not your real offer. You are simply setting context in the mind of the person that you are negotiating with. You actually have a different agenda. Your real offer is a smaller version of your first offer. By starting off big and getting people upset about how unreasonable your first offer is, your second or third offer will appear very reasonable indeed. Compare this situation with starting off with your reasonable offer	113,674
English Humour for Beginners (George Mikes) (Z-Library).epub	English Humour for Beginners English Humour for Beginners George Mikes ENGLISH HUMOUR FOR BEGINNERS Illustrated by Walter Goetz English Humour for Beginners Contents PART ONE : THEORY Does it Exist? If it’s Good it’s English What is ‘English’? The Irish Joke What is Humour? What Humour Really is Not Cruel or Kind? Changing or Permanent? Three Faces of English Humour Political Jokes Dirty Jokes Jewish Jokes PART TWO : PRACTICE Nonsense Limericks and Clerihews The Wittiest Englishman? Farewell to English Humour Follow Penguin English Humour for Beginners About the Author George Mikes was born in 1912 in Siklós, Hungary. Having studied law and received his doctorate from Budapest University, he became a journalist and was sent to London as a correspondent to cover the Munich crisis. He came for a fortnight but stayed on and made England his home. During the Second World War he broadcast for the BBC Hungarian Service, where he remained until 1951. He continued working as a freelance critic, broadcaster and writer until his death in 1987. English Humour for Beginners was first published in 1980, when Mikes had already established himself as a humorist as English as they come. His other books include How to be an Alien , How to Unite Nations , How to be Inimitable , How to Scrape Skies , How to Tango , The Land of the Rising Yen , How to Run a Stately Home (with the Duke of Bedford), Switzerland for Beginners , How to be Decadent , How to be Poor , How to be a Guru and How to be God . He also wrote a study of the Hungarian Revolution and A Study of Infamy , an analysis of the Hungarian secret political police system. On his seventieth birthday he published his autobiography, How to be Seventy. English Humour for Beginners PENGUIN BOOKS ENGLISH HUMOUR FOR BEGINNERS Praise for George Mikes: ‘In all the miseries which plague mankind, there is hardly anything better than such radiant humour as is given to you. Everyone must laugh with you – even those who are hit with your little arrows’ Albert Einstein to George Mikes ‘Bill Bryson is George Mikes’ love-child’ Jeremy Paxman ‘Mikes is a master of the laconic yet slippery put-down: “The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink” ’ Henry Hitchings Praise for How to be a Brit: ‘An instant classic’ Francis Wheen ‘I love it and read it cover to cover. Also has good tips for talking about the weather, not that we need them’ Rachel Johnson ‘This is the vital textbook for Brits, would-be Brits, and anyone who wonders what being a Brit really means. Pass me my hot-water bottle, please’ Dame Esther Rantzen ‘Wise and witty’ William Cook, Spectator ‘Brilliantly comical’ Pico Iyer, The New York Times ‘Full of the very best advice that any would-be Brit should need (and for those of us who have forgotten exactly how it is to be ourselves) it’s a jolly good read’ Telegraph ‘Very funny’ Economist English Humour for Beginners English Humour for Beginners Part One: THEORY English Humour for Beginners Does it Exist? English Humour resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither of them exists. Here the similarity ends: the Loch Ness Monster seems to be a gentle beast and harms no one; English Humour is cruel. English Humour also resembles witches. There are no witches; yet for centuries humanity acted as though they existed. Their cult, their persecution, their trials by the Inquisition and other agencies, went on and on. Their craft, their magic, their relationship with the Devil were mysteries of endless fascination. The fact that they do not exist failed to prevent people from writing countless books – indeed libraries – about them. It’s the same with English Humour. It may not exist but this simple fact has failed to prevent thousands of writers from producing book upon book on the subject. And it will not deter me either. We shall have to spend a little time on definitions. The trouble with definitions is that although they can be illuminating, witty, amusing, original and even revolutionary, there is one thing – and perhaps one thing only – which they cannot do: define a thing. This is more true in the case of humour than in the case of anything else. We shall come to that later. But we shall still have to try to answer such questions as: What is English? What is Humour? What is English Humour? Is English Humour the humour of a nation or just a class? What have cockney humour and Evelyn Waugh in common? Before going into details, I should like to say a few words in general. If English Humour is the sum total of all humorous writing that has appeared in the English language then, in that sense, English Humour does exist. So do Bulgarian, Finnish and Vietnamese humours. England – or Britain, or the British Isles – has produced eminent and brilliant funny men from Chaucer, through Dickens, Oscar Wilde and W. S. Gilbert to P. G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. And, if the question is whether the English people can laugh and make good jokes, then again the answer is yes. But this is not what champions of English Humour have in mind. They allege that the English possess a sense of humour which is specifically English, unintelligible to, and inimitable by, other people and – needless to add – superior to the humour of any other nation. That is a debatable point. But a point worth debating. In other countries you may be a funny man or a serious man; you may love jokes or hate them; you may think clowns and jesters the cream of humanity or crushing bores. You may, of course, have the same views in Britain, too. Yet Britain is the only country in the world which is inordinately proud of its sense of humour. In Parliament, in deadly serious academic debates, even in funeral orations, Shakespeare is less often quoted than Gilbert or Lewis Carroll. Every after-dinner speech – be it on the sex-life of the amoeba – must end with a so-called funny story. You may meet here the most excruciating bores, the wettest of blankets, the dreariest sour-pusses all of whom will be extremely proud of their sense of humour, both as individuals and as Englishmen. So if you want to succeed – indeed, to survive – among the British you must be able to handle this curious and dangerous phenomenon, the English Sense of Humour; to stand up to it; to endure it with manly or womanly fortitude. In other countries, if they find you inadequate or they hate you, they will call you stupid, ill-mannered, a horse-thief or a hyena. In England they will say that you have no sense of humour. This is the final condemnation, the total dismissal. On the following pages I shall explain what English Humour is, i.e. what it is if it exists at all; what the English think it is; how to be humorous in England; what insults and insolence one must pocket lest one should be declared humourless, i.e. not a member of the human race. English Humour for Beginners If it’s Good it’s English My first suspicion that there is no such thing as English Humour arose early. A few weeks after my arrival in 1938 a few people told me that I had a very English sense of humour. That was obviously a compliment. Even more obviously it was utter nonsense. I had just arrived from Hungary where I had been bred and born; I had never read one single book in English because my English was not good enough; I had seen altogether three Englishmen in my life, none for longer than for five minutes. How, where and why should I have acquired an English sense of humour? I observed, however, that only my good jokes were greeted with this high praise. No dud joke, witless observation or silly pun ever merited the comment. No one ever said: ‘Your sense of humour is absolutely lousy but, I must say, it’s very English.’ The pattern about my humour followed the general pattern: if it was good it was English; if it was abominable it was foreign. But soon enough contrary doubt assailed me, too. Perhaps, after all, there was a special English sense of humour. I heard the following joke in those early days. Two men are standing on the platform of Aldgate East underground station – two cockneys, as they must be in any Aldgate East story – at 11.30 at night. There is only one other person there, a shabbily dressed individual at the other end of the platform. ‘D’you know who that chap over there is?’ asks one of the men. ‘Who?’ ‘’E’s the Archbishop of Canterbury.’ ‘Don’t be a fool.’ ‘I tell you ’e is. The Archbishop of Canterbury.’ ‘Look, Bert, what would the Archbishop of Canterbury be doing at ’alf past eleven at night, waiting for a train at Aldgate East? Dressed like that?’ ‘I ’ave no idea what ’e is doing. But I’ve often seen his pictures and it is ’im all right.’ ‘I bet you anything ’e ain’t the Archbishop.’ ‘A quid?’ They bet a pound and Bert walked over to the other man and spoke to him. ‘’Scuse me, but do you ’appen to be the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ ‘Am I who?’ the man asked darkly, and did not seem to be amused. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury.’ ‘You — off, but quick. Mind your own bloody business and go to — hell.’ Bert walks back to his friend and declares: ‘The bet is off. You can’t get a straight answer out of him.’ I thought this joke was quite amusing but, much more to the point, very English. Why? First, there is this lovely nonsensical element. Bert’s friend had a good point there: what would the Archbishop of Canterbury be doing at an East End underground station, shabbily dressed, at half past eleven at night? The courtesy of the question, addressed to the third man, is very English, too. So is the betting. But what makes it a really English joke is its pseudo-fairness. If there is one accusation the English resent as much as not having a sense of humour, it is that they are not fair. Meet an English murderer in jail. He will readily admit that he has slain seven people in the pursuit of his trade. But accuse him seriously of being unfair in some concrete matter – of jumping a queue, for instance – and you will be the eighth victim. In connection with British justice – also claimed to be the best in the world – there is a saying: it is not enough that justice should be done, it must be seen to have been done. This really means never mind justice, the main thing is that your decision should look just. This joke reflects the same mentality. Bert – in the jokes of other countries – would have come back and said: ‘The chap is a foul-mouthed lout, it cannot possibly be the Archbishop of Canterbury. You win.’ That would have been right but stupid. To say: the bet is off etc is very English and very clever. English Humour for Beginners What is ‘English’? And now back to definitions. ‘English’ in this book means English, Welsh and Scottish but not Irish – so I should, perhaps, call this book British Humour for Beginners . But who on earth has ever heard of ‘British’ humour? I am sure even the fiercest Scottish nationalist will agree that English humour is English humour. I know very little about a specific Welsh sense of humour but as probably more Welshmen – or people of Welsh origin – live in England than in Wales, I take it that they are, on the whole, sufficiently anglicized to be absorbed by English humour-imperialism. About the Scots I am going to make a daring statement which may cost me my life. I know they are a separate nation; I know that many of them plan to become even more separate. I have, in fact, a soft spot for the Scots, have always got on splendidly with them and, like all Hungarians, find it easier to learn Scottish English with its harsh consonants than the softer English variety with its unclean vowels (even in the speech of the highly educated classes). If you observe the Scots from within the United Kingdom you can easily perceive the differences between them and the English. But observed from the Continent of Europe they resemble the English much more than they care to. Unless they wear a kilt – and who wears kilts nowadays except Sunday-Scots in Trafalgar Square during the tourist season, or visiting English manufacturers of plastic mugs in the Highlands, plus one Hungarian I know – well, unless they wear a kilt they are, in the eye of the foreign observer, totally indistinguishable from the English. What does a man from Frankfurt or Warsaw see when he looks at the English and the Scots? People who speak the same language; people with the same manners, the same shyness and reserve (at least when abroad), the same arrogance (at least when abroad), the same feeling of superiority. And the fact that the Scotsman feels superior to the Englishman as well as to the rest of the world while the Englishman tends to ignore the Scot means little to the man of Frankfurt. Yes, I repeat – even if I am stabbed to death in the streets of Glasgow – that to foreign eyes the Scots are almost indistinguishable from the English. Nevertheless, we have all heard about the taxi in Aberdeen which got involved in a regrettable accident and eighteen people were injured in it. Or we have all heard jokes like this one: The Scotsman (in the distant past) arrived in London with three pieces of luggage. He asked the porter at the station what his charges were. ‘Fivepence for the first piece, threepence for the others.’ ‘Very well, I shall carry the first one, you the second and the third.’ In other words, what about the proverbial meanness of the Scots? Surely, writing a book on humour, one cannot ignore the Scottish joke? I think one can. First of all, jokes of this kind are monotonous. Secondly, they are jokes about the Scots, not by the Scots, so they have little to do with the Scottish sense of humour. Thirdly, the Scots used to be poor and the (then) rich English mistook their poverty for meanness. According to my own experience the Scots are, in fact, particularly hospitable and generous. I doubt (as I have already explained) that there is such a thing as an English sense of humour, consequently the – say – Welsh sense of humour would be a sub-species of a non-existent genus. But that would be in the true English nonsense tradition. Until the nineteen seventies there was a coin in circulation in Britain called the half crown. There was no crown, but this disturbed no one. The English were quite happy with a fraction of a non-existent unit. In mathematics half of nothing is nothing. In humour and in British fiscal matters (the two are often identical) half of nothing is quite something. English Humour for Beginners The Irish Joke There are two clocks on a tower in Dublin. An English visitor points out to an Irishman that the two show different times. The Irishman replies: ‘What’s the point in having two clocks if both show the same time?’ Or: An Irish traveller dies on a boat and has to be buried at sea. Later the Captain reports with regret that twenty sailors died digging his grave. These are typical Irish jokes. Like most Irish jokes they try to make the point that the Irish are stupid – the other Irish jokes try to prove that they are lazy. When I first came to England my English was quite sufficient to get along with in Budapest, so I thought it was good, but I found that London English differed quite considerably from Budapest English. But whatever mistaken ideas I may have had about my knowledge of the English language I was aware of knowing very little about the British people – not exactly an advantage for a working journalist. I and my Hungarian colleagues knew that the Scots lived up there, somewhere in the North; we knew – from a famous nineteenth century allegorical poem by János Arany – that the Welsh existed, although we were not sure which parts of the island they lived in; and we knew – we loved our Bernard Shaw in Hungary – that the Irish occupied John Bull’s other island (or to put it more precisely, that John Bull occupied that other island which the Irish regarded as their own). That was more or less the sum total of our ethnological knowledge. Our greatest and most urgent preoccupation was to learn English and to acquire some knowledge about the peoples of these islands. It was a sensational event when one of our colleagues decided to visit Ireland. When he came back we besieged him with questions. What were the Irish like? He was puzzled. ‘They are an amazing lot. They are exactly like the Hungarians but they all speak fluent English.’ I have yet to hear a better description of the Irish. Now, forty years on, I still think that definition holds good. Consequently, the Irish are near my heart and I have always resented the sneering racist flavour of Irish jokes. So what about these jokes? Are they all right or is my resentment right? I think both are wrong. The Irish probably are lazy but this fact points to their intelligence not to their stupidity. A small minority of people are lucky enough to make their living by doing things they like doing – but even they do not like everything they have to do and do not always like working. The majority simply have to sell their labour, their expert knowledge, their skill, their time or just their physical strength. That is a bargain and most of them keep the contracts they have made. But why on earth should people like dull jobs? And if they do, why should this be the sign of intelligence and not stupidity? Besides, who are the English to laugh at the Irish, or at anyone else for that matter, because they are lazy? They are intelligent enough to be lazy themselves. And why should they laugh because the Irish are supposed to be stupid? I have mentioned Shaw, an Irishman who for seventy years called the English the stupidest race in the world and made a good living on it, most of his money contributed by the English themselves. Once upon a time, immediately after the war, the Germans used to work very hard but they had good reasons and a good purpose for it. The mood did not last long. They have come to their senses and today they are as lazy as the rest of us. The Irish are not lazier and not stupider than most people. Some of the greatest writers in the English language – Swift, Wilde, Shaw, James Joyce, Yeats, just to mention the first five of the dozens of names that come to one’s mind – were Irish. So surely we ought to cry ‘racism!’, ‘unfair!’, ‘disgusting!’ and swear never again to tell or even listen to an Irish joke? Until a few years ago I should have approved this proposition. Then I was invited to a party in a large country house. The guests were dispersed in many rooms. In one of these rooms, with its door open, I found myself with a group of six or seven people and told them a joke about homosexuals. The laughter was silenced by a man who suddenly appeared from the corridor outside and roared with flashing eyes: ‘Who told that homosexual joke?’ I said it was me. ‘I am a homosexual!’ he shouted. He sounded very proud of it as if it were a major achievement. ‘So what?’ said I. He seemed to be stupefied, I think he was convinced that I had failed to hear what he had said, so he repeated it even more loudly: ‘You’ve just told a joke against homosexuals and I am a homosexual.’ This was obviously a gimmick of his, he must have said it many times before. ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t tell a joke against homosexuals. But people constantly tell jokes about Jews, about the English, about the Germans, about the Irish, about the Scots, about prostitutes, about the new-rich, about doctors, about the Queen and – perhaps in more questionable taste – about stutterers. Why should homosexuals be the one and only exception? What is so specially sacrosanct about them?’ I failed to convince that man whose main contention seemed to be that he was no German, no new-rich, no Queen, no stutterer: he was a homosexual ergo it was wicked to tell jokes about homosexuals. But I think I was right. I do not say that all these jokes are innocent; some of them are truly vicious. But when they are told innocently, we must accept them simply as the expression of some stereotyped opinion the aim of which is to raise a laugh. Occasionally they may do harm and inculcate hostility against one group or another. But, on the whole, while racists may be fond of racist jokes, jokes will not turn people racist. I think we ought to be tolerant, and try not to be what the Germans call tierisch ernst , brutishly serious, not to be self-righteous and outraged when we hear a joke against a group we happen to like and then proceed to tell jokes against groups we happen to dislike. After all, while jokes should be taken seriously, they should not be taken that seriously. And there is another aspect of this. In Australia I once heard a particularly loud-mouthed and ill-educated group of Aussies amuse themselves by telling a string of anti-Italian jokes. Slowly I grew as irritated as that homosexual chap had been at the party. The Italians I had met in Australia were decent, hard-working people, most of them much more intelligent than these particular Australians. Then it suddenly occurred to me that it was not hatred of the Italians that made them tell these jokes, but love of themselves. They wanted to feel superior and clever, and anti-Italian (in fact, anti-anybody) jokes achieve such a purpose. Poor bastards, I thought then, if you need these jokes as therapy to bolster up your ego, you must have them. A motorist has taken the wrong turning and is completely lost in the depths of County Cork, Eire. At last, he discovers a local man and asks him how to get to Limerick. The man scratches his head and replies: ‘Well, if I wanted to go to Limerick I wouldn’t start from here.’ English Humour for Beginners What is Humour? What is humour? I do not know. Mr Spike Milligan, the comedian, wrote: ‘Comedy is a way of making money. The trouble is that everyone nowadays tries to make it into a philosophical system.’ He was quite wrong. Humour is philosophy, the trouble is that everyone nowadays tries to make money out of it. This, however relevant, is beside the main point. The point is that great minds, from Aristotle through Bergson and Freud to Mr Milligan, make desperate, and often brilliant, efforts to define humour and they always fail. The definition of humour is a problem of philosophy. Therein lies the first difficulty. Having heard the word ‘humour’ people expect a good laugh. This expectation is unjustified. The philosophical definition of humour should not be any funnier or more entertaining than the philosophical definition of the purpose of life. But – and therein lies the second difficulty – efforts to give a definitive answer to the question, what is humour, are just as vain as efforts to give a definitive answer to the question, ‘what is the purpose of life’. On this latter question thousands of tomes have been written by some of the best brains of humanity. The answers given were often brilliant, exciting, thought-provoking and profound, but never do they seem convincingly to be true. (Perhaps the truth is just too dull and uninspiring to hold the attention: life has no purpose? But one can’t even swear to that.) The achievement of philosophy is asking the right questions and giving the wrong answers. The achievement of philosophy is to skate with breath-taking skill around problems and to find no solutions. We are no nearer to finding a convincing and generally accepted answer to the question ‘what is the purpose of life’ than we were half a dozen millennia ago. The same goes for the problem of humour. I am not going to fill this gap here and now. I am not going to find the solution missed by so many, from Aristotle to Milligan. Neither am I going to sum up the innumerable theories (except for touching on a few, when it is inevitable). I cannot completely ignore the subject of defining humour but it is not my main subject. My main subject is: how to try to be funny in England. So I am going to sum up and paraphrase what I have said in some earlier books * on the subject. My meditation will raise me into the august company of Aristotle, Bergson and Freud. They could not solve the problem; neither can I. What is humour, then? Well, what is rain? It is something different for the meteorologist and the farmer. For the bank clerk it may be the phenomenon which makes his weekend miserable; for the cinema-owner it may be the phenomenon which makes his weekend profitable. And are a drizzle and a downpour, a shower, a cloud-burst and a drop here and there all rain? Is the difference between a drizzle and a deluge a difference in degree or does it amount to a difference in kind? One can maintain the difference is only one of degree – although one can hardly expect the wrongdoers of antiquity who perished in the Deluge to agree. One can also say that whatever different angles different individuals may have, rain is still rain, and scientific definition will lead to precise results. But this is not true. There is nothing magic about science and in particular nothing magic about methods which claim to be scientific. Different sciences may reach different results even when dealing with the very same case. Legal insanity, for instance, is very different from medical insanity. Physicians may diagnose a man as sick; judges may treat him as a criminal. Medically he may be an invalid; legally he may go to prison for life or, in some countries, he will be hanged. Similarly, one of the several difficulties about humour is that people approached it from several angles. Aristotle looked at it from an aesthetic point of view, Bergson as a philosopher and Freud as a psychologist. It is the story of rain, all over again. You may know many things about humour; you may use it with deadly or uproarious effect; you may enjoy it or earn your bread with it; you may classify it into comedy, wit, joke, satire, irony, mimicry and so on almost indefinitely and you may discover penetrating truths about it. But you still do not know what it is. Similarly, physicists can produce electricity; they know all about it; with its help they can travel in the air, on land or on the water; they can dig tunnels, remove mountains, transmit messages over thousands of miles; they may reach the moon and build miraculous computers; they can lighten our darkness and cure the sick with it; but they do not know what electricity is. Let us, then, try another approach and seek an answer by way of elimination: what humour is not ? The more famous treatises on the subject we read, the nearer we come to our aim. Indeed, the most reliable general definition of humour would be: humour is not what the great minds of humanity have said it was. English Humour for Beginners Bergson’s book on Laughter is excellent reading – much better than its summaries. It is full of diversions and the diversions are the best part of it: funny, witty, often brilliant. What he has to say on the main subject, however, is occasionally downright silly. Bergson’s main ideas are elasticity, adaptability and the élan vital . The opposite of these, inelasticity and rigidity, are laughable, indeed one definition of the laughable is ‘something mechanical encrusted upon the living’. That means, as Arthur Koestler pointed out, that the funniest things in the world according to Bergson are the automaton, and the puppet on a string, the Jack-in-a-box, etc. Koestler said, in effect, that if Bergson was right, Egyptian statues, Byzantine mosaics, epileptic fits, even other people’s heartbeats would turn our lives into perpetual merriment. Bergson goes on to analyse all varieties of humour, and to find that there is an element of inelasticity in everything that is funny. This is an intellectual exercise and people of my generation, used to watching Marxist ideologists performing on the flying – or lying – trapeze, explaining that poverty is riches, compulsory silence is freedom of speech and oppression is liberty find nothing extraordinary in it. Many of us have learnt the trick. Give us an attractive-sounding, apparently clever idea and we will apply it to anything. It is an easy exercise and Bergson does it brilliantly. In the course of his reasoning we find statements such as: all clothes are intrinsically ridiculous. Happy is the man who looks at his socks in the morning and is cheered up for the rest of the day. He also finds physical deformity funny, if it can be successfully imitated. A hunchback resembles a man who holds himself badly, so he is funny. A black man is also funny because he looks as if he has covered his face with soot. Bergson asks us: why do we laugh at a head of hair which has changed from dark to blonde? But do we? Personally I don’t. What, he demands, is comic about a rubicund nose? Nothing, if he asks me. Why do we laugh at a public speaker who sneezes at a crucial point of his speech? Where lies the comic element in a quotation from a funeral oration: ‘He was virtuous and plump’? It lies, Bergson explains, in the fact that our attention is suddenly called from the soul to the body. Any incident, we are told, is comic, if it calls attention to a person’s physical qualities, when it is the moral side that really concerns us. This is utter balderdash and offensive balderdash into the bargain. Physical deformity is not funny under any circumstances, however easily it can be imitated. It is no good trying to fathom why a black man looks funny. He does not look funnier than a white man or a Chinese and I know several people who went to Amin’s Uganda, which is full of black people, and failed to roar with laughter even once, from dawn to dusk. He also says: an individual is comic who goes his own way without troubling himself to get into touch with his fellow beings. ‘It is the part of laughter to reprove his absent-mindedness and wake him out of his dream.’ There may be a great deal of truth in the suggestion that some of the great comic characters, like Don Quixote, were not adjusted to reality. But this is not to say that all of them are unadjusted, from the women in Lysistrata to Bertie Wooster. And why bring absent-mindedness into it? Surely, absent-mindedness is not an indispensable element of humour, except in those overworked professor jokes. Don Quixote may have been maladjusted; he was not absent-minded. Bergson’s worst failure begins with his doctrine that laughter is always corrective, intended to humiliate. So far so good; the aggressive, often cruel, nature of laughter is not in doubt. But the deduction he makes from this assumption is that as a result of this it is impossible to laugh at oneself. Whereas it is indeed not only possible, but – for the very survival of the human race – it is necessary. A sense of humour – and I shall return to this theme – begins with one’s ability to laugh at oneself. It might be said in Bergson’s defence that his idea that deformity and Negroes are hilarious is out of date. But he was a twentieth century author – he died during World War II – and he has little excuse for being considerably more out of date than Aristotle. Freud in his discussion of humour declares that an important element is economy : a thesis which I view with doubt. He gives us various jokes in his book: ‘The girl reminds me of Dreyfus. The army doesn’t believe in her innocence.’ This may be the funniest way of calling a woman a whore but not, surely, the most economical? He tells us about two American businessmen of doubtful honesty who had their portraits painted. When a famous critic saw the two of them hanging side by side, all he said was: ‘Where is the Saviour?’ It was a witty way of calling the two gentlemen thieves, but was it an economical one? Freud says that not all wit is aggressive and he distinguishes between harmless and tendentious wit. Harmless wit gives simple pleasure, tendentious wit a further pleasure, that of aggression and humiliation. In tendentious Freud has made a mistake here; all wit is aggressive, even the so-called harmless wit, when closely examined. Freud also tells us that a joke is the most social of all the mental functions that aim at yielding pleasure. A joke, he says, often calls for three persons and the completion of a joke often requires the participation of someone else. Jokes and dreams – he goes on – have grown up in quite different regions of mental life. A dream still remains a wish; a joke is developed play. Dreams retain their connection with the major interests of life; jokes aim at a small yield of pleasure. Dreams serve predominantly for the avoidance of pain or distress; jokes for the attainment of pleasure. But all our mental activity converges on these two aims. When the poor humorist is determined to learn something from a philosopher – to learn how to make a joke – he finds himself in deep waters. He feels like crying and running away. Koestler in his Act of Creation draws two diagrams with zig-zagging lines and explains the whole thing in words: ‘The pattern underlying both stories is the perceiving of a situation or idea L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference, M 1 and M 2 . The event L, in which the two intersect, is made to vibrate simultaneously on two different wave-lengths, as it were. While this situation lasts, L is not merely linked to one associative context, but bisociated with two.’ Am I quoting out of context? Yes. Is this unfair? Certainly. But quoted in context, with absolute fairness, it will not come any nearer helping you to make a rattling good joke. Max Eastman, in the Enjoyment of Laughter , draws another terrifying graph which is just as helpful as Koestler’s. Koestler, however, raises humour to a new pedestal. According to him the jester is the brother of the scientist and the artist. Comic comparison – humour – is intended to make us laugh; objective analogy – science – to make us understand; poetic image – art – to make us marvel. Creative activity – he goes on to say – is trivalent: it can enter the service of humour, discovery or art. Or put it differently: one branch of the creative activity is humour. The jester is the brother of the sage, perhaps a sage himself. We must be grateful to Koestler for the accolade. One of the most recent English writers to deal with this question was Harold Nicolson. * He does not fare any better with definitions than his predecessors. He distinguishes between grim humour, kindly humour, wry humour, pretty humour, sardonic humour, macabre humour and gay humour (using the word in its old sense). But all this is no definition of humour at all. You would not try to define the notion of hat by telling us that there are caps, top-hats, bowlers, panamas, bonnets, fezes, helmets, shakos and topees. Undoubtedly there are; but even a longer and more complete list would leave us uninformed as to what a hat is. But Nicolson tries, in fact, to do a little better than that. He throws together a number of well-known theories on humour, hoping that four theories will tell us more than just one. They do when they complement one another; they tell us less when they contradict one another. He says that there are four theories of laughter (there are, of course, 144 theories of laughter but let us deal with his four). 1. The Theory of Self Esteem. 2. The Theory of Descending Incongruity. 3. The Theory of Release from Constraint and 4. The Theory of Automation as opposed to Free Activity. The theory of self-esteem is based on Hobbes’s famous dictum on ‘sudden glory’. It says: ‘… the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory, arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.’ One sub-group of this type of laughter is schadenfreude , the sheer enjoyment of the misery of others. Nicolson is very proud of the fact that the word schadenfreude does not exist in English but I cannot decide whether this proves the nobility of the English character or the poverty of the English language. La Rochefoucauld agrees with Hobbes, when he remarks that ‘in the misfortunes of our friends there is always something that pleases us.’ Harold Nicolson’s second category is ‘the descending incongruity’ which is Herbert Spencer’s phrase. You may wonder what descending incongruity means and when you are told it occurs ‘when consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small’, you may go on wondering. It never works the other way round, we are warned. Spencer and Nicolson throw some light on all this: for example, when people make elaborate preparations for fireworks, guests are protected from danger etc, and then there is no glorious and colourful display in the sky, just a faint and feeble sputter, that causes general laughter. When Spencer says that the theory does not work the other way round, he is probably right. When there is a sudden explosion, without any fussy preparations, which kills twenty-seven people and injures another fifty-two, this does not cause general merriment. Then comes the ‘release from constraint’. Boys dismissed from school will enjoy their freedom. With the last point, ‘mechanical rigidity’, we have already dealt when discussing Bergson. Nicolson’s four theories have at least the merit of all-inclusiveness. He takes four well-known and oft-repeated theories and instead of choosing one as the right and only true creed, he throws them together. But even this formidable package tells us very little. Even if his four categories are funny (and they are not) we laugh at many things not included in them. While we may have learnt a great deal about humour from these eminent thinkers, and have enriched ourselves with most profound ideas, we have still failed to reach a definition. The first Lord Birkenhead, then still F. E. Smith, was once told by a dull and pompous judge: ‘Even after your speech, Mr Smith, I am none the wiser.’ Smith replied: ‘Not wiser, my Lord, but better informed.’ This is our position, too. We are much better informed; but not any wiser. Ferenc Molnár, the great Hungarian playwright and equally great connoisseur of good coffee, once said, after drinking a cup of the suspicious-looking black liquid called coffee which was available in Budapest after the First World War: ‘It contains one good thing, one bad thing and a mystery. The good thing is that it contains no chicory; the bad thing is that it contains no coffee. And the mystery is: what makes it black?’ The same with humour. The good thing is that it’s amusing; the bad thing is that it’s aggressive; the mystery is: what the hell are we really laughing about? English Humour for Beginners What Humour Really is Not Perhaps you will sneer at my statement that – after reading many books on the subject and giving it a great deal of thought – I still have no idea what humour is; and sneer even more when I try to convince any readers that no one else knows what it is, either. You will conclude that I am too slow; too dim. I fail to understand what many others have managed to grasp. Possibly. I recall an old story which is also about explaining something very difficult to understand. A blind man asks a young girl what milk is. ‘Milk?’ asks the girl, astonished. ‘Yes, milk. You see, I’m blind and I just cannot imagine what milk is like.’ ‘Well, milk is white.’ ‘My dear girl,’ says the old man, ‘I am old and I have been blind all my life. I just don’t know what white means.’ ‘Oh, but it’s easy to explain,’ says the girl helpfully. ‘A swan is white.’ ‘It’s easy to say that a swan is white. But I have never seen a swan.’ ‘It has a curved neck.’ ‘Curved?’ sighs the old man. ‘It’s easy for you to say “curved”. But I have no idea what curved is.’ The girl lifts her arm, bends her wrist forward like a swan’s neck. ‘Feel it,’ she says. ‘That’s curved.’ The old man feels the girl’s arm, touches the curved wrist several times and exclaims joyfully: ‘Thank God! Now at last I know what milk is.’ That’s it exactly. The same with humour. We know (from Bergson) that it is ‘something mechanical encrusted upon the living’, that there is an element of inelasticity in it; that it is always corrective and means to humiliate. We also know (from Freud) that sometimes it is and does, sometimes it isn’t and doesn’t. We know (from Koestler) that the idea L underlies all funny stories in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference M 1 and M 2 . Having read, and absorbed, all this and a lot more, the more intelligent and perceptive among us touch the curved wrists of Bergson, Freud, Koestler, Nicolson, etc, several times and then utter the Eureka-cry: ‘Thank God! Now, at last, I know what humour is.’ English Humour for Beginners Cruel or Kind? Now that I have succeeded in muddling my readers with the preliminaries and premises, we can proceed from the general to the particular. Not having understood what humour is, we shall find it much easier to understand what English Humour is not. The English are more easygoing about definitions and first principles than the Continentals, and the English are right. They hold with John Stuart Mill that: ‘It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition where the ideas suggested by a term are already as determinate as practical purposes require.’ Humour is humour, they (and I) say – and go on examining its English subdivision. Harold Nicolson in his already-mentioned book writes: ‘I shall consider whether the sense of humour is in fact an English monopoly and if so whether it is transitory or permanent.’ It is generally assumed (wrongly) that a sense of humour is a purely and exclusively human quality. Only humans have a sense of humour; and all humans have some sort of a sense of humour. So make no mistake: the question that Nicolson asks here is whether the English are the only members of the human race on earth and if so why are aliens so inhuman? The result of his exploration, not surprisingly, is that yes, only the English are human, although he does not quite say it in so many words. What he says is this: ‘Englishmen regard their sense of humour as cosy, comfortable, contemplative, lazy and good-humoured.’ How a sense of humour can be good-humoured and lazy are questions on which we need not dwell. But to me the English sense of humour also looks cruel, not particularly witty, childish and often vicious. Such things have been said before and they puzzled Nicolson. How is it – he asks – that to foreigners the English sense of humour seems to be atrabilious and dour? Taine (quoted by Nicolson) remarked more than a century ago: ‘The man who jests in England is seldom kindly and never happy.’ Indeed, Englishmen have always been fond – and proud – of saying that they take their pleasures sadly. Taine added: ‘For people of another race [English humour] is disagreeable; our nerves find it too sharp and bitter.’ This hardly fits in with Nicolson’s view of the English character. The English national characteristics are, according to him: good humour, tolerance, ready sympathy, compassion; an affection for nature, animals, children; a fund of common sense; a wide and generous gift for fancy; a respect for individual character rather than for individual intelligence; a dislike of extremes, of overemphasis and boastfulness; a love of games; diffidence; shyness; laziness; optimism. This self-portrait of the English does not reflect a dislike of boastfulness – but the English know how to boast modestly. A lot of what Nicolson says is true, of course, but what about a few other traits of English character? Cruelty? Conceit? Snobbery? An incurable feeling of superiority? Dislike of everything foreign and strange? A stick-in-the-mud traditionalism and abhorrence of everything new? Humour – like beauty – is in the beholder’s eye. But the beholder’s eye is determined by the beholder’s character, so we might as well have a quick look at some relevant aspects of the English character. English Humour for Beginners Changing or Permanent? When I first came to England I was struck by the English: their outlook on life, their humour, their phlegm, their affected and real superiority, their insularity and their aloofness from the rest of the human race. Their impact on me was overwhelming. I have lived through exciting times, like everybody else of my generation, but the most important, most formative and most significant event in my life was my emigration: to be transplanted from the coffee-houses of Budapest to the cricket grounds of England is a shocking experience for a man who knows how to drink coffee but has no idea how to play cricket. I described my impression of the English in an early book called How to be an Alien , which most people regarded as humorous although it was in fact a desperate cri de cœur , a forlorn cry for help. Because my first impression was so overwhelming, the picture in my mind does not change easily. Yet I have to ask myself: is England still the same country which I set foot on (and which set foot on me) in 1938? Has the English character changed out of recognition (as many people say) or is it permanent and unchangeable (as others maintain)? If it has changed, in what way? National character does not change with the rapidity of the weather. You cannot say that the British national character was sunny in the second half of September, 1938, and cloudy and turbulent in the first week of April, 1980. But you can observe tendencies, note changes and recognize trends. National character, like individual character, is partly inherited, partly formed by the environment. Whether one or the other plays a greater part in character formation, and what the exact ratio is, need not concern us here. As the circumstances – the environment – of the British have changed since the war, the national character has also changed. The three cardinal events of the last forty years in the history of Britain were: the winning of the war, the loss of the Empire and the shift in the power structure in British society. What has been the effect of these events? Was it beneficial or detrimental? The answer to the second question is: both. Under stress, good people become better, bad people become worse. The winning of the war left the least impression on the British character. They were used to winning wars. They knew it had been touch and go – as on many occasions before – but muddling through was very much in the British line and they were also used to being lucky. At the end of the war they realized – it was not difficult – that the United States and the Soviet Union were much greater powers but Britain was still a leading world power enjoying good-will and influence, a permanent member of the Security Council, the centre of a great Empire and enjoying tremendous prestige. The loss of the Empire was a different matter and a great shock. Britain ceased to be a world power, one of the top nations, the supreme arbiter. The rest of the world was not there just to keep her in luxury. There were two basic reactions to this event. One group was ready to face realities and indeed even unrealities, since enjoying disasters and gloom is a good old British habit. Britain, according to them, was now about as important as Portugal – another former Imperial power. This group kept making jokes about losing India but keeping Gibraltar. They were altogether much too self-effacing and self-belittling. The other group acted as if nothing had happened. After all, it was not the Empire that made Britain; Britain made the Empire. For them Britain has remained all-powerful, the top nation, just because the British are the British – magnificent, inimitable, quaint. Palmerston is still Foreign Secretary, recalcitrant European tribal chiefs ought to be birched. The poorer the country became, the deeper it sank into the economic morass, the louder these people have beaten their chests, the more xenophobic, racist, conceited, class-conscious, snobbish and insular they have become. The third great change, the shift in the power structure, affects the national character in two ways. If I may quote myself, I have said somewhere else: Britain is the society where the ruling class does not rule, the working class does not work and the middle class is not in the middle. Social classes are on the move and classes on the move are always bloody awful: desperate, bitter and paranoid if they move downwards, power-hungry, gloating, revengeful and self-conscious if they move upwards. A lot can be said against a hereditary aristocracy in a stable society but at least they are secure, self-confident and believe in themselves, however unjustified such a belief may be. The second trouble is that the British working class is probably the least well-educated in Western Europe. I was struck by this fact when I first came here and still cannot get over it. Trade union experts told me then that education was a long-term affair; but forty years is a long term and a lot could have been achieved between then and now. Then they were engaged in gaining the next ‘substantial rise’ in wages; they are engaged in the same battle today. The British working class has, of course, a great deal of natural intelligence but the best brains opt out and forget their working-class origins (except in their memoirs where it makes good reading) and the second eleven become trade union leaders and lead their battalions from behind, according to rules and principles learnt during the thirties. The state of education is probably worse today than it was forty years ago and when you see the general level of working-class people in, say, Sweden or Germany and think of our own, you want to weep at the ignorance and backwardness of ours. The result is that there are a million and a half unemployed in Britain	211,866
How to Analyze People with Dark Psychology 3 Books in 1 Dark Psychology and Manipulation, How to Read People Like a Book and... (Kingler, Christopher) (Z-Library).epub	Unknown How to Analyze People with Dark Psychology 3 Books in 1 Dark Psychology and Manipulation, How to Read People Like a Book and Psychological Warfare. Understanding Human Behavior for a Better Life CHRISTOPHER KINGLER Unknown © Copyright 2021 by - All rights reserved. The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book; either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. This book is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up-to-date, and reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. Unknown TABLE OF CONTENTS DARK PSYCHOLOGY AND MANIPULATION Introduction Chapter 1: What is Dark Psychology and How Does it Work? Chapter 2: How to Use Dark Psychology in Your Daily Life Chapter 3: Dangerous Dark Personalities Chapter 4: The Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad Chapter 5: Manipulation and Deception Chapter 6: Manipulative Personalities Chapter 7: Personality Traits of Victims Chapter 8: Emotional Manipulation Tactics Chapter 9: Mind Control/Brainwashing Chapter 10: Neuro-Linguistic Programming Chapter 11: How to Deal with Manipulative People Chapter 12: How to Defend Yourself from Manipulation Techniques Chapter 13: How to Avoid Being Manipulated Chapter 14: Myths and Misconceptions About Dark Psychology Chapter 15: Common Cons Worldwide and The Dark Psychology Behind Them Chapter 16: The Internet and Dark Psychology Conclusion HOW TO READ PEOPLE LIKE A BOOK Introduction Part 1: Verbal And Paraverbal Communication Chapter 1: Voice Part 2: How To Understand the Body: Interpret the Most Common Signals Chapter 2: What Is Non-Verbal Communication? Chapter 3: How to Read Facial Expressions Chapter 4: The Eyes Chapter 5: The Mouth Chapter 6: Interpreting Body Gestures Chapter 7: Posture Chapter 8: Breathing Chapter 9: The Hands Chapter 10: The Chest and Shoulders Chapter 11: The Vital or Proxemic Space Chapter 12: How to Understand Body Language: Interpret The Most Hidden Signals (Advanced Techniques) Part 3: Techniques to Identify If a Person is Lying Chapter 13: Beware of Bluffing Chapter 14: How to Seduce and Attract Someone Chapter 15: What Really Motivates Us? Chapter 16: Personality Types Chapter 17: Practical Application Chapter 18: How to Fake Your Body Language Conclusion PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE Introduction Chapter 1: Why You Should Know the Art of Psychological Warfare Chapter 2: What Is Psychological Warfare Theory? Chapter 3: The Greatest Exponents of the Art of Psychological Warfare Chapter 4: What Can We Learn From Sun Tzu and Machiavelli? Chapter 5: Dangerous Dark Personalities Chapter 6: The Psychology of Deception, Influence and Domination Chapter 7: The Art of Blackmail, Manipulation and Brainwashing Chapter 8: Manipulative Political Propaganda and Media Tactics Chapter 9: What Is Psyop? Chapter 10: Why Do People Join Cults? How Do Cults Work? Chapter 11: Psychological Warfare and Strategic Thinking at Work Chapter 12: Psychological Warfare and Strategic Thinking in Relationships and the Power of Words Chapter 13: Psychological Warfare and Strategic Thinking For Entrepreneurs and Business Chapter 14: Defense Strategies In Psychological Warfare Chapter 15: Train Your Mind To Be Calm In Every Situation Chapter 16: Persuasion vs Manipulation Chapter 17: Earn Respect Conclusion Unknown DARK PSYCHOLOGY AND MANIPULATION CHRISTOPHER KINGLER Unknown INTRODUCTION The combination of dark psychology and manipulation is perhaps the most sinister, malevolent, evil, and damaging form of controlling behavior. It can be life-threatening to the victim. It is characterized by extreme harmfulness and premeditated deception. This book aims to give some understanding of the dark psychology and manipulation process. It explains how people can be induced into doing things that are harmful to themselves or others. Understanding what is happening in such situations can help break the cycle of control. It will also help prevent such situations from happening to another person again if it has happened to you at some stage in your life. There is mounting concern about the rise in controlling behavior by people in positions of trust such as teachers, religious leaders, politicians, and employers. Some unscrupulous people use creative mind games to control others for their own gain. This can include forcing someone to do things against their will or stealing their money or property. It can also include more serious abuse such as rape or even murder. Such acts go way beyond bullying, which can be a passing phase for some perpetrators. Dark psychology and manipulation instead involves long-term abuse and the deliberate use of false information to deceive a victim into believing that they are immune to being exploited by another person. Many forms of mind control involve the suppression or blocking of information to the conscious mind of the victim. This enables them to be exploited by unscrupulous people. Examples of Dark Psychology and Manipulation Include: a) Being forced into doing things against your will for no apparent reason b) Having your money or possessions stolen by manipulating you into giving them to another person for no apparent reason c) Being exploited for sex by a person that claims to love you but in reality does not care at all about you d) Being forced to take illegal drugs by being told that they will help you with an illness e) Being forced into illegal activities or being forced to keep silent about them f) Being deceived into going along with something because you are led to believe it is for your own good or the good of others g) Being forced to not tell anyone about a situation because you are being told that it is for a good and noble cause h) Being deceived into thinking that a certain person would never manipulate you because they are your friend, relation, or religious leader i) Being told that if you leave a bad situation or relationship, then something worse may happen to you j) Being denied help because of such things as your age, gender, religion, or culture k) Being told that you are the only person that can save yourself l) Being encouraged to stay in a bad situation because it is less stressful than leaving it If you are involved in any of these situations, then this book may be able to help you. It explains some of the techniques that can be used in these situations. This book will mainly describe dark psychology and manipulation from the victim’s point of view. However, there are also examples of how such methods can be used by perpetrators to exploit others for their own gain. Unknown CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS DARK PSYCHOLOGY AND HOW DOES IT WORK? What is Dark Psychology? Psychology underpins everything in our lives, from advertising to finance, crime to religion, and even from hate to love. Someone who can understand these psychological principles holds the key to human influence. Learning all the different principles of psychology is not necessary. Start with the lessons on these pages, and you'll have a solid foundation. You have to be able to read people, understand what makes them tick, and understand why they may react in ways that may not be normally expected. If only a few people understand psychology and how the human mind works, why is it so important to understand? Those who know how the human mind works can use that power and knowledge against you. Dark Psychology Tactics That Are Used Regularly Love Flooding This includes buttering up, praising, or complimenting people to get them to comply with what you want. If you want someone to help you move some items into your home, you may use love flooding to make them feel good, making it more likely that they will help you. A dark manipulator could also make the other person feel attached to them and then get them to do things they may not normally do. Lying Recounting a fictitious version of the situation. It can also involve a partial truth or exaggeration. Love denial This one can be particularly hard on the victim because it can make them feel lost and abandoned by the manipulator. This includes withholding affection and love until you can get what you want out of the victim. Withdrawal This is when the victim is given the silent treatment or is avoided until they meet the other person's needs. Restricting choices The manipulator may give their victims access to some options, but they do this to distract them from the options they don't want the victim to make. Semantic manipulation This is a technique where the manipulator will use some commonly known words that have accepted meanings by both parties in a conversation. But then they will tell the victim, later on, that they had meant something completely different when they used it. Reverse psychology This is when you tell someone to do something in one manner, knowing that they will do the opposite. But the opposite action is what the manipulator wanted to happen in the first place. Who Will Deliberately Use Dark Tactics? Many different people may choose to use these dark tactics against you. They can be found in various aspects of your life, which is why it is so important to learn how to stay away from them. Some of the people who may use some of these dark psychology tactics deliberately include: Narcissists These individuals will have a bloated sense of self-worth, and have a need to make others believe that they are superior. To meet their desires of being worshipped and adored by everyone they meet, they will use persuasion and dark psychology. Sociopaths Sociopaths are charming, intelligent, and persuasive. But they only act this way to get what they want. They lack any emotions, and they are not able to feel any remorse. This means they have no issue using dark psychology tactics to get what they want, including creating superficial relationships. Politicians With the help of dark psychology, a politician could convince someone to cast votes for them merely by convincing them that their point of view is the right one. Salespeople Not all salespeople will use shady tactics against you. But it is possible that some, especially those who are regularly getting high sales numbers, will not think twice about using dark persuasion to manipulate people. Leaders Throughout history, there have been plenty of leaders who have used dark psychology to get their team members, subordinates, and citizens to do what they want. Selfish people This could be any person you come across who will make sure that their own needs are put before anyone else's. They aren't concerned about others, and they will let others forego their benefits so that they can benefit themselves. If the situation helps them, it is okay if it helps someone else. But if someone will be the loser, it will be the other person and not them. How Is Dark Psychology Used Today? When you were a child, you would see how adults, especially those close to you, behaved. When you were a teenager, the mind and your ability to understand the behaviors around you were expanded substantially. You were able to watch others use dark psychology tactics and succeed. Using these tactics may have been unintentional in the beginning, but when you found that it worked to get you what you wanted, you would start to use those tactics intentionally. Some people, such as politicians, public speakers, and salespeople, are trained to use these types of tactics to get what they want. Broad, Practical and Theoretical Observations Murder, rape, incest, and abuse are all words that can send chills up your spine. As a culture, we have saturated ourselves with contrary ideals for entertainment purposes. We sit and watch horror movies, crime shows, and reality shows, diving into the deviants’ minds. The darkness within becomes an obsession for some, and though they don't re-enact or find the actions preferable, there is a connection that few want to recognize outwardly. While most human beings have a buffer in their mind, which helps us know fact from fiction and right from wrong, some lack it. Imagination is one thing. Combining people's worst fears to find what scenario can be the scariest and most grabbing is something fiction writers and creators often do. Often, though, when watching these dark psyches at work on the screen in front of you, the human mind finds a specific recognition of why the predator or villain does what they do. Some movies and books even prey on the idea of the worst parts of the human condition. Depraved and distraught, the father who witnessed his family's murders climbs out of his ominous depression to wreak havoc on those that committed the acts to begin with. There is satisfaction for people in the revenge of heinous acts. But then, doesn't that apply the same dark psyche to the perpetrator, regardless of the reasoning behind it? Dark psychology has no pointed targets and cares little for the reasoning behind the actions. It is the actual act of manipulation, deceit, and harm that carries the dark psyche's weight. The idea of revenge has been around for a very long time. Prominent examples of the "eye for an eye" concept are still in existence today. The death penalty is one such example, though its root is broad and doesn't currently encourage one person's private actions to another. The government is in charge of carrying out the punishment. But long before that, laws were erected in civilizations that based themselves on the idea of revenge. Psychological Definition The human condition is studied continuously, broken down, dissected, and used in the psychological community. Dark psychology subscribes to this as well. However, in dark psychology studies, its focus relates to the nature of the predator vs. prey relationship of the human condition. Psychologists focusing on the dark psyche move their research toward people who perpetrate crimes or abnormal activity with little or no instinct or care for the social norms. Most people have that buffer protecting others from these ideals, while the perpetrators lack this ability to keep control of their most basic instincts. You may be thinking that basic instincts do not include the often-heinous acts performed by someone with a dark psyche. And while you are correct, there is a significant difference to the .01% of criminal acts performed by dark minds, and if you think about the most primal humans from millions of years ago, they lacked one major player that we all deem reasonable. The very early primitive human beings did not have a societal construct that had been bored into them from birth, augmented with religious ideals, and regulated by high functioning governments. Their most primal instinct was survival. In a world fraught with danger, both natural and nurturing, the human mind protected the body at all costs. There were most likely times that manipulation and deceit were committed in an uncalled-for situation. However, our brains are wired to perceive danger and either act on that or flee. Survival back then had more to do with the ability to fight off animals and find food, water, and shelter. There were no other societal norms. Since our brains are the same brains inside the Neanderthal man, our perception of danger is the only thing that has changed. In a world where almost everyone has food, water, and shelter at their disposal, the fight for those types of situations is less frequent. In today's society, we see the instinct of survival manipulated into a course where we fight for better, and more. Frequently the crimes committed outside of the realm of revenge or the .01% are based solely on those theories. Unknown CHAPTER 2: HOW TO USE DARK PSYCHOLOGY IN YOUR DAILY LIFE How Psychology Can Improve Your Life The Following Are Some of the Top Ten Realistic Uses for Psychology in Regular Life Get Motivated Whether your goal is to stop smoking, lose weight, or learn a new language, some training from psychology provides pointers for staying motivated. To maintain your motivation, make use of some of the tips derived from research in cognitive and educational psychology: Introduce new or novel factors to keep your interest high. Vary the order of things to help stave off boredom. Study new matters that build on your present understanding. Set clear goals that might be at related to the assignment. Enhance Your Management Abilities Having true leadership abilities will, in all likelihood, be vital sometime in your existence. Now, not all of us are born leaders, but some easy suggestions taken from mental studies can help you improve your leadership capabilities. One of the most famous research papers on this topic looked at three distinct management styles. Primarily based on the findings of this and subsequent studies, here are several tips for when you are in a management position: Offer clear steering but permit group contributors to voice opinions. Communicate possible answers to troubles with contributors in the group. Focus on stimulating ideas and praise creativity. Be a Better Communicator Conversation involves a whole lot more than just the way you speak or write. Research indicates that nonverbal indicators make up a big portion of our interpersonal communications. Some key strategies encompass the following: Use proper eye contact. Start noticing nonverbal indicators in others. Use your tone of voice to boost your message. Learn to Better Understand Others Just like nonverbal communication, your capacity to comprehend your emotions and the feelings of those around you perform an essential role in your relationships and professional lifestyle. The term ‘emotional intelligence’ refers to your potential to comprehend each of your emotions in addition to those of other human beings. What can you do to become more emotionally stable? Recall a few of the following techniques: Cautiously assess your own emotional reactions. Record your enjoyment and emotions in a journal. Try to see situations from the perspective of a different person. Make Wise Choices Studies in cognitive psychology supply a wealth of statistics about decision making. By making use of these techniques, you can discover ways to make wiser choices. Next time you have to make a huge decision, consider the following techniques: Try using the “Six Thinking Hats” technique, which involves seeing the situation from multiple points of view, including rational, emotional, intuitive, creative, advantageous, and dark. Recall the negatives and positives of each choice. Appoint a grid evaluation approach that offers a score for how a selected decision will fulfill unique requirements you may have. Enhance Your Memory Have you ever wondered why you can remember the precise information of childhood events yet forget the call of the new customer you met yesterday? Research on how we form new memories and how and why we forget has caused some of the findings that can be implemented without delay in your daily life. What are some methods you can use to improve your memory? Develop an awareness of the data. Rehearse what you have discovered. Do away with distractions. Make Wiser Financial Decisions Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky performed a chain of research that looked at how humans manipulate uncertainty and danger while making decisions. One study looks at how workers could more than triple their financial savings by making use of some of the following strategies: Don’t procrastinate. Start saving now. Commit earlier to dedicating your future profits to your retirement savings. Try to be aware of non-public biases that may result in dark money choices. Get Higher Grades The next time you are tempted to whine about pop quizzes, midterms, or finals, consider that research has confirmed that taking exams honestly helps you better consider what you have learned, even if the material in question wasn't on the test. Studies discovered that repeated test-taking might be a higher memory aid than studying. College students who were tested again and again were able to remember 61% of the content while the ones within the control group recalled an average of 40%. How can you observe those findings to your lifestyles? When researching new data, test yourself frequently to cement what you have learned into your memory. Become More Effective It sometimes looks as if there are hundreds of books, blogs, and magazine articles telling us how to get more completed in an afternoon. But how much of this advice is based on real studies? As an example, think about the variety of times you have heard that multitasking can help you become more productive. Studies have discovered that trying to carry out multiple missions at the same time severely impairs pace, accuracy and productivity. What lessons from psychology can you use to increase your productivity? Consider the following: Avoid multitasking while completing complicated or dangerous obligations. Focus on at the task at hand. Eliminate distractions. Be Healthier Psychology also can be a useful device for improving your day-to-day health. From approaches that encourage workouts and better nutrition to new remedies for depression, the sector of fitness psychology gives a wealth of beneficial strategies that can help you to be healthier and happier. Research has shown that both daylight and synthetic light can reduce the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder. Studies have demonstrated that exercise can contribute to better mental well-being. Studies have determined that helping people understand the dangers of bad behaviors can lead to healthier choices. Unknown CHAPTER 3: DANGEROUS DARK PERSONALITIES What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the dark triad? Probably some fictional realm created by Hollywood, right? Well, this is a crucial concept that ties together all aspects of dark psychology. The dark triad, in a nutshell, is the theme that houses the three most destructive and harmful psychological personality traits known to man. In the following pages, we shall seek to bring these traits to light and better understand them for adequate preparation against them. By the time we are done, you will realize that all other themes of dark psychology stem from this same theme. These traits are psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The majority of individuals will associate the description of a psychopath as a murderous person, and a narcissist as a human who is obsessed with themselves. There is, however, much more to these antisocial disorders than just the stereotypes. These concepts must be respected and understood for their power to become apparent. Machiavellianism This is a technique that traces its origins from the famous political philosopher known as Machiavelli. In his established work on influence and political power, The Prince , Machiavelli shares his ideas, principles, and tactics serve as a sort of blueprint for those individuals who might be seeking to understand influence throughout history. We then ask ourselves what this Machiavellian person is and how he comes about. What puts this particular trait on the map is the manipulator's affinity to only focus on one's self-interest at all times, the exercise of ruthless power and cruelty, one's understanding of the importance of image. In a nutshell, Machiavellian individuals are people whose approach to life is widely strategic, meaning that their actions are usually well thought out and assessed. You may simply identify a Machiavellian by their speech, which often revolves around something like, “How will this benefit me, and how will this result impact my public reputation?” Psychopathy To tell you in black and white what psychopathy is would be difficult, but the fundamental definition of what psychopathy is, or rather who a psychopath is, is that particular individual who seems to be suffering from a type of psychological disorder that heavily involves a superficial charm, impulsivity and a lack of commonly held “human” emotions such as empathy and remorse. These psychopaths can be regarded as the most dangerous people on the face of the earth as they are the best examples of two-faced sons of bitches. Pardon my language. When most people hear the mention of a psychopath, the first image that usually comes to mind is of a haggard-looking individual wielding a machete and wearing a mask. But the reality is far from this. They are most likely to be very handsome strangers who win over their victims by being just the right amount of charming before eventually ruining or even ending their victim’s lives. Surprisingly, based on a series of tests, experiments, and observations, it has been discovered that a large number of these individuals exist at the helm of the business world. The majority of people are just now beginning to view psychopathy as more of a problem to the whole of society. Psychopaths are usually programmed in such a way that they can survive in any field they chose to go into. This is mainly attributed to the indifferent views they have regarding normal human feelings of love, compassion, and so forth. Narcissism If you ask anyone who they think a narcissist is, I can bet that the most likely answer you is that of an individual who simply loves themselves. This is along the correct lines but not accurate enough, particularly when narcissism is viewed through the dark triad lens. You can have self-love without being a narcissist. What are some of the differences between a highly self-esteemed individual and someone selfish to the extent that they are regarded in the dark triad range? Someone who meets narcissism's medical diagnostic requirements, to the point that they are deemed to have a psychological disorder, is likely to display a variety of the following characteristics continuously: They are usually have an inflated sense of self-worth, which manifests itself in several ways. These include seeing themselves as the most special and important person to have ever existed, believing themselves of a higher status than “normal people.” This behavior is often reflected in their sense of self-worth. Sadism Those who exhibit sadism enjoy hurting other people. Physical or mental, it does not matter—either is enjoyable for the sadist. These people will manipulate others just for the fun of it, and enjoy watching the fallout after the fact. For example, someone who constantly causes problems between friends, telling one friend one thing while telling the other friend the opposite just to cause issues and watch the fallout could be a sadist. Characteristics of Dark Psychology Traits Machiavellian We know that a Machiavellian person is a political schemer who is obsessed with his public image. These individuals are considered the most cold-hearted in their pursuit of self-interest above all else. What then could be said about the behavior of these types of individuals? Due to their master level skill of masking their true intentions from the public eye, their behaviors can be hard to decipher. For most individuals who do not fulfill Machiavellianism's clinical definition, their public persona is generally a reflection of their true personal self. Everyone polishes their image and conduct in public a little, but in general, the outward persona of most people is nothing more than a polished portrait of who they are. There is often have a fine line between what they truly are and the person they mold themselves to be in the public eye. Perhaps the best example to be given here is that of serial killers. Examples of such a distinction between intent and appearance can be found in areas less extreme than serial murder. There are countless tales of business leaders who ruthlessly cut jobs and pursue profit over people whenever possible. In terms of Machiavellianism, the very best of these bosses can get individuals to buy into the idea that they are behaving by necessity or even compassion! Such leaders can become almost role models for those who only want to serve their wishes, while appearing to be a "person of the people." A willingness to exploit people is another hallmark of Machiavellian individuals. Let us look at an example to have a better understanding of this. A newcomer in a particular office who possesses these Machiavellian traits would see each colleague, boss, or team member as a resource or piece of a puzzle to utilize. The Machiavellian person would see a sequence of strategic threats and weaknesses to handle, exploit, or neutralize instead of seeing others as fellow human beings. This is a big reason why Machiavellians are so conscious of how they are viewed. They understand that this outward depiction is the key to making an impact and effectively exploiting everybody they encounter. Psychopathic It is necessary to know how this group of individuals manifest themselves in order to detect them early and put up the necessary defenses against them. Charm is one of a psychopathic person's most prevalent behaviors. It must be understood that this charm is superficial rather than real. If you think of a genuinely charming individual from your lifetime, you will probably acknowledge that they have favorable characteristics that underpin outward behavioral displays. However, if an individual genuinely displays a charming personality as an expression of kindness, they should not be labeled as a psychopath. Psychopaths can show all the outward indications of charm such as physical appeal, obvious warmth, and interest in others. The inward motive behind these outward displays is why it's such a red flag. Psychopaths see charm as part of an equation. The manipulator usually asks himself if displaying a particular emotion towards the victim will prove to be advantageous for themselves. They are very calculative people who are numb to normal human feelings. Lying is another trait that makes psychopaths stand out. We all lie in our day-to-day lives. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we are all psychopaths. However, it can show a psychopathic personality when coupled with other characteristics. A psychopath can convincingly present lies as reality. Also, psychopaths do not demonstrate outward indications of lying because they do not have any emotional attachment or emotions of shame, guilt, or excitement about their lies. Lying is just "doing what's required at the moment" for psychopaths. Another signature aspect of psychopathy is a lack of impulse control. Most individuals have processes and internal controls that stop them from acting rashly. These mechanisms of prevention are lacking in a psychopath. If a psychopath sees a chance to exploit, they will act without hesitation. This may be murdering someone they want to kill, violating someone they want to rape, or stealing something they want to steal. This cruel impulsiveness makes psychopaths in areas such as the army some of the most dangerous individuals. Narcissistic One of the most prevalent characteristics in almost all narcissists is the fantasies of their absolute power and an elevated sense of importance. Most of these individuals lay blame on the constant praise they got as children while talking about these fantasies. As adults, these individuals will still demand praise from all around them since they have nurtured the feeling of being the most important of their peers to the maximum. The inflated sense of self-worth experienced internally by narcissists also has consequences for their external reality. This typically manifests in two ways—the need for consent praise and criticism of rejection of hate. For the selfish ego, praise and consensus are like oxygen, while criticism and dissent are like poison. Picture a dictator in a hermit state to comprehend what narcissism looks like when taken to its logical conclusion. Such individuals request worship from those over whom they have authority, statue building in their likeness, and full obedience and recognition. Any act of dissent or disagreement shall be punished quickly and brutally. North Korea is an ideal contemporary illustration of narcissism's extreme manifestation. That nation's rulers request god-like reverence and execute and torture anyone who even dares to convey a thought or concept that is not entirely consistent with the formal doctrine of the state. Unknown CHAPTER 4: THE DARK TRIAD AND DARK TETRAD The Dark Tetrad is the name given to a "suite" of personality traits and their combinations that have been suggested to possess predictive qualities about adverse psychopathy-like behavior. The description is based on research on human psychology and the construct of psychopathy. The term "suite" indicates that the traits may be independent of one another yet related and not necessarily found together in all individuals who are characterized as having psychopathy. Both psychologists and the general public have been fascinated by the dark side of human beings for ages. And the only thing that is common among these three traits is that there is a certain level of evil to all of them. These personality traits make it challenging to have a conversation with someone who exhibits them, or deal with them, in general. Things become disagreeable very quickly, and these people are usually very arrogant, volatile, and domineering. Now, coming to the triad, the three constituents are as follows—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The people who have these qualities often have a toxic personality, and having intimate relationships with them is not only complicated but also dangerous to the partner. The personality profiles of these people are created when the three qualities of the Dark Personality Triad overlap. Here is an example that might help you understand better: A woman was once the subject of identity fraud. All her financial instruments like the credit card and her bank accounts were compromised in the process. She lived with her boyfriend in an apartment where she had to pay monthly rent. Naturally, she was under a lot of stress as she was questioned regularly by the FBI, and this caused a tremendous amount of anxiety too. But even after all of this, the culprit couldn't be caught. But she thought that at least her boyfriend was with her in all of this. He was very supportive of her. He also took on the responsibility of paying monthly rent but from the money that the woman gave him. To cheer her up, he brought her gifts from time to time. After a few days, the landlord of the apartment called the woman. He informed her about all the rent that was overdue. It was at that moment that she realized that the actual culprit in all of this was her boyfriend. He was taking the money for the rent but spending it on gifts. She was in complete denial because this was a case of extreme gaslighting. She couldn't believe the fact that it was her lover who was doing this to her. What Does the Dark Triad Mean? So, let us have a more in-depth look into the Dark Triad and what it means. It was in the year 2002 when this term came into existence, and it was coined by Williams and Paulhus. You already know about the three characteristics that constitute this triad, but in this section, we will go into the details. It is said that anyone who has the traits belonging to the Dark Triad is showing subclinical symptoms. If we simplify this, it means that the person is not fully suffering from ASPD—Anti-Social Personality Disorder—or NPD—Narcissistic Personality Disorder—but they are showing some symptoms. You probably all have an idea of what narcissism means, but here is a simplified description of it—it is a state where the person has a feeling of grandiosity, superiority, or entitlement. The person simply thinks that they are superior to everyone around them, and they try to dominate everyone they meet. They are forever in the pursuit of ego gratification. The principal characteristic of Machiavellianism is a manipulatory attitude. People who have this trait are always focused on their own gain in any circumstance whatsoever, and they always focus on their self-interest. They are also very duplicitous and calculating. Lastly, if we are to explain psychopathy in simpler terms, then I would say that it is marked by bold behavior where the person is anti-social and repulsive and shows a lot of callousness. What are the Characteristic Traits of People Belonging to the Dark Triad? I have already explained the three traits of the Dark Triad separately, but it is time that you understand the overall traits of a person who belongs to the Dark Triad. Deception: The first characteristic that can be easily spotted in these people is their deceptive nature. They do not have any humility or honesty. They are greedy and are not sincere at all. When research was conducted on the three personality traits individually, it was found that all those with these traits tend to cheat on their partners or family members when they think they are not going to get caught. On the contrary, when the risk factors were high, it was found that Machiavellians and psychopaths continued to cheat. They are in the habit of continuous lying. On the other hand, if we are talking about narcissists, then instead of being dishonest intentionally, they are more prone to self-deception. Callousness: As you must have understood by now, people who belong to the Dark Triad lack empathy. Research was conducted focusing specifically on affective empathy. Affective empathy simply means the power to respond to the emotions of others properly. The research concluded that Dark Triad personalities lacked affective empathy as well. People with these personalities felt good when they looked at sad people. Similarly, they automatically became sad or angry whenever they saw someone who was positive or happy in their life. Psychopaths were also found to be happy whenever they saw someone in fear. Similarly, both psychopaths and narcissists were found to be happy when they saw the expression of anger on people's faces. Big Five Personality Test: This test focused on the qualities of openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and extraversion (Lewis R. Goldberg, 1992). Now, I just want to clarify something here because most people tend to get it wrong. Charisma and agreeableness are not the same things. Agreeableness is more like compliance, straightforwardness, and trustworthiness. All of these qualities are of the utmost importance when you want to form strong relationships. Conscientiousness was something that was found to be lacking in both psychopaths and Machiavellians. The level of neuroticism was the lowest in the case of psychopaths, and so that is how you conclude them to be the most sinister of all. When it came to extraversion, narcissists were the ones who excelled in this criterion, and that is quite predictable too. Tips to Deal with People Who Have Dark Triad Traits If you think that someone in your life has the traits belonging to the Dark Triad, it can be hectic dealing with them. You have to understand that the process is not easy, but it is possible with patience and the willingness to address these negative behaviors. Handle the Anger: The first step will be to manage their aggression because this is something that is very often seen in people belonging to the Dark Triad. If these situations are not controlled, they can easily defuse into something bigger. It is quite easy to spot when someone is angry, even if it means that they are showing signs of passive-aggressive behavior (ignoring you or sulking). You can talk to them or distance yourself from them for a while, or you can figure out where all of that rage is coming from. Don't Let Them Bully You: This is extremely important. It is not right or healthy if you have to withstand verbal or physical abuse. If you are in such a situation, you have to take a stand against it and take some action. Even if the abuse is indirect, for example, if the person is belittling you or criticizing you unnecessarily, you have to find a way to hold them accountable for their behavior. Identify the Manipulators: We will go into greater detail about identifying manipulators in the next part of the book. But for now, you should know that when someone's Machiavellianism traits take the upper hand, they become manipulators. They will always find some excuse or another for their hurtful behavior and try to make you say yes to things you don't want to do. Learn New Skills: Dealing with people with Dark Triad traits is no cakewalk, and so, you need special skills. It includes increasing your emotional intelligence, and you will learn about it in the latter part of this book. Once you acquire these skills, managing these people becomes easier, and you can spot any kind of unwanted behavior at once. Unknown CHAPTER 5: MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION This chapter delves deeper into the world of dark manipulation and its cohort ‘deception.’ There is always a bit of deceit in every manipulation. We see manipulation every day, and we are familiar with manipulating circumstances to our advantage. Everyone manipulates in a small fashion here or there; it is part of the human condition. Parents are probably the guiltiest in this endeavor. My mother manipulated me into eating green veggies most of my life. But remember, intent always plays an essential role in any interaction. You should always be observant of what motivates this person to manipulate you. What do they want? Manipulations are not as destructive as long as there is balance. So, when does manipulation grow into deception-based manipulation? If manipulation twists the truth, deception breaks it. Deception changes someone’s perception of reality with lies to some gain of the deceiver. This deception is where we enter the realm of dark psychology, and its first tools are deception and manipulation. Dark psychology refers to the skills of manipulation, deception, coercion, and dark persuasions that predators use to get what they want. Covert Manipulation There are many ways covert manipulation tactics can be used to keep power with the manipulator in a relationship. You could fill a stadium with all the tactics and skills out there, but these are the most common: Love Flooding The manipulator showers you with gifts, attention, compliments, and affection to the point that you are almost drowning. This love flooding creates and strengthens the bond between you. Remember, the manipulator is after power, always power, so giving you all of this love and attention, it will be tough for you to say ‘no’, and you will become dependent on it, as well as feel its absence when it is gone. These are tools to bind you to them and make you dependent and compliant. No Love for You Now that you are enticed by the romance and gifts, it is time to take that away. If you do not behave appropriately in a manipulator’s mind and abide by their rules, they will pull out or become absent altogether until you ‘earn’ their attention back. This restriction of love furthers your bond with them as you give up other things to pay special attention to them to win back their devotions. Guilt is the Weapon Manipulators will play upon your emotions and use passive-aggressive behavior. They will not quite confront or argue with you but rather leave subtle hints to get you to behave accordingly. Manipulators will use your empathy and feed it guilt and sarcasm to get you to do what they want. Semantic Manipulation Semantic manipulation refers to the manipulator saying words and then later saying they don’t share the same definition of those words as you do. In this way, they didn’t break the agreement because they simply had a different understanding of it. We all remember that Bill Clinton’s definition of “sexual relations” was not the same as the American public’s definition of “sexual relations,” so, in his mind, he did not commit what he was accused of because the descriptions didn’t match up. Social Embarrassment/Mind Games Social embarrassment is when you are in public with the manipulator, and they demonstrate their superiority through domination tactics to make you look simple or embarrass you. This mind game is part of taking down your self-esteem. Gaslighting Gaslighting is when you know that something occurred, and the other person immediately says “it is all in your mind,” or “that never happened” to make you doubt what you have seen or heard. Nothing rocks self-doubt like gaslighting. It makes you depend on the manipulator to interpret what you see and hear. This behavior is especially insidious and cruel. Those with dark triad personality traits are not the only people that use covert manipulation. It is around us every day. We see it in politicians, lawyers, teachers, you name it. What I am getting at here is there is no real way to stop dark manipulation; the practice of these things isn’t illegal. Knowing about the tactics is only half the battle. The key is to not allow yourself to be manipulated and have the tools to fight back. Now, where does deception fit into this? Deception Deception is hidden behind a mask. It is hard to spot, and you must look at the intent as you receive the information. Deception is getting someone to accept something that is not their accurate belief. Deception has the victim believing in a false reality that the manipulator created. Levels of Deception Advanced. (Run). Advanced deception is used by psychopaths, serial killers, sociopaths, and others with a criminal mindset. They are skilled deceivers with years and years of practice and a persona that is quite likable because they can be whatever they need to be to get what they want. They are social chameleons. They have no problem using you for whatever purpose they need and have no empathy for how you feel about it. This group contains smooth operators that can navigate your emotions as if they live in your head. They are mastery level ninjas at the abuse techniques. If you feel that someone is in your head, they usually are. Above Average. (Run). This group contains narcissists, those with personality disorders, and love-them-and-leave-them types (without the love). They have an established record of using covert manipulation to get what they want; however, you will not know about it because they are very good at hiding who they really are. Their reality is a bit off, and they want to pull you in with them to see things the way that they do. They are also fans of abusive techniques and have little to no empathy for how you feel about things. Slightly Above Average. (Proceed with caution). These are usually people who have personality traits that lead to deception. They typically don’t know that they are behaving deceptively. They don’t seem to connect with why their actions would be considered deceptive. When these deceivers are wrong, they will argue strictly from a place of emotion rather than logic because they understand they can get their way by merely exhausting the person they are talking with. Slightly above-average deceivers are incredibly persistent. Average. (The usual suspects). This group includes the average, everyday Joe. For example, teenage rebels trying to create autonomy and get away with as much as possible. Defiant people fall into this category. They like identifying as rebels, so their deception is far more apparent. They are not nearly as skilled as the advanced or above average deceivers and are usually spotted reasonably quickly if you are looking. Knowing these levels of deception, you help you to recognize what you are dealing with. The University of Florida created a Dirty Dozen rating scale that is a 12-point methodology test that measures the personality traits of the dark psychology triad. The higher the score, the more likely the person is to have those personality traits. We have established how emotional intelligence can play a significant role in progressing yourself and others in the workplace and other areas of life. The Dark Triad operates in direct conflict to that, setting out to unravel everything accomplished through positive goals and twisting it with greed, bullying, and self-indulgence. Michael Douglas in Wall Street is the epitome of a selfish wolf chanting ‘Greed is Good.’ He doesn’t care who he takes down, and any relationship with him is toxic. The movie is fantastic and a must-see, but the character he plays is lethal to any business or association. Remember, these types of people hide who they are and can operate with extreme efficiency, damaging relationships within the workplace and other areas of life. If you see this type of behavior, it should be dealt with quickly before the wolf's teeth are allowed to sink in. Unknown CHAPTER 6: MANIPULATIVE PERSONALITIES You may wonder; what are manipulators trying to do? Why do they put so much work into manipulating others in	463,959
How to Make People Laugh Learn the Science of Laughter to Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends and Improve Your Sense of... (Christopher Kingler) (Z-Library).epub	part0000 part0001 HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH Learn the Science of Laughter to Make a Powerful Impression, Win Friends and Improve Your Sense of Humour Even If You Don’t Think You’re Funny CHRISTOPHER KINGLER part0002 © Copyright 2021 by Christopher Kingler - All rights reserved. The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book; either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. This book is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up-to-date, and reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1: The Science of Laughter Chapter 2: What Happens in Your Brain? Chapter 3: Work on Your Image and Develop Incredible Charisma Chapter 4: Improve Your Humor and Personality Chapter 5: The Art of Self-Deprecating Chapter 6: Turn Your Bio into a Funny Story Chapter 7: Exercises Chapter 8: Know Your Audience Chapter 9: Know the Anatomy of a Joke Chapter 10: Storytelling Chapter 11: Practical Jokes Chapter 12: Situation Comedy Chapter 13: Sketch Comedy Chapter 14: Social Media and Internet Chapter 15: People Don’t Laugh at Your Jokes— What to Do? Chapter 16: Feed Your Brain Chapter 17: Creating Deeper Connections Conclusion part0003 Introduction Many people say, “keep them laughing” and you might think this is as easy as telling a joke. Well, not really. It turns out that there are some secrets to telling jokes. There are certain things you need to do for your joke to get a laugh. First, be confident with yourself and the joke you’re telling. If you seem insecure, nervous, or reluctant to tell it, then they probably won’t find it funny at all. Next, get the timing right. You need to practice with this one so you can get a sense of how long you have from the point you say the punch line to when people laugh, and then you can get your timing down. In telling a joke, timing is everything. The perfect moment for a joke is when everyone is already laughing or they’ve just finished laughing. You must be in the right environment to tell a joke.. For example, if you’re in a crowded room with strangers, then no one is going to appreciate your jokes. You need the appropriate environment in which to tell people your jokes. The problem with telling jokes in public is that you might make serious mistakes. If you don’t know what to say next after you tell your joke, remember that building up the level of tension while they wait for something funny to happen again will heighten their excitement when it finally does. This doesn’t mean that every time you tell a joke you have to repeat it. Sometimes you can tell a joke once, and it works well. For example, if you have just told a joke about a food item and people ask you what that is, then the best thing to do is just say “Lemons.” This hands down will make everyone laugh because the next time they ask, just say “lemons” again. It is good to know how to tell jokes, and to talk about yourself. It is important to be able to tell a joke and be yourself when you do it. There may be times in your life when you need to tell a joke, especially if you are among people you know. If the people around you are laughing, then what you’re saying is funny. Even if they laugh at something stupid, it’s still good because it lets them know you can joke around and be yourself. This is one of those things that sounds smart, but you don’t have to do it. It is recommended, but that’s it. You can be funny without telling a joke if you are in the mood to laugh about something that is happening in real life. People around you see that you can tell a joke when they see how funny and genuine you are. Some people think they know how to tell a joke. They might tell you one that goes on forever, or it is a repeat of a joke that they have heard somewhere else. These are the people you should not listen to. People need to learn the difference between funny and unfunny. In laughing at a joke that someone else tells, there is much more involved than one would think. The reason people laugh in most situations is that this person has said something that other people agree with or find relevant and they want that person to be rewarded for it. The reason people laugh is to make other people see it’s funny. They view this as a reward. Some people may not laugh at everything. They might not be in the mood to laugh or they don’t agree with the joke. They may have a poor attitude and not want to reward the person for telling the joke or for making fun of another person. Some people might laugh because they are nervous, or are themselves afraid of being laughed at. One thing to remember when you tell someone a joke, is that no matter how confident you are, never tell your joke until everyone has finished laughing. This is important, because it will prevent you from telling a bad joke that no one laughs at, and never and tell a joke that you think everyone will like. Stick to jokes that are funny to you. There is nothing wrong with laughing at someone’s jokes, but if you do this too much, then they might think that there is something wrong with you. Even if you get a joke, there are still times when you shouldn’t laugh at it. It is important to know which jokes to laugh at and which ones to avoid laughing at because sometimes a person will say something stupid that they think is funny. Don’t laugh at such jokes. This will be embarrassing for them. It’s always important to understand when to laugh at a joke and when not to, but there is more to it than that. The way a person laughs reveals if they are laughing for the right reasons or not. Some people will try to laugh at a joke even though they don’t get it. This makes them appear to be trying to gain attention. part0004 Chapter 1: The Science of Laughter The science of laughter is as intriguing as it is complex. How laughter impacts our mental and physical health can affect small things, like how much you sleep at night. Innovative studies have shown that humor can provide several positive benefits. So don’t be afraid to laugh! We’re going to explain what happens when you laugh, what tickles you, and why not laughing for 10 minutes equals a missed meal break. Essentially, laughter is an emotional response to something funny, but that’s not all. It’s more than that, which is why understanding exactly what it can do for you is so important. Laughter as Medicine Well-known research on the health benefits of laughter focuses mostly on the physical aspects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes laughter as part of a healthy lifestyle. A 2004 report showed that laughter can be beneficial to both your heart and respiratory system. The way this works is through stress reduction. Laughter is a natural response that releases endorphins. These can help ease stress and promote relaxation. Laughing out loud for no reason or laughing in response to a humorous situation results in endorphin release. The physical benefits of laughter are as crucial as the mental benefits. A good night’s sleep is easier to achieve when you’re in a good mood. Stress leads to physical ailments such as muscle breakdown and high blood pressure. Laughing reduces your body’s physiological reactions to stressful situations, and fights symptoms that arise from stress. The Endorphins Endorphins are the body’s natural opiates and are responsible for feelings of euphoria and general well-being. In short, they elevate mood and block pain. Laughing also releases dopamine. Dopamine is a "feel good" endorphin whose production is triggered when you see or hear something funny. Endorphins are released even when you laugh for no reason. So the next time you’re in a bad mood or in an uncomfortable situation, try to force yourself to laugh about it. You never know what it could do for your emotional state or your health. Getting Started If you’re just learning about the benefits of laughter, we can relate to you feeling a little confused on where to start. There’s a lot of information out there that may seem hard to filter through. To help you understand how laughter works, we’ve created some helpful infographics for you. This should help clear up any confusion and give you the basics of what happens when you laugh, why it’s important, and what to do about it. How does laughter work? Laughter reduces tension. Positive emotions like joy, contentment, or a sense of well-being follow instances of laughter. It’s the sense of humor that causes the release of endorphins in the body. They give you a boost of energy, help you maintain a healthy weight, and help you sleep better at night. Laughter is contagious! part0005 Chapter 2: What Happens in Your Brain? When you experience humor, your brain releases a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is the same chemical released during orgasm. In combination with the mental stimulation of a joke, it’s possible to experience extreme euphoria. What Are the Different Types of Humor? There are many types of humor, however, we will focus on the principal three. Slapstick, sarcasm, and puns. A hearty laugh can come from any or all three types in various combinations. Sarcasm “That was hilarious. I almost died laughing. The timing was perfect!” Sarcasm, through the use of insults, aggression, exaggeration, and contradictions, makes a person (or group of people) look like fools or be seen in a negative light. Sarcasm is very useful if you need to put someone in their place. Slapstick “That’s not funny.” Slapstick employs the physical to create humor, usually expressed clumsiness, or other physical failures. It requires great timing and concentration. In the middle of the night, a man walks into a bar. The man goes up to the bartender, slurs “Gimme whiskey.” The bartender, annoyed by this drunkard, gives him water instead. The drunk looks at his glass of water and says, “This is water. I wanted whiskey.” The bartender then throws a glass of whiskey at him, splashing it in the man’s face. Puns “I’m sure every joke you tell is a real knee-slapper!” Puns are when you say one word with two meanings, creating an ambiguity. Puns can be difficult to construct, as they require a deep knowledge of the language. For example, “A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says ‘Why the long face?’” Everyone knows a horse has an elongated face and this makes this joke funny. How to Become a Better Joke Writer Becoming a great joke writer involves lots of trial and error.. Write down your ideas and see if they work. If they don’t, try again! Also, you can get ideas from watching television, reading the newspaper, or paying attention to the people around you. The key is paying attention and being willing to listen so that when someone says something funny, you can put it in your back pocket for later use. How Jokes Work Jokes have four components—sets-ups, punch lines, responses, and tags. These are vital for a successful joke. The entire joke needs to make sense, but you have more than one chance to make it funny. Try not to get frustrated, and remember, the best jokes are ones that people can’t predict! part0006 Chapter 3: Work on Your Image and Develop Incredible Charisma Working on your image and developing your charisma puts you on track to being a natural comedian. Practice talking with someone, and as soon as they laugh, make a joke about it. (Remember, if you can’t come up with anything right away, just wait for their next line before responding). Try to do it when they’re not expecting it—like every three minutes instead of every fifteen seconds! Remember that timing is everything in comedy—timing combined with a sense of humor will get you very far in life. One of the great things about humor is that the stakes are low. If you can make people laugh at your expense, you’ll seem humble and people will appreciate that. Work on your delivery, and have a few different jokes that you can use in social situations. Sometimes there’s nothing funnier than a good prank… and there’s no finer art than the practical joke. Keep in mind that practical jokes rarely work unless they’re subtle. Practical jokes are often more satisfying than cracking a good joke. Making someone laugh is a great feeling! Laughter is infectious! It’s an incredible thing to get someone to laugh at something and great fun to see people laughing together—even better when they are unaware that you’re behind the laughter. Be careful, know when to draw the line. You need to know that your audience welcomes your humor before pushing it too far. If you can make people laugh, you’re all but guaranteed to garner everyone’s affection. Be careful though, you don’t want people to think that you’re arrogant. The ability to make someone laugh is a gift! If you have this gift, use it wisely. Think about the type of humor that will work best in your particular situation and be careful not to offend anyone. Make every joke count! When all else fails… If all else fails and you can’t think of anything funny to say, turn to the best joke book I’ve ever found: “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: The Real Deal.” Now that you know how to make people laugh, the next step is learning some jokes. There are millions and millions of jokes out there (not all are funny). You’ll have to try out a few and see what you think of them. Start with your favorites, it’s a learning process. Now you’re on your way to being a natural comedian! It takes years to learn how to be funny, so if you’re thinking of getting into comedy, give up now. You’ll only embarrass yourself… that is, unless you’re really good. Remember that timing is everything in comedy—timing combined with a sense of humor will get you very far in life. part0007 Chapter 4: Improve Your Humor and Personality Improve your humor and personality with these five easy tips! The number one way to spice up your sense of humor is to paying attention to what makes you chuckle, while reading an article or looking at a meme. What made you laugh the most? What made you laugh the least? Asking yourself those questions may help pinpoint what kind of humor works best for you. Many people like puns, but not everyone. Jokes and puns can be too cheesy or clever. If that’s what floats your boat, it’s probably best to stick with that, but if not, try translating the sentiment into another form to see if it works better for you. When you create a new joke, examine it. Was it corny? If so, why did that make you laugh? This may be a form of humor that works well for you. If it was too dry, too intellectual, then maybe you could build it a differently by adding emotion or action. Improve your personality by trying to use different voices and personas. It takes practice, but once you get into it, you might find yourself doing more than just talking back to the characters on TV! Record yourself doing different impressions, such as movie villains, cartoon characters, or famous people. part0008 Chapter 5: The Art of Self-Deprecating Self-deprecating humor is an art. It is about not taking one’s self too seriously, and even making fun of one’s self. There are three steps to becoming a great self-deprecator. Pick a personal trait that you’re insecure or embarrassed by, such as being bald, being short, having acne scars, or being poor. Introduce yourself as though you were talking to someone meeting you for the first time and is unaware of your insecurity or embarrassment (imagine speaking to your date for the first time). Is your insecurity or embarrassment at all evident to your date? Does your date notice anything that makes you feel awkward or uncomfortable? If so, you’re on the right track. If not, talk to someone who knows you and can make suggestions. With each joke or other self-deprecating remark, use the phrase “You know me.” Be sure to echo it in a mocking tone of voice. For example: “You know me! I’m short, bald, and overweight” Step 1 should be taken up when preparing your material for delivery. Step 2 is a practice step. Step 3 is the delivery step. Some people find it easier to make fun of themselves than others. Comedians often rely on self-deprecating humor because it’s much easier (and safer) to make fun of yourself rather than someone else. The 3 steps above are a formulaic way of doing it, but can’t be applied universally. One must be creative and let one’s personality come through in the material. A good way to get started is to write ten ways in which you are awkward or embarrassing, then come up with ten “You know me!” jokes or remarks to match each trait. The important thing to remember while practicing this art is to not take yourself too seriously. If you do, you risk pricking your bubble of self-esteem. You enjoy greater success in dealing with your feelings of insecurity if you can make fun of them. Making jokes related to your insecurities should make it easier for the people around you to see how foolish they are and not take themselves so seriously. A person who has learned how to make self-deprecating humor can use his or her skills in everyday life and in social situations. They can use these skills to diffuse tense situations, and to show people they are not overly serious about certain things. For example, let’s say you just been dumped. You are now paying all the bills. You are now speaking to someone you’re attracted to. Using self-deprecating humor will diffuse tension and act as a confidence booster for your date. You can end up with your date thinking, “This guy has no ego!” Self-deprecation can be in business dealings. When meeting people for the first time, a self-deprecating comedian can never be too sure about how people will react to self-deprecation. They must be prepared to “go with the flow” and not take things too seriously. For instance, you are meeting someone for the first time, introduce yourself and find out that they like your sense of humor. They tell you they know someone who is like you. You ask “Who?” and they say, “A guy I know.” You reply as if you’re self-deprecating: “You KNOW me!” Everyone likes to feel good about what they say. The comedian who admits he or she is a little insecure while making other people feel good makes the interaction more positive for all parties involved, not just for themselves. Self-deprecating humor shows you are not too serious about things, and that you can laugh at yourself. It shows you are not egotistical or stuck up. Self-deprecating humor is one of the most important tools in the toolbox of successful comedians. part0009 Chapter 6: Turn Your Bio into a Funny Story Turn your bio into a funny story with these thirty ideas. I’m a high-functioning alcoholic. I passed out in the bathtub and drowned. The other day, I accidentally ate a ham sandwich that had mayonnaise on it. My favorite song is “Crazy Frog Goes Pop” by Crazy Frog (featuring samples of JT). These days, the only time people want to hear my opinions is when they ask what time it is or where the toilet paper is kept. My favorite color is. Every Valentine’s Day, I send my wife a card saying, “Love, Your Husband.” I was robbed the other day. When I was born, the doctors couldn’t wait to unwrap me from my mummy. Recently, my dog started barking uncontrollably at a taxidermy horse in our living room. My neighbor told me that for a man of his age, he sure has some magnificent hair. My wife is such a bitch that she won’t let me smoke in the house—if I wanted to smoke out of doors I’d have married something with gills. Seasonal allergies have me sneezing like a choo-choo train. I have an aquarium at home with only two fish how the third fish got in there, I don’t know. My mother encouraged me to get into show business, so I became a ventriloquist. I’m not very photogenic. When I was a kid, my parents told me that if people talked badly about you, it meant that they were jealous of you. It didn’t really work, though—I went to middle school and was the most hated kid there. I was recently voted “least likely to succeed.” When I was a child, people told me that the stars were the same stars as we had here on earth. I believed them—until I got older and realized that they were all different. There is an “I love you” for everybody—some people just don’t know where to look for it, or when to listen for it. The first time I shaved, it felt like someone else’s face. My wife thought it would be nice if we could have a kid together, so she bought some baby bottles and left them out on the counter. I took a shower in the gym yesterday, so I’m all sweaty. My wife has me on my back 24 hours a day. The other day, I was driving my car along the highway with the windows rolled up when a group of squirrels jumped out in front of me and startled me half to death. Even my family members don’t respect me—so what do they talk about when they’re together? No one has ever heard me give the “thumbs up” sign. My son’s first word was “asshole.” My wife wants me to get a job, but I don’t want to get a job. I’m going to make sure that my eyes are open when they ship me off to Iraq. part0010 Chapter 7: Exercises Exercises to make your face look funny: Put on your tightest fitting rubber bands, then stretch your mouth over a tennis ball and hold it there for the next 5 minutes. Place the tennis ball inside an empty plastic container, then wet it with water to activate its stickiness. Now you can put a small grape on top of the rubber band and let it slowly slide down as you go about your day! Apply spicy sauce to either side of your lip, gradually making them spicier and spicier until you reach whatever level is tolerable for you (I recommend starting with 4 drops). Place a weak smile on your face with a small piece of tape and have a friend take a picture of you. You’ll end up with one wide-open eye and one half closed. Spitting into the middle of the street will make everyone on the sidewalk laugh at you because it’s hilarious! Spend ten minutes in front of a mirror, pulling on your face until it looks like you’ve been crying for one hour, then cry and wipe your tears on your sleeve for another 5 minutes. Then cry some more. I don’t know how to explain this one, just rub your tongue along the roof of your mouth until it bleeds a bit. Drink a can of soda with no ice in it, then go for a 30-minute run, finally finishing with a bout of violent coughing and vomiting. You’ll look like you’ve been laughing for hours. Spend one hour covering yourself in baby powder with your hands or a towel, then drive down to the lake and wade in as far as you can before you completely sink beneath the surface. Remove a very strong toothpick from the back of your mouth, tie it to a piece of string, and hang it outside in the wind. Put 3 rubber bands around your face and pull them apart slowly until an expression of rage appears. Put all the spaces in between every word on this page into this sentence and make it rhyme: “I am so funny.” In public, while performing with your improved troupe, take out a pen, start furiously scribbling on notebook paper for a few minutes. Immediately afterward, erase everything you wrote, then scribble again. Continue this until you’re off-script and the audience gives you a startled gasp. Giggle to yourself as if it’s the best joke ever told. When going through security at the airport (with a completely clean body), ask an agent if he knows what you look like under your uniform before proceeding to unbutton the top two buttons of your shirt and scrunch up your face in anticipation of his reply regarding the security pat down. During a stand-up comedy act, put one leg up on a chair and slowly rock from side to side while laughing hysterically until the audience is completely baffled by your performance. After drinking a cup of water, slurp it up one nostril at a time and let it dribble out the other before continuing with your day. When you have to sneeze, make sure that you do so without covering your mouth or nose and when the moment comes to sneeze out those initial contractions, make sure you hold perfectly still with your chin tilted upwards and keep your eyes closed until the sneeze happens in its entirety. Listen to a recording of yourself laughing on tape for ten minutes (or until the tape runs out). Scream into a mirror in front of you while watching yourself laugh through that reflection. Walk up to a group of people and say “Hi, my name is Andrew,” laugh inappropriately loud, then blink your eyes twice slowly without speaking another word. Wear loose pants, then hitch them up as far as you can while making sure the entire world can see your underwear. As you’re typing an email on your computer, loudly and obnoxiously fart several times fixing no errors and let out a hearty chuckle. Once you have the attention of a friend or coworker, lean your chin in towards your chest and make eye contact with them while keeping that awkward expression. Lick your hand, then throw it up and wave it around until somebody grabs onto it. Grab a tree branch, hang upside down from it for five minutes (making sure nobody sees), then crawl to the ground and walk away saying nothing to anyone. Ask someone for one hundred pennies, then offer to give them one penny back if they can guess which hand they’re in before the penny is removed from their grasp. See how many different laughs you can produce in a row without taking a breath. When you’re eating alone, put your hands over your face and pretend that you’re talking to someone who isn’t there. Take off all of your clothes and ask if anyone wants to play naked volleyball with you at the beach! Go to a fast-food restaurant and order $15 worth of food at a drive-thru window, then hand them one penny and walk away while laughing loudly one foot from their car window. Write yourself a note saying “DO NOTHING. FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.” Sign the note with your name, then put it in a frame on your mantel. Every morning when you wake up, read the note aloud to yourself and pretend that you’re taking it seriously. Pull out a pair of swim goggles and put them on while at a public pool. Jump off the diving board wiping out ridiculously hard, and hitting your head on the bottom causing some dizziness to occur. Fill an empty spray bottle with water then use it to douse yourself with some water before doing so. Write a note to yourself and have it on your person. As you’re getting ready to leave the house for the day, ask yourself why you wrote that note. Then, start laughing uncontrollably before saying aloud “Oh snap.” When walking through any area with lots of people, every so often make random noises while talking out loud in an obnoxious manner. Whenever you’re out in public and notice that there are very few people around, point at yourself and say “I’m invisible!” slowly, then run away from somebody holding a camera phone or pointing their phone at you without looking back. Do the “umbrella dance” at a party. Next time you’re walking down the street, throw your arms out and start making a funny face as though you’re possessed. Walk up to someone and ask if they know how to get to Wonderland, then walk away laughing hysterically while saying “Gotcha!” repeatedly until you get into your car or home. Make your phone ring in public by pulling out the battery. Whenever someone is walking at a normal pace, start running towards them full speed and yell “Oooohhh… Ka-BOOM!” before they see you coming up behind them. Walk around for a few minutes in front of your local Walmart store, then jump up and down on one leg while repeatedly saying “Dollar?” while holding up a single dollar bill as if it’s a prize to win every time you say it. Whenever you see someone on a plane, bus, or in the airport acting like they don’t have enough legroom, walk over and say “I’ve got plenty of room!” while spreading your legs as wide open as possible. Whenever you’re walking down the street and hear someone ask for directions to somewhere you don’t know how to get to, give them incorrect directions or pretend to not know where they want to go. Start walking around in public with a carrot hanging from your nose or a cucumber sticking out of your pants pocket and act like it’s normal. Start humping random objects in public, and when someone asks you why you’re acting weird, say “I’m just playing with my food.” Walk your pet on a leash in public and then carry the leash over your shoulder like it’s a gun. Start carrying around a sign that reads “Free food” or “Free money” whenever you see a homeless person. Whenever walking down the street with someone else, hold up one finger and cross the other foot over it while saying “Did I pass gas?” Whenever walking down the street with someone else, either whisper to them or giggle when they talk to you. Deep sigh loudly when you are alone. Tell dirty jokes frequently and tell them as if they were profound observations about the human condition. Call people smart, sexy, cool, stupid, ugly, and fat. Borrow money from a friend then never pay it back or pay it back five years later and act like you don’t know what they are talking about when they bring it up. Pick your nose in public over three times per day for no reason other than to gross people out. When someone goes to shake your hand, pull a gun out of your waistband and point it at their head and say, “Whoops!” Wear Crocs ® in public. When you’re at the table with your family, say “What? WHY ARE YOU ALL STARING AT ME?!” Stand up in the middle of a conversation with someone and shout, “WHY DO WE LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYWAY?! TAKE ME TO OUTER SPACE!” Get yourself extra tickets to sporting events from work or classmates by pretending they were meant for another purpose all along. When the movie ends, ask if anyone else wants to stay and watch the credits. Tell people that if they don’t laugh at your new jokes, you’re going to kill them. Own a white belt with a big red buckle and wear it constantly for no reason other than to annoy people who try to ask you what you’re doing with it on your waist. Be rude to everybody in public by acting as though they have offended you. When you find a sweet potato while on a hike, throw it at random people and act like you didn’t do it. When asked for your name, say “The name is whatever gives the person the most pleasure.” Tell people that your life was going to be better than theirs unless they laugh very hard at everything you say. Ask people if they know who Bruce Lee is, even if you know perfectly well that they do. Whenever you’re done with something, start re-doing it again until it’s perfect or until someone tells you to stop doing it and leave them alone. Ask random people if they can speak a certain language even though you know they can’t. Tell everyone within earshot of you that the object you are holding is a rare, precious artifact from outer space and that it is worth thousands of dollars. Walk up to people and ask them if they are “the one.” Walk around with an old Walkman on your head and pretend like it’s giving you advice about your life choices or what to say next after every single thing you say out loud. Walk around with an old pocket watch in public and pretend that it’s a cell phone. In the middle of a meeting or conversation, abruptly ask someone if they remember “that one guy who said that thing.” Laugh uncontrollably at someone when they are talking to you and give no rational reason. Walk up to somebody at random and ask them if their whole family has been killed yet because you have some information to share with them relevant to whatever it is they’re doing while acting as though it’s the most important information anyone has ever shared with you before. Go to a stranger’s house and start talking about the weather and how nice it looks outside. Every time you answer the phone, ask, “Who is this?” Eat an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids and then constantly ask people if they are enjoying them. Try to be offended whenever someone makes fun of your appearance or something you’re wearing, even when you know that they only did it because they thought it was funny at the moment or because they are insecure about their appearance. Say “um” non-stop in a conversation until you run out of things to say and make yourself seem like an idiot in doing so. Whenever you get mad at someone, start telling them they’re a dick head and that they deserve to be treated like one. Tell people you’ve seen their dog on your neighbor’s lawn and keep telling them that until they believe you. Go to an abandoned house or some other place where there is no one else around you and practice kung-fu moves or punches right in front of it while saying “I’m so good! I’m the best!” repeatedly in a goofy voice. At Walmart, count every single blue thing in the store. Pick your nose and start talking about how great it tastes and how you wish you could get a whole glass of it. When people say “hey” to you, say “Hey! What’s up?” right back at them in an enthusiastic voice, like they were waiting for you to come over to their place all along. Whenever someone asks for your opinion on something, laugh out loud because of how absurd it is that anyone would ever want to hear your opinion on the matter. Start telling people they’re being too serious about something and should just get with the program and have some fun. Go up to a police officer while wearing a dark-colored trench coat and ask them if you look like a criminal before trying to buy drugs from them. Tell everyone at work that you were jealous of how well-dressed they were for work today so you went out and bought new clothes just for the occasion even though it is unrealistic for someone to spend that much money on new clothes for one day when money is tight. Start talking with yourself as if you were a movie character full of wise and humorous observations. Go to a gas station and start screaming “Come on down! Make my day, come on down!” repeatedly while holding out your arms like you’re expecting someone to jump into them from across the street. Go up to random people in public and ask them “Do you believe in vampires?” when they look as though they’re asking you that same question. Tell people you can’t wait to get old because you’ll be able to do whatever you want without worrying about what any of your friends or family members think and act like it’s the most liberating feeling in the world. Whenever someone asks you what day it is, ask them if they’re sure that they need to know that right this second. Tell people to stop staring at you and that it’s rude for them to keep looking at your face when there are other things around them at all times. Whenever you see someone walking around with a cute animal, ask them if they found it on the street. Tell people you are in alliances with everyone in the world as long as they’re not trying to kill you at that very minute. Start telling people everything you do is a conspiracy for your enjoyment that benefits no one else but yourself and your family, even though it hurts most of the people around you who care about you. part0011 Chapter 8: Know Your Audience Know your audience. Have a sense of what the people you are trying to make laugh are interested in. Find out what they find funny by asking them questions and listening to their answers. For example, if you have a friend who loves dogs, try telling jokes about dogs or telling stories about funny things that happen with your dog. Keep a sense of humor in mind when it comes to making people laugh. You should take into consideration that people often laugh for different reasons than you might think. For example, if you are telling a joke to your friend about how dumb college students are, this might be funny to you because you find college students annoying. However, this joke may not be funny to your friend who is going to college! Avoid telling jokes that can make people uncomfortable or offended. People dislike being around others who make them feel uneasy. Don’t force yourself on other people. Don’t try too hard to make them laugh. It isn’t worth it and it will most likely backfire on you. Think of what makes other people laugh and use it in the situations in which you need to make them laugh. Write down your observations and try to use them the next time you are trying to make people laugh. Try to connect with others. People are most likely to laugh when they feel like they have a connection or bond with the person who is making them laugh. You can create this bond by jokes that relate closely to things shared between you and your audience (e.g., school, childhood, dating). You can also build a relationship by sharing things about yourself that others don’t know and then proceed with funny jokes that relate to the information you have just given away, thus creating a sense of closeness between you and the audience. Don’t just use joke routines to get laughs and then move on. Try to incorporate your jokes into the conversation. This will give the audience a sense of being part of the experience by sharing in your humor and laughing along with you. Try “cold reading” for jokes. Cold reading is a method in which comedians use their natural intuition to convince people into believing them, often leading them to reveal personal information about themselves that they might not otherwise choose to reveal, such as their weight, marital status, or political views. Cold reads can help you get people laughing because it is at least partly based on personalities, which makes it easier for people to laugh at your jokes. Consider asking your audience if they have a couple of friends who are about the same age. Your average listener will probably share a few stories with their friends about their lives and experiences with other people in their lives. This will make it much easier for you to start cold reads on people in your audience. Here are some actual cold reads: “How many feckless teenagers does it take to conduct an orchestra? None, they can’t read!” “Everyone looks younger than they really are, but being young is still better than being old.” “I predict that by the time you’re my age, you’ll be willing to do anything for sex. If that’s the case, you’ll be sick of it by now. Why would you want to get older if that means giving up sex?” “You have an impressive figure for a woman your age. What are you doing to keep it looking good? (giggle)” The above cold reads are examples of how to insert these jokes into situations in which people need to laugh. Have confidence in what you do. When making people laugh, they will need to believe that the jokes are coming from a genuinely funny source for them to be funny. Improve your performance by standing up straight and presenting yourself confidently. Practice your delivery—become a wonderful storyteller. Ask for feedback if you think your jokes aren’t funny. If you have friends who will give constructive input, ask them for advice. Most people who want to laugh will be open to hearing what friends have to say about what’s funny or not funny. Ask them what they like and don’t like about your jokes so that you can improve and get more laughs! Practice jokes in different situations. Even if a joke may not be appropriate for every occasion, practicing it regularly will make it natural for when you need it. If you are in a situation where you need to make someone laugh, you will have a joke ready you know will work! Don’t obsess about making people laugh. Don’t put so much stress on yourself that you fail. If your primary objective aim is fun and laughter, then relax and enjoy the moment. Be willing to use humor in moments where it might be inappropriate. It might be awkward, but in serious situations lightening the mood with a funny comment or joke may give others the idea that there is nothing to worry about. Keep it simple when trying to make people laugh. If you are trying to tease someone, the joke should be as simple as possible, so they can quickly figure out what you are trying to say. If there are too many layers or complexities your joke, it may not be able to stand on its own. Know the difference between an honest and an unfunny joke. It is much easier to make someone laugh with a joke that is based on something true or real rather than something completely false or imaginary. Try using jokes that involve yourself, so you can relate to them better, and give them more of personal touch (as opposed to making up an entire story about another person). Poke fun at yourself. People are much more willing to laugh when the joke is about you, as opposed to someone else. Be ready for jokes that don’t go well. If you are trying to make people laugh and they don’t give any signs of laughter, don’t just stop. Keep telling the joke differently until it gets picked up or understood by someone in your audience. Make jokes that are short and sweet! Don’t try to be too funny or come up with a long story that requires a lot of setups, because it will be harder for people to follow along with you. Don’t rely on props or gimmicks. It is very easy to get too caught up in the props you are using and lose sight of the actual joke, making it boring. Try to make your humor gender-neutral for maximum appeal. People will appreciate a joke that can be appreciated by both genders. Don’t be afraid of being funny when it comes to the ladies. If you want to make the ladies laugh, try not to rely on gender jokes or gestures that may insult the women in your crowd. Keep it clean! If people find something offensive in your jokes, they will most likely walk away. Tell short jokes, not long ones. If you keep telling long jokes, people will lose interest. Know when to stop telling a joke. If someone has stopped laughing at your joke and it seems like no one else is listening, chances are that your audience has had enough of it and needs to get some fresh air. Try starting over with another one! Be creative when determining what makes a good joke! Don’t rely on the classic punch line. If the audience is already laughing at your story, you will be hard-pressed to make them laugh again with a typical punch line. Everyone, regardless of age, loves a practical joke. If it can be done in front of friends or family with a little of preparation, people will appreciate the show of creativity. This is something you shouldn’t overthink. Just be sure you have enough food for everyone involved in the practical joke! To achieve this kind of magic with your practical jokes, use these tips: Make sure everyone is present before you begin. Bring as many props as needed to make it as spectacular as possible. Make sure you know what to expect from your audience. If there are children around, make sure adults are involved. Don’t scare the children! We all need of a good laugh. If we take a rest from our everyday troubles and laugh at the fun pranks, we feel better and think more clearly. We may even have an easier time performing the best pranks in the world! Of course, you will not want to cause serious harm or endanger anyone, so be careful! Be certain you know what you’re doing if you decide to prank someone. Have fun with your practical jokes! part0012 Chapter 9: Know the Anatomy of a Joke Joke Categories Jokes can be grouped into categories. The most common categories are: Gags, one-line jokes that startle to make the audience laugh. For example, “What do you call a fish with no eyes?” The punchline is usually a pun or play on words. Practical jokes are often characterized by tricking someone into doing something embarrassing, yet viewed as funny by their peers. These are often very elaborate and complex plans that will require careful preparation for the prankster to execute them correctly and convincingly. Before a practical joke can be set up, the perpetrator must put the victim at ease and convince them there is no danger in what they are about to do.. A practical joke may involve an element of childish malice in which an innocent act will produce a humiliating experience. Costumery (dress up) has its roots in theatrical performances. Costumes are worn to create a hilarious effect. A pun is a play on words, relying heavily on word association to make the audience laugh—for example, “Why did the golfer lose his balance?” Answer: “He was clubbed by an irate gopher.” Puns are often used in comedy routines and sitcoms, and are useful in making people laugh when used effectively. The pun may have been invented in the fourth century BC by the Greek poet Cratinus (ca. 429 BC), who amused audiences by mixing two dissimilar dialects of Greek. Punning is an integral part of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and remains popular today in various guises such as spoonerisms, malapropisms, and homophonic puns. A joke about a person’s name may be a reference to or denigrating comment about their appearance, intelligence, personality, or some other quality. For example, “I had a teacher once who was named George. She was an English major. She taught literature, and she taught me how to spell words.” A stereotype joke highly depends on the idea that certain groups of people are associated with particular traits, and are usually used as an insult or put down. This is common in some cultures and unacceptable in others. A list joke is a short humorous list of things usually in sequential order. Lists of this nature provide a quick, easy laugh. A common example is the “Top 10 Things…” gag, which always ends with, “You Don’t Want to Know About!” Another example, Peter Kay made his list jokes famous when he produced the hit DVD series “Live at the Top of the Tower.” A punny joke uses wordplay to make an audience laugh, such as “I love long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.” A setup line leads into a punchline. For example: “If you’re lucky, you’ll meet a girl with a sense of humor. But don’t be disappointed if it’s your brother.” Sight gags are jokes told simply for the sake of making the audience laugh. Some jokes are necessarily visual but can work on other senses throughout the storyline—for example, a line may start with “What does an elephant dream about?” and then end with “As he trudges along…” A play on words is a form of humor that uses multiple meanings of a word, or similar-sounding words with dissimilar meanings, to create a humorous effect. A joke that relies on the concept of irony to create humor is called an irony joke. Irony involves stating the opposite of what you mean, usually for humorous purposes. For example: “Dad always likes it when Mum doesn’t wear her glasses because he says she looks prettier.” A practical joke, often abbreviated as ‘prank’, is a mischievous trick played on someone, usually causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks or hoaxes in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke. A person who performs a practical joke is called a “practical joker.” One classic form of humor consisting of multiple associated sketches/stories centered on one simple idea. The stories usually take something familiar and present it in an unfamiliar way, often using surrealism or non-sequiturs to achieve this effect—for example, two men are talking while walking down the street. They pass a small dog, then one of them says, “That’s not a dog, that’s my wife!” A joke where the punchline primarily derives its humor from being disgusting or offensive is called a sick joke (or cringe comedy). For example: “I’ve got bad news for you… you’ve got cancer.” A common theme of sick jokes is vomit and vomiting (being sick). As this topic is sensitive to many people, these types of jokes are usually not told at parties or in public. A joke that employs self-irony is self-derogatory humor. It’s a form of satire used to convey a particular point of view and is often used in comedy as a source of character development and continuity. For example: “I’m not ugly… at least, I think.” Novelty humor frequently makes use of puns, antonyms, spoonerisms, non-sequiturs, or gibberish. A pun involves using a word in one sense when another word that sounds similar has a different meaning—for example: “You left your alibi at the scene of the crime.” Puns are common in comic strips where space is limited. A joke that uses exaggeration and parody to create humor is satire. It often pushes the boundaries of decency by criticizing social conventions, institutions, or authority figures. Actual people and misdeeds can be used as material for satire. Often, alternative names are needed to clarify that what is being satirized is not real (for example, when a ne	114,670
How to Read People Like a Book Find Out What People Really Think, Even When They Lie. Anticipate Intentions and Defend... (Kingler, Christopher) (Z-Library).epub	Desconocido How to Read People Like a Book Find Out What People Really Think, Even When They Lie. Anticipate Intentions and Defend Yourself Against Those Who Are Deceiving You Through Body Language CHRISTOPHER KINGLER Desconocido © Copyright 2021 by Christopher Kingler - All rights reserved. The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book; either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. This book is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up-to-date, and reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. Desconocido TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PART 1: Verbal And Paraverbal Communication CHAPTER 1: Voice PART 2: How To Understand the Body: Interpret the Most Common Signals CHAPTER 2: What Is Non-Verbal Communication? CHAPTER 3: How to Read Facial Expressions CHAPTER 4: The Eyes CHAPTER 5: The Mouth CHAPTER 6: Interpreting Body Gestures CHAPTER 7: Posture CHAPTER 8: Breathing CHAPTER 9: The Hands CHAPTER 10: The Chest and Shoulders CHAPTER 11: The Vital or Proxemic Space CHAPTER 12: How to Understand Body Language: Interpret the Most Hidden Signals (Advanced Techniques) PART 3: Techniques to Identify If a Person is Lying CHAPTER 13: Beware of Bluffing CHAPTER 14: How to Seduce and Attract Someone CHAPTER 15: What Really Motivates Us? CHAPTER 16: Personality Types CHAPTER 17: Practical Applications CHAPTER 18: How to Fake Your Body Language CONCLUSION Desconocido Introduction B ody language encompasses a variety of forms including facial expressions, gestures, eye movement, and posture. It includes voluntary facial expressions and gestures used to control the flow of interpersonal communication; it can also include control of bodily behavior that is not always conscious. Body language is one of the three cues used in social interaction (besides speech and touch) and involves nonverbal communication between human beings. It can be used to express an emotion or thought, to manipulate others into feeling a certain way or simply to attract attention. Body language can serve functional purposes, such as to attract the attention of another person, to show interest in what another person is saying, etc. It also serves social purposes, such as indicating a friendly or hostile attitude towards another person, indicating whether a person is comfortable with another, or showing one’s attitudes about, or beliefs in something. It can also be used to advertise that one is looking for a sexual partner. Body language involves the unconscious observation of natural human body movements such as gestures and posture. In this way, body language is a form of interpersonal communication. The term implies the existence of a range of communication which includes those acts that do not require speech. Body language is also sometimes known as kinesics from its early identification in the work of Dr. Meredith Regan in 1955. The field has become popular largely due to the efforts of famous experts such as Paver, Birdwhistell, and Mehrabian. Body language can be more accurate than tone of voice in conveying a mood or attitude. Body language can be consciously controlled, but may also be the result of cultural or emotional conditioning. Body language is a form of nonverbal communication. Body language exploits natural human cues and signals to display attitudes and intentions to others. It consists of facial expressions, hand gestures, posture, and eye movements. The field of behavioral kinesics emerged in the 1920s as an offshoot of psychoanalysis. A part of psychoanalytic theory, body language was related to the study of mind or mental states. Sometime after World War II, social scientists and psychologists began to criticize the study of psychology, which ignored situational factors and environmental influences. This was the beginning of nonverbal behavior, the study of environmental influences on behavior. The new field proved useful in several ways: As a result, manuals for law enforcement officers and security personnel emerged whereby they could learn more about preventing criminal activity, including how to identify subtle facial expressions or other body language cues that might help locate weapons or tell if a person was lying. The American anthropologist Edward T. Hall was among the first scientists to study cross-cultural differences in nonverbal communication. He also developed one of the earliest theories of personal space. Body language may be able to help people with autism spectrum disorders better express emotions and socialize in ways they can understand more than words alone. Neurologists believe that humans are hardwired to control their bodies in certain ways. They suggest that this may be due to the existence of mirror neurons, which give people a sense of how others around them might feel during social interactions. There are two categories of communication: Verbal cues are communications that include spoken and written language. Nonverbal communication : Can be observed through direct body contact or the lack thereof. While direct body contact, like holding hands or hugging, is an obvious example of nonverbal communication, the absence of direct body contact can also serve as a cue. For example: Touch : is one method that can help let another person know how you feel about him or her. Touching of any kind serves several main purposes: Touch may also be used as a form of communication to express affection or intimacy (e.g., hugging, hand-holding), or to indicate familiarity or friendship (e.g., a pat on the back). Touch, however, may also be used as a form of power and control (e.g., pushing someone out of the way). Pace and proximity : This term refers to spatial relationships between people. People use these cues to determine how close they stand, and, consequently, how intimate an interaction is. When individuals are standing close to each other, it usually means they are comfortable talking to each other. Proxemics : This is the study of human use of space. It describes personal space, social-cultural space, public spaces, intimate spaces, and others. An example of personal space is tending to feel uncomfortable or awkward when a stranger stands too close. Gestures : Are nonverbal actions that communicate a message to another person without the use of words. A gesture is understood within the cultural context it occurs in. For example, a thumbs-up gesture in the United States is understood to signal that everything is okay. In Brazil, Mexico, and other countries in South America, the same gesture signals an insult. Gestures can be broken down into categories Gestures can be grouped into several categories: greetings, distance-keeping behaviors, stances and poses, gestures of power or control, insults and obscenities, sexual gestures, and body decoration. Nonverbal cues of discomfort may be communicated by different behaviors like facial expressions or physical actions that reveal emotions like sadness or anger. While some bodily signals are universal, the context is essential to understanding them. A smile, for example, can mean "hello," or it can mean "I'm happy." It can also be a signal of embarrassment or discomfort. The context and the meaning must be interpreted to understand how that person actually feels. Head and Facial Movements Are Used in Many Nonverbal Communication Cues Head movements can indicate agreement or disagreement with what the speaker is saying. They can also be used to express the speaker's attentiveness towards the other person. Head tilts show attentiveness and interest, while a tilt to one side indicates inattentiveness or uncertainty. When nodding, there is usually a slight pause and no movement of the chin or facial muscles. This type of nod is used to indicate understanding, confirmation, or agreement. Facial Expressions Can Communicate a Wide Range of Emotions The facial expression may be the first cue a person will give that reveals their inner feelings. Facial expressions can be controlled voluntarily or involuntarily. Don't Believe Everything You See: The Body Language Charade If you want to understand what people are really thinking, studying their body language won't always help. A dissertation by Tim Leighton, PhD candidate at the University of Portsmouth, UK showed that we are better at hiding our real feelings than most people think. In a test with 60 volunteers, only during 37 percent of the experiment did the participants seem to be really honest. The other 63 percent of the time, they tried to hide their true feelings from researchers. "This suggests that most of the time we are better at hiding our emotions than we think, and even when we seem to be giving an honest opinion or expressing an emotion, there's a good chance that this is a front," says Leighton. "We simply can't help it—it's a constant source of deception. Humans seem to be hard-wired to hide their true feelings." But there's no need to despair. Leighton says, “It's more important to be aware of our body language rather than trying to read what people are thinking. Our body rarely lies, but we need to exercise caution when reading people,” he explains. “Anyone who tells you they can read body language with more than 50 percent accuracy is wrong.” Desconocido PART 1 Desconocido VERBAL AND PARAVERBAL COMMUNICATION Desconocido Desconocido Chapter 1: Voice A s with any form of body language, the voice should be analyzed against the entire gamut of body language to draw a reasonable conclusion. Individuals that work in customer care or call centers understand the value of voice. It is what the customer meets and on which they form an opinion of the service and the company. Concerning voice, what counts most is what one hears. If you are a fan of music, you probably have had comprehensive exposure to the role of voice in communication. A high volume communicates nervousness, and one should seek to convey energy and sound persuasive. At one point, you might have felt unease having to shout on the phone due to the mouthpiece or network issues because it makes you sound aggressive, and that is not how you want to be perceived. Listening to an individual that appears to be shouting suggests that the individual is irritated, tired, or unwell. A speaker that sounds like he or she is shouting comes across as someone that is offended or irked by an issue or the audience. Then there is the speed of speaking. Speaking fast indicates panic and selfishness. Slowing down the speed of speaking allows the receiver to effectively process what is being spoken. Speaking fast also indicates that one is in a hurry and wants to move on to the next point. If you have ever called a call center and got an agent that spoke faster than usual, then you likely felt the agent was not listening or that they were not valuing your concern, as it should be. Pitch concerns the lowness or highness of the voice and is highly important in the English language. Through pitch, we express emotions and attitudes by changing intonation. From the pitch of the voice, we can determine if one is feeling stressed. Variation of pitch helps make the conversation sound natural, as emotions are not static. From the analysis of pitch variation, one can determine if one is a native or non-native speaker of a language. A monotone voice is not expressive and not interesting to hear. Regarding tone, it is critical because it can mislead or enhance the outcome of the conversation. If one has an angry tone, then the receiver will assume that the speaker is upset. A professional and understanding tone is preferred. A critical tone makes the person sound as if he or she is judging the audience. A professional tone makes one appear diplomatic and knowledgeable in what he or she is presenting to the audience. Organizations invest significantly in attaining a professional tone. Tone also includes the choice of words, however, in this context, we are focusing on nonverbal communication. Perhaps at one point, you tried making a joke, but no one laughed, or you had to offer apologies because the audience processed it differently. Maybe part of this mishap was due to the way you voiced the joke, making it appear like you were shouting, taunting, or expressing disdain. Even the best comedians lose the audience in some instances due to the way they express their jokes. Having a consistent content tone of voice enables the audience to view you as consistent. Take time to search the late and former United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan to appreciate the pitch and voice of a speaker. There is a justification for insisting on a pleasing tone during communication. Your tone is likely to be associated with your personality and profession, and it is the reason organizations invest time and resources in evoking a tone that connects them with their clients. Exhibiting a unique tone can help charm and convince your customers. It is not just about having a pleasant tone but also about creating an identity. If one exhibits a consistent and particular tone, then the public is likely to form an image of your values and personality, and this can make it easier to connect with customers. For instance, your favorite social media influencer has a particular tone that you associate with the individual. Particularly outside of face-to-face communication, tone is critical to avoid misconceptions and backlash. As most services are online these days, customers occasionally need assistance with applications and access to online services, and this requires a responsive call center. When customers contact the call center, the only thing they interact with is the tone of the speaker. The tone of the call agent can worsen the emotions of the client or thaw their emotions and make it easier to solve the issue facing the customer. The role of tone in communication is to make one appear human. People prefer to deal with humans, and tone helps create a relatable personality that the customer can bond with. A rising and falling tone helps make the communication feel natural. Having the same tone will make one sound monotonous as well as appear rehearsed. If you sound monotone, then it suggests that you cannot elicit the emotional aspects of the communication, and this makes you appear less human to the audience. Most likely, your favorite actors effectively use tone to convey different emotions. At the national level, your favorite political figure varies their tone, making their message appear relatable. Tone also helps establish authority. You probably know someone that sounds commanding and authoritative, courtesy of their tone of voice. The preferred tone is consistent and natural that communicates confidence in what one is speaking about, and this makes the person appear in charge. Try watching National Geographic wildlife documentaries or TED talks, and you will realize that the narrators and speakers have a consistent and varying natural tone to suggest confidence in what they are talking about. Most documentaries provide a learning opportunity for the role of tone in communication. It is through tone that one sustains the focus of the communication. Tone helps keep the audience positioned in what the speaker intended. Again, using the call center example, most call agents politely try to keep the conversation formal even when the caller tries deviating the communication. The tone of the conversation makes the audience appreciate the formality level of the conversation. During interviews, the formality of the tone helps make the content delivered by the interviewee sound believable. Lastly, tone helps one develop an identity. As indicated, you regard certain people as commanding, comical, or reserved based on their tone, among other factors. Again, try recalling which celebrity or politician sounds convincing, professional, commanding, or angry. Tone is connected to the way people feel the emotion you are trying to communicate. In some cases, the tone contradicts the intended emotion, thus distorting the message. Activity Search YouTube for industrial strikes in the United Kingdom and the United States and listen to the pitch and tone of the leaders. Now search for industrial strikes in any African or Asian countries that speak English and listen to the pitch and tone of the leaders. Then comment on the tone variation or lack of tone variation in the selected leaders of the industrial leaders. Go further and comment on the pitch of the selected leaders of the industrial strikes. Then, listen to any speech by Barack Obama and a speech by Teresa May. Which of the two sounds convincing and natural to listen to? Desconocido Desconocido PART 2 Desconocido HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE BODY: INTERPRET THE MOST COMMON SIGNALS Desconocido Desconocido Chapter 2: What Is Non-Verbal Communication? N onverbal communication is difficult to define. Ray Birdwhistell claimed, “Studying nonverbal communication is like studying physiology with no heart.” For that reason, it is difficult to propose a single definition of it. Using the general and accepted definition of communication (sender, receiver, and messages) we can accept that any behavior is considered communication. Desconocido Characteristics Nonverbal communication is omnipresent and multifunctional. It can lead to misunderstandings. It has phylogenetic and ontogenetic primacy. It can express what is not said verbally. It is reliable. In humans, non-verbal communication is frequently paralinguistic; that is, it accompanies verbal information by shading it, expanding it, or sending contradictory signals. When we talk (or listen), our focus is on words rather than body language, although our judgment includes both. An audience is simultaneously processing the verbal and nonverbal aspects. The movements of the body are not generally positive or negative in themselves, rather, the situation and the message will determine its evaluation. Desconocido Gestural and Body Language Body communication, evolutionarily before structured verbal language, is an essential part of the human communication system and that of many primates. In modern humans, nonverbal language makes paralinguistic sense and is important in many human communicative exchanges that adequately complement verbal discourse. It is mentioned that gestures transmit moods and the bio-psychic situation of a person, such as their degree of stress or fatigue. Some authors point out that success in communication depends on the correct and proper functioning of all components of the communication system. We start from the conviction that being understood by a small or large number of people is an art that can be learned to the extent that several resources are known and implemented by the sender; in this case, the monitor, the transmission of the message, and its correct assimilation by the receivers will be favored. Desconocido Look The look is an important aspect of nonverbal communication since it complements verbal information by corroborating it or clarifying its content. In most conversations between human beings, there is remarkable eye contact. In children, the lack of eye contact is frequently associated with lies, distortions, and other interesting psychological facts. It can also point to autism. In public communication, very persistent eye contact can cause restlessness and nervousness in the person speaking, or the audience. On the other hand, the look serves to interact and mark the word shifts in a conversation. Before answering a question, it is common to look away. The gaze also serves to establish the duration of the word shift. Many of the gestures and attitudes are derived from an unconscious behavior, although they are acquired in childhood and are not innate. Children gradually learn to distinguish between a mocking look, a look of surprise, and a challenging look, etc. Finally, the time for which the gaze is maintained can also help to know what the interlocutor thinks. Thus, an insecure or nervous person is unable to keep his gaze fixed on his interlocutor for a long period. Also, talking about personal issues decreases (or even causes loss of) eye contact. The look is a basic technique of nonverbal communication in the field of communication. In this communicative field, we have studied the existence of three levels to which we can direct the gaze according to what we want to convey: Low or Ground Level This is when the gaze is directed to an area near the ground or on the ground. This type of look conveys feelings related to the earth in semiotic terms. Self-assimilation is typical of this level, suggesting that the sender is having an internal conversation with himself. Other feelings related to this level are disgust, anger, and sadness. Medium or Neutral Level This is a gaze at the level of the emitter's eye or between the ground and sky. The issuer uses this level to give a sense of truthfulness and neutrality about the information that is he emitting. It is related to the truth, sincerity, or the feeling of trust that the sender intends to generate over the receiver. It is also used to express feelings related to the upper and lower level, reinforced with the veracity of the level. It is not so much an internal conversation of the sender with itself, but rather a direct and voluntary projection of nonverbal information to the recipient. Upper or Aerial Level The gaze is directed to an upper point of the middle level, closer to the sky. In semiotic terms, the feelings related to this level are joy and illusion. The gaze directed to heaven has historically been related to the gaze towards a magical world of gods and superstitions. We can also relate the look to the sky as an acceptance of the issuer of a superior figure, trying to convey humility or a request for mercy. Desconocido The Analysis of Nonverbal Communication Requires at Least Three Basic Criteria Every nonverbal behavior is inevitably associated with the whole communication of the person. Even a single gesture is interpreted as a whole, not as something isolated by the members of the interaction. The interpretation of nonverbal movements should be made in terms of their congruence with verbal communication. Normally the emotional intention is revealed by nonverbal movements, and intuitively we can feel the incongruity between them and what we are told verbally. Nonverbal communication needs to be congruent with verbal communication and vice versa so that total communication is understandable and sincere. The last criterion of interpretation of the meaning of nonverbal communication is the need to place each nonverbal behavior in its communicational context. Desconocido Chapter 3: How to Read Facial Expressions S ome people have just too much ego to allow their true facial expressions to be shown. When a particular matter has clearly hurt them and that they are undergoing immense pain on the inside, their big egos do not let them reveal such details. These are the kinds of people who suffer in silence, and within a couple of days you may get information that they did something more harmful—suicide for example. There is also a category of people who hide their facial expressions, not because they want to do so, but because they just do not know how to overcome negative emotions. As negativity builds up from the inside and starts to show in the face, they devise ways to hide any negative expressions to lock you out from analyzing them. They want to look happy when, in reality, they are sad. They want you to see that they are having a good time, but in reality, there is a sickness or issue that has been stressing them for months now. We all know that negative emotions can lead to frowning, which essentially makes a person seem not so approachable or appealing. Thus, in an attempt to retain their attractiveness, they conceal any negative facial expression. In other cases, people may hide their facial expressions just to please. These are the people who believe in the philosophy that what you do not know cannot hurt you. Their idea is that when they keep information from you, you may still have a happy life. Thus, when they speak to you, they will struggle to build a certain kind of facial expression that conveys the message that all is well while, even though this is far from the truth. Let’s say, for example, one of your best friends gets some bad news from the doctor that they have cancer and that they have only a few years with you. They love you so much and know how devastating such news could be to you. In order to save you all the pain, they may choose to struggle with the pain on their own, believing that if you do not know about it, you will have a happy life. Whenever they speak with you, they will do their best not to let you into the inside. From their facial expressions, they will be smiling for you, while only they know the agony they are experiencing. You have the responsibility of decoding this so that you get the message they are trying to lock inside. Desconocido 5 Signs Someone Is Faking Facial Expressions 1. Taking a Deep Breath This is a technique that seems to be universal amongst all people who express untrue facial expressions. You will often see them continuously breathe in and out heavily in the midst of their explanations. This is because they know that for you to believe the facial expression they just wore to impress you, they have to appear calm. That is what the deep breathes are meant to do—take in more oxygen so that they can recollect their composure and be cool. If you do not pick up on the breathing pattern, they may succeed in the deception. 2. Putting On a Fake Smile A smile doesn’t mean someone is happy at all times. Someone who smiles and has a bubbly look on their face can win hearts and affection. As a result, many assume that with just the right smile, they will be able to hide feelings like anger or sadness. But a fake smile will always be fake. It may convince some people at first glance, but a keen individual will soon realize this smile is fake. How well you know the individual could guide you into distinguishing between the smile they just put on and their real happy smile. But even if you do not know them that well, their inability to sustain the smile will eventually prove it fake. 3. Trying Not to Support the Head There is something about ‘cooked’ facial expressions that makes the head heavy. People who understand the technique of hiding facial expressions know this. Thus, they always try to make sure that their head is held up high to better deceive you. When you pick up on this, there will be occasions when they can no longer hold the head up and end up burying the face in their palms for some seconds before realizing that they may show you they are lying. Careful analysis of the struggles not to support the head could reveal to you that they are faking their facial expression. 4. Struggling to Relax the Face A relaxed face can easily build up a deceiving facial expression. When you speak to someone, and at one moment their face is relaxed and the next moment it is not, that is a sign of a problem. This shows that they may have tried to relax it up to a certain point when they could do it no more. There is something here; take a deep look at their face, and you shall see the truth. 5. Silent Lip Movements To become calm, some people speak to themselves. They may say something like, “Calm down, you can do this. Just stay cool.” If you are not careful, they may actually succeed in being calm and creating a falsified facial expression. Through a keen look at the lip movements, you may tell that the person has more things that they are hiding under their facial expressions. Desconocido Monitor Body Language Communication is a combination of tonal variation, body language, and spoken words. Of these three, body language is the most important element that determines how the message is passed across. To get the message, you need to embrace body language from a neutral perspective. Don’t anticipate anything. In an attempt to analyze someone, you might go overboard and overthink the message. It is advisable that you relax, observe, and allow your subject to express themselves comfortably and freely. Allow your subject the same freedom of expression that you need to interact with them and understand them well. There are a few things you need to pay attention to that can help you analyze their actions and body language and decipher the message in their communication better. Here are some of the things you should look at: Posture To analyze someone, you must take note of on their posture. There are subtle messages you can identify from someone’s posture, like confidence, self-esteem, and ego. These have an effect on the message passed across or the inferences drawn from the message. Appearance Appearance matters when communicating with someone. It can influence your perception of the recipient or their message. Many people will assume someone is deeply spiritual if they show up in Buddhist attire, casual if they have a T-shirt and jeans on, and professional if they are in a power suit. By their clothing and appearance, you are already biased about their personality, hence the message you expect from them. Motion Physical movements can also influence the way you analyze someone. Some of the things you should focus on are subtle, but they can tell you so much. Someone who feels under pressure can pick their cuticles or bite their lips in a bid to ease the situation or to overcome an awkward moment. This might not apply all the time, but in most cases, when someone is not forthcoming about something, they tend to put their hands behind their back, on their lap or in their pocket. Anger, defensiveness, or need for self-preservation is portrayed when someone folds their arms and legs. Look keenly, and you might also notice that people tend to lean toward those they feel more comfortable with or those they like and further away from their foes. It is amazing how such simple reactions can tell you so much about someone even without them uttering a word. Facial Expressions While it is easy to hold back from saying something, it is not easy to hide facial expressions. Facial expressions can also tell you a lot about someone’s reaction. Someone who is overthinking a situation or worried might have deep frown lines. Contempt and anger are associated with pursed lips. The same can also be expected of a bitter person. In a tense moment, many people will grind their teeth or clench their jaws. Desconocido Emotional Attunement Ever heard someone say you give off positive or negative vibes? This is true. Emotions express your energy about someone or something. When you are around them, you feel either good or bad. Some people drain your energy while others make you feel vibrant. The energy might be invisible, but it has a profound impact on your perception of someone, which also affects the way you analyze them. To sense someone’s energy, notice how you feel when talking to them. Do you feel comfortable in their presence, or do you want to back off? Look at their eyes. You can tell whether someone is angry or content by looking at their eyes when they speak to you. Another feature you should look at is the tonal variation. From someone’s tone, you can tell whether they are annoyed or happy. You can also tell how their mood changes from their tone. Desconocido Intuitive Approach Intuition is about gut feeling. This goes beyond the spoken word and body language. Intuition rises above everything you might have read or heard about someone. It is about what you feel about them the moment you meet them. During your first meeting with someone, how easy are you around them? Gut feeling is a primal method your body uses to determine whether you can trust someone or not. After your gut feeling, think about whether you got goosebumps. Goosebumps represent striking a chord with someone or a sign that you resonate with someone who inspires you even if you have never met them before. Desconocido Chapter 4: The Eyes T he eyes are said to be the windows to our soul and our thoughts. There is so much that you can tell just by looking at a person’s eyes and the various movements that they make. Desconocido To Be a Stellar Analyzer, Follow the Steps Below 1. Establish Your Reason for Wanting to Analyze Someone Do you want to know whether they are lying to you or are you trying to validate their authenticity? It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with a stranger or not. The rules are the same. 2. Baseline the Eyes The baseline process involves establishing how a person’s eyes behave in a normal and non-threatening situation. Do this by asking about casual and neutral topics such as what they think about the weather, what they would like to drink, as well as movie and hobby preferences. The baselining questions should be no-brainers and something that nobody would really lie about. Take note of how the eyes behave as you are having this talk, and you have your baseline. 3. Look for Any Signs of Eye Deviation from the Baseline For instance, if you are on a first date, keep tabs on the conversations and topics that make the other party’s eyes deviate from the baseline. These are potential red-flags, and you may want to dig a little deeper. Psychologists and the FBI use this tactic all the time, and they are able to establish which questions they need to dig deeper on. Baseline deviations can take the form of: Eye blocking. Eye blocking often happens when a person feels threatened, or when they are repulsed by something they see or hear. This is an indication of a very uncomfortable situation, mostly due to disbelief or innate disagreement. Some people display eye blocking by rapid blinking while others take to rubbing the eyes. Learning to read eye blocking can help you realize when you have repulsed people, enabling you to make it up or change the topic immediately. Many years ago, I was out on a date with a person that I really liked and felt an instant chemistry with. As we got to know each other, I said something demeaning about people who opted for a divorce rather than staying and fighting for their marriage. I was trying to come off as a keeper, and I missed his sudden change of demeanor, which involved a lot of eye rubbing. Turns out he had married young and had already been divorced once. Needless to say, we never went out for a second date. If I had known what I know now, I could have potentially saved the situation. Squinting. People will often squint if they do not like you or something that you are saying. This behavior is similar to eye-blocking, and you should address it quickly or clarify whatever it is that you have said before it gets worse. Eye positions. Understanding eye positions is immensely important in the analysis process, and it will tell you a lot with minimum effort. You can analyze these eye movements when doing cross-examinations, interviews, or generally when a person is talking to you. From this analysis, you can tell whether a person is lying to you or not. Right eye movements are associated with truth, while left eye movements are associated with lies/making things up. You must realize that human beings will always have a strong desire to be liked and accepted, and sometimes creating a façade of who they want to be seems like the best option. Regardless of the content through which you are analyzing a person, knowing this technique will help you know who you are really dealing with. When a person is talking about a past event, they often rely on stored memories that they can vividly remember and describe. The memories are said to be on the left side of the brain, and that is why eye movements are to their upper left (your right if you are directly facing them). However, if a person is just being deceptive and has to come up with a fake story, the eyes will shift to your left. The same applies when they are talking about remembered sounds such as conversations they claim to have had in the past. When a person is having an internal dialogue/debate, they will most likely glance toward the lower left. However, remembering a feeling will have them glancing toward the lower right Movement of the eyes is considered to be one of the most accurate methods of analyzing a person/situation, although it is not fool proof. You have to pay very close attention to the movements and put them in the context of the discussion to avoid making wrong judgments. In most cases, you have to associate the movement with the exact word or sentence that a person is saying. Consider the following scenario: A person may be telling the truth about an incident and add bits of lies in between. For example, a statement like “I graduated in business and commerce from Harvard University” may have two parts. It may be true that indeed the person graduated in business and commerce, with the only exception being that they did not attend Harvard. If you are keen enough, you may notice the sudden shift in eye movements which will be red flags. If you are not sure about what you have observed, it is prudent to ask to follow-up questions. For example, you can ask the person to tell you all about Harvard and what their experience was in the institution. Such a question requires a lengthy answer, and you will be able to observe eye movements much more accurately at this point. Sideway Glances. When a person is giving sideways glances, it is often an indication that they are uncertain, and often an indication of nervousness. You may want to ask to follow-up questions since this may be a sign of deception. Again, it really depends on the context of the conversation since most people are prone to making sideways glances when they are withholding certain information. Maybe they just don’t trust you. In most cases, you will only make credible inferences when you understand what all the eye movements mean and connect them to the context of the conversation. Remember, if you are not sure, the best thing to do is to ask more follow-up questions and analyze more signs. Desconocido Chapter 5: THE Mouth Desconocido Nonverbal Behavior of the Lips Lip Compression H ave you ever watched the recordings of someone testifying before a judge or Congress? You will likely notice an eerie similarity in the way the person’s lips seem to disappear during those moments. When we are faced with stress, we often make our lips disappear unconsciously as a way of shutting ourselves off from the world. Lip compression is a vivid sign that the person is troubled or something has gone wrong. Mind you, this behavior doesn’t necessarily show deception. Sometimes, when the person is in a high level of discomfort, the corners of the lips might turn downward. You should also know that it is hard, perhaps impossible, to fake this gesture. The Lip Purse When people disagree with what you are saying, they are likely to purse their lips. It could also mean that they are either considering what is being said or searching for an alternative to your offer. Knowing this gesture will help you to modify and present your case. To know if the lip-purse gesture stems from disagreement or the person searching for an alternative option, you need to consider the ongoing conversation to pick additional cues. The lip purse is rarely faked, and you should give it special attention when you notice it in those you are interacting with. Desconocido Tongue Display There are numerous tongue signals that can give you an insight into what people are feeling. For instance, people’s lips become dry when they are stressed, and they tend to moisten their lips by licking them. Also, people tend to run their tongue across their lips as a way to calm themselves during discomfort. It is also common to see people stick out their tongues at someone they feel like antagonizing. It is usually a sign of insecurity when people lick their lips while pondering their options. Let’s examine the tongue-jutting behavior that occurs in various contexts. This is a universal gesture that you will observe anywhere in the world. I’m sure you are trying to conjure up a mental image of this gesture. Don’t worry if you can’t since you will get a clear picture as we proceed. The tongue-jutting gesture is seen in interviews, restaurants, meetings, and even in gambling rooms. It is often done at the conclusion of a deal or when you think you have the upper hand in a transaction. The gesture has several meanings. For instance, it translates to “I got caught again,” gleeful excitement, “I did something foolish,” or “I’m naughty.” In business discussions, you often see the tongue-jutting behavior when one person feels he has gotten away with something. So, if you see this expression, ask yourself what could have triggered it. Perhaps you have been cheated or fooled. Desconocido Smiles and Laughter: The World’s Most Irresistible Gestures Children are often told by their parents to put a big smile on their face when their cousins come over for Christmas. We also learn the art of faking laughter to cover up embarrassing moments. We have integrated so many gestures into our daily routine that help us navigate different situations. Smiles have the ability to evoke positive emotions at an intuitive level. It’s a common tool used to disarm people. When we probe deeper into the significance of such smiles, we often find a whole different type of meaning. You need to know that the zygomaticus muscle, which is responsible for the smile gesture, can be consciously controlled. Smiles can be faked! Desconocido How to Differentiate Between Real and Fake Smiles To an person inexperienced in reading body language, it’s difficult to differentiate between a real and fake smile. One of the major reasons for this is that when a person smiles, our defense usually comes down, and this makes us powerless in telling the difference between a real and fake smile. So how can we tell the difference in order not to fall prey to those who would manipulate us through the smile? There is another muscle referred to as the orbicularis oculi, which controls the corners of the eye. It acts independently and reveals the sincerity of a real smile. So, the first place to check a real smile is to look at the wrinkles in the corner of the eye. A sincere smile creates wrinkle lines at the corner of the eye, while a fake smile involves just the widening of the lips. Desconocido The Smile Leniency Concept The smile leniency concept is a tool used by people, especially transgressors, to disarm dangerous situations. According to Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People , people believe that smiling can not only help you win friends but also influence people. For example, applicants smile more in a job interview to boost their chances of getting the job. People smile more when they are trying to get others’ approval. The smile-leniency effect, when applied by transgressors in a court of law, can result in a less severe sentence since the transgressor is more likely to come across as likable and nonthreatening. So why does this effect have such an impact on others? This concept is a sign of deference, apology, and submissiveness, all rolled into a charming smile. People who don’t want to seem weak or submissive often move around without a smile in a bid to look grumpy and aggressive. Desconocido Five Common Types of Smiles While it’s easy to detect a fake smile, we often have difficulty deciphering the types of smiles that we come across every day. Let’s take a look at the five basic types of smiles: Tight-Lipped Smile This is the type of smile you put on when you have something to hide. In this gesture, the lips are stretched tight against the face without showing the teeth. This gesture is a favorite of women, and it shows they have a contrary opinion that they’d rather not say. Interestingly, other women are quick to detect these signals, while men often remain oblivious to them. For instance, a woman might say another woman is capable and strong while maintaining a tight-lipped smile. She secretly harbors thoughts that the other woman is bitchy and controlling. You will also observe this gesture in successful businessmen who look as if they hold the key to success but aren’t willing to divulge it. Conversely, some successful businessmen like Richard Branson walk around with a wide toothy grin and are glad to explain the secret of their successes because they know most people won’t attempt it. Twisted Smile This gesture reveals only one thing—sarcasm. This is a smile used to show contrasting emotions on the face. For instance, the left cheek, left zygomaticus muscles, and the left side of the eyebrows might be pulled up by the right side of the brain to form a smile while the muscles of the right side of the face are pulled downward by the left side of the brain. What we have here is a contrasting emotion on each side of the face—i.e., one side of the brain features a cheesy grin while the other part forms a smile. This gesture is usually accurate, and it’s a good indication that the other person is using sarcasm against you. The Drop-Jaw Smile The drop-jaw smile is a feigned gesture meant to boost happy reactions in people. You often see this gesture on Bill Clinton and the Joker in Batman . It is a practiced gesture that involves dropping the lower jaw to give an impression of laughter or playfulness. Sideways-Looking-Up Smile This coy smile gesture has been known to generate widespread empathy for women, especially from men, since it evokes their parental nature to protect and care for females. This involves slightly turning the head downwards and away while looking up with a tight-lipped smile. This gesture creates a smile effect that looks secretive, coy, and juvenile. People like the late Princess Diana were able to use this gesture effectively to captivate the hearts of those around her. It’s an important courtship gesture used by women to attract men. It is analyzed as a seductive and “come on” gesture. Interestingly, this same smile is used by Princess Diana’s son, Prince William, which not only reminds people of Diana but also melts their hearts. Desconocido What to Do When There Are Mixed Signals Sometimes we don’t say what we are thinking, but the face betrays our innermost thoughts. For instance, someone who’s consistently looking at the nearest exit while walking with you is giving you clues that he would rather be somewhere else. I call these ‘intention cues.’ Other times, we say something and believe otherwise. This brings us to a general rule about observing and analyzing words and emotions by looking at the facial expressions. Whenever you are confronted with mixed signals from the face (such as anxiety signals along with happiness clues, displeasure displays alongside pleasure behavior) or if the nonverbal facial behavior is not in coherence with the verbal statement, always pick the negative emotion as the more honest and accurate of the two. In this case, the negative sentiment is the more genuine and accurate of the person’s emotions and feelings. You might wonder, “Why side with the negative emotions?” The answer lies in the fact that our immediate reaction to an objectionable situation is always accurate, and we quickly attempt to mask it with some socially acceptable behavior. So, when confronted with mixed signals, rely more on the negative emotion, especially if it’s the first. Here’s a tip before we move on—it is possible for you to be confused about the significance of a person’s facial expression. When you find yourself in this situation, try to copy the facial expression and see how it makes you feel. And don’t bank all your judgments on the facial expression alone since it can mislead. Rather, look for clusters of the body language and assess it in the context of the person’s circumstance and environment. Desconocido Chapter 6: Interpreting Body Gestures T here are actually two ways to deliver a message when you are engaged in a conversation. Of course, the usual way is simply by talking; however, there is another way that is also as effective but is often overlooked, and that is through the use of gestures. Gestures as small acts that you do while you talk. By learning how to read gestures, it is even possible to say whether the person you are talking to is lying or not. Gestures may also reveal the current mental and emotional state of a person. As they say, “actions speak louder than words.” Indeed, if you want to master the art of manipulation, then learning how to use, as well as read, gestures are very important. Take note that a gesture is not limited to the movements of the hand or crossing of the arms. It can also involve such small and often neglected moveme	150,161
Humour (Terry Eagleton) (Z-Library).epub	part0001 HUMOUR part0002 part0003 ‘To Those Born After’, originally published in German in 1939 as ‘An Die Nachgeborenen’, translated by Tom Kuhn. Copyright 1939, © 1961 by Bertolt-Brecht-Erben / Suhrkamp Verlag. Translation copyright © 2019, 2015 by Tom Kuhn and David Constantine, from COLLECTED POEMS OF BERTOLT BRECHT by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tom Kuhn and David Constantine. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 2019 Terry Eagleton All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: sales.press@yale.edu yalebooks.com Europe Office: sales@yaleup.co.uk yalebooks.co.uk Set in Adobe Garamond Regular by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931197 ISBN 978-0-300-24314-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 part0004 For Trevor Griffiths part0005 CONTENTS Preface 1 On Laughter 2 Scoffers and Mockers 3 Incongruities 4 Humour and History 5 The Politics of Humour Endnotes Index part0006 PREFACE A good many studies of humour begin with the shamefaced acknowledgement that to analyse a joke is to kill it dead. This is not in fact true. It is true that if you want to raise a laugh it is unwise to joke and dissect your joke at the same time, rather as some US presidents are said to have been unable to walk and chew gum simultaneously; but there are not many comedians who come up with a theoretical inquiry into their wisecracks at the very moment they are delivering them. Those who do so are generally to be found in job centres, not in clubs and theatres. (There are, to be sure, exceptions, such as the brilliantly original comedian Stewart Lee, who deconstructs his own comedy as he goes along and analyses the audience’s response to it.) Otherwise, humour and the analysis of humour are perfectly capable of coexisting. Knowing how a joke works does not necessarily sabotage it, any more than knowing how a poem works ruins it. In this as in other matters, theory and practice occupy different spheres. An anatomical acquaintance with the large intestine is no obstacle to enjoying a meal. Gynaecologists can lead fulfilling sex lives, while obstetricians can coo over babies. Astronomers confronted every day with the utterly insignificant status of the Earth within the universe do not hit the bottle or leap off a cliff, or at least not for that reason. There are, to be sure, a number of remarkably humourless accounts of humour on the library shelves. Some such studies come thickly furnished with graphs, charts, diagrams, statistics and reports of laboratory experiments. 1 One glum trio of scientific researchers even appear to cast doubt on whether jokes actually exist. There are, however, some illuminating commentaries as well, a range of which I have drawn upon in this book. Theories of humour can be as useful as theories of polygamy or paranoia as long as they are marked by a certain intellectual modesty. Like any fruitful hypothesis, they need to acknowledge their own limits. There will always be anomalous cases, unresolved puzzles, awkward consequences, inconvenient implications and the like. Theories can be riddled with discrepancies and still perform some productive work, rather as a fuzzy photograph of someone can be better than no photograph at all, and a job worth doing is usually worth doing badly. The incomparable William Hazlitt quotes a fellow author, Isaac Barrow, as observing that humour is so ‘versatile and multiform’, a phenomenon of which any exhaustive definition is impossible to come by: Sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly restoring an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciliation of contradictions, or in acute nonsense . . . a mimical look or gesture passeth for it; sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being; sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange: sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose; often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how . . . It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way . . . which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, shewing in it some wonder and breathing some delight thereto. 2 It would be a foolhardy theorist who would seek to cram all that into a single formula. Even so, humour is not simply an enigma, any more than poetry is. It is possible to say something relatively cogent and coherent about why we laugh, though whether I have done so in these pages is up to the reader to judge. T.E. 2017 part0007 1 ON LAUGHTER They laughed when I told them I wanted to be a comedian. Well they’re not laughing now. Bob Monkhouse Laughter is a universal phenomenon, which is not to say a uniform one. In an essay entitled ‘The Difficulty of Defining Comedy’, Samuel Johnson remarks that though human beings have been wise in many different ways, they have always laughed in the same way, but this is surely doubtful. Laughter is a language with a host of different idioms: cackling, chortling, grunting, chuckling, shrieking, bellowing, screaming, sniggering, gasping, shouting, braying, yelping, snickering, roaring, tittering, hooting, guffawing, snorting, giggling, howling, screeching and so on. It can come in blasts, peals, gales, gusts, ripples or torrents, blaring, trumpeting, trickling, swirling or piercing. There are also different ways of smiling, from beaming, smirking and sneering to grinning, leering and simpering. Smiling is visual and laughter primarily aural, but when T. S. Eliot writes in The Waste Land of a ‘chuckle spread from ear to ear’ he fuses the two phenomena. Chortling, sniggering and so on denote different physical modes of laughter, involving as they do such matters as volume, tone, pitch, pace, force, rhythm, timbre and duration. But laughter can also convey a range of emotional attitudes: joyous, sarcastic, sly, raucous, genial, wicked, derisive, dismissive, nervous, relieved, cynical, knowing, smug, lascivious, incredulous, embarrassed, hysterical, sympathetic, skittish, shocked, aggressive or sardonic, not to speak of purely ‘social’ laughter, which need not express the least amusement. 1 In fact, most of the forms of laughter I have just listed have little or nothing to do with humour. Laughter may be a sign of high spirits rather than amusement, though you are more likely to think things funny if you are feeling euphoric in the first place. Physical modes and emotional attitudes can be combined in a variety of ways, so that you can titter nervously or derisively, bray genially or aggressively, giggle with surprise or delight, cackle appreciatively or sardonically and so on. The paradox, then, is that though laughter itself is purely a question of the signifier – mere sound without sense – it is socially coded through and through. It is a spontaneous physical occurrence (most of the time, anyway), but one which is socially specific, and as such cusped between nature and culture. Like dance, laughter is a language of the body (Descartes called it an ‘inarticulate and explosive cry’), 2 though the body is also enmeshed in meaning of a more conceptual kind. Even so, it will never be entirely at home in that more rarefied sphere. There is always a surplus of brute materiality over sense, and it is this that a lot of humour allows us to savour. It also encourages us to accept this incongruity as natural. Farce in particular tends to dramatise this fateful collision between body and mind. As a pure enunciation that expresses nothing but itself, laughter lacks intrinsic sense, rather like an animal’s cry, but despite this it is richly freighted with cultural meaning. As such, it has a kinship with music. Not only has laughter no inherent meaning, but at its most riotous and convulsive it involves the disintegration of sense, as the body tears one’s speech to fragments and the id pitches the ego into temporary disarray. As with grief, severe pain, extreme fear or blind rage, truly uproarious laughter involves a loss of physical self-control, as the body gets momentarily out of hand and we regress to the uncoordinated state of the infant. It is quite literally a bodily disorder. We shall see later that this is one reason why an excess of laughter has frequently been censured as politically dangerous. There is something alarmingly animal about the activity, not least about the kind of noise (hooting, braying, cackling, neighing, bellowing) it involves. It calls to mind our affinity with the other animals – an irony, to be sure, since they do not laugh themselves, or at least not conspicuously so. 3 In this sense, it is at once animal and distinctively human – a miming of the noise of the beasts, yet quite unbestial itself. It is also, of course, one of the most commonplace and pervasive of human pleasures. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting , Milan Kundera quotes the French feminist Annie Leclerc on the subject: ‘Bursts of repeated, rushing, unleashed laughter, magnificent laughter, sumptuous and mad . . . laughter of sensual pleasure, sensual pleasure of laughter; to laugh is to live profoundly.’ Laughter signifies, then, but it also involves the breakdown of signification into pure sound, spasm, rhythm and breath. It is hard to form impeccably well-shaped sentences when you are thrashing helplessly around on the floor. The disruption of coherent meaning to be found in so many jokes is reflected in the disintegrative nature of laughter itself. This temporary derangement of meaning is most obvious in the absurd or nonsensical, in goonery and surrealism of one form or another, but it is arguably an aspect of all effective comedy. In one sense, laughter represents the momentary collapse or disruption of the symbolic realm – of the sphere of orderly and articulate meaning – while in another sense it never ceases to rely on it. We do, after all, generally laugh at some object, event, utterance or situation, unless we are simply being tickled, fighting a fit of depression or registering our pleasure in someone’s company; and this involves the deployment of concepts, which is one reason why some commentators have claimed that non-linguistic animals do not laugh. Laughter is a form of utterance which springs straight from the body’s libidinal depths, but there is a cognitive dimension to it as well. Like fury or envy, it involves beliefs and assumptions. In fact, some forms of humour, as we shall see later, are primarily intellectual affairs. Wit, for example. Farce may convert human action into mere physical motion, but even this depends on moving in a world of meaning. Infants smile almost from birth, but laughter begins only around the third or fourth month, perhaps because of its need to engage the mind. It is true that laughter can gather an uncontrollable momentum of its own, so that after a while we no longer know exactly what we are laughing at, or laugh simply at the fact that we are laughing. It is what Milan Kundera, quoting Annie Leclerc once more, calls ‘laughter so laughable it made us laugh’. 4 There is also the case of contagious laughter, in which we laugh because someone else does, without needing to know what he or she finds so funny. As with certain diseases, you can pick up a dose of laughter without being sure where it came from. Generally speaking, however, laughter alters the mind’s relation to the body without suspending it completely. It is worth noting the curious fact that much of this applies to weeping too. 5 James Joyce speaks in Finnegans Wake of ‘laughtears’, while his compatriot Samuel Beckett writes in Molloy of a woman whose dog has just died that ‘I thought she was going to cry, it was the thing to do, but on the contrary she laughed. It was perhaps her way of crying. Or perhaps I was mistaken and she was really crying, with the noise of laughter. Tears and laughter, they are so much Gaelic to me.’ In fact, laughing and weeping are not always easy to distinguish. Charles Darwin points out in his study of the emotions that laughter can easily be mistaken for grief, and both states may involve copious floods of tears. In The Naked Ape , the anthropologist Desmond Morris argues that laughter actually evolved from crying. Laughter, in short, is not always a laughing matter. There have even been lethal epidemics of the stuff in China, Africa, Siberia and elsewhere, hysterical paroxysms in which, so it is alleged, thousands of people have died. In 1962, one such outbreak in what was then Tanganyika immobilised whole school districts for months on end. Since being out of control is never entirely gratifying, laughter can easily border on the unpleasant. Samuel Johnson defines it in his Dictionary as ‘convulsive merriment’, which is not always an agreeable experience. The same is true of being tickled, with its curious blend of the pleasurable and the unbearable. As with watching a horror movie, we are gratified, agitated, excited and uneasy all at the same time. Monkeys who bare their teeth in what appears to be a smile may actually be issuing a threat. Thomas Hobbes writes of laughter in Leviathan as a grimace. We speak of people screaming with laughter, gasping for breath, occasionally having a coronary. Lying through his teeth, the narrator of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy tells us that he once laughed so hard he broke a blood vessel and lost four pints of blood in two hours. The novelist Anthony Trollope suffered a stroke while laughing at a comic novel, a misfortune by which few of his own readers are likely to be afflicted. 6 Despite its potentially calamitous effects, laughter may be indicative of human progress: only an animal which has learnt to carry objects in its hands rather than its mouth can leave the latter free for chuckling or tittering. It would be possible to develop a semiotics of laughing or smiling, showing how each genre of laughter or style of facial expression has its place within a complex signifying system. You can, in short, treat laughter as a text, or as a language with so many regional accents. Upper-class Englishmen, for example are more likely to bray than middle-class Englishwomen, who are rather more given to tinkling. There is a style of laughter in Belize that one is unlikely to hear in Belgravia. Military generals tend not to giggle, or popes to cackle. Those who play Santa Claus may beam, but they would be ill advised to snigger. It is hard to imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger simpering, though easy enough to imagine him leering. The president of the World Bank is permitted to laugh heartily but not hysterically. The ability to assess such modes and tones belongs to what Aristotle calls phronesis , meaning our practical social know-how, as is knowing when humour is appropriate or misplaced. For example, one should not recount the joke ‘What’s black and white and lies on its back in the gutter? – A dead nun’ to an elderly nun at prayer in a cathedral, as one of my children did at the age of five. Here is another example of misplaced humour: Doctor: OK, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. Patient: Give me the bad news first. Doctor: The bad news is that you’ve only got three months to live. Patient: And the good news? Doctor: The good news is that I’m just off to Monaco with this unbelievably beautiful woman. We smile here at the discrepancy between how the brutally jesting or monstrously tactless doctor ought to behave and how he actually does, a tension that is spiced by a spot of agreeable sadism on our part at the expense of the hapless patient. We are gratified by the doctor’s sheer chutzpah, his barefaced disregard for both human compassion and professional decorum, which allows us vicariously to indulge our own illicit hankering to be free of such irksome responsibilities. We are relieved for a few moments of the inconvenient burden of compassion. Black humour of this kind eases the guilt we may feel at our glee over the discomfiture of others by socialising it, casting it in the form of a joke to be shared with one’s friends and thus rendering it more acceptable. There is some pleasure to be reaped, too, from laughing in the face of death, and thus being able to make light of our own mortality. To jest at death is to cut it down to size and diminish its fearful power over us, as in another doctor joke: Patient: How long have I got to live? Doctor: Ten. Patient: Ten what? Years? Months? Weeks? Doctor: No, no: ten, nine, eight, seven . . . To confront its own extinction in fictional form means that the ego can achieve a momentary transcendence of it, gaining a brief taste of immortality. One thinks of the symbolic victory over death of Woody Allen’s grandfather, who as his grandson touchingly reports sold him a watch on his deathbed. Laughter compensates a little for our mortality, as well as for our general infirmity. Indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche remarks that the human animal is the only one to laugh because it suffers so atrociously, and needs to dream up this desperate palliative for its afflictions. Gallows or graveyard humour, however, involves more than a disavowal of death. To cut death down to size with a casual jest is also to vent our spleen on it for the disquiet it causes us. There is also the question of our unconscious desire for what we fear. What Freud calls Thanatos or the death drive pulverises meaning and value, and is thus bound up with that fleeting derangement of sense we know as humour. Like humour, this Dionysian force garbles sense, confounds hierarchies, merges identities, scrambles distinctions and revels in the collapse of meaning, which is why carnival, which accomplishes all this too, is never very far from the cemetery. In cutting the ground from beneath all social distinctions, carnival affirms the absolute equality of all things; but in doing so it sails perilously close to the excremental vision, reducing everything to the sameness of shit. If human bodies are interchangeable in an orgy, so are they in the gas chambers. Dead levelling, as one might call it. Dionysus is the god of drunken revelry and sexual ecstasy, but also a harbinger of death and destruction. The jouissance he promises can prove lethal. The doctor joke, then, grants us some momentary relief from the need to behave with decorum and treat others considerately. It also allows us to stop agonising for a few brief moments over the prospect of death. The notion of humour as a form of relief forms the basis of one widely influential view of it, the so-called release theory. The seventeenth-century philosopher the Earl of Shaftesbury sees comedy as releasing our constrained but naturally free spirits, while Immanuel Kant speaks of laughter in his Critique of Judgment as ‘an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing’, 7 which combines the release theory with the concept of incongruity. True to this approach, the Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer claims that ‘mirth is caused by a gush of agreeable feeling which follows the cessation of unpleasant mental strain’. 8 In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious , Sigmund Freud argues that jokes represent a release of the psychic energy we normally invest in maintaining certain socially essential inhibitions. 9 In relaxing such superegoic repression, we save on the unconscious exertion it demands and expend it instead in the form of joking and laughing. It is, so to speak, an economics of humour. On this view, the joke is an impudent smack at the superego. We exult in these Oedipal skirmishes, but conscience and rationality are also faculties we respect, so that a tension is set up between being responsible and running riot. Hegel speaks of the ludicrous in his Philosophy of Fine Art as the upshot of a collision between an ungovernable sensual impulse and one’s higher sense of duty. It is a conflict reflected in boisterous roars of laughter, which as we have noted already can be as alarming as they are agreeable. Perhaps most jokes betray a murmur of uneasy laughter at the prospect of bringing the Father low. Fearful of being punished for this insolence, our delight at seeing the patriarch dethroned is edged with nervous giggles of guilt, which then spur us to chuckle even more as a defence against this disquiet. If our laughter is edgy, it is because we fear the consequences of this illicit enjoyment as much as we revel in it. This is why we cringe as well as chuckle. The guilt, however, mixes a certain spice into the enjoyment. In any case, we know that the conquest we have chalked up is purely provisional – and a paper victory too, since a joke, after all, is simply a piece of language. We can therefore indulge our iconoclasm while assuaging our guilt about it, secure in the faith that the Father (a figure whom, after all, we love as well as hate) will not be permanently disabled by this minor insurgency. His abject loss of authority is purely temporary. It is just the same with the fantasy revolution of carnival, when the morning after the merriment the sun will rise on a thousand empty wine bottles, gnawed chicken legs and lost virginities and everyday life will resume, not without a certain ambiguous sense of relief. Or think of stage comedy, where the audience is never in any doubt that the order so delightfully disrupted will be restored, perhaps even reinforced by this fleeting attempt to flout it, and thus can blend its anarchic pleasures with a degree of conservative self-satisfaction. As in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist , Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park or Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat , we can wreak some gloriously irresponsible havoc while the parental figure is absent, but would be devastated to learn that he or she might never return. In the more innocuous kind of joke, so Freud argues, the humour springs from the release of the repressed impulse, while in obscene or abusive joking it stems from the relaxation of the repression itself. Blasphemous jokes also allow us to relax such inhibitions, as in the tale of the pope and Bill Clinton dying on the same day. By some bureaucratic blunder, Clinton was despatched to heaven while the pope was sent to hell. The error, however, was rapidly rectified, and the two men managed to snatch a quick word as they passed one another travelling in opposite directions – the pope remarking on how eager he was to see the Virgin Mary, and Clinton informing him that he was just ten minutes too late. In Freud’s view, the pleasurable form of the joke itself (wordplay, snatches of nonsense, absurd associations and so on) may lead the superego to relax its vigilance for a moment, which then allows the anarchic id an opportunity to thrust the censored feeling to the fore. The ‘forepleasure’ of the joke’s verbal form, as Freud calls it, lowers our inhibitions, softens us up and in doing so cajoles us into accepting the joke’s sexual or aggressive content, as we might not otherwise be ready to do. Laughing is in this sense a failure of repression; yet we are amused because we acknowledge the force of the inhibition in the very act of violating it, so that, as Sándor Ferenczi points out, a totally virtuous individual would laugh no more than a totally villainous one. The former would not harbour discreditable feelings in the first place, while the latter would not recognise the force of the prohibition and would therefore feel no particular thrill in transgressing it. 10 As Freud points out, we may be less moral than we like to think, but we are also more moral than we imagine. Like the neurotic symptom, jokes for the release theory are compromise formations, incorporating both the act of repression and the instinct being curbed. So it is that the joke for Freud is a double-dealing rogue which serves two masters at once. It must bow to the authority of the superego while assiduously promoting the interests of the id. In the little insurrection of the wisecrack we can reap the pleasures of rebellion while simultaneously disavowing them, since it is, after all, only a joke. As Olivia remarks in Twelfth Night , there is no harm in an allowed Fool. On the contrary, the licensed jester who sends up social convention is a thoroughly conventional figure himself. Indeed, his irreverence may end up reinforcing social norms by demonstrating how remarkably resilient they are, how good-humouredly capable of surviving any amount of mockery. The most durable social order is the one secure enough not only to tolerate deviance but actively to encourage it. A good deal of humour involves what Freud knows as desublimation. The energies we invest in some noble ideal or exalted alter ego are released as laughter when it is rudely punctured. Since sustaining such ideals involves a degree of psychological strain, not having to do so can be a gratifying sensation. We are now free from having to maintain a reputable moral front and can reap the delectable fruits of being openly crude, cynical, selfish, obtuse, insulting, morally indolent, emotionally anaesthetised and outrageously self-indulgent. But we can also be enjoyably released from the exigencies of sense-making itself, what Freud calls ‘the compulsion of logic’, a process that imposes unwelcome constraints on the unruly unconscious. Hence our delight in the surreal and absurd, in a world in which anything is possible, such as (in an episode of BBC Radio’s The Goon Show ) the crafty device of floating a life-size cardboard replica of the British Isles off the British Isles in order to fool German bomber crews during the Second World War. The nineteenth-century philosopher Alexander Bain speaks of ‘The posture of artificial and constrained seriousness demanded by the grave necessities of life’, 11 restrictions of which a Victorian like himself was likely to be especially aware; and it is this solemn stance towards the world that humour allows us momentarily to shuck off. Everyday life involves sustaining a number of polite fictions: that we take a consuming interest in the health and well-being of our most casual acquaintances, that we never think about sex for a single moment, that we are thoroughly familiar with the later work of Schoenberg and so on. It is pleasant to drop the mask for a moment and strike up a comedic solidarity of weakness. Bain goes on to combine this release theory with a version of the superiority thesis, which we shall be investigating later. If we rejoice in seeing the high brought low, a deflation which allows us to relax a certain psychological tension, it is partly because we can now condescend to those by whom we were previously intimidated. We shall see later how a number of theorists combine different theories of humour in this way. In the same spirit, Sándor Ferenczi remarks that ‘remaining serious is a successful repression’. 12 Joking is thus a brief vacation from the mild oppressiveness of everyday meaning, which is itself a form of sublimation. The construction of social reality is a strenuous business which demands a sustained effort, and humour allows us to relax our mental muscles. It is as though beneath our more rational faculties there lies a darker, dishevelled, more cynical subtext which shadows our conventional social behaviour at every point, and which occasionally erupts into the open in the form of madness, criminality, erotic fantasy or an exuberant shaft of wit. It is a subtext which invades the daylight world on a large scale in such literary forms as Gothic fiction. One is reminded, too, of the Monty Python sketch in which a shopkeeper obsequiously serving a customer breaks suddenly into a torrent of foul abuse before reverting to his customary deferential self. On the other hand, there are forms of humour which are more instances of repression than resistances to it. Good, clean, hearty fun, for example. Boy Scout japes and general male joshing are anxious, aggressive ways of fending off subtleties of feeling and psychological complexities, all of which pose a threat to the world of mutual towel-slapping and beating drums while bare-chested deep in the woods. What Bain perceives in his pre-Freudian way is that the maintenance of everyday reality itself demands of us a continuous repression. It is as though we are all really play-actors in our conventional social roles, sticking solemnly to our meticulously scripted parts but ready at the slightest fluff or stumble to dissolve into infantile, uproariously irresponsible laughter at the sheer arbitrariness and absurdity of the whole charade. Meaning itself involves a degree of psychic strain, dependent as it is on excluding possibilities which swarm in from the unconscious. If excrement plays such a key role in comedy, it is partly because shit is the very model of meaninglessness, levelling all distinctions of sense and value to the same endlessly self-identical stuff. The line between comedy and cynicism can thus be alarmingly thin. Seeing everything as shit may represent a blessed emancipation from the rigours of hierarchy and the terrorism of high-minded ideals, but it is also unnervingly close to the concentration camp. If humour can deflate the pompous and pretentious in the name of some more viable conception of human dignity, it can also strike, Iago-like, at the very notion of value, which in turn depends on the possibility of meaning. Take, for example, the story of the factory worker whose job it was to press a lever every few minutes. After many years at this task he discovered that the lever was not connected to anything, and suffered a severe breakdown as a result. One of the most disturbing aspects of this anecdote is that it is mildly funny. Released from the burden of meaning, we are amused by the absurdity of the situation at the same time as we are horrified by it. Futility is both alluring and appalling. Or take the tale of a group of patients in a psychiatric hospital who decided to commit collective suicide. Since there were no pills or weapons to hand, one of the group stood with his feet in a bucket of water and his finger in a light socket, while the others clung on to him as one of them threw the switch. This, too, has its darkly entertaining aspect. We are dismayed by the misery that drove these men and women to such desperate extremes, while suppressing a wry smile at the ludicrousness of their situation. Death, wreathed as it is in portentous significance, is momentarily disarmed, reduced to Beckettian farce, so that the energy we invest in repressing the fact of our own mortality can be discharged in laughter. In both these cases, humour involves a brutal disregard for human value, a value that we nonetheless continue to cherish. We can dip into senselessness for a blessed moment without having to sign on for some of its more frightful consequences. If we are gratified by these strikes against the superego, however, it is partly because (though both of these incidents actually happened) we are in the presence of a piece of language rather than the real thing. At the same time, as Freud argues in an essay on humour, the superego may take pity on the ego and reinforce its narcissism. It may address it in consolatory tones, assuring it of its invulnerability by pointing out that there is no need for it to be anxious, since the world, after all, is just a joke. 13 Bucking the tyranny of what Freud calls the reality principle, as jokes can be seen to do, affords us a certain infantile satisfaction, as we regress to a condition which pre-dates the jealously enforced divisions and precisions of the symbolic order and are able to throw logic, congruity and linearity to the winds. The failure of physical coordination induced by intense laughter is an outward sign of this reversion to primal helplessness. Humour does for adults what play does for children, namely liberates them from the despotism of the reality principle and allows the pleasure principle some scrupulously regulated free play. Infants and toddlers may not be accomplished wits or maestros of the well-timed gag, but they delight in the zany and nonsensical, as well as in the kind of babbling that might later become either poetry (‘mouth music’, as Seamus Heaney calls it) or surreal humour. They are, however, strangers to the kind of comedy that depends upon deviating from established norms, since they have as yet no grasp of them. You cannot defamiliarise a situation, and thus provoke a smile, when everything is still wondrously unfamiliar. If carnival turns on a swoop from high to low, sexuality also manifests this bathetic movement from the sublime to the ridiculous, high-flying idealism to the workaday stuff of the senses. This is doubtless one reason why it is always a reliable source of humour, along with the fact that repression in this province of human affairs is particularly robust, and the release of it correspondingly pleasurable. Since humour involves a gratifying release of tension which mimes the event of orgasm, even non-sexual varieties of it have subdued sexual overtones. Sexuality is a matter of physical desire but also of signs and values, and thus exists on the borderline between the somatic and semiotic. Pitched between romance and a romp, too much meaning and too little, it is an inherently ambiguous phenomenon. Few human activities are at once so exotic yet so banally predictable. How can a few inches of flesh, or a few perfunctory thrusts of the loins, launch a thousand ships? How can the question of who copulates with whom, an observer from Alpha Centauri might ponder, constitute an issue for which men and women will howl, weep and kill? Nothing is more central to traditional comedy than marriage, in which the somatic and semiotic are ideally at one, as the union of two bodies becomes the medium of a unity of souls. Yet comedies like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream also alert us to the arbitrary status of these affinities, which could after all always have been different and perhaps a few scenes ago actually were. Body and spirit will not slot together quite so smoothly. If Puck in the Dream is too much restive spirit, the rude mechanicals are too much solid body. Something of the same might be said of the polarity between Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest . There is a fissure at the heart of humanity, which will not be easily healed by a happy ending. Nature and culture meet in sexuality, but their encounter is always an uneasy one. Perhaps it is for this reason that there is a wayward, unassimilable element at the close of some comedies, a surly Malvolio who refuses to join in the festivities, in order to remind us of the factitious, purely conventional nature of resolutions which might otherwise appear providential. Matthew Bevis writes of the human creature as ‘an animal which finds its own animality either objectionable or funny’, and speaks wittily of ‘the double act that we are’. 14 For Jonathan Swift, a certain grotesque or bathetic comedy is built into the contradictory amalgam of body and spirit we know as humanity. ‘All men are necessarily comic,’ comments Wyndham Lewis, ‘for they are all things , or physical bodies, behaving as persons .’ 15 ‘What is funny, finally,’ comments Simon Critchley, ‘is the fact of having a body’ 16 – more precisely, one might claim, the incongruity involved in neither quite having a body nor quite being one. We are, in short, comic creatures even before we have cracked a joke, and a good deal of humour exploits this fissure or self-division in our make-up. ‘The aim of a joke,’ remarks George Orwell, ‘is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.’ 17 When it comes to the linguistic animal, incongruity goes all the way down. Since we can objectify our own animality but not dissever ourselves from it, a certain irony is structural to the human species. To disown our animal existence altogether would be a form of madness, as Gulliver illustrates at the end of Swift’s novel, but to be nothing but a body is to be a Yahoo. We are constituted in a way that allows us to reach beyond our own corporeal limits, a condition more commonly known as making history. As such, we belong to our own bodies in a way that permits us to put them at arm’s length, which is not true of even the smartest of slugs. Bathos – a too-sudden tumble from the exalted to the everyday – involves both release and incongruity; and incongruity, as we shall see later, lies at the heart of the currently most popular theory of how humour functions. To idealise involves a certain psychological effort, one which it is gratifying to relax and discharge in the form of laughter. Bathos, to be sure, is not the only way in which such psychic release can come about. For the so-called release theory, all humour involves this deflationary effect, as in a rush of desublimation we economise on the energy we invest in serious matters, or in the repression of certain illicit desires, and expend it instead in the form of laughter. Even so, the bathetic is especially marked in British comedy, not least because of the insistence of the class system. Legendary British comedians such as Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams all trade on sudden, indecorous shifts from the civilised tones of the cultivated middle classes to the blunter idiom of the populace. It is as if such comics contain contending social classes within their own person, and as such figure as a kind of walking class struggle. Taking poshness down a peg or two is a familiar British pastime, one that combines the nation’s satirical impulse with its penchant for self-deprecation. English humour often revolves on a conflict of class cultures. One calls to mind Monty Python’s ‘Summarise Proust’ contest, a popular television game in which competitors each have two minutes to summarise the plot of Proust’s three-thousand-odd-page novel, first in evening dress and then in a bathing costume. For quite different social reasons, bathos is also a key device in Irish humour. A society with a rich legacy of ancient art, monastic learning and scholastic thought is likely to be peculiarly conscious of the gap between this erudite culture and the conditions of everyday life in a wretchedly backward colony. So it is that the final book of the Anglo-Irish Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels veers between the absurdly high-minded Houyhnhnms and the bestial, shit-coated Yahoos, allowing the reader no normative middle ground on which to stand. In his Thoughts on Laughter , the eighteenth-century Ulster philosopher Francis Hutcheson maintains that a good deal of humour arises from an incongruous coupling of grandeur and profanity, or dignity and meanness, which he extols as the very spirit of burlesque. One takes it he has comic parody, not striptease, in mind. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy counterpoints the pathologically rationalist Walter Shandy, who is pure mind, with his son Tristram, who is all body. W. B. Yeats pitches Crazy Jane against the Bishop, the carnivalesque vitality of the peasant against a stifling orthodox spirituality. James Joyce’s Ulysses splits down the middle between the esoteric meditations of Stephen Dedalus and the mundane reflections of Leopold Bloom. In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , a venerable scholastic tradition is splintering before our eyes, reduced in Pozzo’s garbled speech to a heap of fragments. Flann O’Brien’s fiction plays off abstruse metaphysical speculation against the threadbare platitudes of pub talk. In Ireland today, one has only to use the phrase ‘the Skibbereen Eagle ’ to evoke a sense of bathos. Skibbereen is an unremarkable town in County Cork whose newspaper, the Eagle , solemnly assured its readers in an editorial at the end of the First World War that it was ‘keeping a close eye on the Treaty of Versailles’. Small nations with a history of hardship tend to be especially amused by those among their own ranks who get above themselves. There is, however, a deeper meaning of bathos. Writing of the critic William Empson, Christopher Norris argues that the key terms he investigates in his The Structure of Complex Words (‘fool’, ‘dog’, ‘honest’ and so on) play their part in generating ‘a down-to-earth quality of healthy scepticism which . . . permits their users to build up a trust in human nature on a shared knowledge of its needs and attendant weaknesses’. 18 It is, in effect, a description of the comic spirit. But it is also an account of what Empson elsewhere calls pastoral, a way of seeing which views the complex and sophisticated as embedded in the commonplace. Pastoral in his view signifies among other things a large-minded plebeian wisdom which knows when not to ask too much of others. You must love and admire the ‘high’ human values of truth, beauty, courage and the like; but you must not be excessively dejected if men and women fail to live up to these sublime ideals, or terrorise them with such notions in a way which makes their weaknesses painful to them. As such, the pastoral sensibility has something in common with Antonio Gramsci’s ‘good sense’, the routine practical wisdom of those who, more conversant with the material world than their superiors, are less likely to be bamboozled by florid flights of rhetoric. ‘The most refined desires,’ Empson comments in both pastoral and Freudian vein, ‘are inherent in the plainest, and would be false if they weren’t.’ 19 Some individuals, he acknowledges, are more subtle and delicate than others, and this need not matter – indeed, it may be a positive enrichment, provided such distinctions do not wreak social damage. But the most seductive subtleties, the most dazzling displays of heroism, virtue and intellect, are a poor thing compared to our common humanity, and whenever we are forced to choose it is always better to choose the latter. It is thus that bathos ceases to be a mere comic trope and becomes instead a moral and political vision. In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting , the Czech novelist Milan Kundera contrasts what he calls angelic and demonic views of human existence. The angelic sees the world as orderly, harmonious and stuffed to the seams with meaning. In the kingdom of the angels, everything is instantly, oppressively meaningful, and no shadow of ambiguity can be tolerated. The whole of reality is drearily legible and intelligible. As for those in the grip of paranoia, there is no room for the random or contingent. Whatever happens happens by necessity, as part of some grand narrative in which every feature of existence has its allotted function. Nothing is negative, awry, deficient or dysfunctional; instead, in this anodyne angelic vision, humankind marches beaming towards the future, shouting, ‘Long Live Life!’ There is a civilised mode of laughter associated with this way of seeing – a rejoicing over how shapely, meaningful and wisely conceived the world is. Among other things, it is the world of Soviet dogma in which Kundera spent the early decades of his life, though it also bears a marked resemblance to contemporary American ideology, with its compulsively upbeat, you-can-be-anything-you-want version of reality. In this euphoric realm, there are no catastrophes, simply challenges. The speech to which it gives rise is what Kundera calls ‘shitless’, whereas the demonic is full of shit. As we have seen already, it revels in the vision of a world purged of meaning and value, one in which everything is excrementally indistinguishable from everything else. If the angelic suffers from an excess of meaning, the demonic is afflicted by a lack of it. Even so, the demonic has its uses. Its role in social existence is to disrupt the anodyne certainties of the angelic by figuring as the grit in its oyster, the glitch in its mechanism, the perverse, refractory factor in any social order. As such, it has a certain affinity with the Lacanian Real. The demonic is the cackle of mocking laughter which deflates the pretensions of the angelic, puncturing its portentousness. It is, as the Devil himself comments in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov , the wayward, cross-grained element which prevents the world from collapsing on itself under the weight of its own suffocating blandness. His own role, he tells Ivan Karamazov, is to act as a form of friction or negativity within God’s Creation, one which will prevent it from withering away from sheer boredom. Without him, the world would be ‘nothing but Hosannas’. If this deviant factor were to be expunged, cosmic order would break out and put an end to everything. Devils are natural deconstructionists. Humour of this kind is the amusement that springs from things being out of order, estranged or defamiliarised, deprived for a moment of their allotted role in the overall scheme of things. We laugh when some phenomenon seems suddenly out of place, when things go off the rails or are thrown out of kilter. Such comedy represents a momentary respite from the tyrannical legibility of the world, a realm of lost innocence which pre-dates our calamitous fall into meaning. It disturbs the equipoise of the universe, as in the joke or spontaneous shaft of wit, or bleaches it of coherent meaning altogether, as with the goonish, fantastic, preposterous and surreal. The literally meaningless sound of laughter enacts this haemorrhage of sense. It is not surprising, then, that the demonic is so often associated with humour – that hell traditionally resounds with the obscene cackling, sniggering and guffawing of those lost souls who believe they have seen through human value and exposed it as the pompous fraud that it is. Thomas Mann speaks of this laughter in Doctor Faustus as ‘a luciferian sardonic mood’, a ‘hellish merriment’ of ‘yelling, screeching, bawling, bleating, howling, piping . . . the mocking, exultant laughter of the Pit’. 20 The demonic versus the angelic is Iago against Othello, or Milton’s smouldering Satan against his constipated bureaucrat of a Deity. ‘Laughter is Satanic,’ writes Charles Baudelaire; ‘it is therefore profoundly human.’ 21 The devils cannot suppress a spasm of incredulous laughter at the sheer gullibility of men and women, their pathetic eagerness to believe that their gratuitous, paper-thin meanings and values are as solid as flatirons. In an innovative study of comedy, Alenka Zupančič sees jokes as microcosms of ‘the paradoxical and contingent constitution of our world’. 22 What they do is raise to consciousness the chancy, ungrounded nature of our sense-making. They are, so to speak, the hidden truth of the symbolic order of language, with its rational, apparently natural version of reality. The signifiers that constitute that order are in fact arbitrary marks and sounds; and if they are to function effectively, they must be flexible, ambiguous and free-floating enough to be combined in a variety of different ways, including absurd and outrageous ones. What makes for sense, then, must also logically make for nonsense. Each is an indispensable condition of the other. Zupančič speaks of ‘universal nonsense as the presupposition of all sense’. 23 For Freud too, it is non-meaning that lies at the root of meaning. ‘The value of the joke,’ writes Jacques Lacan, ‘. . . is its possibility to play on the fundamental non-sense of all usages of sense.’ 24 Jokes let the contingently constructed nature of social reality out of the bag, and hence betray its fragility. ‘On a certain level,’ Zupančič comments, ‘there is a dimension of precariousness and fundamental uncertainty in our very world that gets articulated or becomes manifest in every joke.’ 25 One might say the same of the symbolic order seen as an orderly structure of kinship roles, governed by a set of rules for their appropriate combination. It is in the nature of such an order that if it is to function properly, it must also be capable of functioning improperly. If the laws that regulate it can give rise to legitimate permutations of roles, they can also generate illicit ones. Incest, for example. This instability of social meaning is likely to be most obvious to an outsider. So it is that from Congreve, Farquhar, Steele, Macklin and Goldsmith to Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw and Behan, English stage comedy has been dominated by a lineage of Irish émigrés, writers who washed up in the English metropolis with little but their wits to hawk and proceeded to turn their hybrid status as insider/outsiders to fruitful dramatic use. As English speakers themselves, a number of them in fact of Anglo-Irish descent, they were sufficiently conversant with mainland conventions to master them successfully, while sufficiently estranged from them to have a quick satirical eye for their absurdities. Assumptions that might seem self-evident to the British could strike them as flagrantly factitious, and comic art could be plucked from this discrepancy. A conflict between nature and artifice is a staple comic motif, and few were better placed to feel it on their pulses than those Irish authors who frequented the English clubs and coffee houses without ever quite feeling that they were much more tha	277,098
Humour, Seriously (Jennifer Aaker Naomi Bagdonas) (Z-Library).epub	Chapter 1: The Humour Cliff It’s the first day of spring quarter at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Fifty students excitedly file into a lecture hall, a few still wondering whether the course they’ve registered for is an elaborate joke played by the administration. “Humour: Serious Business” is about to begin. Whiteboards line the walls; all the chairs and tables have wheels, for easy rearranging. It’s a setting that’s ideal for workshopping and terrible for napping. Jennifer, in her self-appointed role as DJ, has David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” blasting. Naomi has a clip from SNL cued up to kick off the lecture. And yet trepidation hangs heavy in the air. Before class begins each semester, we have our students complete a “Humour Audit,” a self-reflection exercise / terrifyingly personal quiz about how they use humour in their lives. fn1 It includes questions like “Who or what makes you laugh the most in your life?” and “Who do you feel the funniest around?” and “Please submit complete documentation of your income, expenses, and assets for the previous fiscal year.” fn2 So it’s understandable that the students feel spooked: A sense of humour is like a muscle—it atrophies without regular use. Unfortunately, we find that in most students and executives we start working with, atrophy abounds. Just look at these responses to the question “When was the last time you really laughed?”: “I honestly can’t remember. Is that terrible?” “I’ve been thinking and am drawing a blank! I know I laugh. Or at least I thought I did, which now I’m questioning …” “On Tuesday, I did not laugh once. Not once. Who knew a class about humour could be so depressing?” The good and bad news about these responses is that our students are not alone. And it’s not Tuesday. fn3 The Humour Cliff The collective loss of our sense of humour is a serious problem afflicting people and organizations globally. We’re all going over the humour cliff together, tumbling down into the abyss of solemnity below. 1 At the bottom of that abyss we’re joined by the majority of 1.4 million survey respondents in 166 countries who revealed in this Gallup poll that the frequency with which we laugh or smile each day starts to plummet around age twenty-three. To some extent, this pattern makes sense. As kids, we laugh all the time. The average four-year-old laughs as many as three hundred times per day. 2 (The average forty-year-old, by comparison, laughs three hundred times every two and a half months.) Then we grow up, enter the workforce, and suddenly become “serious and important people,” trading laughter for ties and pantsuits. Before long, we lose levity entirely in a sea of bottom lines, slide decks, and mind-numbing conference calls. Our sense of play is repressed by a dizzyingly complex and dynamic professional environment, full of social land mines that are difficult to gauge and feel safer to avoid. As a result, most of us choose to keep our interactions sterile, measured, and professional; we go to work each day and leave our sense of humour—and so much more of ourselves—at the door. This response signals a fundamental misunderstanding about how to work—how to solve important problems, how to conduct ourselves, and how to be successful. We don’t need more “professionalism” in our workplaces. Instead, we need more of ourselves, and more human connection—especially as in-person meetings are replaced by video chats and more relationships are sustained entirely by email. Often, all it takes is a hint of levity to shift a moment, or a relationship, from transactional and robotic to relational and authentic. So what’s holding us back? Our research reveals four common misperceptions—or, as we like to call them: The Four Deadly Humour Myths fn4 After we surveyed more than seven hundred people across a wide range of industries and levels about what holds them back from using humour at work, four themes emerged, each rooted in a myth that needs debunking. It’s MythBusters, Business Edition . THE SERIOUS BUSINESS MYTH A large portion of our respondents reported believing that humour simply has no place amid serious work . Early in our careers, this myth often stems from insecurity about our lack of experience. (This is before we’re experienced enough to know nobody really knows anything.) We worry about harming our credibility and not being taken seriously. Yet according to surveys of hundreds of executive leaders conducted by Robert Half International and Hodge-Cronin & Associates, 98 percent reported preferring employees with a sense of humour, while 84 percent believed employees with a sense of humour do better work. 3 And humour affects not just how our leaders perceive us, but also how our peers do: Showing our sense of humour can make our peers more likely to attribute higher status to us and to vote us into leadership roles. As we rise through the ranks in our careers, this misconception evolves. With greater status comes greater scrutiny; when we find ourselves on progressively bigger stages, we feel pressure to signal even more professionalism and “seriousness” to shareholders, customers, and colleagues. What’s more, leaders report that the status differential makes it harder to show up as their authentic selves while also fulfilling the responsibilities of their public role. But now more than ever, they need to do both. Today’s leaders are facing a crisis of trust; nearly half of employees cite their lack of trust in leadership as the single biggest issue impacting their work performance. 4 What’s more, when employees are asked what characteristics inspire trust in a leader, the responses that rise to the top—like “knowing the obstacles the leader overcame” and “speaks like a regular person”—tell a consistent story: Today’s employees yearn for more authentic, human leaders. Aspirational, yes, but also flawed. Humour is a powerful leadership strategy to humanize oneself to employees, break down barriers, and balance authority with approachability. (So powerful in fact that we wrote an entire chapter about it—damn.) As one example, leaders who use self-deprecating humour are rated higher on measures of both trustworthiness and leadership ability by their employees. 5 While the bosses in question would probably downplay those gains with self-deprecating humour, they’re very real. And beyond the signals we send to our employees, a culture that balances serious work with levity and play can actually improve team performance. In a study involving more than fifty teams, researchers analyzed prerecorded team meetings as well as supervisors’ ratings of team performance, both immediately and again two years later. 6 The presence of humour in team interactions predicted more functional communication and higher team performance both in the moment and over time. Playful cultures allow teams to thrive, even (and especially) when the stakes are high and the times are hard. Of course, we shouldn’t go for funny all the time—that would be exhausting (and counterproductive). But we’ve swung so far in the other direction that our businesses thirst for it. The secret to success for many of the brilliant executives featured in this book is their ability to strike a delicate balance between gravity and levity; much like hot fudge and ice cream, each enhances the other. And both make something (your business prospects and glycemic index, respectively) rise precipitously. fn5 And if that adorable balloon heroically balancing an anchor isn’t convincing enough, then let’s pass the mic to President Eisenhower, who once said “A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.” If Dwight David Eisenhower, the second-least naturally funny president after Franklin Pierce, thought humour was necessary to win wars, build highways, and warn against the military-industrial complex, then you better learn to use it, too. THE FAILURE MYTH We wish we had a dollar for every time we’ve heard a student or client express a deep, paralyzing fear that their humour will fail. fn6 They’re terrified of the awkward silence following a joke that falls flat, or, worse, the ensuing revelation that they’ve unintentionally offended someone. But research shows that we get failure wrong. Not all humour “fails” are created equal, and every time you get a laugh is not necessarily a “win.” Over the last several years, three of our partners in crime from the Second City retreat—Brad Bitterly, Maurice Schweitzer, and Alison Wood Brooks—have run a series of experiments at Wharton and Harvard exploring humour’s impact on perceptions of status, competence, and confidence—and, just as important, the impact of failed humour on each. 7 In one experiment, subjects were asked to read a transcript of a job interviewee’s response to the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Some of the responses were serious, while others were tongue-in-cheek (e.g., “celebrating the fifth anniversary of your asking me this question”). Subjects were then asked to rate the interviewees on competence, confidence, and status. The results weren’t what you might expect. It turned out that the most important determinant of whether an interviewee was viewed more positively or negatively was not whether their response elicited laughter, but whether it was perceived as appropriate . In other words, it’s not so much whether you’re actually funny—it’s whether you have the gumption to tell any joke (which signals confidence), and whether that joke is appropriate for the context, that signals status and competence. This chart sums it up pretty well: The upper right quadrant is still the sweet spot you’d expect it to be—increasing perceptions across all three factors: confidence, competence, and status. Jackpot! The left half of the chart, according to our trusty laughter barometer, is what we typically tend to think of as failure: that is, nobody laughed. But if you find yourself in the upper left quadrant, you’re still good! Even humour that people don’t find laugh-out-loud funny still leaves us better off if it’s regarded as appropriate —increasing others’ perceptions of our confidence and having no meaningful impact on status or competence. fn7 The lower half of the chart is how we define failure—humour that people find inappropriate, whether or not it gets laughs. Falling into these quadrants (the asshole and villain zone) tends to decrease perceptions of status and competence. Of course, rarely do people intend to be villains or assholes—the lower quadrants of the graph aren’t places we navigate to on purpose. But inadvertently crossing a line happens to the best of us and is a real risk, especially for those in highly visible or public positions. Throughout the book, we’ll provide tools to mitigate these risks, avoid common pitfalls, and recover (and learn) from fails when they happen. For now, though, let’s just focus on redefining “failure” when it comes to humour. And by the end of the book, you’ll be better at creating real humour wins and avoiding the fails that actually matter. THE BEING FUNNY MYTH Now we come to one of the trickiest myths: that in order to use humour and levity in the workplace, you have to “be funny.” Seems logical, right? But believe it or not, what’s far more important than “being funny” is simply signaling that you have a sense of humour. Even if you’re not comfortable being funny yourself, as long as you understand the value of humour at work, you can benefit from it. The mere act of signaling that your sense of humour has a heartbeat is enough to make a big difference—especially if you’re in a leadership role. One study by researcher Wayne Decker found that managers with a sense of humour (regardless of whether they themselves were funny) were rated by subordinates as 23 percent more respected, 25 percent more pleasant to work with, and 17 percent friendlier. 8 So how exactly do you signal you have a sense of humour? Sometimes, it’s as simple as laughing at others’ jokes, or jumping on opportunities to lighten the mood. Even a friendly smile can work wonders. As former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo puts it, “You don’t have to be the quickest wit in the room. The easiest way to have more humour at work is not to try to be funny—instead, just look for moments to laugh.” The good news is that if you’re anything like these 174,000 Gallup respondents, you’re likely doing this a lot more outside the office already. 9 On average, the data shows, we tend to smile and laugh much more on the weekends than on weekdays. So you’ve been practicing: Keep in mind, the vast majority of business cultures span the spectrum from painfully boring to soul-crushingly serious. And it’s more often a bit of fun rather than full-on funny that makes all the difference: a moment of delight that leads to a smile, or an “aha” rather than a “haha” (or, if you work for a supervillain, a “mwahaha”). THE BORN WITH IT MYTH Comedians need both talent and training to succeed. But too many people are under the impression that humour is an innate ability, not a skill you can learn. In other words, we tend to believe we’re either funny or we’re not; as researcher Carol Dweck would put it, we have a fixed mindset. However, thanks to the work of Dweck and her colleagues, we now know that a number of domains once thought to be wired into our genetic coding, like intelligence and creativity, are not fixed. We can change them by adopting what she calls a growth mindset . 10 Humour is not some binary feature of our genetic code, but rather a skill we can strengthen through training and use, much as we would strengthen our leg muscles by working out at the gym, climbing stairs, and walking to and from the fridge during videoconferences when our “camera isn’t working.” If you need proof that humour can be learned, travel back with us five years to when Jennifer was unanimously voted the least funny member of her family. Jennifer and her family were at home, enjoying a lovely dinner of Round Table pizza (“cooking,” as she calls it). Fresh into her research about the science of humour—and always on the lookout for new “data”—she decided to conduct a family poll. Subjects included her husband (Andy), two sons (Cooper and Devon), and daughter (Téa Sloane). The question posed at the table was “Who is the funniest member of our family?” No sooner had the words escaped her mouth than all three kids’ eyes shot down, laser-focused on their vegetables. Andy batted at an invisible fly. Jennifer leaned in expectantly. It was Téa Sloane—the youngest and bravest of the bunch fn8 —who finally broke the silence. “Dad is the funniest in our family! Then comes us.” She paused, looking around the table to see if she was forgetting anyone. “Also, our dog, Mackey. Then you.” The rest of them nodded, quietly but firmly, in a way that suggested Jennifer’s place in the family humour hierarchy was as immovable as it was self-evident. And now, five years later—fueled by a deep desire for global impact and familial redemption—Jennifer is the triumphant author of a book about humour. Proof that there is hope for you, too. What’s My Humour Style? Not everyone is funny in the same way. Over the last six years, we’ve run a series of studies to tease apart individual differences in both what people tend to joke about and how they most naturally deliver their humour. Those studies have yielded four primary humour styles: the Stand-up , the Sweetheart , the Magnet , and the Sniper . Understanding your natural humour style will allow you to wield it with precision and presence. Reading through the following descriptions should give you a sense for which one(s) resonate; for a more thorough assessment, head to humorseriously.com and take the Humour Styles Questionnaire or check out the mini quiz on page 237 . THE HUMOUR STYLES First, like any good lumberjack, let’s understand our axes. The horizontal axis relates to the content of one’s humour, from affiliative (wholesome, uplifting humour) to aggressive (humour that’s no-holds-barred and a few shades darker). fn9, 11 The vertical axis measures delivery, from expressive (spirited, spontaneous, spotlight-seeking) to subtle (understated, premeditated, and full of nuance). The Stand-up (Aggressive-Expressive) Stand-ups are natural entertainers who aren’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get a laugh. They come alive in front of crowds, and in group situations are almost always the ones cracking jokes. Stand-Ups believe that few topics are off-limits to joke about, and they don’t shy away from cursing, dark humour, pranks, and spontaneous roasts. Their thick skin means they can take it as well as they dish it out, and in fact they often see being the butt of a joke as a sign of affection. If the world is your stage and you don’t mind sacrificing some dignity (or someone’s feelings) to get a laugh, you might lean toward the Stand-up style. The Sweetheart (Affiliative-Subtle) Sweethearts are earnest and honest, and they often fly under the radar. They prefer their humour planned and understated—a subtle laugh line thoughtfully woven into a speech or presentation versus a joke told on the fly. Sensitive and cheerful, Sweethearts stay away from teasing at the risk of hurting feelings (plus prefer not to be the subject of others’ teasing), and instead use humour as a tool to lift up those around them and bring people together. If you have an optimistic bent to your humour, aren’t interested in the limelight, and prefer to plan out what you’ll say (and how it will make people feel), you might lean toward the Sweetheart style. The Magnet (Affiliative-Expressive) Magnets have an ability to boost people’s moods with unwavering good cheer. They keep things positive, warm, and uplifting, avoiding controversial or upsetting humour while radiating charisma. Their delivery tends to be animated and sometimes even slapstick—they readily slip into impersonations and characters. Magnets often crack up when delivering a goofy joke because it’s just too fun to tell—and are equally generous with their laughter when someone else takes the stage. If you do improv comedy (or have been told you should), have a reputation for giving great toasts at weddings (equally heartfelt and hilarious), and come home from parties with your cheeks sore from smiling, you might lean toward the Magnet style. The Sniper (Aggressive-Subtle) Snipers are edgy, sarcastic, and nuanced, unafraid to cross lines in pursuit of a laugh. They describe their humour as an “acquired taste”—one that not everyone will acquire—with a delivery that tends to be dry and under their breath. In group situations, they prefer to watch from the sidelines before making their move, giving them time to silently craft their next zinger. Don’t expect them to laugh easily; in general, you need to earn the Sniper’s laughter, which makes it even sweeter when you get it. If you have a way of landing a deadly one-liner with a perfectly deadpan delivery, and aren’t afraid to cross lines and go over people’s heads, you might lean toward the Sniper style. ADAPTING YOUR HUMOUR STYLE Most of us have some sense of which humour style comes most naturally, but these labels are by no means absolute. Our style can vary depending on our mood, the situation, and the audience. Some of us might love being the center of attention and telling loud, offensive jokes when out with a few close friends but are more likely to share a small, ironic observation in a crowd. Or we might be biting and sarcastic (in a loving way) at home with our partner but keep our humour light and positive with our team at work. In fact, you not only can shift styles, but you should . As many comedians have shared with us, part of using humour effectively is being able to adjust your set and delivery depending on your read of the room. For instance, Stand-ups and Snipers tease to express affection but sometimes fail to realize that when taken too far, their humour can feel alienating to Magnets and Sweethearts. To keep the crowd on their side, it’s important for Stand-ups and Snipers to know when to take their foot off the gas. On the flip side, Magnets and Sweethearts put themselves down to lift up others, but too much self-deprecation can undermine their power in the eyes of Stand-ups and Snipers. Our humour style isn’t hard-wired. There’s power in not just gaining awareness of our own style—our preferences and tendencies in what we find funny and how we deliver our humour—but in recognizing when it might benefit us to shift. In the chapters that follow, we’ll share stories from people who span the spectrum of styles. By the end, we hope you’ll have a broader perspective on how to adapt your own sense of humour based on the context, in a way that’s authentic to you. Remember, the bar for humour in the business world is extremely low. The goal isn’t to elicit raucous, rolling-on-the-floor laughter; it’s simply to create a moment of connection. Often, all it takes is a mindset of levity to transform a relationship or moment. “Sounds easy enough,” you say. “We’re in! Wait—what the hell is ‘a mindset of levity?’ ” LEVITY, HUMOUR, AND COMEDY The health psychologist and author Kelly McGonigal draws an important distinction between the concepts of movement and exercise . Movement, she says, is anytime you use your body to engage with life. Exercise is simply the choice to move for a purpose. We use this simple but important distinction with our students and clients to explain a concept that’s foundational to what we teach: the difference between levity and humour —and to go one step further, comedy. Levity is a mindset—an inherent state of receptiveness to (and active seeking of) joy. Both levity and movement relate to how we navigate the world: naturally, and often without thinking. Both permeate everything we do, and even minor adjustments—something as simple as walking with your shoulders back instead of slouched, or buying an apple from an airport bodega with a smile instead of a scowl—have a major impact on how we feel and how people interact with us. While levity is an inherent, baseline capability, humour is more intentional. Humour channels levity—just as exercise channels movement—toward a specific goal. We all have natural preferences in each realm: You might prefer yoga, soccer, or cycling, just as your sense of humour is drawn to certain styles of jokes, impersonations, or physical gags. Humour, like exercise, is something you can hone—something that requires skill and effort. It feels good, fn10 and we know it’s good for us, but sometimes it takes work. Comedy is the practice of humour as a structured discipline. Like sport, comedy requires a dexterous command of technique and a great deal of training. Stand-up, improv, and sketch each require their own set of specialized skills, just as basketball, soccer, and hockey require different types of athletic ability. Only a select few compete at the professional level; not everyone wants to be on this level, and not everyone can. In this book, our goal isn’t to turn you into a professional; we won’t teach you to perform improv like Amy Poehler or tell jokes like Stephen Colbert—though we will study a few of their techniques the same way amateur athletes watch and learn from the pros. More important though, we’ll teach you to navigate the world with more levity, and hopefully get you to hone and flex your unique flavor of humour. McGonigal says that “people often panic when they hear the word ‘exercise.’” Similarly, our students walk into class with trepidation, worried that we expect them to be fall-down funny. In fact, we simply want to encourage them to embrace and revel in their natural human tendency to levity, in the same way McGonigal wants people to experience the inherent joy of movement. If we hope to achieve one thing with this book, it’s to engender a greater sense of levity in your day-to-day life. While we’d love for you to be a team captain in the next All-Star game, we care more about getting you off the couch and dancing when a good song plays on shuffle. MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FARM By now, you’re more or less caught up with the students in our class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. fn11 They’ve completed their humour audits (just as you will—read on!), and now they’re ready to start paying attention to the nuances of humour in their lives—where they see it in the world, what they find funny, who brings it out in them, and how they most naturally express it. Over the course of the semester, our students experience a profound shift. What begins as a sobering, often (very) unfunny first class (remember: “On Tuesday, I did not laugh once. Not once. Who knew a class about humour could be so depressing?”) ends with students reporting significantly more joy and more laughter in their lives. This shift is about more than their becoming funnier: They become more generous with their laughter. They notice opportunities for humour that would otherwise pass them by. The mindset of looking for reasons to be delighted becomes a habit. In a very real way, they learned how to move a little more fluidly, how to exercise with better form, and play their favorite (amateur) sport with better results—just as you will. When you walk around on the precipice of a smile, you’ll be surprised how many things you encounter that push you over the edge. So, repeat after us: “I promise to laugh more. Even on Tuesday.” THE HUMOUR AUDIT fn12 WHAT DOES HUMOUR LOOK LIKE IN MY LIFE? This exercise is intended to spark self-awareness about various aspects of your unique sense of humour, so you can more easily tap into it on a moment’s notice. Remember, this is about activating a mindset of levity, not achieving viral hilarity. So when you reflect on moments of humour, think also about moments that created delight, joy, amusement, or even just a smile. When was the last time you really laughed? In general, who or what makes you laugh the most in your life? When was the last time you made someone else laugh? Who do you feel the funniest around; who appreciates your humour? Pro Tip: If you find yourself struggling with this mission, get an outside perspective. Ask friends, family members, and colleagues to answer the questions with (and about) you. Reflection: What surprised you? Were certain questions easier or more difficult? What realizations or questions did this spark? Copyright PENGUIN BOOKS UK \| USA \| Canada \| Ireland \| Australia New Zealand \| India \| South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com . First published in the United States of America by Currency, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York 2020 First published in Great Britain by Penguin Business 2020 Copyright © Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, 2020 The moral right of the author has been asserted ISBN: 978-0-241-98681-3 This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Disclaimer WRITE-ON PAGES Any references to ‘writing in this book’ refer to the original printed version. Readers should write on a separate piece of paper in these instances . Footnotes Introduction: Gravity and Levity 1 Which one of our students described in a course evaluation as “uncomfortably close.” 2 This just means we flew. In coach. 3 A story involving a “then boyfriend” implies an ending that could go one of two ways. In this case, it was the happy way. Chapter 1: The Humour Cliff 1 Note: this is the most enjoyable kind of audit, because it focuses on what you find funny and not on tax evasion. (Unless you find that funny.) 2 Surprise! This was an IRS audit all along. 3 We had a 6 in 7 shot of being right on this and took the swing. 4 We read once that if you insert the word “deadly” in a title, people will be more likely to (a) read the subsequent content and (b) take it more seriously. Also, Nelson Cowan, the author of The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Limited, and Why? calls the number four “magical” and a “mystery.” Which is why we were all the more delighted to uncover four myths. Note: Cowan’s book would have been even more popular had he not forgotten to include the word “deadly” in the title. 5 Of note: beware the difference between analogy and equivalence. Just because something is like hot fudge and ice cream doesn’t mean it’s a substitute. Try telling your kids they can have a balance of gravity and levity for dessert, and see how they react. 6 Technically, we do get at least a dollar every time a student expresses this fear, since we are paid more than a dollar per student, though we don’t let them express this fear more than once. 7 In cases where a joke’s appropriateness is ambiguous, a lack of laughter can cause people to view the joke as less appropriate as well, which can result in a loss of status. This is why we always carry a laugh track for our deepest-cut dad jokes. 8 Dear Coop and Dev—this is untrue; you are all equally brave, and equally wonderful, and equally loved. But in this moment, Téa Sloane was the most candid, which sometimes counts as brave. 9 This axis is inspired by the groundbreaking work of Rod Martin and Patricia Doris, though the specifics in how we define the axis differ from theirs. Note that Martin and Doris were conducting scientific research and writing academic articles on the topic of humour long before it was cool. Like it is now. 10 With good reason: Laughter releases many of the same neurochemicals as a good workout, resulting in a feeling akin to a “runner’s high.” Beyond feeling similarly pleasurable, both also prime us for greater personal connection and resilience to stress. So in a way, Jillian Michaels and Amy Schumer have the same job. 11 Which means you have an honorary degree of some type. Congratulations! 12 Feel free to share with your accountant, not because it’s a real audit but because accountants need to laugh, too. Chapter 2: Your Brain on Humour 1 While this barely seems like a joke, you must understand that research studies are vast deserts of dry technical language, where even a tiny drop of levity is a welcome oasis. Not unlike corporate America. 2 A bit more granularity for our data geeks: Researchers found a significant positive correlation between measured general intelligence and humour ratings, where an increase in humour ratings of .29 standard deviations on average predicted an increase in intelligence scores of 1 standard deviation. Aren’t statistics fun? 3 No matter your politics, you have to admit Obama has major “dad-joke energy.” 4 Just a slideshow of gray wallpapers. Maybe not as popular as its namesake, but pretty useful if you’re redecorating. 5 Think of how much money you would pay for a therapist to achieve that type of result. This book just pays for itself. 6 The 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey reported that the average person spends thirteen years and two months at work. In contrast, people spend an average of only 328 days socializing with friends over the course of a lifetime. Thus the classic adage: “Keep your friends close, and your middle managers closer.” 7 There’s a reason America’s Emotionally Neutralest Home Videos never made it past the first season. 8 And this is in the subzero temperatures of Norway. Imagine what it could do in Palm Springs! Chapter 3: The Anatomy of Funny 1 Which also means that eighty-eight get left on the cutting room floor. What a waste! Surely there must be a way to recycle the unused jokes, donating them to dads or tax accountants. 2 For nonmillennials: One Direction was a wildly popular English-Irish pop boy band of the 2010s. We hope we don’t have to tell you who the Backstreet Boys were. 3 People say analyzing humour is like dissecting a frog: Few people are interested and the frog dies. This is where we hit our stride. 4 Unless you’re Jack Nicholson, who does a killer Jack Nicholson impression. 5 This is how Jennifer learned that she seems like the kind of person who “would try to knock off a few emails while she is meditating” and how Naomi learned she seems like the kind of person who “brings s’mores supplies to every outdoor event ‘just in case.’” 6 Note: “Marie Kondo’s personal hell” is only a figure of speech, not where she’ll end up. Marie seems lovely and we imagine she is destined for a very tidy afterlife. 7 This association even transcends species. Kanzi, a bonobo who speaks through lexigrams, dubbed kale “slow lettuce” because it takes longer to chew than other greens. To our knowledge, Fallon has not yet tested this material on Kanzi. 8 Aka “The Garden of Earthly Horrors.” 9 In the words of Comedian David Iscoe, “This is why comedians are notoriously hard to date. If you find your special comedian is always practicing bits on you, feel free to give them a chance to practice getting heckled. 10 Except in a kind of surrealist anticomedy way, which we now realize we want more than anything to see. Chapter 4: Putting Your Funny to Work 1 The winning consultant was sent on an all-expense-paid trip to take classes at the California Academy of Tauromaquia—that is, bullfighting school. 2 We are delighted to report that Michael is now happily married, cohabitating, and still living in LA, in case you’d like to mail him and his lovely wife, Lydia, and their daughter a succulent. 3 If you got this deep-reach callback to the negotiations study in chapter 2 , we are proud of you. 4 Though if you do decide to throw a cat at your problems, it’ll land on them with all four feet. 5 A prompt that was passed to Naomi by friend and former colleague Saagar Thakkar, who uses it in his innovation sessions. If you’re looking for relationship advice, Saagar has a treasure trove. 6 If you don’t get this reference: Pause. Google “Steve Ballmer going crazy on stage.” Watch the video of the former Microsoft CEO. Return to book. 7 Giving new (and negative) meaning to the phrase “reduce your footprint.” 8 And then there are the topics the writers just pitch to one another for fun—like “Oddly Specific Things to Be Insecure About.” Responses to that one included “My cat only meows at my boyfriend,” “I can never flip a pancake on the first try,” and “My ears are too small to hold a cigarette.” Did you just check your own ears? So did we. Chapter 5: Leading with Humour 1 Except for Oprah. She is in front of us, and she is perfect. 2 The 2016 HOW Report analyzed responses from 16,000 employees in 17 countries across all major industries and occupations and was independently validated by the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. This is not funny, but it is true. (And HOW!) 3 Roll film: The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley. 4 In the words of Secretary Albright during her visit to our class: “There are things that you cannot imagine a secretary of state is ever asked to do.” 5 The song lasts a full five and a half minutes—331 seconds—while most people can remember exactly four words (“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”). Meaning that the song lasts 83 seconds per memorable word. 6 A little different from the scene her last manager had set on Jean’s first day at the firm, when he had given her two books: Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Irma Rombauer’s recipe bible The Joy of Cooking . As Oelwang recalled, the message was harrowingly clear: Learn to go to war and crush competitors, or quit the rat race and cook your way to domestic bliss. Sigh. 7 But don’t expect a Marvel movie contract. Unless you get big and green when you’re angry. Then, maybe. Chapter 6: Creating a Culture of Levity 1 A reference to Mike Judge’s paean to white-collar drudgery. If you haven’t seen this … yeah, we’re gonna need you to go ahead and watch it ASAP. If you could do that, that would be greeeat . Which is a reference you’ll understand only after you watch it. 2 Search “Google TGIF 1999 video” on YouTube for a treat. And Google “TGIF $14.99 Menu” to treat yourself to two grill favorites plus mashed potatoes and lemon butter broccoli for an affordable price. 3 Yes, that was a subtle search engine pun. Please feel free to boo(lean). 4 That said, if you’ve got it—flaunt it, sister (sassy snap). 5 Incidentally, April Fools’ Day was a sacred holiday at Sun. They do not mess around. One year, employees transported the entire contents of the CEO’s office into a shipping container in the company parking lot. Another time, an executive’s desk was found at the bottom of a tank at the San Francisco Aquarium. 6 Not to be confused with Rebel Rousers, the 1970 American independent outlaw biker film starring Jack Nicholson. Or with rabbit rousers, the people who go around to farms playing bugles by the rabbit warren to let the rabbits know the day has begun. 7 Naomi was a collegiate athlete and Jennifer works out in flip-flops. We’ll let you guess who wrote this sentence. 8 Now, this is meaningful water cooler conversation. 9 Portmanteau term for “frozen rosé.” In this entire book, this is our fanciest footnote. 10 That is, a thing most of the team regretted on most Saturdays. 11 Upon hearing this fact, our friend David Iscoe disappeared for an hour without explanation and emerged with this: a set of historically accurate song lyrics to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Enjoy: “We Didn’t Start the Firefox” by David Iscoe NCSA, Mosaic, Erwise tanked, it’s archaic Marc Andreesen, James Clark, Barksdale CEO Netscape Navigator, Godzilla looked like a gator Number one market share, killer IPO Netscape sold to AOL, product support went to hell iPlanet, disbanded, nowhere left to go AOL went bad to worse, Mozilla went open source Foundation, Corporation, deprecated suite Firefox, Thunderbird, friendly hackers spread the word Bugzilla, Gecko, Pocket if you read We didn’t start the Firefox It’s as old as trousers Since the world’s had browsers We didn’t start the Firefox No, we didn’t code it But our iPhones load it Chapter 7: Navigating the Gray Areas of Humour 1 Or maybe your dad thinks a good pun lightens the day, while you think the only good pun is the one that never sees the light of day. Or your friend loves South Park for being an “equal opportunity offender,” whereas you think two dozen wrongs don’t make a right. Or your sister thinks jokes about people falling flat on their face (literally or metaphorically) are obnoxious, but you’ve fallen on yours so many times you need to joke about it. Or you find the antics of the gang on Friends delightful, or maybe, like the Futurama character Lrrr of planet Omicron Persei 8, you wonder—“Why does Ross, the largest Friend, simply not eat the other five?” Or maybe you’re amused by Mr. Bean walking around with a turkey on his head, while your spouse just doesn’t think humans should wear poultry under any circumstances. Or maybe your friend loves the way Maria Bamford talks openly about depression, but the silliness of it makes it hard for you to get on board. Maybe you love BoJack Horseman because it’s full of animal puns, while your cousin loves it because it’s a searingly accurate portrait of mental illness (softened by animal puns). Or maybe you read our footnotes because you are rigorous and know the value of hard work. Thank you; we see you and appreciate you. 2 It’s worth noting that Don Rickles never had an office job. 3 OR, if you are teaching this class online, they digitally line themselves up using tiny student avatars. 4 Anyone who hasn’t made a work-life trade-off either doesn’t have a job, or doesn’t have a life. Or has perfect versions of both, in which case we’re jealous. 5 Any time the game is played as intended. 6 Q: “When I inevitably purchase this without reading carefully and then find out it’s the same cards as the original Cards Against Humanity, can I return it and get my money back?” A: “That color looks great on you! No.” 7 It’s called the pink tax, and if you hire a male accountant, at above-market rates, he’ll tell you how to save on it. 8 Fade in: A woman finishes her toast at a company holiday party. As laughter fills the bar, she turns to the camera and slow-motion winks, as the familiar jingle fades in. “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe she’s just the boss.” 9 Despite the name, the storyslam bears no resemblance to a WWE event and is in fact more like an open mic night for stories. Though it would be kind of adorable if, during one WWE primetime event, Brock Lesnar pulled out a book instead of a folding chair and told everyone a heartbreakingly beautiful tale involving love, loss, and lower back muscles. 10 In the least fun footnote of this book, allow us to elaborate. These men tested high in what’s called “hostile sexism” on the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which means they indicated agreement with statements like “The world would be a better place if women supported men more and criticized them less,” “A wife should not be significantly more successful in her career than her husband,” or “There are many women who get a kick out of teasing men by seeming sexually available and then refusing male advances.” 11 Such as: “A man and a woman were stranded in an elevator and they knew they weren’t gonna make it out alive. The woman turns to the man and says, ‘Make me feel like a woman before I die.’ So he takes off his clothes and says, ‘Fold them!’” Yeah, we know. Chapter 7.5: Why Humour Is a Secret Weapon in Life 1 “We are what you call a super fun family.”—Jennifer 2 Note: not a thing. (AFTER)WORDS: A Conversation with Michael Lewis 1 Authors’ note: “fun inefficiency.” Chapter 4: Putting Your Funny to Work CHAPTER 4 Putting Your Funny to Work “There is nothing like a gleam of humour to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.” —Eva Hoffman Chapter 6: Creating a Culture of Levity Toy Story was one of the most creatively ambitious, lucrative, and trailblazing films of a generation. The world’s first feature length computer-animated film, it was a quaint tale about the adventures of a ragtag band of lovable toys who come alive when humans are out of sight. In many ways, the making of the movie mirrored the plot itself. The small, impassioned creative team would routinely pull all-nighters during which the eclectic bunch of engineers and animators at Pixar would—not unlike Woody and Buzz—come alive. Pixar’s culture was imbued with an infectious, energizing spirit of levity and play. Some nights, that meant mini-golf tournaments and scooter races in the cramped hallways of their Los Angeles studio. (These recurring contests were so competitive that senior producer Tom Porter was once awoken at home in the middle of the night to return to the studio and protect his long-held record.) The interns held elaborate dress-down Fridays, showing up in matching costumes like Jedis or Cub Scouts. The company hosted “Pixarpalooza,” with as many as twenty different bands of Pixar employees playing covers of their favorite songs. But these traditions didn’t come at the cost of productivity. In fact, many regard Pixar’s teams as some of the most hardworking and productive in the industry. This was no happy accident. Ed Catmull, the former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, believed that levity and play were foundational to building productive, creative teams. This is a theory validated by research: In a study of 352 employees across 54 teams, researchers Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock and Joseph Allen videotaped hourlong team meetings and then analyzed supervisors’ ratings of team performance. The teams that had humour demonstrated more functional communication and problem-solving behaviors, and performed better as a team, both during the meeting itself and over time. 1 It was exactly this kind of playful culture that allowed the teams at Pixar to thrive. Under Catmull’s leadership, Pixar launched blockbusters like A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo and developed the cutting-edge computer technology that revolutionized animated film (and made grown adults weep over bugs, fish, and fuzzy blue monsters in the process). In Catmull’s view, that success was due in large part to the camaraderie and resilience among workers at Pixar, which was itself a product of the laughter-filled culture they’d cultivated. As Catmull reflected, “Lots of humour and levity in the good times solidify the relationships, making it easier for people to call on one another during the hard times.” In short, it came down to culture. It seems obvious that a culture in which employees can do their best work while having fun is desirable. So why do so many workplaces feel like they’re straight out of Office Space ? fn1 If yours is one of them, this chapter is for you. In the pages that follow, we’ll offer stories, frameworks, and tips that will help you cultivate a culture of humour and levity at your organization. But before diving in, we want to stress that the application of these techniques isn’t universal. You might be comfortable in the spotlight, pulling your company’s culture toward you, or instead prefer to influence culture more indirectly by elevating a charismatic co-worker or altering your office’s physical space. Like eating a Reese’s, there’s no one way to build culture. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to refract each principle and tactic through your authentic leadership style and your unique organization—then adopt the ones that are most resonant. In the process, you’ll foster stronger relationships and empower your teams to do their best work, all while creating the kind of environment where people want to work. Set the Tone from the Top Unsurprisingly, leaders have a disproportionate influence on organizational culture. 2 One of the most effective ways we’ve seen leaders engender a culture of levity is by publicly embodying—and enabling—humour, sending strong, consistent signals that levity and play are desired and embraced. SHOWCASE YOUR FUNNY We’ve explored many stories of leaders showcasing their humour: how Leslie Blodgett’s ad in The New York Times got employees buzzing; how Stephen Curry’s spirited impression of Steve Ballmer relaxed his team of partners and allowed them to feel more comfortable; how Richard Branson’s daring helicopter stunt matched his cheeky prank when he landed, reinforcing that play was valued and encouraged at Virgin. What these stories—and the ones you are about to read—have in common is that they allow leaders to signal that they aren’t the type to take themselves too seriously. These public displays of levity set the tone for the culture and give tacit permission for others in the organization to follow their lead. Spontaneous humour is a common tool used by those CEOs who are most effective at setting a tone of levity. Why is it so effective? Surprise! (No, there’s no actual surprise. The answer is “surprise.”) When humour feels planned, you lose the crucial element of surprise. In this way, a punch line should come like a punch. If your audience is braced for impact, it’s harder to knock them out. (And they’re uncomfortable waiting for you to deliver it.) No wonder one of the first pieces of advice most comedians give to noncomedians is never to start a story with “I have a funny story ….” When people perceive that you’re trying to be funny, all of a sudden you have something to prove. Organic humour has a far lower bar. When you are simply reacting to the moment (the “here and now” from trusty chapter 3 ), anything even slightly surprising or unserious—the smallest gesture of play—can elicit laughter. In short: If it feels planned, it better be good. If you’re onstage and accidentally drop a peanut, it’s comedic gold. It’s easy for us to say “Go be spontaneously funny!” but doing so in practice is far more difficult. That’s why we suggest focusing on creating favorable conditions for spontaneous humour that doesn’t feel forced. And the simplest way to do that is to showcase where it already exists—your most naturally playful, fun work relationships. Dick Costolo was no stranger to this strategy; while at Twitter, he had a number of employees he’d call on to fill this role. Among them was April Underwood, a longtime colleague and senior product director whom Costolo would periodically invite onstage for companywide presentations. The two knew each other well from working together at Google, and their playful, preexisting rapport helped Costolo come across as a real person—with a real sense of humour. By inviting Underwood onstage, Costolo was tacitly establishing her as every other employee’s proxy; seeing her play and rib the boss allowed them to vicariously do the same. As Underwood reflected, “There’s no substitute for that moment when something unexpected happens and the people onstage respond to it with humour. The fact that it’s unplanned, unfolding in the moment, makes it even funnier. And it was a safe way to do it, because we could play off each other in a way that was completely natural—and fun.” A similar dynamic is at play in those SNL sketches in which actors “break” character and laugh at their own hilarity.	374,498
The Art of Living A satirical novel (Stephen Bayley) (Z-Library).epub	About the Author About the Author Stephen Bayley Hon FRIBA was the person for whom the term ‘design guru’ was coined, something he accepts with what he likes to think of as self-deprecating irony. After a short and blameless period in provincial academe, he joined Terence Conran in an attempt to popularize design. This resulted in the Boilerhouse Project in London’s V&A, which became the most successful gallery of the eighties. The Boilerhouse evolved into the unique Design Museum, which Mrs Thatcher opened in 1989, after some finger-wagging and insisting it should not be called a ‘museum’. During this period he learnt a lot about the perversity of genius and the absurdity of ambition. Although Stephen Bayley has written many books and hundreds of articles that have shaped the popular understanding of design, this is his first work of fiction. He is Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, an honorary visiting professor at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture, and a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest artistic accolade. Acknowledgements Acknowledgements First, housekeeping. Bill Scott-Kerr is the unusually patient publisher. Our first conversation about this book was thirty years ago in La Famiglia, a Chelsea trattoria popular with footballers and ageing rock stars. In those days, Bill looked like a youthful rock star, a ruined cherub. Eloisa Clegg has been the supremely diligent and exceptionally charming editor. She always has something helpful or cheerful to say, and there can be no better compliment. It’s really quite something to look forward to an editor’s messages. Charlie Brotherstone is my long-suffering agent, whose essential and very attractive optimism completely blinds him even to my obvious failings. Second, apologia. It’s agreed: all novels are memoirs, all memoirs are novels. The main characters in this satirical novel – which is also a lampoon, a send-up and a burlesque – are works of fiction: products of my imagination, informed by accumulated and compounded observations. In this case, observations made over the last forty years or so as a bit player in the antic malarkey of London’s design culture. Third, published sources. From before my time, I relied for period colour and bitchy asides on the diaries and memoirs of James Lees-Milne, especially Another Self (1970), A Mingled Measure (1994) and Through Wood and Dale (1998). Colin MacInnes’s famous novel Absolute Beginners (1959) was also a useful source to help me catch the pre-Pop mood of London. But best of all was the painter Michael Wishart’s elegant and louche account of bohemia, High Diver (1977). Readers who know Lees-Milne, MacInnes and Wishart may recognize passages where my uninhibited and admiring post-modern sampling wanders into near plagiarism, just like my flawed hero, Eustace Dunne. Fourth, what’s really going on. The bulk of this book has been inspired by (almost) anything interesting that’s been said to me since about 1980. Conversations, messages, postcards, scribbled notes, commonplace books, quotations half remembered and reinvented, witticisms digested and regurgitated. For example, the chapter title ‘Spaghetti, gin and fucking the missus’ was vouchsafed me by a peer of the realm who, competing in the London Marathon, had occasion to ask another runner, a postman from Glasgow, about his training regime. But, repurposed, it makes sense in another context. By the Same Author Also by Stephen Bayley NON-FICTION In Good Shape: Style in Industrial Products 1900 to 1960 The Albert Memorial Harley Earl The Conran Directory of Design (ed) Sex, Drink and Fast Cars Commerce and Culture Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things General Knowledge Design: Intelligence Made Visible Labour Camp Sex: A Cultural History A Dictionary of Idiocy Life’s a Pitch Work: The Building of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Cars Woman as Design Liverpool: Shaping the City La Dolce Vita Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything Taste: An Essay Death Drive: There Are No Accidents Signs of Life: Why Brands Matter How To Steal Fire: The Myths of Creativity Exposed, the Truths of Creativity Explained Value: What Money Can’t Buy: A Handbook for Practical Hedonism 1: 1946 – It was a dark and stormy night T HEY SAY YOU SHOULD NEVER start a story with an account of the weather. But what do they know? In 1946, when I was fourteen, Met Office archives confirm that it was a cool, unsettled spring and early summer: unusually drizzly with mist even on May mornings. I was at Fraylings, a school in the West Country, territory that had escaped the recent German bombing, unlike London or the Midlands. ‘Progressive’ is what we would call this school today. It was a school for talented misfits, so I felt at home there even if it was a home I did not much like. My father was a financier and a swindler, a one-time Member of Parliament, but a talented and inventive professional liar long before he entered Westminster, where mangling the truth became compulsory. Claiming a radical past, my father, Eustace Senior, had fantasized freely about his family tree. Were we gentry from Wales? He let people think that. In fact, he had left the bitter austerity and harsh discipline of Josiah Mason’s Orphanage in Shoreditch to become a Fleet Street runner. He took a Pitman’s shorthand course, unusual for a boy, became a court reporter and, somehow, eventually found himself the proprietor of some minor City trade rags that formed the basis of what became the Financial Times . This made him rich, but an over-ambitious flotation accompanied by some fanciful supporting literature and entirely fictitious accounts found him arraigned for fraud in 1903. He defended himself in court, was acquitted and became that Home Counties MP, featuring often in newspaper diary pages. Soon, another bankruptcy forced his resignation from Parliament. Then, a reckless bond scheme found him guilty of fraud once again and he was sent to Pentonville the very same year he proudly took delivery of a new Bentley Mark VI, the luxury ‘sports saloon’ which was for so many people a symbol, profound if remote, of national aspirations in the bleak years after Hitler’s war. During the trial, as the newspapers gleefully reported, he won the right to a quarter of an hour’s daily adjournment during which time he drank a quart of champagne on what he claimed were medical grounds established by the Surgeon-General, a gentleman of his acquaintance, as he often reminded people. Knowledge of all this paternal success, excess and resonant failure gave me, I think, an enduring caution about money, as well as a puritanical streak a mile wide and an inch deep. Still, everyone agreed that my father was a man of unusual talent, great application and no morals whatsoever. A man made by effort and imagination, but undone by greed and ambition. A man incapable of being reasonable, with himself or others. Of the more conventional morality, he had little to say. My father could not distinguish fact from fiction, believing something was true if he wanted it to be. But he taught me about charm, persuasion and commitment. He taught me never, ever to give up. To keep on, long after it seemed sensible to quit. ‘Coming second is just being first of the losers,’ he told me. His belief was that anything might be achieved by hard work. Perhaps like Picasso, for whose art, being a complete philistine, he had no time at all, my father believed that if you could imagine something, it was already real. It would be harsh and crude to call him a conman, but he taught me that self-invention is an art form. And that people are credulous and their belief in what you tell them can be reinforced by repetition. What I tell you three times is true. And the more so if it is four. But, most important of all, he taught me, by example, to stay out of jail. Like many children who have been mistreated or abandoned, I coped with this miscreant, fantasist, but beguiling parent by freezing my own emotions and refusing properly intimate engagement with anyone. In truth, neither of my parents was able to give me any sense of certainty. My father was erratic and improvident, while, despite her forbidding hauteuse , my mother was essentially weak and indecisive. So I had to make my own certainties. And, to be honest, I chose taste and style over morals and ethics. People who have unhappy childhoods often become adept at inventing themselves. I began my own course of self-invention aged about ten. postbellum tristesse Wrenaissance Fraylings, so called because its architectural references were simultaneously to the Florence of Brunelleschi and to the designer of London’s St Paul’s, was unmarked by shrapnel. It daringly mixed genders in class, was reluctant to thrash its pupils, adventurous in its curriculum, but gentlemanly in an old-fashioned way, nonetheless. It stood in its cheerful red brick and Portland stone dressings in a fine park. They always said it was designed by Lutyens, but, really, it was just designed by an architect who liked Lutyens very much. Still, impressive, optimistic and decent, Fraylings was a rebuke to any stubborn remains of postbellum tristesse. The grounds were four hundred lush acres. Indeed, Godfrey Boate, the freethinking headmaster, took an educated interest in avant-garde forestry as well as Austrian dietetics. ‘Angst’ had not yet become a German loan-word, even if ‘Blitz’ unfortunately had. Bombsites were, of course, unknown in the countryside. Sometimes Godfrey Boate took small, mixed groups into the woods to collect berries and prune the crab apple trees. The early summer that year was characterized by practical promise, if unrealized, of proper sunshine: in my memory, school days were long and brightly lit by cautious optimism, an effect magnified daily as the war passed into history. Realistically, there was no longer any prospect of a bomb being dropped on your head nor of a Fallschirmjäger parachuting on to the lawn and massacring your family at a sun-dappled tea and scones event with his FG-42 automatic rifle. In edited recollection, of course, the sun mostly shines. Very few of our most precious memories involve downpours or mist. But it would be stupid to pretend that in 1946 most of the country was anything but savagely bruised. Yet people were neither deterred nor depressed. Or not yet. Survivors do not capitulate. And they find stratagems for renewal. And, for those seeking symbols, there was symbolism everywhere. Heathrow had just opened: a modern, international airport for the weary, old, sea-borne imperium. You could now fly direct to full-blooded and sunny Buenos Aires, even if at home bread was rationed, meat was grey and your bike had been stolen. On a clear day in Devon, from Fraylings you could see the lofty contrails of a Boeing Stratoliner, Douglas DC-6 or a Lockheed Constellation groaning westward-ho at twenty thousand feet towards the promised land. I can remember now the keen – almost painful – sense of yearning the sight gave me. Euphoria is not the English way; empirical construction is. In my youth Stevenage was declared a new town with the promise of enlightenment via Scandinavian-style town planning, modernist lamp posts with clean lines, and semi-automatic garbage disposal. The Bank of England was nationalized and Bentley introduced that handsome and powerful Mark VI saloon, as fine a car as you could buy in all of Europe. My father’s was gun-metal grey. Now he was in Pentonville and the car sat forlorn in a U-shaped gravel drive on a Surrey private estate, sticky pine needles coagulating on its wings, windows growing yellow-dull, tyres sagging, bird shit ossifying on the fabric sunroof. As I always say, symbols are everywhere. a decent bit of buggery So, I want you to imagine a summer’s afternoon at school in Devon in 1946. Lessons are over and I am sitting in the cricket pavilion with some bootleg shandy, plimsolled feet resting on the old iron lawn-roller smothered in fragrant chopped grass. There is a light breeze and the sound of distant laughter. To be sure, enjoyment is somewhere on someone’s agenda. Somehow, the atmosphere suggests the prospect of vague, but deliciously intense, romantic encounters, as thrilling as they will be uncomplicated. But I was usually glum: I felt older than the other boys, more thoughtful, less playful, more intense. I did not laugh much and never at myself. Perhaps a father in jail does that to you. The only friend I made at Fraylings was Rollo Pinkie, a pretty, but cerebral, olive-skinned boy with a flop of dark hair and fine fingers. Rollo was from the Scottish Borders, where his father had been the agent of an ancient, rebarbative and gnarled duke. He was sophisticated in mind and manner, but not at all the metropolitan type. He was a listener more than a talker, although witty and acerbic when he allowed himself to speak. I did not think it was a crush, but I was certain he felt a strong attachment. We provided each other with cover from the mondain realities of the Fraylings days. Standing against the pavilion’s chipped Ideal Standard urinal, dealing with the effects of the shandy, the smell of Izal disinfectant competing with latrines and cut grass for our attention, I said with fine affectation and a bluntness I hoped would be felt as admirable: ‘You know, God made me handsome and clever, but He also made me cross and uncertain.’ Thoughtful words for a teenager, although that term had not yet been coined. I wondered, not without pleasure, if Rollo thought me deranged with self-obsession. With a calculated smirk on my face, I gave an expressive flick and buttoned up the flies of my cricket whites, zip fasteners being something only rich American relatives knew in 1946. And wanting to test Rollo, I added, beaming: ‘You know there’s a tradition in Fraylings that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a decent bit of buggery, don’t you? If you shag one of the maids, you’ll be expelled. But you’ll only get a ticking-off if it’s one of the boys.’ Indeed. So we all found. Fifty years after this conversation with Rollo, a journalist wrote that both good and bad fairies had been present at my birth in Reigate in 1932. The good fairies, it was reported, had seen to it that I was notably attractive, if not in a demonstrative way. I had charm, they said, in abundance, even if, they hinted, it had an overworked on-off switch. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ were not expressions I used readily. To do so would have been to acknowledge the moral significance of another person. They told me I was handsome to women, but with a certain smooth and suggestive effeminacy evidenced in soft, clear skin that made me also a curiosity to men, an ambiguity in alignment I never quite bothered to dispel at any point in the years ahead. And the good fairies had also made me perceptive, original, industrious and energetic. There was, additionally, the keenest sense of personal style, a well-cut suit of character fit to dress – on rare occasions to disguise – the muscular ego beneath. I was not bookish, but was an adroit lifter, and the second-hand wisdom I often repeated became, over time and with successive improvements in my own voice, incorporated into my own personality. For example, I often cited William Morris whose principles my mother had taught me: ‘Not on one strand are all of life’s jewels strung.’ I very grandly mentioned this to Rollo as we ambled away from the cricket pavilion. He arched his eyebrows and said, ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘It’s simple. There are always several ways of getting things done. You really don’t have to do the obvious thing. In fact, I think it’s sometimes better if you don’t.’ the good and bad fairies I really do suspect good and bad fairies were present at my birth. They later each insisted on their part of the bargain. Handsome, clever me was restless and dissatisfied. I had acquired, or developed, an entire psychology, a personal dynamic, founded in notions of sharp-elbowed advancement, callous betrayal and calculated revenge under a camouflage of charm and elegant manners. No matter how fortunate and well-founded I appeared to others, I maintained an enduring internal sense of myself as a sufferer, an injured party who had been cheated out of what was deservedly his. As a result, some found me shifty, if in a rather elegant way. I trusted no one and loved only myself, and that I possibly overdid. Favours and benefits were ever computed and calculated. My generosity was on a timed drip. Human debt became my currency. I learnt to add percentages of interest to every personal transaction. Emotional obligations were collected, even nurtured, as a banker nurtures debt. I detested authority and refused to salute the flag on Empire Day, suggesting instead that the Union Jack should be at half-mast. And, of course, people loved me helplessly. To extract even a grudging nod of approval from Eustace Dunne was to have won one of life’s battles, to have been given a nod and a wink and a nudge in the ribs by the Pope himself. Yet I lacked empathy for others to a degree that, in more modern times, would very likely have attracted professional clinical attention. Rollo said I had a real psychological problem: I was a total cunt. And because of this, I was fascinating. The English master, an amiable, scruffy rascal called Yobbo Clarke, had taught us that P. G. Wodehouse believed a good autobiography required an eccentric father, a miserable childhood and an extraordinary time spent at school. The bad fairies had lavished this trinity on me in abundance. cordite and damp wallpaper I only ever confided in floppy-haired Rollo. With him I shared my history. Prep school had been in Chelsea when the bombs began to fall. In fact, I had been with my mother buying school uniform in Peter Jones during the very first air raid, when deadly Heinkels visited Sloane Square. It is not difficult to sense how shocking it might have been to have this primary rite of passage, one curated by your own mother, interrupted by murderous high explosives. While newsreels make the Blitz look almost comforting, a demonstration of indomitable sing-along tribal London spirit, my experience was a brutally different reality. ‘The panic was contagious, you know,’ I said to Rollo. ‘Forget all that heroic newsreel. People actually weren’t at all calm. There was running, screaming and panic. But I was too confused and fascinated to be really scared. In fact, I was more afraid of the shelters than the bombs.’ Why? Because snobbery and cruelty occupied compartments of similar sizes in my mind. ‘Sleep was impossible,’ I continued. ‘The thumps and tremors were continuous, the buildings above rocked and swayed and we sat with our feet in foetid slurry. I taught myself not to wince because that would be under-bred.’ I told Rollo about once leaving the Anderson shelter after an all-clear. There was a grey dust everywhere which was so fine it made you sneeze helplessly. Satanic curling coils of black smoke emerged from the drains. Wrecked buildings looked like sightless death’s hands. In broken windows, curtains fluttered. Everywhere the smell of cordite and damp wallpaper. The contents of shops were strewn over the pavement. I suspect all of this contributed to my later reverence for merchandise, my uncontained anger at people who disrespected stuff, who wasted things, who made messes. Once, I bent down to pick up from the pavement a fine, mottled, plane tree leaf only to discover that it was, in fact, a severed hand made more terrible still because a wedding band remained on one finger. I confessed to Rollo that the Luftwaffe had hardened me, but I still felt terrible pangs when I was delivered to Fraylings for the first time. Seeing my father’s brand-new Bentley disappearing back to London made me homesick. I mean literally vomiting. Bombs had not made me emotional, but when I later unpacked my trunk and found a letter from my mother with a dried flower inside, I rushed to the lavatories and cried myself hoarse. It was a day of fluid evacuations. ‘It was because the car was brand new that it was so terribly sad,’ I said to Rollo. ‘The car had its whole life in front of it. There were journeys to be made, things to be discovered. And I could have no part of them.’ And nor, now that he was in prison, was my father going to have a part of them either. the invincibly disgusting mutton stew I was an advanced example of the school’s preferred type: a talented misfit who was vain and good-looking. I had no academic interests whatsoever, not much in sports, although cricket whites flattered me, a universal conceit. I was, however, drawn to lepidoptery, which offered imaginary vectors of escape to destinations more exotic than Devon. And I excelled at art and craft, which took me away from maths, chemistry and Latin. I soon took control of the school’s book-press in the basement and printed Johnny Fennell’s dreadful poems, illustrating them with linocuts I designed myself. This got a notice in the local newspaper, my very first brush with fame. I still have the cutting. One night in the dorm, as other beds rhythmically creaked, I whispered to Rollo who was lying awake staring at the ceiling, ‘I can’t sleep. Let’s go up to the roof for a smoke and leave this mob of masturbating hooligans alone. I want to talk to you.’ This was intended both as a command and a touching request, expressing both authority and need. Like ‘teenager’, ‘psychopath’ was not yet a word in common currency. ‘I hate this place,’ I hissed, as we crept through a dormer window on the mansard roof to find a perch in the gutter with a view of Appledore’s distant lights. We smoked, and I wanted to enlarge my views on food as they formed in my mind. A dish, even an atrocious school dinner, I told Rollo who was nodding, was never mere fuel: it was a proposition about style and status. It could be read as an insult or a gift. At this stage in Fraylings’ history, it was mostly insulting, although I dare say they are now on to avocado toast. ‘Did you try that mutton stew?’ I said. ‘I thought it invincibly disgusting. Both half-cooked and over-done with that absolutely vile coagulating fat. And those stiff sardines in that filthy green, nacreous oil. The pies! Dear God, those are very suspicious. What on earth do they put in them? And what about those unidentified frying objects? I think they might have been testicles.’ We shared a dislike for most teachers, especially Yardley Letwin, the games master, who was inclined to put his hand down boys’ shorts whenever circumstances allowed, which was quite often given that he supervised the cold showers after games. Additionally and disgustingly, Letwin liked to recommend bathing ‘after every evacuation’, an instruction generally ignored, on practical grounds if no other: the water in Fraylings was never even temperate. Many years later, Letwin became Secretary of the Paedophile Information Exchange, bringing Fraylings unwanted notoriety. downstairs with bohemians But the art room offered a reprieve, a remedy for homesickness, a site of worship, a place where special and comforting rites were observed. The paint smelt of pleasure, of independence. It was the sovereign territory of Swinfen Harries, perhaps the only man I ever truly admired. In fact, so profound was my admiration that many of the anecdotes establishing Swinfen’s own colourful reputation were eventually, like his quotations, absorbed into my personal lore: plagiarism and inspiration being not very far apart. For example, the nomad-artist Swinfen arrived for the first day of teaching at school with his every worldly possession carried on a magnificent and lustrous black Brough Superior motorbike. Eventually, significant entrances on a motorbike would become a part of my own well-polished repertoire of journalist-friendly anecdotes. They were not true, but respect for truth is a puerile temptation. And the journeyman Swinfen had worked for Eric Gill, helping the rascal-genius zoophiliac with his Prospero and Ariel frieze at the BBC’s Broadcasting House. Gill, it was often told by Swinfen, conducted the employment interview on the scaffolding, covered with Portland stone dust, with a chisel in one hand, a mallet in the other, wearing his quasi-medieval tunic which made his disdain for conventional underwear into an uninvited provocation for those on the ground or climbing the ladder towards him. I never, of course, met Gill, but felt this vicarious contact via Swinfen validated my own credentials as a true source of the Arts and Crafts spirit. Often, in conversation, the unwary might have got the impression that we had, indeed, been intimates. I often used to say, knowingly: ‘The artist is not a different type of person; every person is a different type of artist.’ This was an old saw of Gill’s. But people now think it is mine. As if to prove a point about the infinite variety of human potential, the bohemian Swinfen was also a Boy Scout. Magnificently, he had known both Auguste Rodin in Paris and Baden-Powell in Hampshire. I found this peculiar amalgamation of campfire DIY and cosmopolitan culture compelling to an almost erotic degree. Ancillary to Swinfen’s art room was Swinfen’s cellar, an even more appealing resort with the character of a club privé , accessible (by a spiral staircase) only to an elect few who had been favoured with personal invitations. It smelt of heat, dust, ink and beer. Here was the book-press that I had learnt to use. And the kiln Swinfen had himself built. Here he drank beer at his rumoured all-night firings. In the cellar was the desk with his specialist collection of de luxe and rare inks: Ama-iro Iroshizuku from Japan, Jacques Herbin 1798 from Paris, as well as Kaweco and KWZ from Germany. Here too was a small collection of Japanese poetry books, together with some exquisite, small ceramic pieces by Urano Shigekichi. Swinfen often said, ‘I learnt precision from Japanese poetry.’ Later, I used to say exactly the same. In his cellar, Swinfen passed on worldly advice with the warm beer as he worked. A bachelor before that term acquired its low associations, he once told me, ‘I will never get married. I am both happy and miserable enough as it is. I don’t want or need to add anything to either side of the account.’ Another day he said: ‘The strangest thing once happened to me. I was visiting the Dormer tomb, it’s in the church in Wing, Buckinghamshire. Do you know the one I mean? It has an impressively early classical entablature held up on Corinthian columns, not at all bad for the Home Counties in 1552! Anyway, while snooping around the rest of the church, I found a monument with my own name on it. Swinfen Harries. It’s not a common name, you’ll agree. I was amazed. And then I heard a voice saying, “We’ve been waiting for you.” It was just like M. R. James. What do you think about the mysterious disquisition of ghosts?’ This he did while teaching me, an enthusiastic pupil, how to perform efficient gas-tungsten arc welding, a technique he practised with his shirt off. Above the Vulcanic roar of the torch, he would sometimes ask: ‘What do you think is the proper use of riches? I think a man can count himself rich by the stuff he can do without.’ He taught me ceramics, which he curiously pronounced with a hard ‘c’. Under his tutelage, I learned to throw and fire clay, but not before decorating it with abstract patterns inspired by the Swedish books about the Svenskt Tenn design group and the Gustavsberg ceramics factory I found on his shelves. By the time I was sixteen, I could design and make a credible replica of Stockholm modernity. A tea set of mine with a repeat painted motif of stylized lingonberries was on display in the school entrance hall for nearly a year. With Swinfen, the esoteric and the mundane, the mystical and the muck, were part of an indivisible whole. In one welding lesson, he unforgettably asked: ‘What would you say is the exact difference between a pipe and a tube?’ too much torque Welding, I found, was empowering. It lent an attractive Promethean force to its adepts and would, in future, helpfully allow my impressive claims to possess a fragile affinity with the working man and his art. And it was welding that undid me. Swinfen had introduced me to his precious, bound volumes of the pre-war Architectural Review , whose good-natured modernist propaganda and arresting photography in dramatic chiaroscuro cheered him greatly. Sometimes pages were printed on textured, coloured stock, pink being a favourite, yellow an alternative. It had some of the characteristics of a revivalist tract, and a similar range of enthusiastic voices belonging to writers who appeared also to be hallucinating, but with much better typography. I was particularly drawn to a photo-spread on the 1933 Stuttgart Stühle aus Stahl exhibition of modernist metal furniture. It featured pictures of smoking lesbian novelists with geometric hair, wearing Bauhaus fashions and draping themselves over tubular steel chairs designed by Erich Mendelsohn. In one of the pictures, I admired a single stem of a rose in an unlabelled wine magnum upon a glass-topped tubular steel table. I made a visual note. An image more distant from Empire Day at Fraylings could not easily be imagined: it was both coolly sophisticated and weirdly erotic, suggestive of a world of possibilities and confidences not yet available to Devon scholars. So I decided to make myself a copy of the table. I used Swinfen’s tube-bending machine and his stock of Reynolds chrome molybdenum tube. Or was it pipe? There was trial and error. I sourced the glass from a merchant in Totnes who cut it to my pattern, finishing the edges to an impressive smoothness. I bought clamps. I shamelessly copied the Mendelsohn original from The Architectural Review . And, applying too much torque to the last clamp, the glass violently shattered, severing a tendon in my right wrist. But the injury had a larger effect than mere indisposition: at sixteen, I was never able to draw properly again. To compensate, perforce, my eyesight became exceptionally, even ruthlessly, well-focused. Fifty years later, a Japanese architect called Kengo Kuma experienced exactly the same problem after a strangely similar accident. Kuma taught himself to draw with his left hand. But I taught myself to steal. Swinfen visited me daily in the school infirmary. ‘Poor chap,’ Swinfen said. ‘I knew you’d be better off with the Gothic Revival than with the bloody Neue Sachlichkeit . So much for clean lines.’ He tamped his pipe and added, ‘Pugin’s glass would never break, d’you know.’ women in uniform Rollo visited often, but they were dull days recuperating in the infirmary and, as its only patient, I could freely prowl its ward and offices since only my hand, not my legs, was compromised. One afternoon, surprising her in the tea room, I asked the nurse, always known to the boys as Jinx, ‘Is it really true what they say about women in uniform?’ As a result of events arising from this inquiry, I was commanded to Godfrey Boate for my sacking. While Jinx had not complained at the time of this flagrant flouting of school rules, indeed, had been an enthusiastic participant once she had put her bedpan down, the following week she had found it necessary to register some retrospective distress with school officials. As I entered the headmaster’s study, Boate laid aside his copy of The Forest Trees of Tasmania and sighed very deeply indeed. ‘Mr Dunne, I am very sorry about this. And I do not mean your indisposition, most unpleasant and unfortunate as your injuries are. But I simply cannot allow this sort of behaviour. As I have often said, a little mutual masturbation can be ignored, provided it is discreet. I can even turn a blind eye to occasional buggery, although again I would counsel discretion and moderation in this activity. But interfering with the paid staff. With the paid medical staff. With the paid medical staff while they are on duty. This is simply not acceptable. It is bad for morale. I am afraid I must ask you to leave Fraylings, although we will give you the most helpful references.’ In this way, the British public school maintained its reputation of being able to spot talent and then carelessly expel it. ‘A dispute about manners. You know: girls, that sort of thing,’ I would always say when asked in future to account for my premature departure from Fraylings. Nurse Jinx, however, had not been a girl, but a married woman of thirty-four. And it had been raining. 1: 1946 – It was a dark and stormy night 1 1946 – It was a Dark and Stormy Night ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ George Orwell, Animal Farm , 1945 My teacher was inspired by Eric Gill. 2: 1948 – Spaghetti, gin and fucking the missus ‘J ESUS . T HAT UTTER BASTARD B OATE sacked me for shagging Jinx. Christ! God bloody knows, everyone has shagged Jinx, haven’t they? She’s got more miles on her than the school bus. And been serviced more often.’ It was two days – and a long, slow, reflective train journey – after the Boate hearing. I was prodding at a spot on my nose and talking to the hall mirror in my mother’s flat in that part of London where smart Hampstead becomes suburban Finchley. Some might even dispute whether it was London at all because it was nearer Barnet than the Heath, but the address suited my mother’s ambitions and these ambitions eventually became my own. You are, after all, what – or where – you want to be. Presentation is important. Social mountains are there to be climbed. And I had climbed to the third floor of a late Victorian mansion block, all pompous red brick and stone dressings with impressively polished brass door furniture and a lobby below that smelt of beeswax, perfume and afternoon affairs. The flat was flooded with Finchley Road light and furnished with plywood chaises longues by an alcoholic Finnish architect of the second rank. This was the same furniture you found in Jack Pritchard’s Isokon building, at the other end of Frognal, a bold, white, geometrical construct, a messenger from ‘The Continent’, a rare example in bosky London of what American and European architects were already calling ‘The International Style’. It brought modernist flair as well as some adventurous, exotic spirits to the area. Mother’s rooms were also filled with Ambrose Heal’s fashionably austere ‘prison’ furniture, a nice irony considering her husband was in Pentonville. Of brown Victorian furniture my mother had much to say, all of it hostile. Bleached oak, pale laminated plywood and birch were more to her taste. Thus, the walls were painted beige, a bold choice for the day, but good in pseudo-Hampstead light. Perhaps it was a little like a Scandinavian tuberculosis sanatorium: ‘clean lines’, you see, has an actual and a metaphorical meaning. A few drawings by Ruskin Spear, a student contemporary of Mother’s, were the sole concessions to decoration, while a pair of Anglepoise lights and a pseudo-Bauhaus rug designed by a chain-smoking vegetarian novelist indicated the optimistic presence that the modernist exotic spirits down the road would recognize. Then there were the orange Penguins and blue Pelicans, the very first generation of English paperbacks, although they were, in fact, imitations of German originals, but that could not be said at the time. The Penguins were ambitious modern literature by Thornton Wilder and George Orwell, the Pelicans earnest and instructive studies in the history of coal mining, collecting Bohemian glass and anarchist agriculture. They were housed in a little plywood assemblage – again, Finnish designed – a thing known as a ‘Donkey’. I was, as I tormented my spot, wearing a well-considered outfit of slept-in jeans, a novelty at the time, brothel creeper shoes and a red Harrington zip jacket with tartan lining and the collar turned up, anticipating James Dean and Elvis by several years. Or so I later realized. I was already comfortably ahead of the game. take it from here George Orwell’s 1984 was just out. I had already read Mother’s copy – another orange Penguin – but I was at least as interested in the new television set which last night had shown a flickering grey and grey 405 line performance by Terry Thomas in the BBC’s first ever comedy series. Bleak and humourless as it was, comedy was in the air. On the radio, my favourite show was Frank Muir’s and Denis Norden’s Take It From Here , a masterpiece of gentle sophistication. It was a first class education in the art of the pun … and I learnt all its lessons. Infamy? Infamy? They’ve all got it in for me. The television news that same night may have featured the opening of London’s first launderette on Queensway and later the maiden flight of the amazing new passenger jet called the Comet, which flew at five hundred miles per hour. This mixture of doomed apocalyptic vision, pop culture and democratized technology I can now see predicted the future. I mean my future. Anyway, the stubborn spot was very nearly gone when the door slammed and Mother marched in. ‘Dear God, Eustace, you look such a fucking sight. When you’ve finished straddling the world like a denim-clad Narcissus, will you please tell me what you intend to do with yourself? Or were you thinking of keeping your no-good bloody father company in prison?’ She looked me in the eye while lighting an untipped Sweet Afton cigarette, inhaling deeply, a process that simply seemed to make her more steady and threatening still. ‘Actually, Ma, I was thinking of becoming a designer. I’d thought about un été doux et reposant ,’ I said, salvaging a phrase from a school French lesson. ‘I’d considered going over to le côté obscur , but I think idleness and the dark side have – frankly – limited appeal. I want to be busy. And rich.’ That morning, on the train back to Frognal, somewhere between Dorchester and Reading, I had decided that the Lethaby Academy of Art on Kingsway was my means to this end. I was a delinquent, but I felt delinquency had some glamour and wanted to realize all its cash value. ‘I’m going to art college,’ I told her. ‘Are you, indeed?’ she replied, her head nodding in slow, contemptuous beats. ‘And how exactly do you intend to pay? Do say when you have a clue. That is, if you ever have a clue.’ She turned on her axis and headed out again for the ancient lift with its open-work metal shaft and squeaking cables. I like to think she was letting me go. ® R OLLO P INKIE: Eustace was always vague about what became of his parents. In discussing them at all, he managed to combine an overt mawkish sentimentality with an occult, callous disregard. While he promoted his convict father to ‘something in the City’ and a county level real tennis champion, the truth was that when his parents, escaping their creditors, decamped to Bali to run a bar in Denpasar, he broke off all contact. At the time, the only Europeans in Bali were Dutch flotsam left behind after independence. Nor, many years later, did he attend their joint funeral, organized according to Buddhist rites, on Kuta Beach. fat, pale, miserable models The Lethaby Academy was, generally, a dispiriting place. There was a lift, but it never worked. Sweating brick walls were painted in cream and green gloss, indistinguishable from a hospital or an asylum, although somewhat less deliberately fine than Mother’s Hampstead sanatorium. It was populated to a surprising degree by talentless, demobbed soldiers enjoying their freedom by mooching listlessly in the yellow light of the studios, making roll-ups and eyeing the girls. Necessarily, they were older men than I. One of them explained to me with admirable candour that, ordinarily, in 1948 the best he could hope for in civilian life was a regime of tinned spaghetti, gin and fucking the missus. But art college offered several years on the coast of Bohemia, as well as, longer term, vistas – illusions, possibly – of escape from the humdrum. Forgetting the demobbed, lethargic soldiers with their noxious Woodbines, the other students were idle and supercilious, as survivors sometimes are. I was soon a matter of social suspicion. Why? Because, I suppose, I had a toxic confidence that people found more enervating than stimulating. I also took care of what I was wearing. Meanwhile, the student body as a whole sat around in an unheated Junior Common Room whose only concession to decoration or cultural curiosity was the fading remains of Air Raid Precautions posters. Typhoo tea was drunk out of filthy enamel mugs, the stains recording the passing of time like the rings in a section of an oak tree. It was just after the Land Rover launched at the Amsterdam Motor Show. As if to demonstrate the entire country’s confused search for a post-war identity, no one could quite decide if the Land Rover was a car or a piece of agricultural equipment. Still, it was reported in all the newspapers as a symbol of national recovery. Some of the Lethaby Academy’s staff, I soon learnt, had been occupied by designing parts of the revivalist ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, an event intended to raise national consciousness by suggesting that the increased production and consumption of material goods would bring bliss from Plymouth to Perth, enthusing Leicester and Burnley in between. Yet there were few signs of revival or vitality on Kingsway itself. But there were, at least, girls, mostly in army surplus duffel coats which they did not remove indoors. They did not smile much. Most of them were what my contemporary, Terence Conran, mixing smug wit with genuine horror, described as ‘virgins from Surbiton’. We knew this to be true because, whenever possible, we tested their integrity. Many were found wanting. I enjoyed Terence’s remark because it nicely combined cruel topographical snobbery with a lofty profession of romantic sophistication. But, generally, sexual curiosity at the Lethaby was fulfilled at its first and most modest level by the life class. Fat, pale, miserable models sat, as buses grumbled by outside, goose-pimpled and nude under the tired grey light that lazily penetrated a wired glass rooflight. The first life model I saw, fat and pink, looked as if she wanted to cry. The room stank of bouquet de corsage and varnish while the naked models were, if female, diseased barmaids; if male, punch-drunk boxers or bit-part actors. The milieu was not stimulating, artistically or sexually, although sometimes, by way of compensation, we were joined by the celebrated portraitist Rodrigo Moynihan, usually dressed in a tweed jacket and corduroy bags, who raised the tone. He was, I assumed, always heading somewhere better. Certainly, there were better destinations. Top-lit white flesh is not a delight and I preferred to spend my time at the nearby Sir John Soane Museum on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was deliciously crepuscular, absolutely deserted and inexhaustibly interesting. And the only nudes were classical statues. Here, while avoiding the liberal arts lectures in college, I educated myself in the matters of hazard and surprise in Soane’s spellbinding cabinet of curiosities, his Regency memory palace. In this network of chance encounters, wandering between Egyptian sarcophagi and Hogarth paintings, I learnt from experience how to create spaces, turn corners, use colour and play with light. These are the tricks of the interior designer’s trade. It was Sir John Soane, a humble builder who became the Regency’s greatest architect, who taught me how to be a designer. Designers are people who have a vision of how things should be. They are essentially idealists, always wanting to alter, and, one hopes, ‘improve’ things. Everywhere I go, I interrogate my surroundings. I read streets and houses. I ask them questions. I have a habit that people tell me is an annoying one, of rearranging their desks, unasked. There’s really nothing that can’t be improved by design. It’s not so much a specific style as an attitude. Sometimes people think it arrogant. ® Rollo Pinkie: Eustace never really understood that he was really selling his personal taste, although he persuaded himself and almost everyone else that in rearranging someone’s desk or designing a sofa, he was reaching for some sort of universal, timeless excellence. He never appreciated the ludicrous paradox that while designers believe they can always change anything for the better, they stubbornly insist that their own work is an eternal classic which should last for all time. I liked the way that Soane had risen from a local artisan to be an international tastemaker. Assimilation of another sort played its part too. While I tended to avoid my fellow students, I saw advantage in cultivating some of the more pleasing members of staff. Insinuating myself into conversations in the local pub, the atrociously smelly Seven Stars, whose olfactory range spanned vomit to urine via tobacco and stale beer, I gathered that in the Senior Common Room, people were reading Eliot’s Notes Towards the Definition of Culture and Leavis’s The Great Tradition , as well as, more lightly, Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One . All of them then new and being reviewed. So I went as soon as I possibly could to Foyles on Charing Cross Road to shoplift them. modernizing the lazy rump of imperium One of the most pleasing, which is not to say easy-going, members of staff and a great influence on me was a Hungarian-Jewish typography tutor, Ilona Jacobsen. She had arrived in London at the same time as Hampstead’s Isokon Building on Frognal and with similar credentials and ambitions: she was a woman intent on modernizing the lazy rump of imperium. Ilona used a cigarette holder to emphasize her lascivious mouth and kohl to emphasize her penetrating, yellow eyes. She was a connoisseur of fonts and of darker things too. Like Swinfen Harries at school, Ilona knew about ink and took it most seriously: she had an account at J. Herbin in Paris and regularly imported exotic bottles from Schlagmuller of Mannheim and Isozaki of Kyoto. I thought this a good omen. It was a pleasure to watch Ilona suck up these fine inks into one of the many vintage pens on a crowded art deco platter kept on her desk. Ilona sucked up other things too. Injections of paraldehyde, prescribed as a cure for seizures in infants, were regularly used as a remedy for the delirium tremens she suffered. She always claimed, with her familiar glass of Fernet-Branca to hand, that her DTs were not caused by drink, but by the trauma of Hungarian fascists marauding around in the Thirteenth District of Budapest where her family lived so uneasily in the days before her forced departure. Ilona once told me in a heavily accented and melancholy voice, ‘Luxury stains everyone it touches,’ pulling at the hem of her black Chanel dress as she spoke. Then, with a flick of the wrist, dusting the ash off. Her opinions combined the oneiric romanticism of William Morris and the severe analytics of Marx with the sumptuous tastes of a privileged grande horizontale who had once been rich. She had no small talk. Her conversation was always political. ‘By the end of the nineteenth century,’ she would lecture me, ‘the machine had made skilled craftsmen into mere labourers. Their sole interest in their work became their pay, and beauty, instead of being a universal right, became a social luxury. Huh?’ When she talked like this, in a delicious guttural accent, I was never sure whether she was teasing, but her story fascinated me. The daughter of a fashionable milliner, Ilona’s Marxist dialectics were enforced by an austere aesthetic, acquired from a term at the Dessau Bauhaus in 1928. To this she added the keenest possible business sense. It was this German art school connection that led her, after the Bauhaus, to the Berlin office of the architect Erich Mendelsohn whose chairs I had admired at school. Mendelsohn was just then working on the famous Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft, always known as UFA, studios, spiritual home of the German film industry. It’s nice to think that some of the dark Expressionist horrors of German cinema were made in a beautifully refined modern building, as sleek as a white ocean liner. I always enjoyed these paradoxes. On leaving Germany, when it became no longer possible for people called Mendelsohn to stay, the architect travelled to London where his reputation, established in the Berlin magazines, assured a ready acceptance by the local architectural community. A first job was soon acquired: the design of a new Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square, soon to be a gloriously incongruous intrusion of hard-edged German Modernismus into elegantly sedate Chelsea. This was where my mother bought my school uniform. When Ilona herself inevitably arrived in London, she immediately contacted Mendelsohn. He promptly invited her to design the first displays in the David Jones vitrines along King’s Road, which she did with Bauhaus bravado, successfully adapting Oskar Schlemmer’s puppets and Herbert Bayer’s graphics to the sale of Jersey knits and practical shoes. This caused a sensation in the Evening News and marked the beginning of a relationship with the David Jones Partnership. This lasted until 1956 when Ilona committed suicide while watching Soviet tanks debauching Budapest. On television. the vanity of a self-mounted butterfly Towards the end of the spring term she told me, over a cup of very thin and bitter coffee, possibly made of acorns, and in the High Holborn Kardomah, that I had the ‘vanit	636,907
The Denial A satirical novel of climate change (Clark Ross) (Z-Library).epub	Cover The Denial Ross Clark Copyright © Ross Clark 2020 Ross Clark has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. First published in 2020 by Lume Books. Table of Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 About the Author With thanks to James Dent, for help with the meteorology, and to my wife, Catherine, for her insights 1 On hearing that strong northerly winds had been forecast for Guy Fawkes Night, Bryan Geavis was in a quandary as to how to spend the last hours of daylight. Should he secure the climbing roses on the front of his house, or should he retire upstairs to follow the storm on the internet? Roses were a passion of his – he had notebooks in which he had registered the date they had flowered, stretching back 40 years. Yet he found something uniquely seductive about a North Sea storm. He loved watching the satellite images of the swirling masses of cloud as they raced, usually from west to east, stirring up a seemingly innocuous body of grey water into lethal rage. Compared with the Atlantic, the North Sea was not so much a tea cup as the saucer – so much shallower than some of the fjords and lochs which fed into it, and yet prone to swells and surges which could surprise shipping and on occasion snap the legs of an oil platform. Storms had once been Geavis’ profession. He had spent three decades as a meteorologist on oil platforms, the lives of divers and drilling engineers dependent on his ability to detect and predict the path of a brewing storm. He had an innate sense of how to translate the isobars on a map into the real effects – he knew how winds would snatch at anything that had not been lashed down, how a rogue wave could wash a man off a platform if he was not secured with a line. It had been his judgement, his responsibility, to tell whether or not outside work would be possible on the platforms from day to day. He had carried on doing this for over 30 years, until a corporate restructuring at Albion Oil had eliminated his job, and he had been unwillingly sent ashore to spend a few anticlimactic years in the company’s PR department. As soon as he had been free to take his pension, he had done so – and in retirement reverted to storm-watching as a hobby. Friends occasionally called him an oddball for it. He was ribbed on the occasion, during a family Christmas, when he had excused himself from the festivities because he wanted to check on the progress of a frontal system. “Bryan, it’s not normal to invite people around, then disappear upstairs because you want to watch a storm,” his wife, Olivia, had told him. But it was not going to make any difference. He loved storms, and was not going to be deflected from his interest. Inevitably, it was the storm that won the battle for his affections on Guy Fawkes Night. He hastily bound his roses as best he could, then retired upstairs to his computer screen. What he saw immediately disturbed him. For two days, a storm had been stuck in the middle of the North Sea, drawing cold winds down from the north over the whole of Britain. The 6.00 pm weather forecast by the Agency for Modelling Climate Chaos (formerly the Met Office) had predicted that the storm would start wandering towards the east coast overnight and deepen a little, tightening the isobars and strengthening the winds. Instead, it seemed to be sinking southwards towards the Thames Estuary – straight for Geavis’ own house. Worse, it was deepening more quickly than the Agency had suggested. Geavis knew at once what it meant. Already, the seas were high: two days of northerly winds in the North Sea had funnelled water southwards – a classic tidal surge. But it was about to get a lot worse. Geavis checked the tide tables, which confirmed his fears. At the storm’s current rate of progress the northern flank of the storm, with its easterly winds, would align with the estuary at around midnight – just in time for the 00:24 hours spring tide. Anyone relying on the television weather forecast would be entirely unprepared for the almost certain flooding that was to come. His brain raced. People could die, and he was in a position to do something about it. He felt had to act, but how? He called his wife to come downstairs. “Olivia, Olivia! Look at this!” She did him the courtesy of coming to have a look, but she did not really know what she was looking at. “There’s a big ball of fluff over the North Sea,” she said. “But how do you know it is coming this way?” When he explained his thinking, still she was unconvinced. “Surely it could still miss us, as they said on the telly?” “No, no,” said Geavis, becoming agitated. “I’ve seen enough of these to know what I am looking at. It’s coming this way, alright. This could be devastation.” “But there’s nothing about it on the news. Wouldn’t they be saying?” “They can’t have seen the storm turn our way. Their models are wrong.” The danger was disturbingly close. Floodwaters whipped up by the storm would not reach Geavis’ own house, which, as he had taken care to establish when he bought it, was at 37 feet above mean sea level. But walk a few streets southwards and the land dipped, as Essex met the sea. For those who lived on the seafront, only the bulwark of a concrete sea wall would protect them from the storm surge. And tonight, that wall was in danger of being overtopped. If that happened, residents would have little warning. The water would spill, slowly at first, then in a great rush. The water would keep on coming, and coming, rising 10 feet in a minute or two. For the occupants of the bungalows – and they mostly were bungalows, on the seafront – there would be nowhere to go. In his mind, Geavis was already running up and down the seafront with a loudhailer. “Danger, danger! Evacuate your homes at once! There is an acute flood risk at high tide tonight!” But in reality, he had no loudhailer. Instead, he made a call to the local radio station. A producer listened, and said he would raise the matter with the station’s weather forecaster. Geavis tuned in, and half an hour later was at first flattered to be mentioned – only to hear his warning dismissed. “Apparently, a listener called in earlier to say that there is a severe storm heading directly for Essex,” came the forecast. “Well, don’t worry unduly. The information we have at the moment is that the worst of the winds will pass us by. We’ll keep you informed if the picture changes.” And then they played an old hit, ‘Riders on the Storm’ by The Doors. “They’re taking the mickey!” said Geavis. He went down to dinner asking himself: had it been enough? Had he done all he possibly could? * “You’re not still worried about that storm?” asked Olivia, sensing his disquiet. “It’s the speed it’s coming down the east coast,” he said. “That’s absolutely crucial. I’m going to have another look in a minute, but they’re going to be sitting ducks, everyone who lives in low-lying places along the Thames.” “If it’s going to be rough weather the very least you can do is get a good meal inside you. Honestly, the efforts I make – and you never comment.” Geavis grunted, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie – it wasn’t a good meal, and it would hurt his pride to say so. He couldn’t overcome the disappointment he felt at every mealtime. How he missed meat! The jars of vitamins and mineral supplements that Olivia always put on the table before him said it all – why did he need those if sustainable food (as it was always described on the packaging) was as healthy as everyone kept telling him it was? Maybe he was wrong, maybe vegan food was as good for him as it was for the planet; yet he couldn’t help feeling from the pit of his unfulfilled stomach that it wasn’t properly sustaining him. What irritated him most was the way that his dinner had been dressed up as a steak, as if disguising a concoction of beetroot would be enough to stave off his cravings for the real thing. “They’re not too bad, are they, these steaks?” said Olivia. Geavis wanted to speak his mind, but he knew it would hurt and besides, he’d said it often enough before – he just wanted a real steak. Or some chunks, or some mince. But what hope did he have? There was no absolute ban on eating meat, but in practice it had become difficult for ordinary folk to procure it – or indeed any food officially labelled as ‘unsustainable’. Every citizen had to submit quarterly carbon audits, accounting for the carbon emissions for which they were personally responsible. The allowances were so tight there was little room for meat and in any case, public disapproval was heaped upon those who attempted to eat it. The last time Olivia had tried to buy a couple of steaks, about three years earlier, she had been surrounded by several people tut-tutting at her choice. “You’re killing the planet, you effing moron!” she was told. Embarrassed and feeling threatened, Olivia had put the steaks back and had never tried to buy meat since. It was possible to be prescribed meat for medical reasons, or to be put in touch with a specialist supplier if you could prove you had a religious need. But few butchers would dare set up a shop or market stall to supply the general public, now. Any such establishment would quickly be surrounded by a mob of wailing activists – popularly known as the Greenshirts – who would hold a symbolic funeral for the dead animals and threaten to put the trader before the courts on a charge of animal cruelty. Country people were known illicitly to snare rabbits and other creatures. But for most people, the only option was to down the officially approved vegan food and keep on popping the vitamin pills. Geavis pushed his half-empty plate away from him and announced that was going to take a walk down to the seafront. “But what about the waves?” said Olivia. “You said it was going to be dangerous.” “And that is exactly why I’ve got to go” He pulled on a set of waterproofs – garments he had once worn on the oil platforms – and opened the door carefully. Even so, he was surprised at how it was snatched by a gust of wind. The winds were not yet gale force, but they were heading that way. He was sure that he felt the cold more than he had in the old days, and he was convinced it was because he didn’t have a good meal inside him. A branch of one of his roses had become detached, which scratched his face, but he hadn’t the time to deal with it. Rain was now falling almost horizontally, and dark puddles were forming on the pavement. He couldn’t seem to help scooping rainwater into his shoes. With each street, the wind seemed to strengthen until, just short of the seafront, he found himself having to cling to fence posts just as he used to cling to the rails of the oil platforms. The house names – Sunny Bank, Sunnyside, Fair View – were laughably at odds with the evening’s reality. When he reached the sea wall, he gripped it with both hands and looked over. At low tide, the sea could be half a mile away. But the water was coming up fast and the last few patches of muddy sand were disappearing. Another hour and the waters would be up to where he was standing. He looked back, down into the tidy, ornament-filled gardens of the first row of bungalows. They were lightweight buildings and would be reduced to matchsticks if the waves reached them. He tried to imagine what it would look like if the wall failed to hold the water back: a mass of tangled chairs, concrete frogs and maidens, plant pots and garden chairs, all mixed with detritus brought over with the water – land and sea suddenly and ferociously mixed together. Had he time to warn everyone of what was coming? He did the calculations in his head. There must be 120 properties in the line of danger, he estimated. Even if he spent just a minute at each, trying to explain what was going to happen he would hardly have time to reach them all. But supposing he instructed his first randomly selected resident to go and warn two neighbours, and to ask each of them to warn two others? The mathematics of this appealed to him: two, four, eight, 16, 32. The job of warning everyone could be done inside 10 minutes. As he walked towards the first property, a quick flash of a thought passed through his mind: he could be the hero of the hour. At the first bungalow, there was a light on and the sound of a television in the front room, yet still it took several knocks to rouse the woman inside. She then took up more vital seconds as she decided whether or not to open the door. She sized him up through the glass: who was he, and what did he want this time of night? Eventually she did open the door, but only on its chain. “Excuse me for disturbing you,” said Geavis. “But I am a retired meteorologist who lives in the neighbourhood and I am convinced that a storm is coming our way. The weather forecasters have underestimated the danger. There is a serious flood risk and you need to leave your home.” He could see it in her face – she was trying to work out his true motive. Was it a distraction burglary? Was he going to attack her, even if he didn’t look a threatening type? What has happened to the community, he thought, that neighbours can’t trust each other? She thought much the same. “But where would I go?” she asked. “It isn’t like the old days, when I could have jumped in the car and gone and stayed with Daisy for the night. I can’t go out in this.” “And you can’t stay in, either.” She went to look for her cat but made no commitment to follow his instruction. He moved on. At the next house, a couple were more open to being persuaded to leave, but they insisted in going up to the sea wall themselves to have a look at the waters. Already, the sea was a couple of feet higher than when Geavis had first looked; water was now slapping up against the concrete, sending spray and foam over the top of the wall. “You’re right, it does look high,” one of them said. Yet it was still hard to convince them of the danger they faced. Geavis had only managed to visit a couple more houses before he heard doors up and down the street beginning to open. Almost simultaneously. he heard a siren. Then another. There were blue flashing lights. Then came a voice, over a loudhailer. “Warning of severe risk to life,” came the words. “We’re evacuating this street. Please leave at once.” Geavis’ phone began to bleep. He looked and saw the same message. It had picked up his location and was sending him a personal warning. Out of nowhere, an emergency flood plan was swinging into action. Residents appeared at doorways, hastily doing up their children’s coats. Some carried pets and assorted possessions – stuff they ought to have left behind. Geavis felt relieved. The responsibility was no longer his. He could return home – which he did, grabbing at lampposts and bushes as he went. The wind was now stronger, and by the time he reached home he felt exhausted just from battling against it. He was surprised by Olivia’s reaction when he got inside. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would be cross. “For Christ’s sake, don’t you ever do that to me again,” she said. “It’s utterly foolish to go out in that weather. Couldn’t you even have rung me? So typical of you not to think of me.” He didn’t know whether to apologise or explain. He couldn’t engage with Olivia’s anger – his mind was full of the weather. “They’ve caught up,” he said. “They spotted the storm, after all. They’ve evacuated three streets. Everyone’s going to the leisure centre.” Sleep was out of the question. Geavis retreated to his study and followed the storm, the eye of which was now spinning quickly down the East Anglian coast. On its northern flank the winds were not only strengthening; they were beginning to align with the Thames, which would serve to push a bulge of water westwards towards London, rising ever higher as the river narrowed. He sat by the window, looking out for floodwaters, and watching the odd limp firework in the distance. As the high tide approached it became agonising for him not to know whether the sea wall had held. He stayed in, listening to the radio and to the winds as they ruffled his roof tiles. But at 2.30 in the morning, with Olivia asleep, his curiosity became too great. He let himself out of the house and made his way towards the sea. Two streets away, he came up against a police cordon and an officer on patrol. “Not through here, sir,” said the officer when he saw him. “Flood protection.” “But the tide is receding now.” “Doesn’t make any difference. No-one is allowed – not even if you live in these streets. Gather at the leisure centre and we’ll let you back in the morning, with any luck.” Geavis turned away, but then wished he had had it out with the officer. What was the point in keeping the streets closed now? It was just authorities trying to make up for their failure to see the storm earlier – people covering their backsides, that was what it was. Geavis tried an alternative road down to the sea, but found that shut off too. Then, he remembered a little alleyway and found that the police had forgotten to close it. He walked fast along there, downhill past rotting garages still sheltering long-disused cars. He kept looking out for the floodwaters he felt sure would be there. Would they have reached the first street, the second street or the promenade? But he didn’t find any floodwaters, other than large puddles on the seafront, little seas with islands of pebbles. They weren’t deep and he guessed they had been caused by spray, not by water pouring over the flood wall. The defences had held. He peered over and saw the tide receding. The emergency was over and everything was looking normal – except for a layer of weed encrusted onto the wall, a few inches from the top, which served as evidence of how close the sea had come to breaching the defences. Having worked himself into the expectation of a major disaster he couldn’t help but feel, perversely, a little disappointed – an emotion he tried to dismiss as he turned for home and his bed. * The following morning, he was awoken by Olivia. “There’s been devastation in London,” she said. “It’s the only thing they’re talking about on the radio.” The tide had surged up the Thames until it ran headlong into floodwaters draining from the heavy rainfall that had fallen in southern England in recent weeks. In several places the river defences had been breached, and there had been casualties. It would not be clear how many had died until emergency services had visited the flooded properties, but reports were already trickling through. An elderly man had been found drowned in Woolwich. A couple had died trying to save a dog in Beckton. A tree had fallen on a house in Leyton; crushing a couple in bed. Several cars had been found on the river’s foreshore, having been swept off nearby streets. At least one motorist was dead, though not all vehicles had yet been checked. A youth had been severely injured when the firework he had just lit was blown over by the wind and fired itself into his chest. Worst of all, there were reports of a major incident in Deptford, details of which were sketchy, but many deaths were feared. The secretary of state for the climate emergency, Sarah Downwood, gave a statement. “London was hit last night by one of the worst storms of the past century. My thoughts go out to those who have been affected by the disaster, the full extent of which is only becoming clear with daylight. It is yet another sharp reminder that the climate emergency is not some abstract problem for the distant future. It is with us in the here and now.” There was a flurry of questions from reporters. “Can you tell us why the storm was not forecast?” “Please understand that we are in an emergency situation,” replied Downwood. “Our thoughts at the moment are with the victims of this disaster. I will make further statements later, but that is all I will be saying for now, thank you.” Then a reporter asked the question that had just occurred to Geavis himself. “Was the barrier closed? And if not, why not?” But Downwood gave no answer. “Of all the things!” said Geavis. “They didn’t even close the Thames Barrier! That was the whole point of it: to save London from a night like this!” To Olivia, whose career was in medicine, rivers and tides meant little. But she then asked a question which had not occurred to Geavis. “What about Adam?” Adam was their son. He lived with his partner and daughter in a flat several streets back from the river in Beckton – a ground floor flat. “Surely they would have been out of harm’s way?” he said. But the more he thought about it, the less sure he was. Did the land rise or fall between their flat and the river? He tried to think it over, attempting to recall the lie of the land from his visits there, then resorted to his computer to find out. Locating the flat by satellite image, he discovered it stood just a metre above the usual high-water mark of the Thames, and possibly two metres below the level of the previous night’s tidal surge. If the river’s flood wall had been breached, Adam and his family would have been submerged. They might not even have realised the danger they were in. He kept this horrible realisation from Olivia. Olivia, meanwhile, was already ringing her son – or trying to. There was no answer. She tried Chloe. Still no answer. What about Amber, their 10-year-old daughter? Surely she must answer – she never seemed to put her phone down. But from Amber, too, there was no answer. Might they just be busy? Geavis found himself visualising a wall of water bursting into the family’s flat. There was only one thing for it. They were not going to rest until they had gone to Beckton and satisfied themselves that all were safe. But how to get there? Olivia did as she always did when they needed to make a journey outside their immediate neighbourhood – although that had happened less and less in recent years. She tried to call up an electropod via her phone. These autonomous egg-shaped vehicles were supposed to arrive within minutes, but in practice this was rare. There were not enough electropods to meet demand, and they were prone to malfunction. Some had been stolen and illicitly reprogrammed for the thief’s exclusive use. When complaints were made to the mayor, his answer was always the same: electropods were there to be used by everyone, now and then, but they were never supposed to be a substitute for private cars. Meanwhile, most cars had been removed from the road. Even electric cars were proving incompatible with the ever-tighter carbon budgets being placed on individuals. Not only that, a shortage of rare metals had stalled production of batteries. “We all need to ask ourselves whether we really need to travel so much,” was the mayor’s standard response. While waiting for the electropod, Geavis and Olivia continued to ring their family members, but without success. They kept the radio on. More details of the storm were emerging. Several more bodies had been discovered: the death toll was now 24. It was being reported that the authorities had attempted to close the barrier, but by the time they realised the need the currents had been too strong. Pressure was building on Sarah Downwood, who was being accused of being far too laid-back. Several residents of districts close to the river claimed they had not received sufficient warning. “The first I knew there was a storm was when water started pouring in my living room through the cat flap,” one lady in Dagenham complained. “It was only after that I had a telephone call warning me there was a flood on the way. What use is that?” Her words were played over and over again on every news bulletin. By 10:30 am , Sarah Downwood was forced to make another appearance before the cameras. “Further to my earlier statement, let me assure you that the government will do all it can to ensure that this will never happen again. I am well aware of claims that this weather event was not forecast as early as it might have been. But we all have to be aware that severe weather events like these are becoming ever more common. It is a stark reminder of the climate emergency we face and the drastic measures we need to take.” While some reporters approved, others were unconvinced that she was doing enough. The subject of the non-closure of the barrier wouldn’t go away. Another question was now being asked: will there be a public inquiry? Feeling under pressure, Downwood raised her arms and made an instant decision, which horrified her civil servants. “Yes. I assure you there will be.” Geavis nodded approvingly. “If they didn’t close that barrier, that’s negligence,” he said. “Heads must roll.” Half an hour later the electropod had still not arrived. “We could have walked to the station by now,” said Olivia, before suggesting they did just that. A few hundred yards down the road they discovered why their electropod had not arrived: there it was, buzzing with strained effort as it tried repeatedly, but without success, to mount a pile of earth, gravel and other detritus washed into the road by the previous night’s rain. “Is that ours?” asked Olivia. “I’m not getting in it now,” replied Geavis. “Pathetic things!” It was a mile and a half walk to the station. There were few people about, and little traffic. Several people were undertaking makeshift repairs to their homes, securing flaps of roofing felt loosened by the high winds. The air was strangely calm, given how recently the storm had passed. Yet, the peace was broken by the sound of an aeroplane. Aeroplanes always caught Geavis’ attention. Where once they had been ubiquitous, now they were such a rarity that it was difficult to ignore them. He found himself asking: who can that be, flying when most of us don’t even get to travel by car? As with meat, as with cars, there was no specific law against flying, yet it was an experience that had become impossible for most people. Their carbon allowances were not generous enough to allow them to take foreign holidays anymore, such as they had enjoyed in their youth. To fly , it was necessary either to cut down the rest of your carbon emissions to virtually zero, or otherwise to obtain a special permit, for which you had to plead some desperate need to travel. The death of a close relative might do the trick, as would, on occasions, a cultural or religious need – the Executive for Personal Carbon Budgeting could sometimes take a generous view on that. But holidays were out of the question. Unless, that is, you were one of the chosen few who qualified for a much more generous carbon allowance. Looking up at the plane, Geavis could easily guess who was inside. “Bloody climate influencers!” he said. “While people are drowning down here, they are up there watching!” To become a climate influencer – or CI, for short – was the ambition of almost everyone. It opened doors, brought privileges of which others could only dream. The CIs enjoyed much higher carbon allowances because, it was argued, they needed to reach the widest possible audience in order to spread their message. They had to reach conferences and attend other events around the world. They needed to make speeches and share their wisdom with public administrators, especially in tropical regions where, they believed, people often seemed especially resistant to understanding the climate emergency and the need to curtail their lifestyles for the sake of the climate. As one of the most prominent CIs, an actress-turned-campaigner by the name of Zoe Fluff, had put it on the radio the previous week: “Our hardest work is in some of those remote communities where people just stare at you when you suggest that by burning parts of the forest they are fouling their own environment and changing the weather. They don’t see the connection. But with persistence, you can get through to them. Spend time working with people in their forests and on their beaches, and eventually they accept that what they have been doing is wrong and they must change their ways. It is such a beautiful moment when you realise your message is finally hitting home.” A CI found it much easier to own a car, too. While there was no general ban on car ownership, for a non-CI to own a car would almost certainly result in an illegally high carbon footprint. Without a CI sticker on the windscreen, cars were liable to be pulled over by the police and the driver suspected of evading the carbon allowance system. Sometimes, activists would surround a private car, or lie in front of it and invite the driver to run them over if he dared. But of course, he wouldn’t dare. Usually, the motorist would be shamed into submission, and would emerge tearfully from his vehicle, to be comforted by the crowd as he confessed to his selfishness. Geavis and Olivia arrived at the station to find there were no trains; the overhead wires had been brought down in several places by the winds. If they were going to reach Beckton they would have to walk. Although daunted by the thought of making the journey on foot, Geavis found himself enjoying it. Once-choked highways now carried little traffic. The freshness of the air was a blessing for anyone who remembered the old days. But Olivia was complaining about her knees, and the peace was suddenly shattered by a fast-moving car which caught them unawares and had to swerve to avoid them, hooting as it went. “Bloody CIs!” said Olivia. “Why do they have to be so selfish?” The encounter with the car seemed to provoke a change in their mood. The more they tried to convince themselves that their son and his family were okay, the darker became the thoughts that gathered at the back of their minds. “If there were floodwaters in the streets in front of their flat, surely there would have been a commotion,” said Olivia. “They couldn’t have slept through that. They would have got up and saved themselves.” Geavis was silent for a moment, then said: “But their flat is on the wrong side of the building. Would they have heard anything?” “If they evacuated their flat in a hurry, they could have forgotten their phones. Or dropped them if they waded through water. That might explain their silence.” “Didn’t they say on the news that a woman had been found drowned in Beckton?” “Would that have been the same part?” “Beckton isn’t that big. If it floods in one place it would have flooded in another.” “Amber can’t swim!” “That might not have made a difference – the water would have been so cold anyone could have died of shock.” Geavis hated to look at his phone but couldn’t resist it any longer. The reception was poor, but he just made out a headline: “Thousands Unaccounted For.” “Don’t say this is happening!” * Over the course of their three-hour walk, Geavis and Olivia gradually became convinced their family had drowned. That son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter had made a heroic effort, but it hadn’t been enough. Perhaps they had become separated. Maybe Amber had got into trouble and her parents stopped to help. Or the other way around. It would have been typical of them, to have given up their own chance to escape by stopping to help others… Geavis’ mind raced on; he couldn’t stop it. Would he have to give a eulogy at the funeral? What would he say? Would they set up a tribute page on social media for Amber? It was what she would have wanted. Surely she would have many online friends desperate to know what had happened to her? They arrived at Beckton to find the streets six inches deep in water in some places, and dry elsewhere. The water must have been a little deeper at some point, because Adam’s doormat had been displaced by several feet – presumably lifted up by the floodwaters. But there was no water inside the flat, and in any case it turned out the family would not have been drowned if the water had come in – someone had knocked on their door, warning of the rising water, and they spent the next few hours at the top of the communal staircase in their block before returning home as the water fell. They were fine. “Sorry that you were so worried,” said Adam, “but the electricity has been off and our phones have run down. How else could we have contacted you?” Geavis felt relieved, but at the same time foolish. “Why didn’t we think of that?” he asked Olivia. “So obvious, that there would be no electricity.” “And why didn’t you and your meteorologist friends see it coming?” said Adam. There was a mischievous look in his eye, suggesting he wasn’t really expecting a serious answer from his father, but Geavis couldn’t help taking it as an attack on his professional pride. He felt defensive of his former colleagues, and explained how forecasts could sometimes go hopelessly wrong. He started to talk about how the mathematical models meteorologists created of the atmosphere worked; how sometimes they predicted what would happen with great accuracy but how on other occasions one small detail threw the whole forecast awry. That is what had happened the previous night: the storm had veered off in a different direction than that predicted. “Nine times out of ten we can get it right,” he said. “And hardly anyone notices, let alone praises us. But when things start to go wrong, they go very wrong, very quickly. The errors feed off themselves. It’s chaos.” “It certainly was chaos round here last night,” said Adam. “Your old colleagues chose a bad night to get it wrong.” “That’s not quite what I meant by chaos. I meant chaotic mathematically. It’s the reason why we can’t predict the weather more than a few days ahead – and sometimes not beyond a few hours.” Amber, who had been drawing yet listening intently, was interested by this idea. “But we know what the weather is going to be like in 100 years’ time. There’s going to be bigger storms and more droughts.” “You’re talking about the climate,” said Geavis. “That’s not quite the same as the weather. No-one knows if it is going to be sunny or rainy a hundred years from today, but we think it might, on average, be warmer then than it is today.” “We think it is going to be warmer? Don’t we know ?” “We think we know. If we are right that the rise in temperatures is being forced by the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then, yes, the Earth is likely to keep on getting warmer. But the trouble is, there are a lot of things we don’t know about the climate, so I’m afraid we can never really be sure what will happen. Temperatures have risen and fallen sharply in the past, without human influence, and for reasons we don’t fully understand. There is always an outside chance we have got it all wrong and the climate could get cooler.” “Cooler?” said Amber. Her grandfather’s answer struck her as unsatisfactory, but she couldn’t quite tell why. She was used to being given answers, and he couldn’t give her any. She went back to her drawing and decided to leave the matter until another time. 2 Just as the floodwaters had risen, peaked and then receded, so too did the projected death toll. At Friday lunchtime there were reports of possibly 10,000 people lost “…and who knows how many more have not yet even been reported missing?” the newscaster rhetorically asked. “The population of the boroughs affected runs into the hundreds of thousands.” The leader of the opposition, Jake Raglan, declared it to be “possibly the greatest natural disaster ever to strike this country. Except it isn’t natural at all. It is an unnatural disaster, caused by human hands.” But that afternoon, with communications restored, the people who had been missed began to make contact with those who had been missing them. Flooded homes and cars had been searched and mostly found empty. The estimated death toll began to fall, firstly into the low thousands, then into the high hundreds and then the low hundreds. By the following Monday, when the flooded basement of the House of Commons had been pumped out and a debate was hastily called to discuss the disaster, the toll was beginning to congeal at around 35 – a figure with which MPs who had written speeches on the presumption that thousands were dead struggled to contend. “This disaster changes everything,” said a tearful MP for an east London seat. “Never have so many in this country died from the consequences of our own selfishness. We must now accept that the reality of the climate crisis is hitting us far harder, in a far more deadly way than any of us could have imagined even just a few months ago.” Jake Raglan, fearful that another MP was stealing his thunder, upped his rhetoric. “It is now an all-out struggle for survival in which every single one of us must be engaged. The government’s complacency in this has verged on the criminal. It must now explain what it is going to do.” Geavis imagined himself in the chamber, responding to this. He wanted to put Raglan right. The death toll, he wanted to say, was not as high as that of the great North Sea tidal surge of 1953, still less that of the great storm of 1703. He found himself a little angry when Sarah Downwood responded to Raglan’s remarks without acknowledging this fact. “I assure the right honourable gentleman that we are not asleep on the job. The whole country is deeply shocked by what has happened. I am today taking measures that will further reduce our contribution to climate devastation. This government’s target for achieving net zero carbon emissions will be brought forward by a further two years. With this is mind, I am cutting the personal carbon allowance by a further 10 percent. Climate influencers will, for now, be exempt from any cut, though this will be reviewed at a later date. ” Raglan stood up and immediately demanded that she make it a 20 percent cut. * The deaths reported presented a varied picture of misfortune. Several people had been caught in basement flats, perhaps unaware of any imminent hazard until water began to pour in through windows and doors. There was a homeless man who had taken to sleeping halfway up a flight of concrete steps adjacent to the river: he may have been the first victim. A couple had died when their houseboat was torn from its moorings and overturned, tipping them into the floodwaters. A man had died, it was believed, while trying to save a trapped dog – the animal survived but the man collapsed from a heart attack. A disorientated motorist driving on a flooded street had lost his bearings and driven into the river. But the single biggest loss of life, and the case that came to grab most public attention, had occurred in an underground garage close to the river in Deptford. It wasn’t clear what had been going on – some suggested a party, others an orgy or some kind of pagan ritual – but whatever it was, around 100 people had failed to hear or take notice of a flood warning and found themselves trapped. In their panic to escape, some had fallen and been trampled. A dozen bodies had been recovered. There were more questions at this stage than there were facts. How had they failed to take notice of a flood warning that had been broadcast an hour before high tide, when they could have calmly walked out of the basement? Everyone else in the immediate area had made themselves safe, so why not the revellers? While some suggested that the music must have drowned out the sirens, speculation began to circulate on the internet and in newspapers that drugs were involved. “They want us all to feel guilty for the flood deaths,” wrote Tyra Gaunt, a columnist on the Daily Torrent whose name had become a byword for causing offence. “But, sorry, I’m not going to shed tears over a bunch of junkies too off their heads to hear a loud and audible flood warning.” The response to her column was, as she expected and privately hoped, swift and outraged. There were calls for her to be sacked – a regular backdrop to her working life – but they seemed to be amplified beyond what was usual. For a day or two, Gaunt’s column became the lead news story, distracting from coverage of the flood itself. A petition was begun to “silence the haters for good,” demanding not just her dismissal from the newspaper but also her prosecution under laws against hate speech. An angry crowd gathered outside the newspaper’s offices with banners. “Killed by climate hell, and now their reputations murdered,” read one. The editor of the Daily Torrent held out for five days, defending his columnist, until Lady Smithers, the wife of the proprietor, was spotted and harangued as she alighted from a taxi outside Harrods. Within hours, Tyra Gaunt was dismissed. She took the news from her editor with incredulity. “But I was doing what you wanted me to do, wasn’t I?” She sloped off down the street, feeling angry, cheated, yet with an uncomfortable thought inside her head: having trained her fire on individuals and institutions every week for quarter of a century shouldn’t she be a little more accepting now that the guns had been turned on her? It didn’t stop her calling the editor from home and threatening a lawsuit if she was not reinstated, but in the event it was Tyra herself who narrowly escaped being charged with public order offences. The Tyra Gaunt affair served to concentrate attention on the Deptford victims. A week after the disaster, the road outside the apartment block where the disaster had occurred had become taken over by a shrine of flowers and other objects. A vigil was held. The victims became the face of the disaster, not so much pitied as exalted. Few, after Tyra Gaunt, dared speak ill of them, even in private. It turned out they had broken into the basement without permission, and had been holding a ceremony to heal the Earth from humankind’s evils, involving the sacrifice of a motor-car, parts of which were found strewn around the basement. Loud music and, yes, drugs had been involved too. But who was to judge them when it was clear the flood warnings should have been louder? “How ironic,” said the mayor of London, calling by to visit the scene, “that these beautiful people were meeting to express their deep love for the Earth – and were overwhelmed by a man-made storm”. That idea irritated Bryan Geavis. Of course it wasn’t a man-made storm, he muttered to himself. You can’t make a storm. But he had something else on his mind. He needed to submit his quarterly carbon return to the Executive for Personal Carbon Budgeting, and was struggling with the figures, not least because he wasn’t sure on which date the 10 percent reduction in the personal carbon allowance had kicked in. No-one seemed to know. He searched online, made phone calls, even read through what Ms Downwood had said in parliament, all to no avail. The quarterly carbon return was required of all citizens. Itinerant people could generally escape it, but for everyone else it had become a never-ending chore. Most people paid for a carbon assessor to do the work for them, at some cost. Those who took this option needed only to supply the assessor with their energy bills, travel tickets and all of their purchases for the year. In return they got a figure, telling them their carbon footprint for the previous three months. They would then be asked to pay a levy based on this figure – which rose to a punitive level if a threshold was crossed. Geavis spurned the carbon assessors and always liked to fill in the return himself; it gave him a sense of pride to master the bureaucratic language. But it was also a little perilous to do the work. Make a mistake and he could face a swingeing fine. No-one could get away with falsifying the information. Until a few years previously, it had been possible to conceal expenditure – no-one could prove, say, that you had bought a wild bean pizza on a particular date. But that had all gone when banknotes and coins were abolished. The only way to buy things now was via a card or mobile phone. Every transaction was transmitted to a database for the Executive for Personal Carbon budgeting – or was rumoured to be. What was the code for the banana cake he had bought on 27 January? And how many carbon points had it had? Was it 300 or 500 grams? He asked Olivia, but she hadn’t a clue – she couldn’t find the code, either. It mattered, because from his calculations he would come out pretty close to the annual carbon limit for a grade 32 private citizen – a privileged white male between the ages of 65 and 70. “It’s going to come out too high,” he said, plunging his head into his hands. “That’ll be an extra £1,000. It’ll mean no trip to Clacton next year.” “But do we enjoy Clacton that much anyway?” said Olivia. “It’s not the same as it was in the old days, when there were lights and music on the seafront. I could quite happily stay at home.” Geavis’ work was interrupted by the arrival at the door of a girl called Bunty. He recognised her as the daughter of a couple from several doors down, and assumed that she was still at school. She was. But recently she had also been appointed a climate influencer, and as part of the arrangement she was expected to call on neighbours and advise them on how to make changes to their lifestyle for the good of the planet. Geavis resented the idea of being told what to do by someone so youthful, but she was so full of smiles and persuasion that he allowed her into the house anyway. “Mr Geavis, I’m just dying to run through with you a few things about our action plan for extreme weather,” she began. “As you probably know, events like the big storm are going to be happening more and more – unless we take action, right now.” It became immediately clear to Geavis that Bunty was reciting from a prepared script, and he wanted to tell her so, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. Would it not sound a bit rude to say that to a 17-year-old girl? Besides, it was a script so carefully put together, so tightly delivered, that it allowed him no chance to interrupt. “We’ve really got to get those greenhouse emissions right down – immediately. And sadly, it’s not something we can do without taking a close look at our lifestyles. Shall we have a look at yours? And remember, it’s your children’s futures that depend on the decisions that you make today.” With hardly a blink she was looking around. “Let’s have a look at how you are heating your home” He got a tick for that – he showed her his air source heat pump and she said, “Wow, that’s given me a good feeling. You’re making inroads on that carbon footprint of yours.” Geavis couldn’t seem to stop himself showing her round the house, letting her inspect everything. Was it because it gave him a sense of warm satisfaction every time she signalled her approval? She smiled and gave him the thumbs up at his solar panels, insisted on high-fiving him when she saw his triple glazing – though the gesture didn’t come naturally to him and he offered only a limp palm. Before he knew it, he was showing her the contents of his fridge. At this point, Bunty’s tone began to change. There was nothing wrong with the celery, the swedes, the parsnips – they all passed muster. But then she spotted a pair of guavas which Olivia had brought home from the market the previous Tuesday. Bunty picked one up and waved it at him, her expression changing to a grimace. “That’s given me a sad face, Mr Geavis. Have you thought of the food miles in this?” Geavis shook his head. “Come on,” she continued, “that’s tropical. We don’t need to appropriate other cultures’ diets – and push up our emissions in the process.” “It was just a treat,” said Geavis, feebly. “Last year, 3,500 people died in tropical storms, and it’s all our fault.” Geavis stood and looked at her, blankly. Bunty was beginning to irritate him now, but he couldn’t think of a way to extract himself from the situation. “It’s quite a big fridge, too,” said Bunty. “How many of you live here? Two? A fridge half the size would do you. And remember, if you base your diet around seasonal local vegetables, you won’t need to refrigerate them.” Geavis decided to let Bunty finish surveying his house to her satisfaction, and he tried his best to nod at whatever she said, while he thought of something different entirely. But he couldn’t help asking her, when she had reached his second bathroom and berated him for possessing a power shower: “How did you become a climate influencer?” “I did a school project,” she said. “I found out all the ways my teacher was wasting energy. Then, I had to go on three marches and interview three people on the street and tell them they were selfish.” “Was that it?” “What more did you want me to do? Those are pretty big things.” “And what do you hope to get out of it?” “I want to do enough assessments to win a trip to Florida.” “To Florida? How come?” “All the things I’m telling you to do save carbon emissions… I can tot them up in the app and it will tell me how much carbon I’ve offset. If it’s enough, I can fly to next year’s climate conference. It’s such fun, according to people who have been.” “Are you supposed to be telling me this?” “Why not? I’m proud of saving so much carbon.” “But what if I don’t take your advice?” Bunty looked puzzled at this. “But why wouldn’t you? Surely you want to stop climate change, don’t you? We’ve just seen how it’s killing people.” Geavis said nothing, and Bunty left a few moments afterwards, feeling sufficiently disturbed by his offhand manner that she later felt the need to share her experience with her contacts on the social media site, Mob. Her confidence had been deflated by what she saw as Geavis’ unexpectedly negative attitude, and she took the next day off school to recover. As for Geavis, he thought he had concealed his anger from her. But as soon as she wa	373,007
A Biography of Loneliness The History of an Emotion (Fay Bound Alberti) (Z-Library).epub	A Biography of Loneliness A Biography of Loneliness The History of an Emotion Fay Bound Alberti A Biography of Loneliness Source Acknowledgements Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer, copyright © 2007, 2009, reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Co., an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Excerpt from A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1954 by Leonard Woolf, renewed by Quentil Bell and Angelica Garnett. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. All additional material by Virginia Woolf reproduced by permission of the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath , reproduced by permission of Penguin Random House LLC and Faber and Faber UK; Letters of Sylvia Plath , reproduced by permission of Harper-Collins US and Faber and Faber UK; extract from Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’, reproduced by permission of Harper-Collins US Louise Bourgeois, diary entry, August 8, 1987 © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY; reprinted in M.-L. Bernadac, Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923–1997 (London: Violette Editions, 1998), p. 132. A Biography of Loneliness Further Reading Allen, R.L. and H. Oshagan, ‘The UCLA Loneliness Scale’, Personality and Individual Differences , 19 (1995), pp. 185–95. Andersson, L., ‘Loneliness research and interventions: A review of the literature’, Aging & Mental Health , 2 (1998), pp. 264–74, 265. Barrett, L.F., How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain (London: Macmillan, 2017). Birke, L. and R. Hubbard, Reinventing biology: Respect for life and the creation of knowledge (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995). Bound Alberti, F., This mortal coil: The human body in history and culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Bound Alberti, F., ‘ “This modern epidemic”: Loneliness as both an “emotion cluster” and a neglected subject in the history of emotions’, Emotion Review , 10 (2018), pp. 242–54. Brittain, K., A. Kingston, K. Davies, J. Collerton, L. Robinson, T. Kirkwood, J. Bond, and C. Jagger, ‘An investigation into the patterns of loneliness and loss in the oldest old: Newcastle 85+ study’, Ageing & Society , 37 (2017), pp. 39–62. Buse, C., D. Martin, and S. Nettleton, ‘Conceptualising “materialities of care”: Making visible mundane material culture in health and social care contexts’, Sociology of Health and Illness , 40 (2018), pp. 243–55, 244. Cacioppo, J.T., J.H. Fowler, and N.A. 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Michailakis, ‘The lost Gemeinschaft: How people working with the elderly explain loneliness’, Journal of Ageing Studies , 33 (2015), pp. 1–10. Seeman, M., ‘On the meaning of alienation’, American Sociological Review , 24 (1959), pp. 783–91. Snell, K.D.M., ‘The rise of living alone and loneliness in history’, Social History , 42 (2017), pp. 2–28. Stivers, R., Shades of loneliness: Pathologies of a technological society (Lanham, MD; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). Strijk, P.J.M., B. van Meijel, and C.J. Gamel, ‘Health and social needs of traumatized refugees and asylum seekers: An exploratory study’, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care , 47 (2011), pp. 48–55. Svendsen, L., A philosophy of loneliness , translated by K. Pierce (London: Reaktion, 2017). Vaisey, D., The diary of Thomas Turner, 1754–1765 (East Hoathly: CTR Publishing, 1994). Van den Hoonard, D.K., The widowed self: The older woman’s journey through widowhood (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000). Vlachantoni, A., R. Shaw, R. Willis, M. Evandrou, J. Falkingham, and R. Luff, ‘Measuring unmet need for social care amongst older people’, Population Trends , 145 (2011), pp. 60–76. Zappavigna, M., Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the web (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). A Biography of Loneliness Index of Names For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Addison, Joseph 29 – 30 , 90 – 91 Ahmed, Sara 224 , 226 Anderson, Benedict 129 – 131 Anderson, Jane (Plath’s friend) 54 – 55 Andersson, Lars 5 Andreas-Salomé, Lou 216 – 218 Aristophanes 61 , 63 – 65 Aristotle 8 – 9 Austen, Katherine 88 – 89 Baird, Julia 107 – 108 Barrett, L.F. 8 Bauer, Monika 183 – 184 BBC 44 – 45 , 121 Bell, Vanessa 213 – 215 Berners-Lee, Tim 233 – 234 Bernicoff, June 83 Bernicoff, Leon 83 Beuscher, Dr Ruth (Plath’s psychiatrist) 54 Bigg, John, ‘Dinton Hermit’ 22 – 24 , 23 f Bilston, Brian 163 Blake, William 209 – 210 Blount, Thomas 19 Bourdieu, Pierre 226 Bourgeois, Louise 220 Brontë, Anne 33 Brontë, Charlotte 33 , 150 – 151 Brontë, Emily 71 Buchan, William 27 – 28 Burton, Robert 26 – 27 Bush, Kate 71 Byron, Lord George Gordon 74 Cacioppo, John 38 – 39 , 124 – 125 , 180 , 195 – 196 , 239 Cacioppo, Stephanie 240 – 241 Center for Refugee and Disaster Response 174 CentreForum, ‘Ageing Alone’ 159 Cohen, Eddie (Plath’s pen-pal) 48 – 49 , 53 – 55 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 67 – 69 , 209 – 210 Coles, Elisha ( English Dictionary ) 19 Commission for Social Care Inspection 146 – 147 Corstjens, Marcel 121 – 122 Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities 147 Courtier, P.L. 22 Cox, Jo (MP, UK) 2 – 3 Crouch, Tracey (MP, UK) 2 – 3 Cullen, William 27 – 28 Darwin, Charles 32 , 66 Davidow, Ann (Plath’s friend) 48 – 50 Dawkins, Richard 228 Defoe, Daniel 20 – 21 Deresiewicz, William 209 Descartes, René 31 – 32 Dickens, Charles 11 , 33 – 34 , 115 Dittmar, Helga 172 Durkheim, Émile 35 – 36 , 38 – 39 Ekman, Paul 7 – 8 Eliot, George 33 Entlis, Laura 240 Fast, Julius 188 – 189 Fischer, Claude S. 127 Forbes, Anne 201 – 203 Frakow, Lana F. 125 Freud, Sigmund 34 – 38 Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda 196 Fuller, Thomas 87 – 88 Gibson, Edmund 93 – 94 Hardy, I.D. 33 Hardy, Thomas 33 Heidegger, Martin 36 Hobbes, Thomas 230 – 231 Hopper, Edward 208 Horder, GP John (Plath’s friend) 59 Hughes, Howard 13 Hughes, Ted 40 , 55 – 58 Hulchanski, David 167 – 168 Jenner, Sir William, 1st Baronet 105 – 107 Joachim-Neuport, Hans (Plath’s pen-pal) 48 – 49 Johnson, Samuel A Dictionary of the English Language 19 – 21 Jung, Carl Gustav 35 , 212 – 213 Kafka, Franz 180 – 181 Kierkegaard, Søren 36 Kipling, Rudyard 114 Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee 127 Laing, Olivia 7 , 31 , 208 Larivey, Pierre de 87 Laws, Glenda 154 – 155 Leshem, Dotan 230 – 231 Loach, Ken 167 Locke, John 230 – 231 Lyly, John 66 Madden, Samuel 166 – 167 Martin, Daria 180 – 182 Martineau, Harriet 150 – 151 Matlock, Judith (Sarton’s partner) 218 – 219 McCartney, Paul 1 McDonald, Michael ( Mystical Bedlam ) 202 – 203 Men’s Sheds Association 236 Mercier, J.B. 22 Meyer, Stephenie 75 , 78 – 79 Millard, Chris 52 – 53 Monbiot, George 230 Moustakas, Clark 9 National Health Service (NHS) 4 , 137 , 140 – 141 , 143 , 159 , 199 , 225 – 226 , 235 Nietzsche, Friedrich 216 – 217 Office for National Statistics 121 , 160 Olivier, Laurence 73 f Osborne, Nigel 236 Oxford English Dictionary 19 – 20 , 118 , 133 , 163 , 166 – 167 Phipps, Charles (royal Treasurer) 105 , 112 – 113 Plath, Frieda 40 – 41 Plath, Otto Emil 43 , 45 Plato 61 , 63 , 66 , 69 Pope, Alexander 29 – 30 , 184 – 185 , 231 – 232 Power Cobbe, Frances 150 – 151 Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll 110 – 111 Prouty, Olive Higgins 46 – 47 , 53 Reagan, Ronald 230 Reddy, William 29 Richardson, Samuel 32 – 33 Riis, Ole 192 Rilke, Rainer Maria 216 – 218 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 22 , 25 , 28 , 230 – 231 Rowe, Nicholas 94 – 95 Rubinstein, Robert 186 – 187 Sandford, Jeremy 167 Sarton, Mary 218 – 219 Sartre, Jean-Paul ( No Exit ) 36 Schober, Aurelia Frances (Plath’s mother) 43 , 45 – 51 , 54 , 56 – 58 Shakespeare, William 19 , 25 , 151 – 152 Sharpe, Pamela 152 – 153 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 22 , 211 – 212 Smith, Adam ( An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations ) 231 Snell, Keith 30 – 31 Spitz Charitable Trust 236 Steele, Richard 29 – 30 Stephen, Julian Thoby (Woolf’s brother) 216 Sterian, Jean-Lorin 179 Stretch Dowse, Thomas 166 – 167 Strong, Jonathan 174 – 176 Taylor, Barbara 22 , 37 – 38 Taylor, John 166 – 167 Thane, Pat 150 Thatcher, Margaret 3 – 4 , 230 Thomas, Keith 201 Tomas, Annabel 172 Tönnies, Frederick 36 Trump, Donald 130 – 131 , 239 Umblijs, Andris 121 – 122 United Nations 168 – 169 Vaisey, David 98 van der Hoonaard, Deborah 86 – 87 van Dijck, José 132 Walkerdine, Valerie 80 Weber, Max 36 – 37 Whittaker-Wood, Fran 160 Wiggins, Francis 166 – 167 William, Patrick 180 Wilson, Adrian 55 Woodhead, Linda 192 Woolf, Virginia 42 – 43 , 52 – 53 , 205 , 212 – 218 Wordsworth, William 206 – 207 , 209 – 211 Zemeckis, Robert 20 – 21 , 184 – 185 Zimmerman, J.G. 22 A Biography of Loneliness Chapter 3 Loneliness and Lack Romantic love, from Wuthering Heights to Twilight Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half. Aristophanes, in Plato’s Symposium (285–370 bce ) I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! Cathy, in Wuthering Heights (1847) In the modern West, the idea of the significant other has become synonymous with that of the ‘soulmate’ or the ‘one’; a belief that there is one special person we are each supposed to be with, to ‘complete’ us, or ‘make us whole’. This romantic image of the significant other dominates: in Valentine’s Day celebrations, in supermarket ‘meals for two’, in the language of ‘soulmates’; in novels, films, and songs in which love is all you need. Which translates as a particular kind of love, that—as the language of romance has it—‘knocks you off your feet’ and ‘bowls you over’, yet keeps you ‘hungry for more’. Romantic love is physically and emotionally intense, highly idealized, and threatening to the stability of the individual self; yet the obliteration of the self into another person is all that is desired. Around this single, passionate vision, all else is ordered in the idealized world of traditionally heterosexual relationships: courtship, marriage, a home, children; growing old together and expecting that passion to persevere, even in the face of rising divorce rates. There is a gulf between emotional expectation and the realities of long-term relationships, in other words, in which each idealized version of a union is seen as different from all others. 1 We might argue that the ideal of an ‘other’, without whom one is destined to always be incomplete, creates an inevitable sense of loneliness through lack; if loneliness represents a gulf between the emotional and social connections that are desired and those that are achieved, and the cultural ideal is for a soulmate, then how can a person be truly fulfilled without one? Within heterosexual relationships, moreover, the ideal of a soulmate also fosters a sense of co-dependency in which women, in particular, have been expected historically to prioritize that relationship over everything else, as seen in the case of Sylvia Plath. There is often in the case of the many romantic visions of ‘the one’, a sense of danger, of instability, of domination and control, that presents an emotionally unhealthy version of romantic relationships. The case studies used for this discussion are two novels in which the soulmate is central— Wuthering Heights and the Twilight series . Each shares the image of the romantic hero as dangerous, close to nature, a threat to the stability of the self, and yet the only alternative to desolation and loneliness on the part of the suffering heroine. Firstly, however, I want to explore the philosophical basis of much romantic love in the twenty-first century, and the quest for wholeness on which the pursuit of love depends: the idea of the soulmate. Where does the image of the soulmate come from? And how does its existence impact on ideas of loneliness, real or imagined? The concept of a soulmate is an ancient one, though not in its modern guise. The idea of another person who ‘completes us’ derives from the writings of the classical Greek philosopher Plato. In The Symposium , written around 385 bce , Plato depicts a dialogue between a group of notable men attending a banquet. 2 The men included the philosopher Socrates (Plato’s teacher), the General Alcibiades, the Athenian aristocrat Phaedrus, and the comic playwright Aristophanes. Each of the men were charged by the host to speak in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire, associated not only with erotic love, but also with the heady emotional connotations linked to love, including what Phaedrus termed ‘that courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes’. Love was figured here as an entity that was both earthly and spiritual, mixed with the sacred and the profane, in this—partly tongue-in-cheek, wine-fuelled—discussion of the merits of Love. When it was his turn to speak, Aristophanes stated that humans were once different physical and emotional beings. Rather than being mere man or woman, there was man, woman, and a ‘union of the two’ which was called Androgynous. There were therefore three distinct beings. And these creatures moved differently to their classical antecedents: The Primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck; also four ears, two privy members [male and female genitalia] and the remainder to correspond. 3 Now, because of this tripartite state of the human, there were not two sexes but three that corresponded to the sun (man), the earth (woman), and the man-woman of the moon. The number three has long had symbolic meaning, from the Holy Trinity to Macbeth’s three witches. These terrible creatures attacked the gods, leaving them with a conundrum. Was it better to kill and annihilate the entire species with a thunderbolt (in which case the gods would lose out on future sacrifices), or to punish them in some other way? Zeus came up with the answer: he would ‘cut them in two, and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers’. This he did, halving humans like an ‘egg’ and turning each face in so that each individual might contemplate themselves. He pulled the skin from the sides towards the navel, ‘like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel)’. 4 No sooner had they been separated than: The two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one . . . and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them . . . and clung to that. In recognition of this apparently innate need for the ‘other’, Zeus turned the genitalia to the front, and changed the reproduction of humans from sowing of the seed ‘like grasshoppers in the ground’ to penetrative sex, ‘in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue . . . so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man’. The problem raised by Aristophanes’ story is one which is immediately recognizable within modern definitions of an ‘other’ by which we might become whole. ‘Each of us when separated’, Aristophanes continued, has ‘one side only, like a flat fish . . . and he is always looking for his other half’. There was not, however, the association in classical Greece with the idea of the perfect heterosexual match that is so dominant in the twenty-first-century West; the sexual and emotional desires of individuals depended, quite literally, on how they were cut: ‘the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments . . . they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men and embrace them . . . and these when they grow up become our statesmen’. Nevertheless, a profound transformation takes place ‘when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself , whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort’: The pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment . . . This meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of [an] ancient need. In this view, it is only by discovering the special ‘other’ whom one is destined to be with, and who can complete the self, that happiness is possible. Indeed, this very merging of the souls and the body of those destined couples is the opposite of loneliness, for it is impossible to feel lonely, in a modern sense, if one is emotionally, physically, and spiritually connected to a significant other. A similar argument is made in modern psychology, in signifying the birth of the self, formed in oneness with a loving and engaged parent, rather than in the formation of a romantic relationship. The pitfalls of the soulmate, which has since become the prototype or yardstick for ‘true romance’ in the West, are clear. The idea that there is a special someone for everyone, and that wholeness is dependent on finding that person, is incredibly limiting. It also creates a gap between perception and reality, and a sense of failure for those who do not find ‘the one’. Nor is it a vision conducive to community thinking. If there is only one ‘other’ to be found, then romantic love is an individualist experience. 5 Especially in evolutionary biology and the quest for a mate. The ‘survival of the fittest’ concept was only introduced in the fifth edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species , and intended to mean simply that those who produce the most offspring were likely to pass their characteristics to the next generation. Yet it has been used by Social Darwinists to justify imperialism, racism, genetics, and social inequality. 6 The militaristic language of romance, as a conquest that has clear winners and losers, has a longer tradition, for instance the proverb: ‘all is fair in love and war’ (John Lyly’s Euphues: The anatomy of wit , 1578). 7 This rhetoric of sexual conquest finds its way into the language of the soulmate, not only in terms of how one is ideally presented for the gaze of the other, but also because it pits women against other women, men against men. And it prioritizes emotional and sexual satisfaction over other qualities, such as economic support or companionship. To explore this further, let’s look at the original, eighteenth-century formulation of the ‘soulmate’, which borrowed from the ideas of Plato in a far more domesticated guise. The ‘Soulmate’ as a Romantic Ideal The first recorded usage of the term ‘soul mate’ (as two separate words: soul + mate) was by the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In a Letter to a Young Lady (1822), Coleridge acknowledged the absorption of marriage for women, for whom ‘it is an act tantamount to Suicide—for it is a state which, once entered into, fills the whole sphere of a Woman’s moral and personal Being, her Enjoyment and her Duties’. In marriage, he continued, the extremes of happiness and misery can be felt, and most people choose a match that is somewhere between ‘indifference’ and ‘liking’. Yet ‘in order not to be miserable’, Coleridge advised, it was necessary to have ‘a Soul -mate as well as a House or a Yoke- mate’. For who would ‘blend your whole personality, as far as God has put it in your power to do so—all that you call “I”—soul, body and estate—with one, the contagion of whose habits and conversations you would have to guard against in behalf of your own soul; and the insidious influence of which on the tone and spirit of your thoughts, feelings, objects, and unconscious tendencies and manners would be as the atmosphere in which you lived!’ 8 Throughout the letter, Coleridge uses gardening imagery—identifying the ‘soil, climate’, and ‘aspect’ in which one’s happiness might ‘bloom’—and here he invokes the atmosphere, in each case envisaging the growth and development of human character and experience (and soul) as natural phenomena that needed only the right conditions in which to thrive. These conditions were not only ideal for social and psychological development; they were also ordained by God: ‘God said that it was not well for the human Being to be alone; to be what we ought to be we need support, help, communion in good’. 9 By the time this letter was written, the theme of loneliness as a distinct emotional state was increasingly commonplace. So, too, was the literary idea that a marriage could mark some kind of spiritual union; a similar expression, ‘partner of my soul’, was recorded in the diary of a well-read eighteenth-century shopkeeper, Thomas Turner, in 1761. 10 That such sentiment gathered momentum by the time of the Romantics is unsurprising. So, too, is that this concept could be read in secular and classical as well as religious terms. For in the Romantic period, secular humanism, literary self-consciousness, a love of the natural, and a pursuit of individual health, wealth, and happiness were physical as well as emotional obligations, on which mental and physical health depended. Thus, Coleridge moves from agricultural language to pathological medical imagery, imagining the health of the physical body as paralleling that of the mind. ‘Do not marry a man suffering from “ inveterate Gout or consumption” or experiencing “Palsy on one side” ’, he wrote, using the ailments ‘figuratively’: ‘under the names of bodily complaints [I] am really thinking, and meaning you to think, of moral and intellectual Defects and Diseases’. 11 Why? Because it is this ‘more precious Half’ of a person, and not their manners, appearance, or outward bearing, that mattered most. When Coleridge used the term soulmate, therefore, it was in the context of understanding the ‘I’ of a person to be composed of three interrelated but distinct states: ‘soul, body and estate’. 12 In this reference to the individual as a social as well as a spiritual and physical being, Coleridge recognized the conventions of marriage must embrace the emotional and religious as well as the material needs of women and men. It was not so much that Coleridge was subscribing to the idea of ‘the one’ in any modern sense, but that the concept of a soulmate was a neat linguistic and philosophical device to use alongside the more conventional contemporary terms: ‘House’ or ‘Yoke’ mate. Historians have traditionally focused on marriage as a voyage of love or financial gain, an approach which is unhelpful and overly simplistic. 13 What is important about Coleridge’s statement is that a soulmate needed both material and emotional fulfilment. Significantly, that person need not be a spouse; an important part of Romantic culture was the quest for human connection, and the need for lasting bonds between individuals. What is often overlooked in the story of sociability and the growth of affect is the increasing importance, in Romantic ideology, that one’s spiritual, sexual, and emotional needs could be fulfilled through a particular kind of human rather than spiritual relationship. In the wake of Coleridge’s writings, there was an increasing trend, in British literature, for the term ‘soulmate’ to mean an individual who was intended to complete the self (as it meant in Plato’s time), with the added thrill of romance. This redefinition of love, from the companionship and duty of a friend to a sexual ideal that was characterized by individual desire, seems to have been characteristic of the pursuit of individualism. The term ‘soulmate’ picked up traction particularly in early twentieth-century English publications, first from the late 1930s, and with a steady climb during the 1960s, before a dramatic spike from around 1980. The increasingly common use of the term ‘soulmate’ from the 1980s may be linked to its appearance in personal ads and media discussions about the search for the ‘one’. ‘Lonely hearts’ also peaked as a literary term in the late nineteenth century, linked as it was to emotional sentiment around the heart as an affective and symbolic organ of romance. 14 In the early twentieth century, the idea of a ‘lonely heart’ as a social identity, especially a woman who struggles to find a mate, was prevalent in fiction and newspapers, suggesting the commercialization of the quest for love. The Guardian newspaper still has a ‘soulmate’ dating page that fulfils the same function, though it has gone online, along with other, digital dating technologies to make the search for love more user-friendly and ‘scientific’. The modern ideal of the soulmate may have been fully realized by the early twentieth century. Yet its roots belong in the nineteenth, with the Romantic association of love, longing, and the natural world with the passionate desire for individual fulfilment through a union that was both otherworldly and physical. In both Wuthering Heights and the Eclipse series, a woman is set in pursuit of a ‘soulmate’ or significant other, without whom she is lonely (yet with whom she is unable to enter the ‘normal’ realms of the social). Both novels involve dangerous sexuality, and a brooding and menacing male protagonist who is part of, but also separate from, the natural landscape. Both female protagonists, Cathy and Bella, are pitted against social convention and individual desire. Their choices lie between implied sexual and emotional fulfilment or a sterile but conforming life; those choices also revolve around the promise of being seen or not being seen and being endangered or being safe. In both we find the internalization and perpetuation of the idea of the intense romantic ideal as a desirable—and indeed the only —form of love worth fighting for. Lack of fulfilment, or the loss of that ideal, brings emotional desolation and loneliness. Love and the Soul in Fiction: The Case of Wuthering Heights Let us consider first Wuthering Heights , published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and Emily Brontë’s only published novel. It is now regarded as a literary classic, but at the time was controversial, in its depiction of cruelty, hypocrisy, and unsympathetic characterization. Much has been written about the imagining of the wild moors of Haworth as a counterpart to gentile, yet artificial sensitivities, and about the conflict between established country folk and newcomers, unaccustomed to the stark realities of rural life. The romantic relationship between its key protagonists has been widely discussed—and popularized through a wide range of artefacts, including a number one hit in the form of Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush in 1978. The love between Catherine and Heathcliff, and between Catherine and Edgar, is a subject that has stimulated much literary discussion. I want to look at the novel here through the combined lenses of loneliness and romantic love, as the depiction of romantic love as an ideal in Wuthering Heights creates a tormented vision in which the individual whose love is unrequited must be cast adrift in the lonely moors. Wuthering Heights was heavily criticized on its first publication. 15 Commentators were shocked at the brutal characters, entirely lacking in any moral purpose or influence. There are suggestions of the Gothic in the novel: the sinister, castle-like buildings, the hint of demonic behaviours, the passion-driven hero or anti-hero, and the fainting and fragile heroine; the promise of the supernatural, such as a ghost; the terrifying spectacle of nature; winding paths and secret places; moonlight and darkness. Of course, Wuthering Heights contains all these elements, and many more, which were increasingly commonplace in English literature since the late eighteenth century. 16 But Wuthering Heights is also a novel of intense ‘romantic sensibilities’: ‘the novel is replete with the effusion of tumultuous passion and high-pitched emotions’, says one critic—‘in fact, the romantically poetic rendering of elemental passions, particularly of Heathcliff and Catherine, makes the novel almost akin to a lyrical poem’. 17 The story also taps into a series of conventional, post-Romantic narratives about the indivisibility and inescapability of love, as a spiritual and earthly quest. In a series of gendered tropes about illness, sensibility, nature, and civilization, Catherine and Heathcliff are depicted as antithetically different, but absolutely necessary for the completeness of one with the other. Heathcliff represents the wildness of unspoiled nature, paralleled by the moors that cannot be tamed by the gentile, ineffectual, attempts of the Lintons ( Figure 3 ). Figure 3. Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939), Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. The character of Catherine, by contrast, must be punished for conforming to conventional expectations of gender and class, rather than allowing herself to be free, uninhibited, and passionate. The cult of the delicate and sensitive woman, idealizing fragility, was dominant in early nineteenth-century Britain, when women’s ‘complaints’ dominated literary and medical discussions of female abilities and susceptibilities. 18 Edgar, cultured and refined, is set against the restless, violent Heathcliff, who pays no heed to social conventions, or the requirements of civilized behaviour. Yet Heathcliff is also a shadow of Catherine and a glimpse into what she could become. Thus, she announces that Heathcliff is ‘more myself than I am’, and ‘whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’. ‘I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always in my mind . . . as my own being’. Heathcliff, in turn, calls Catherine his ‘life’ and his ‘soul’. Catherine acts against her ‘soul’ and her ‘heart’ when she marries Edgar, and the outcome can only be dire for Catherine’s mental and physical health. And Heathcliff cannot survive without Catherine. When she dies, he rails against the world, declaring that ‘I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ Although the characters in Wuthering Heights are extreme caricatures of the prevailing gender and social in the nineteenth century, the image of the suffering and abandoned lover was all too familiar, especially for women. In one analysis of the cause of death in some 250 Victorian novels, more female characters died from unrequited or lost love than any other cause combined. 19 Such was the power of love in inciting a breakdown due to the extremes of passion; and the power of failed domesticity in damning a woman to oblivion. The characterization of Heathcliff in many ways appears to follow the model of a ‘Byronic hero’, so-called after the poet George Gordon Byron or Lord Byron (1788–1824); such heroes were characterized by a gruffly handsome appearance, a defiance of convention, a charismatic pursuit of desire and individual fulfilment, and a transgressive sexual appeal or danger that pitted desire against duty. 20 Byron’s semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) depicted a defiant, moody hero that skirted outside social convention and yet was capable of deep feelings and affection. Since Byron was widely regarded as something of a sexually voracious and moody individual in his own right, handsome yet dangerous, passionate yet committed, the man and the myth became blurred in public consciousness. And when he was fatally wounded in the Greek War of Independence, the theme of the Byronic hero became fixed. It is an image that would have been well known to contemporary readers of Wuthering Heights . 21 Appropriately, then, Heathcliff remarks to Nelly that Isabelle had pictured him ‘a hero of romance and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion’. 22 The passionate romance is revealed to be a fantasy, rather than a reality, but it was nevertheless influential in constructing the image of the desirable yet dastardly romantic hero and the enthralled, abandoned heroine. The theme of the ‘soulmate’ is a tormenting one, for it sets the bar on heterosexual intimacy, at the same time as it promises only passionate destruction. It also allows for a high level of abuse to be carried out in relationships, in the belief that to be passionately desired by a soulmate produces a level of passion that supersedes any social convention or normative codes of conduct. 23 Alarmingly, these threads also run through twenty-first-century fiction aimed at teenage girls and young women. Love Conquers All, Even Werewolves and Vampires The invocation of the Gothic has resurfaced in a plethora of mainstream novels aimed at women and girls that feature the same tropes of danger, passion, death and decay, a curse, insanity, the supernatural, and—persistently—vampires. Between 2005 and 2008, four books were published that compose the series Twilight . These would later be made into the Twilight Saga film series by Summit Entertainment. Written by American author Stephenie Meyer, the books chart the life of teenager Isabella (Bella) Swan, who moves to her father’s house in Forks, Washington, when her mother leaves their home in Phoenix, Arizona with her new husband. In Forks she meets and falls in love with Edward Cullen, a 104-year-old vampire, and also with Jacob, who is a werewolf. Heralding the beginning of a new era in vampire fiction, the series sold over 120 million copies worldwide by 2011 and had been translated into forty different languages. From a feminist perspective, these books are problematic, for they valorise unhealthy romantic relationships. 24 They also suggest that nothing is quite so lonely as unrequited love. The plot of the Twilight books revolves around Bella’s decision to be with Edward (and sometimes Jacob), and the intensity of the passion she has for Edward in particular; a passion that means she has to forgo her humanity, be socially ostracized, and be closer to nature in a brutal sense; eventually hunting in the forest with the other vampires, whose way of life was once repulsive to her. These novels—and more especially the films that followed—have been hugely successful and spurred significant literary debate as to their literary and social value. There are critics that suggest Bella’s relationship with Edward represents Christian abstinence as a goal for girls (if they have sex, he will kill her. He desires her blood, yet he cannot control himself if he bites her). The books also sensationalize what is an essentially abusive relationship: Edward controls what Bella can and can’t do, who she can and can’t see; and there is an ever-present fear of violent death. The plot of the series is remarkably similar to Wuthering Heights in that it involves a young woman who is drawn to a handsome yet dangerous man, and the ultimate fulfilment or rejection of that relationship is the pivot on which the books hinge. Bella is persistently exposed to danger through her dealings with Edward; from the sadistic vampire who seeks to consume her, to her own sense of disconnect from her family and friends since she cannot inhabit both worlds. A love-triangle is produced by the inclusion of the shape-shifting wolf Jacob, who identifies that being with Edward is killing Bella. He tells her that they could be together without her having to change or adapt at all. She could keep her family and friends; she could keep her life. By contrast, absorption into Edward’s world is only possible by her literal consumption and her transformation into an impossibly beautiful vampire. Along the way, Edward has to prove his love for Bella by exposing himself to danger (with the Volturi, the coven that rules on vampire codes of conduct). Bella gets pregnant and almost dies as this hitherto unknown birth between a vampire and a human produces a child that is both immortal and possesses special vampire and human qualities. There is, in the end, some wrapping up of disagreements and an equilibrium that is at odds with the dramatic unfolding of the protagonists’ relationship and the blissfully unaware human world in which they will continue to live—separately but together, unified by their extraordinary bond. Unlike Wuthering Heights , love conquers all; unlike the Gothic originals, modern novels are rose-tinted for a Hollywood audience in which the death of the protagonists would not be remotely satisfying. Interestingly, in the film version, the story is played out as though the characters had died, which the shocked audience discovers later is merely a glimpse into a possible but vanquished future. Normal service is resumed after that teasing subversion of convention, and viewers get their happy ending. What I want to focus on more fully here are the connections between Twilight and Wuthering Heights , and the ways in which the relationship between Edward and Bella, like that between Heathcliff and Cathy, explores and reinforces key themes: about the conflict between self and society (or desire and convention), the meaning of belonging and loneliness, the nature of love, and the nature/civilization divide. Both works explore the limits and expectation of female desire and the extent to which the self can ever actually thrive without that significant ‘other’. Or rather, whether women can thrive. Edward was miserable and spied on Bella from a distance, but he managed to stay away. Bella pushed herself into more and more dangerous situations, including sexual danger, in pursuit of a response from Edward. The overall message seems to be that the relationship is inevitable, and for all its pain, worth pursuing. The term ‘soulmate’ is used repeatedly by characters justifying this outwardly unhealthy union in Eclipse , which is the third novel in the Twilight series. 25 To have a soulmate is the ideal situation that is projected in Bella’s life (by her mother, by her female friends), and a pattern she sees in other members of Edward’s family, the members of whom will literally live forever as they are immortal. This is a considerable contrast to Bella’s own life, as her parents had split up when she was young, her father seems lonely, and her high-school classmates are trying, and failing, to secure ‘the one’. Edward becomes Bella’s saviour; he will take her away from a life that is ordinary, and he will transform her into someone brighter and better in every way. Except one—she may lose her soul. Bella believes it’s worth the risk. Edward rapidly becomes the logic of Bella’s existence. She has no hobbies or interests, as manifested when they separate, and she spends months in her own room pining and becoming so unwell that her father worries for her health. She only eventually becomes active when she realizes she can put herself physically in danger because that draws Edward towards her and he can ‘save’ her all over again. As if the resonances between the stories weren’t enough, Meyer explicitly references the plot of Wuthering Heights. This is to crank up the sense that the story of Bella and Edward is tapping into universal truths about love. In Eclipse , there are several scenes where Bella is wandering around with a dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights , and she even enters into a conversation with Edward about its merits. He is initially dismissive of the book, but eventually expresses surprise that he is able, at last, to comprehend Heathcliff, a man who seems to suffer as Edward does. ‘The more time I spend with you’, he says to Bella, ‘the more human emotions seem comprehensible to me. I’m discovering that I can sympathize with Heathcliff in ways I didn’t think possible before’. 26 The comparison runs both ways, as Heathcliff—in a quote from the book read by Bella—is roused by passion and jealousy towards a potential love rival (much as Edward had expressed his antipathy towards the ‘dog’ Jacob): ‘The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out and drank his blood!’. 27 Heathcliff is equally vampiric, then, and equally bloodthirsty. Bella also compares herself to Cathy, ‘only my options were so much better than hers, neither one evil, neither one weak. And here I sat, crying about it, not doing anything productive to make it right. Just like Cathy’. 28 It is Edward who will whisper in her ear, channelling Heathcliff, the infamous phrase from Wuthering Heights : ‘I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ The cultural success of the Twilight Saga in this context reasserts the idea that a soulmate is crucial for an individual’s development, and particularly for a woman. A woman’s value is defined by absorption into another, and in a relationship that can be abusive as long as he is ‘the one’. It also suggests that women who do not find this kind of love are ‘unlucky’ or failed. Even ‘desperate’ women like Bridget Jones eventually find their soulmates (like the Twilight series, Bridget Jones ’ Diary has tapped in to a range of cultural archetypes about romantic relationships, with the eponymous and unlikely heroine becoming shorthand for a lack of success in love). 29 Today there are thousands of self-help books, like The Soulmate Secret , that promise to help readers find their special one; there are also numerous books and guides and programmes set up to support lonely people in their search for love, and even suicide-pacts arranged by those who do not succeed. 30 Clearly, the idea of a soulmate or a perfect romantic partner (and the parallel loss associated with its absence) continues to flourish. The reasons why seem related to the quest for individual identity and belonging that is being described in this book as linked to modernity. The decline of an overarching narrative of religion, in which one is cared for unconditionally, and the corresponding rise of individualistic ideas about the development of the individual, as well as the onset of mass consumerism and globalization, which focus on the perfection of that individual self and a prevailing psychological discourse that sets the individual against the world from birth, has identified romantic love as the prime source through which spiritual, mental, psychological, and physical satisfaction can be achieved. What, then, of those who never find ‘true love’, who do not experience close connections in their families of origin, and/or spend their lives looking for ‘the one’? If we accept that emotional experiences tend to be patterned according to cultural archetypes—teenage girls dreaming of being loved the way Bella is loved by Edward (or Jacob), and older people searching online for their soulmate even when multiple marriages have failed—then it becomes entirely possible that the influence of the soulmate myth helps to fuel loneliness. And being lonely in a crowd takes on new and powerful meanings. If we are only complete with a partner who fulfils us (in whatever sense that is taken), how can we ever be whole, without ‘the one’? The social psychologist Valerie Walkerdine’s work is instructive here, especially in understanding how young girls, positioned as passive recipients of men’s desire from a young age, can be particularly moulded, from youth, to expect their individual fulfilment to be dependent on a (usually youthful and vital) male other. 31 This creation of a model of yearning for fulfilment can follow individuals throughout their lives. Young single people and recently divorced people seem especially likely to report feeling lonely because unattached, while longing for ‘one special person’. 32 In studies of single, divorced, married, and widowed adults, those who were married tended to show less loneliness, though of course loneliness within marriage—compounding feelings of not being understood, not being ‘seen’—is a separate social problem. 33 The presumptions made about single people continue to be overwhelmingly gendered: consider the 1970s image of a ‘swinging bachelor’ against that of a ‘lonely spinster’. 34 And for single women, often accused of being ‘too selective’ in their pursuit of a mate, the ideal of passive, feminine acquiescence to a romantic ideal is apparent as a cultural norm. 35 In the early twentieth century, a cultural presumption in Britain, no matter that women had been making their own living in the world for centuries, was that single women were simply ‘waiting for marriage’. 36 There was also a strong body of criticism advising that women should not wait too long to secure a match in case they lost their erotic allure and/or ability to reproduce, both of which have been historically depicted as women’s (particularly white women’s) key assets. Today, that theme has been reawakened in the concept of ‘erotic capital’, which young women are supposed to possess in relation to their aesthetic appearance, and which depreciates as an asset over time. 37 At its most repugnant, this institutionalized patriarchal and biological reduction of women is found in the INCEL movement, a self-defining group of men who describe themselves as ‘involuntarily celibate’ as a result of women’s freedom over their bodies (and legitimize violent actions and terrorism as a result). 38 Although most studies into loneliness among single people focus on the elderly and alone, then, usually as a result of widow(er)hood and the disparate geography of families in the twenty-first century, there is clearly more work needed into loneliness and romantic aspirations and delusions; in particular the cultural role of the soulmate in generating a sense of lack. In terms of behaviours associated with loneliness and the search for a romantic ‘other’, there is a considerable body of work into the negative, often self-defeating search for love on the Internet, where presumed intimacy is often gratified immediately without being deep or long-lasting or meaningful. 39 (I am making a distinction here between the search for long-term relationships and casual encounters, though the motivations of people using dating apps can be diverse.) 40 The search for romance, and the belief in a soulmate, impacts on our experience of loneliness as individuals and a society. If the sentiment of two people together against the world is an ideal (regardless of how individuals behave through the legitimacy of ‘passion’), then there are clear social and emotional impacts, both in terms of how people experience lov	548,265
A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland) (Z-Library).epub	A Book Of Silence ‘In Maitland’s hands, silence turns out to be another entire, psycho-geographical world laid alongside the one we know and hear and yack about so much. “I learned to tell when it had been snowing in the night by the quality of silence”… her book is full of such moments, articulating the common but usually ignored and unexpressed experiences in our lives’ Spectator ‘A healing book about the pleasures to be found alone and how solitude can set you free’ Red ‘Refreshing, insightful, strangely touching and bound to make you want to haul yourself off that sofa in search of a life-affirming journey’ Wanderlust ‘Extraordinary … Maitland is blazingly intelligent, and committed to rigorous, interrogative scholarship … a justified and valiant response to the widespread frenzy and mindlessness of 21st century life’ Sunday Business Post ‘[Sara Maitland] is right to think that silence is a deep need, ever less honoured in our lives’ Evening Standard ‘Fascinating … raises many interesting philosophical questions’ Sunday Times ‘An extraordinary book … in our noise-saturated culture’ Chosen by the Kew Bookshop in London in the Independent on Sunday ‘Her artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation and essay, describes her route away from urban brouhaha towards increased solitude … Her book demands to be taken on its own terms as the vision of a highly educated contemplative who is alert to Western culture’s distrust of loners’ Independent ‘Maitland is a bold adventurer and the rest of us, doubtless ill-equipped to deal with the emotional and intellectual challenge of self-sought solitude, are lucky she can give the condition of silence such an articulate voice’ Metro ‘By the end of her brave, honest, fascinating book, one respects her choice of lifestyle, the determination it has taken to bring it about and the sacrifices it has engendered’ Scotsman ‘Offering at once personal anecdotes, cultural diagnoses and soothing antidotes, these memoirs make for a timely and nourishing read’ List ‘The pursuit [of silence] is described with fervour and intelligence that make this book full of insights and explorations, oddities and quirks – about the natural world (some dazzling descriptive passages), about silence in several cultures, about the choice of where to live, about routines, satisfactions, happiness’ Tablet ‘You can’t help warming to Sara Maitland … Maitland is a rottweiler of enthusiasm who pursues her ideas to the end, eloquently and learnedly, and nowhere more than in this, her latest work’ Irish Times ‘Her dedication to the cause is both inspiring and shocking … There are many beautiful meditative passages in her meditation on silence … [A] wonderful salutary book’ Sunday Telegraph A Book Of Silence A B OOK OF S ILENCE Sara Maitland GRANTA A Book Of Silence For Janet Batsleer and John Russell for reasons best buried in silence A Book Of Silence Table of Contents Praise Title Page Dedication 1: Growing up in a Noisy World 2: Forty Days and Forty Nights 3: The Dark Side 4: Silence and the Gods 5: Silent Places 6: Desert Hermits 7: The Bliss of Solitude 8: Coming Home ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS NOTES INDEX Copyright A Book Of Silence Growing up in a Noisy World I t is early morning. It is a morning of extraordinary radiance – and unusually up here there is practically no wind. It is almost perfectly silent: some small birds are chirping occasionally and a little while ago a pair of crows flapped past making their raucous cough noises. It is the first day of October so the curlew and the oystercatchers have gone down to the seashore. In a little while one particular noise will happen – the two-carriage Glasgow-to-Stranraer train will bump by on the other side of the valley; and a second one may happen – Neil may rumble past on his quad bike after seeing to his sheep on the hill above the house; if he does he will wave and I will wave back. That is more or less it. I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn’t know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obviously sensitive friend commented when she came to see my latest lunacy, ‘Only you, Sara – twenty-mile views of absolutely nothing!’ It isn’t ‘nothing’, actually – it is cloud formations, and the different ways reed, rough grass, heather and bracken move in the wind, and the changing colours, not just through the year but through the day as the sun and the clouds alternate and shift – but in another sense she is right, and it is the huge nothing that pulls me into itself. I look at it, and with fewer things to look at I see better. I listen to nothing and its silent tunes and rhythms sound harmonic. The irregular line of the hill, with the telegraph and electricity poles striding over it, holds the silence as though in a bowl and below me I can see occasional, and apparently unrelated, strips of silver, which are in fact the small river meandering down the valley. I am feeling a bit smug this morning because yesterday I got my completion certificate. When you build a new house you start out with planning permission and building warrant, and at the end of it all an inspector comes to see if you have done what you said you would do and check that your house is compliant with building regulations and standards. Mine is; it is finished, completed, certified. All done and dusted. Last night I paid off my builder, and we had a drink and ended a year-long relationship of bizarre intensity, both painful and delightful. Now I am sitting and regathering my silence, which is what I came here for in the first place. Three minutes ago – it is pure gift, something you cannot ask for or anticipate – a hen harrier came hunting down the burn, not twenty metres from the door. Not many people have a hen harrier in the garden. Hen harriers are fairly rare in the UK, with slightly over a hundred breeding couples mostly in the Scottish Highlands. They are slightly smaller and much lighter than buzzards, and inhabit desolate terrain. Male hen harriers, seen from below, look like ghosts – pure white except for their grey heads but with very distinct black wing tips. They hunt low and glide with their wings held in a shallow V; powerful hunters, beautiful, free. I do not see them very often, but the first time I came to the ruined shepherd’s house, which is now, today, my new home, there was a pair sitting on the drystone dyke. They speak to me of the great silence of the hills; they welcome me into that silence. The silent bird goes off about his own silent business, just clearing the rise to the west and vanishing as suddenly as he came. Briefly I feel that he has come this morning to welcome me and I experience a moment of fierce joy, but it rumbles gently down into a more solid contentment. There are lots of things that I ought to be getting on with, but I light a cigarette and go on sitting on my doorstep. It is surprisingly warm for October. We had the first frost last week, light-fingered on the car windscreen. I think about how beautiful it is, and how happy I am. Then I think how strange it is – how strange that I should be so happy sitting up here in the silent golden morning with nothing in my diary for the next fortnight, and no one coming and me going nowhere except perhaps into the hills or down the coast to walk, and to Mass on Sundays. I find myself trying to think through the story of how I come to be here and why I want to be here. And it is strange. I have lived a very noisy life. As a matter of fact we all live very noisy lives. ‘Noise pollution’ has settled down into the ecological agenda nearly as firmly as all the other forms of pollution that threaten our well-being and safety. But for everyone who complains about RAF low-flying training exercises, ceaseless background music in public places, intolerably loud neighbours and drunken brawling on the streets, there are hundreds who know they need a mobile phone, who choose to have incessant sound pumping into their environment, their homes and their ears, and who feel uncomfortable or scared when they have to confront real silence. ‘Communication’ (which always means talk) is the sine qua non of ‘good relationships’. ‘Alone’ and ‘lonely’ have become almost synonymous; worse, perhaps, ‘silent’ and ‘bored’ seem to be moving closer together too. Children disappear behind a wall of noise, their own TVs and computers in their own rooms; smoking carriages on trains have morphed into ‘quiet zones’ but even the people sitting in them have music plugged directly into their ears. We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, that we value privacy and that the solitary and silent person is somehow more ‘authentic’ than the same person in a social crowd, but we seldom seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticise silence on the one hand and on the other feel that it is terrifying, dangerous to our mental health, a threat to our liberties and something to be avoided at all costs. My life has also been noisy in a more specific way. Because of an odd conjunction of class, history and my parents’ personal choices I had an unusually noisy childhood. I was born in 1950, the second child and oldest girl in a family of six; the first five of us were born within six and a half years of each other. If you asked my mother why she had so many children, she would say it was because she loved babies, but if you asked my father he would say something rather different: ‘Two sets of tennis, two tables of bridge and a Scottish reel set in your own house.’ We grew up in London, and in an enormous early-Victorian mansion house (my father’s childhood home) in south-west Scotland. My parents adored each other. I think they adored us, though in a slightly collectivised way. They were deeply sociable and the house was constantly filled not just by all of us, but by their friends and our friends; my mother’s father lived with us for a while; there was a nanny and later an au pair girl. What was perhaps unusual for the time was that they were very directly engaged as parents; there was none of that ‘seen and not heard’ nursery life for us. We were blatantly encouraged to be highly articulate, contentious, witty, and to hold all authority except theirs in a certain degree of contempt. I am appalled now when I think back to the degree of verbal teasing that was not just permitted but participated in: simple rudeness was not encouraged, but sophisticated verbal battering, reducing people to tears, slamming doors, screaming fights and boisterous, indeed rough, play was fine. (You don’t grow out of these things – my son’s partner has since told me her first encounter with us as a group was one of the most scary experiences of her life – she could not believe that people could talk so loudly, so argumentatively and so rudely without it coming to serious fisticuffs.) We were immensely active and corporate; introspection, solitude, silence, or any withdrawal from the herd was not allowed. Within the magical space they had created for us, however, we were given an enormous amount of physical freedom – to play, to roam, to have fights and adventures. It worked best when we were all quite small. In 1968, when every newspaper in the country was bemoaning the outrageous behaviour of teenagers, my parents had five of them. I think retrospectively that they lost their nerve a bit. I am not sure what they imagined would happen. If you encourage your children to hold authority lightly, eventually they will work out that you are ‘authority’ and hold you lightly too. They were better with smaller children – we had fairly traumatic and very noisy teens. There were good moments. One thing that is hard to insert into this account is just how sophisticated and politically engaged my parents were. I remember the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, for example, with great vividness because one of my parents’ closest friends was an admiral in the US navy. He was staying with us, we went on a lovely sunny day trip to Cambridge and as we walked along the Backs, a very young man from the US Embassy appeared. He had been searching for Uncle Harry personally; he had to fly home immediately to Defend His Country against Communism. The following year I knew about the Profumo affair too, though rather lopsidedly. It was the cause of a rare fight between my parents, who usually managed to maintain perfect solidarity against their children’s activities. My father taught me a bitter little limerick about it, which he encouraged me to recite at a cocktail party of his Butlerite Conservative friends (several of them eminent) and which rather accurately reflected his own politics. There was a young girl called Christine Who shattered the Party machine. It isn’t too rude To lie in the nude But to lie in the House is obscene. The fight between my parents was not, interestingly, about the content of these lines, but about my father encouraging me to ‘show off’. A bit of me still wonders what on earth they thought would come of it, especially for their girls. You bring them up free and flamboyant, and are then totally surprised and even angry with them when they don’t magically turn into ‘ladies’. It was, for me at least, a strange mixture of upper-class convention and intellectual aspiration. There was a good, and noisy, example of my father’s confused vision a few years later. I was expelled, fairly forcibly, from the House of Commons in 1973 for disrupting a debate on the Equal Opportunities Act, then a Private Members’ Bill. I was pregnant at the time. The Times (my parents’ daily, obviously) made this a front-page item including my name. I was rather anxious about how my parents would react. My mother was appalled that I should do this while I was pregnant , but my father was entirely delighted. Not because he favoured such actions or had any particular enthusiasm for Equal Opportunities, but because the person responsible for ‘Order in the House’ was an old friend of his, whom nonetheless he found both prissy and pompous – he was much amused by the embarrassment that I would have caused this friend, having to deal with ‘one of us’, with someone he actually knew. He may also, of course, have admired my boldness, without admiring the way I had chosen to exercise it. We were inevitably sent off to boarding schools, the boys disgracefully at seven or eight and my sisters and I a little later. I am just about prepared to acknowledge that there might conceivably be children whom public school, under the old boarding system, positively suits and that there are homes so dire that boarding is a relief or even a joy, but it remains for me one of the very few institutions that is bad for both the individuals it ‘privileges’ and our society as a whole. In this context, however, all I want to do is point out that the entire ethos depended on no one ever being allowed any silence or privacy except as a punishment; and where the constant din inevitably created by over two hundred young women was amplified by bare corridors and over-large rooms. I found it a damaging, brutal experience, made worse by the fact that in my parents’ world not to enjoy your schooldays was proof that you were an inferior human being – you were supposed to be a ‘good mixer’, to ‘take the rough with the smooth’ and enjoy the team spirit. If you are feeling miserable and inferior the last thing you are going to do is tell parents who think that the way you feel is proof that you are miserable and inferior. Perhaps the stakes were too high; perhaps they were too proud of us. At home we were supposed to get into Cambridge, and wear long white gloves, a tartan silk sash and our deceased grandmother’s pearls, and dance at Highland Balls. I was expected to have my own political opinions, and have them turn out the same as my parents’. We were expected to be sociable, active and witty, and hard-working, industrious and calm. We were meant to be sociable and popular and bizarrely chaste. At school we were meant to be educated, independent, self-assured, and totally innocent. On Saturday mornings we all had to kneel down in the assembly hall so that the mistresses could walk along the rows and make sure everyone’s skirt exactly touched the ground. I am still not sure what the terror of the miniskirt was about, really. It all got pretty intolerable and very noisy. In 1968 I escaped. These were the days before the Gap Year was a well-organised middle-class rite of passage, but if you stayed on at school after A levels to do the then separate Oxbridge entrance exams, you finished school at Christmas and had an inevitable gap until the following October. My father filled this gap by packing us off to any foreign continent of our choice and leaving us to get on with it. It was probably the first time in my life that I had been on my own and responsible for myself; it should have been a time to break out. My skirts were spectacularly shorter than anyone in America had ever seen before – hippies and counterculture and the politics of protest and feminism itself may have been US imports, but the miniskirt was authentically British – and my class accent was less immediately identifiable, but I was not really up to it. It was six months of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong moment, just. I left Washington the day before Martin Luther King was shot and arrived in Los Angeles a week after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. In San Francisco I did go to Haight Ashbury, but I went as a tourist. From that perspective it seemed sordid and scary, and I left at once. I do remember, though, one bright hot dawn in the Arizona desert when I stared into my first huge nothing: it was the Grand Canyon. It was red and gold and vast and silent. Perhaps I should have sat down on the rim and stayed for a while, but it was too soon. I gawped for a bit and walked down a little way, then I turned round, got back on the Greyhound bus and went on to somewhere else. Then, that autumn, I went to Oxford. I became a student at exactly and precisely the right time – for then ‘to be young was very heaven’. What more joyful and lucky thing could happen to a privileged public-school girl than to find herself a student at Oxford between 1968 and 1971? It is fashionable now to decry the astonishing, extraordinary period in the late sixties – to dismiss it, or to blame it. I refuse to go there. I am with Angela Carter: There is a tendency to underplay, even to devalue completely, the experience of the 1960s, especially for women, but towards the end of that decade there was a brief period of public philosophical awareness that occurs only very occasionally in human history; when, truly, it felt like Year One, when all that was holy was in the process of being profaned, and we were attempting to grapple with the real relations between human beings … At a very unpretentious level, we were truly asking ourselves questions about the nature of reality. Most of us may not have come up with very startling answers and some of us scared ourselves good and proper and retreated into cul-de-sacs of infantile mysticism … but even so I can date to that time and to that sense of heightened awareness of the society around me in the summer of 1968 my own questioning of the nature of my reality as a woman. 1 Everything interesting and important that has happened to me since began in Oxford in the three years that I was an undergraduate. There I discovered the things that have shaped my life – the things that shape it still, however unexpectedly, as I sit on my doorstep and listen to the silence: socialism, feminism, friendship and Christianity; myself as writer, as mother and now as silence seeker. It was not instant. I arrived in Oxford more virginal in more ways than now seems credible. I felt like a cultural tourist, unable to connect directly with the hippies, with their drugs, mysticism and music; or with the politicos and their Parisian excitements, though I went like a tourist to hear Tariq Ali speak at the Student Union; or with the ‘sexual revolutionaries’ who whizzed off glamorously to London and complained about the repressive college, which expected us to be in bed, alone, by 10.30. I had to cope with the realisation that I was not the cleverest person in the world – a mistaken belief that had sustained me for years. It was culture shock; I had a strange, nagging sense that I was where I wanted to be, but I wasn’t quite getting it: an odd mixture of excitement and frustration. I wanted it. I wanted all of it. I did not know how to have it. My life could have gone horribly wrong at this point. Then, just in time and gloriously lucky, I tumbled, by chance, by grace, in with a new group of people. They were a group of American students, most of them Rhodes Scholars and all of them active against the Vietnam War. They hung out in a shambolic house in north Oxford. I am not entirely sure why they took me under their collective wing, but they did and I was saved. What they gave me was a connection point between politics and personal lives, the abundant energy that comes from self-interested righteousness, a sense that there were causes and things that could be done about them, and large dollops of collective affection. This household has become famous for something other than their sweet kindness to me – because one of the people in it was Bill Clinton, who has always, as far as I am concerned, been a loyal friend and an enormous resource; but it was not just him: it was the whole group of them. My world was transformed. The sky was bright with colour. I smoked my first joint, lost my virginity and went on my first political demonstration. I stopped attending lectures and my ears unblocked so I started to hear what was going on around me. I realised that a classical education, Whig history and compassionate liberalism were not the only values in the world. I was set suddenly and gloriously free. I made other friends, did other things – and we talked and talked and talked. A bit later this household gave me, rather unexpectedly, something every bit as important. One evening Bill asked me if I would go with him to hear Germaine Greer speak at Ruskin College, shortly before The Female Eunuch was published. He had heard she had terrific legs (she did) but very properly thought it was the sort of event that he wanted a woman to go with. Being Bill he quickly rounded up some more people and that night I met Mandy Merck and thus discovered the brand-new Women’s Liberation Movement. Once I felt secure enough to cope, it transpired that actually one thing my childhood had provided me with were the skills of collectivity. Groups suited me; quick-fire combative talk was something I had practised around the dining-room table from my earliest years. With well-trained energy I engaged in the very noisy, highly verbal student political life of the time – the noisy articulacy of the socialist left and then the emerging verbal culture of early feminism. In an odd way it was like all the good things and none of the bad ones from my own childhood. To speak out, to tell aloud, to break the silence (and, to be honest, to shout down the opposition) was not only permissible – it was virtuous, if not compulsory. In 1972 I had my first short stories published; I got married and I got pregnant. My husband was an American from upstate New York; he came to Oxford on a scholarship and stayed. By the time we got married he was a trainee Anglican vicar of the extreme Catholic persuasion – high church and high camp went together in those happier days. In the early seventies the best of the adherents of Anglo-Catholicism were all so funny, so witty and so quick, self-mocking, heavily ironic and we all loved talking. While he was training my husband invited a new friend to supper one night; the friend, nervous about dining with a heavily pregnant feminist intellectual, asked someone what we were like. ‘Don’t worry,’ said this mutual friend, ‘they all talk at the same time, very loudly; so you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’ So then I was an Anglo-Catholic socialist feminist. Perhaps the only thing that holds these two together is that they are both very noisy things to be. I quickly extended the din range, though; I became a vicar’s wife and a mother. A vicarage is the least quiet place imaginable – a house that is never your own and never empty or silent. My daughter was born in 1973. Looking back now, I know that my first experiences of positive nourishing silence were her night feeds. My husband’s great-grandfather was a carpenter – he had made furniture and when we got married my parents-in-law had sent from America the most exquisite New England four-poster bed made of bird’s eye maple with golden candy-twist posts. In the soft darkness of the pre-dawn, propped up in this beautiful bed, with my beautiful daughter contentedly dozing, I encountered a new sort of joy. From where I am now this does not surprise me, because that relationship between mother and child is one of the oldest and most enduring images of silence in Western culture. In about 2000 BCE one of the psalmists wrote: I have set my soul in silence and in peace, As the weaned child on its mother’s breast so even is my soul. 2 Four thousand years later Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, wrote, in a totally different context, almost exactly the same thing: that the capacity to be alone, to enjoy solitude in adult life, originates with the child’s experience of being alone in the presence of the mother . He postulates a state in which the child’s immediate needs – for food, warmth, contact etc. – have been satisfied, so there is no need for the baby to be looking to the mother for anything nor any need for her to be concerned with providing anything; they are together, at peace, in silence. Both the ancient poet and the contemporary analyst focus on the child here – but as a mother I would say there is a full mutuality in the moment. I remember it with an almost heartbreaking clarity. Some of it is simply physical – a full and contented baby falling asleep at the empty and contented breast. But even so I now think that those sweet dawns, when it turned from dark to pale night, and we drifted back into our own separate selves without wrench or loss, were the starting point of my journey into silence. I am a bit curious that it is the night feed, rather than any of the other times the ‘weaned child’ lies in the mother’s arms, with its wide eyes somehow joyously unfocused. There is something about the dark itself, and the quiet of the world, even in cities, at that strange time before the dawn, but also I suspect that physical tiredness enhances the sensation. More particularly, you are awake to experience it solely and only because you are experiencing it. If the feeding were not happening you would almost certainly be asleep, be absent from consciousness in a very real way. This is not true during daytime feeds, but here, in the fading night, there is nothing else to do save be present. The dark, the ‘time out of time’ and the quiet of night are fixed in my memory along with the density of that particular silent joy. At the time I did not recognise it for what it was, but I now know that it was an encounter with positive silence, in an unexpected place. For the most part the experience of having small children is not silent. Meanwhile I was in the process of becoming a writer; more words, more word games. More noise. It is easy to think of writers as living silent lives, but on the whole we don’t; when we are writing we usually work alone and usually with great concentration and intensity – but no one writes all the time. Perhaps as a relief from that intensity there is a tendency, at least among younger writers, to seek out people and activities. Anyway it was the seventies; feminist writers were engaged in demystifying our work, opening it up and talking about it. Everyone was in a Writers’ Group. I was in a wonderful Writers’ Group – with Michelene Wandor, Zoe Fairbairns, Valerie Miner and Michele Roberts. We wrote a collective book and we talked and talked and talked. I liked my noisy life. All that talking. All my life I have talked and talked. I love talking. I used to say that if I were ever in Who’s Who I would put down deipnosophy as my hobby. Deipnosophy means the ‘love of, or skill of, dinner-table conversation’ (from the Greek deipnos – dinner). I have always loved this word and I loved the thing itself. I’ve been lucky enough to know some of the great deipnosophists of my times. It is hard to think of a less silent life. It was – and this is important to me – an extremely happy life. I achieved almost all the personal ambitions I started out with. I am a published writer of the sorts of books I want to write and believe in: I have written five novels, including Daughter of Jerusalem , which, with Michèle Robert’s first novel, Piece of the Night, was credited with being the UK’s first ‘feminist novel’ and which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1979. I have also written a range of non-fiction books and, perhaps most important to me, I have produced a long steady line of short stories. I made a living doing freelance things I liked to do. I had two extraordinary and beautiful children with whom I get on very well. I felt respected and useful and satisfied. I do not regret any of it. This does matter. When things changed and I started not just to be more silent, but also to love silence and want to understand it and hunt it down, both in practice and in theory, I did not feel I was running away from anything. On the contrary, I wanted more . I had it all and it was not enough. Silence is additional to, not a rejection of, sociability and friends and periods of deep emotional and professional satisfaction. I have been lucky, or graced; in a deep sense, as I shall describe, I feel that silence sought me out rather than the other way round. For nearly twenty years I had a marvellous life. Then, at the very end of the 1980s, for reasons I have not fully worked out yet, that well ran dry. My marriage disintegrated. Thatcherism was very ugly. It was not just the defeat of old hopes, but in the impoverished East End of London where my husband had his parish it was visibly creating fragmentation and misery. There was a real retreat from the edge, in personal relationships, in progressive movements of all kinds and in publishing. Anglo-Catholicism ceased to be fun ; and became instead increasingly bitter, misogynistic and right-wing; we stopped laughing, and a religion where you cannot laugh at yourself is a joyless, destructive thing. As a writer I ran out of steam. I lost my simple conviction that stories , narrative itself, could provide a direct way forward in what felt like a cultural impasse. I also went through a curious experience – a phase of extremely vivid and florid ‘voice hearing’, or auditory hallucinations. Although such experiences are commonly held to be symptoms of psychosis, and often form a central part of a diagnosis of so-called ‘schizophrenia’, this does not seem to me to describe the experience fully. I continued to carry on with my life. I found the content of these voices more absorbing and engaging than tormenting, and they certainly never urged hideous actions upon me. They were very distinct, however, and belonged to individuals, mainly drawn from fairy stories – a ‘lost little girl’, a dwarf, a sort of cat-monster. The most threatening were a sort of collective voice which I called the Godfathers and who seemed to represent a kind of internalised patriarchy, offering rewards for ‘good’ or punishments for ‘bad’ behaviour. I am still uncertain how much they were connected to the death of my real father in 1982, just a few months after my son was born and named after my father. When they were at their most garrulous there was a genuine conflict between my normal noisy lifestyle and listening to them and attempting to explore and understand what they were saying. There was an additional problem; inasmuch as they gave me any ‘instructions’ at all, these were about not telling anyone about them. This meant the rather novel experience of having something important going on in my life that I did not talk about. The worst aspect of all this was the fear, indeed the terror, that I might be going mad. It was the normal cultural response to the voices that was the most disturbing aspect; otherwise and in retrospect they gave me a good deal of fictional material, some interesting things to think about and an awareness that there was something somewhat awry in my life. In the early years of the 1990s I began to make changes in how I lived. I became a Roman Catholic, escaping from the increasing strains of high Anglicanism without losing the sacraments, the richness of ritual and the core of faith. I bought a house in Warkton, a tiny village just outside Kettering in Northamptonshire. It was the chocolate-box dream of a cottage in the country – very old with low-beamed ceilings and a thatched roof. At that point I did not seriously think that my marriage was ending. We bought the house jointly. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. My husband’s tenure in the Church of England was looking shakier by the day and it seemed reasonable for us to have a house to live in if or when he no longer had a vicarage. Whatever the intention, the reality was very soon that I lived in the house in Kettering and he lived in the vicarage. Then something unexpected happened. My son decided that he wanted to stay at his school in London. (This did not last long, actually – when he had finished his GCSEs, he came to Kettering to do his A levels and we had an extraordinarily happy two years together there. I don’t think he has quite forgiven me yet for selling that sweet house and moving north.) Although he came to Kettering almost every weekend, I was suddenly, and without exactly planning it, living on my own for the first time in my life. Sometimes one’s subconscious plays subtle tricks on one. To be honest I went to Warkton in a bit of a sulk. It was supposed to be a noble way of supporting my husband – he needed more space, but he also needed no ‘scandal’. He was part of a group who wanted to become Roman Catholic priests despite being married. A small group of ex-Anglican clergy did in fact pull this off. But while Cardinal Hume was extending the tradition in every way he could manage on their behalf, clearly divorce, or even formal separation, was not going to be taken on board. An agreeable flat in London was not going to pass muster; a charming cottage in the country was much more acceptable. In many ways I felt that this was very thoughtful and kindly of me. I am not sure at that point I would have been up to doing it at all if I had thought how much it would change the trajectory of my life. Too much seemed to be changing too quickly. The entirely unexpected thing was that I loved it. It is quite hard in retrospect to remember which came first – the freedom of solitude or the energy of silence. If you live alone you have particular freedom: when I first moved into the cottage it needed redecorating and I found myself choosing very deep rich colours. Someone commented on how different this was from all the houses I had lived in before, and I was slightly startled to realise how much of my domestic tastes had been a compromise between my preferences and my household’s. (It amuses me still to see how different my house and my husband’s house both are from the houses that we shared.) Food was another freedom; to eat what you want, when you want it, is a significant freedom after years of catering for a busy household with all the managing, compromises, effort and responsibility. These are little daily things, but they add up. Suddenly the amount of time in the day expanded, and there was freedom and space and choice. I became less driven, more reflective and a great deal less frenetic. And into that space flowed silence: I would go out into the garden at night or in the early morning and just look and listen; there were stars, weather, seasons, growth and repetition. For the first time in my life I noticed the gradation of colours before sunrise – from indigo through apricot to a lapidary blueness. One morning very early I was outside and heard a strange noise, a sort of high-pitched series of squeaky protests. It was not a loud noise; I would not have heard it, even if it had occurred, in anything except the silence of a rural dawn. Suddenly something resembling an oversized bumblebee whirred past barely a metre from my face and crashed into the crab apple tree; then after a pause another one, and another. They were five baby blue-tits leaving their nest in the shed wall for the first time, free and flying, however clumsily, into the early sunshine. It was a privilege of solitude and a gift of silence. For me, from the beginning, silence and solitude have been very closely linked. I know that this is not true for everyone – there are people who love solitude, who spend enormous amounts of time alone, without having any sense of themselves as silent – who have, for example, music or even television on a great deal of the time and who go, in happy solitude, to social or public events – to concerts, plays, films, sporting events and to the pub. Equally there are individuals whose silence is happily communal – you sometimes see this with couples, who need and enjoy to have their partner in the house but whose relationship for long periods of time seems to need no speech to flourish. More deliberately there are the silent religious communities, both Buddhist and Christian, for whom the silence of the people around them enriches their own. But for me personally the two are inextricably entwined. I suspect this is because I am a deeply socialised person; when I am with other people I find it nearly impossible not to be aware of them, and that awareness breaks up the silence. I worry occasionally that this may have something to do with the thinness of my sense of self, which can be so easily overwhelmed by others. But for whatever reasons, I cannot properly separate the two and I have noticed that I tend to use the words almost indiscriminately, so that the phrase ‘silence and solitude’ can be almost tautological; they both refer to that space in which both the social self and the ego dissolve into a kind of hyper awareness where sound, and particularly language, gets in the way. This was space that I was coming to love. It took a little while to realise how much I loved it. It was not a sudden plunge into solitude and silence; it was a gradual shifting of gears, a gentle movement towards a new way of living that gave me an increasing deep satisfaction. I still wonder what created that profound change in me. I honestly do not think I had been suppressing a deep desire for solitude or a need for silence for a long time; I still feel it was something new. Change. The change. I think perhaps that it really does have something to do with menopause. I am by no means the first woman to shift her life in her mid forties and create a new sort of space for herself. In 1993, quite soon after I moved to Warkton, Joanna Golds-worthy asked me to contribute an essay to her forthcoming Virago collection, A Certain Age . At first I said I was too young – indeed, I did not finally stop menstruating for another ten years – but when I thought about it I became aware that there were changes going on – not just the ones I have been describing but more physical basic things. I had always enjoyed a textbook twenty-eight-day menstrual cycle; between 5 and 10 a.m. every fourth Friday I would start to bleed; I would bleed for five days and that would be it. Now that was getting bumpier, I could no longer count on the timing and instead I had backaches, bad-tempered fits and mild cramps. I, who had never shaved my legs or underarms on high feminist principle, was having to think about how I felt about the faint but real moustache that adorned my upper lip. I started to get hangovers and the occasional hot flush. There are so few clues. No one wants to talk about it. We live in a culture that is terrified of the process of ageing, and in which women are encouraged to take artificial hormones so that they do not enter into this magical condition. But it is not just a modern phenomenon. Middle-aged and menopausal women are conspicuously absent from most myths and traditional stories: first you are the princess and the mother, then you vanish and reappear as aged crone. Even psychoanalysts throw up their hands in despair; at menopause women move beyond their help and good management. Helene Deutsch gives a particularly brutal, but not atypical, analysis of her own helplessness: Successful psychotherapy in the climacterium is made difficult because usually there is little one can offer the patient as a substitute for the fantasy gratifications. There is a large element of real fear behind the neurotic anxiety, for reality has actually become poor in prospects and resignation without compensations is often the only solution. 3 Probably the suggestion that such women might like to go and live alone and experiment with silence would not come comfortably to a proponent of ‘talking therapies’. Unfortunately there is such a taboo around menopause, and such a wide range of ages at which it takes place in individual women, that it is hard to tell whether a turn to silence and solitude might be connected with this life event. There is, however, an interesting group of women saints, who lived highly active lives ‘in the world’ and then in their forties took a mystical path, joining religious orders often of considerable austerity or becoming recluses. Hilda of Whitby did not become a nun until she was middle-aged; Bridget of Sweden was married, had eight children and was a lady-in-waiting to the queen before she started to experience her visions; she became a nun and founded her new community when she was in her forties. Although Teresa of Avila became a nun at twenty, she had what she called her ‘interior conversion’, which opened the way for her visionary experiences, in 1555 and in 1562 she began her reform movement, moving her order (the Carmelites) back towards greater silence. So I am tempted to believe that there is something significant in this passage for women at least. As I became more interested in silence I became intrigued by the negative silence and secrecy that has made menopause almost inaudible culturally – except occasionally, like Sarah or Elizabeth in the Bible, where the restrictions or freedoms of menopause are miraculously overcome by the direct intervention of God. Throughout the 1990s I wrote a series of short stories about menopausal women, refinding them in old tales and inventing new ones. 4 A lot of these, old and new, are about women making unexpected changes in their lives, opening up their imaginations and finding a new self-sufficiency. They are also stories deeply imbued with the countryside, and the rhythms of seasons and growth. While I was researching for these stories I learned a strange and beautiful thing. Birds have hollow bones – their bones are not solid like mammals’ bones, like human bones, but are filled with air pockets, a bit like bubble-wrap only less regular. (This is why when you pick up a dead bird it feels so insubstantial in your hand, unlike, say a mouse.) This is a deft evolutionary development – archaeopteryx, the earliest winged dinosaur, had feathers but solid bones – to make flying easier for them. At menopause women’s bones thin out and fill with air pockets – in acute osteoporosis, under a microscope they are almost indistinguishable from birds’ bones: at menopause women can learn to fly as free as a bird. 5 Oddly enough, in my own fiction, flying – dragons, witches, birds and angels – has often appeared as an image of women’s freedom, so this discovery was especially delightful. When I look back at those stories now I cannot help but sense that something new and happy was going on for me over these years. Perhaps not surprisingly, parallel with this I discovered the silent joy of gardening. In my childhood gardening, which meant almost entirely kitchen gardening – fruit and vegetables – had been a chore, an unending series of household tasks in which we had all been required to participate; needless to say we did this in a highly organised team spirit and it had never seemed to me like a pleasure or a source of contemplative serenity. My husband had a lovely garden at the East End vicarage, but it was always very definitely his garden; I felt no jealousy and was happy for him both to make the decisions and to do the work. The garden behind my cottage in Warkton was my garden. Everyone should have her first garden on Northamptonshire loam – it is so encouraging: you stick in a spade and it cuts into this rich, fertile, dark soil, never too dry and never boggy, with few stones and a generous well-balanced nature. Everything grows fast and strong. And of course it grows silently. In our noise-obsessed culture it is very easy to forget just how many of the major physical forces on which we depend are silent – gravity, electricity, light, tides, the unseen and unheard spinning of the whole cosmos. The earth spins, it spins fast. It spins about its own axis at about 1,700 kilometres per hour (at the Equator); it orbits the sun at 107,218 kilometres per hour. And the whole solar system spins through the spinning galaxy at speeds I hardly dare to think about. The earth’s atmosphere spins with it, which is why we do not feel it spinning. It all happens silently. Organic growth is silent too. Cells divide, sap flows, bacteria multiply, energy runs thrilling through the earth, but without a murmur. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ 6 is a silent force. Soil, that very topmost skin coating, is called earth and the planet itself is called earth. It is all alive – pounding, heaving, thrusting. Microscopic fungi spores grow, lift pavements and fell houses. We hear the crack of the pavements and the crash of the buildings – such human artefacts are inevitably noisy – but the fungus itself grows silently. Perhaps we are wise to be terrified of silence – it is the terror that destroyeth in the noontide. Gardening puts me in contact with all this silent energy; gardeners become active partners in all that silent growth. I do not make it happen, but I share in it happening. The earth works its way under my nails and into my fingerprints, and a gardener has to pay attention to the immediate now of things. In one’s own garden one must not be caught unawares – a single sprout of couch grass can grow five miles of roots in a year, while lurking silently behind the delphiniums, which are growing less extravagantly but just as determinedly in the opposite direction: up, up, upwards, and creating a magnificence of blue as though they were pulling the sky down to them. I have to pay attention to that silence. In Warkton for the first time a garden became precious to me – it became an occupation, a resource and also my first glimpse that there might be art forms that I could practise which were not made out of words. Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not ‘in silence’ but with silence – it was a silent creativity. The garden itself, through that silent growth, put in more creative energy than I did; it grew silently but not unintelligently. I started to think about gardens; not so much about gardening, which I see as a technical skill like spelling is for writers, but about gardens themselves. This meant looking at other people’s gardens and reading about the history of gardens. To my surprise, because he is usually criticised among feminists for his rationalist philosophy and his desire to ‘manage’ and control nature, I found myself deeply in tune with the Renaissance figure Francis Bacon, who made himself three notable gardens and also wrote Of Gardens (1625), a personal and individual essay about beauty and taste, and Sylva sylvarum (published after his death in 1626) in which sections 5 and 6 are devoted to his ideas about gardening. Although actually he was a fine experimental horticulturalist, he too saw this as preliminary technique. The skill was necessary to create a garden, but the garden itself was not, in his view, simply a place to display one’s gardening skills. He said of his garden in Twickenham that he ‘found the situation of the place much convenient for the trial of my philosophical conclusions’. More important, it got me interested in how gardens might reflect ideas, thoughts and desires, just as literature or painting does. Gardens, I learned, were very central to a great many religious traditions, as places of contemplation and silence of a physical kind: Zen gardens, European monastic gardens, the Persian and Moorish water gardens. ‘Professional’ silence seekers (hermits for want of a better collective noun) have always gardened. Improbably high in the Himalayas, in northern caves and on rocky islands, in Middle Eastern deserts, there they are, digging, scrabbling, weeding, watering, growing what they can – vegetables, a little grain and flowers, unexpected beauty in the harsh silence of their lives. They are seeking silence as close to the earth, to the silent power of growth as possible, becoming, as the	665,523
A History of Solitude (David Vincent) (Z-Library).epub	A History of Solitude ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book, as with any other historical enterprise, is the product of lone endeavour and collective support. I am particularly grateful to Barbara Taylor, both for the funded network she has established on the history of solitude and for sharing her own knowledge and expertise. Her forthcoming study of the subject in the early-modern era will be a necessary complement to this exercise. The ‘Pathologies of Solitude’ seminars have been a useful location for testing the ideas and conclusions of my work. John Naughton has supplied networked support through the projects of the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. I thank him for his encouragement and hospitality, as well as his unrivalled expertise on the digital revolution and its implications. The visiting fellows at CRASSH have been a source of debate and information. Colleagues at the Open University have read and commented on draft chapters and made available their specialized knowledge, with particular thanks to Amanda Goodrich, Ros Crone, and John Wolffe. I have benefited from discussions with Patrick Joyce, Leslie Howsam, Kathryn Hughes, and Isabel Rivers. Andrew Mackenzie-McHarg and Anne Vila helped me understand Johann Zimmermann and his writings. Claudia Hammond lent me material from her impressive BBC/Welcome Trust collaborations. The progress of this project has been discussed in the generous company of Brenda and James Gourley, and Seija and Graham Tattersall. Charlotte Vincent, as so often over so many years, has been a sustaining critic, arguing through the book’s ideas, supporting its labour and reading every word for accurate expression. At Polity, Pascal Porcheron’s persistent enthusiasm for this project has much to do with its completion. The care given by Justin Dyer to the preparation of this text has been exemplary. This book has been researched in the deep quiet of the rare books rooms in the British Library and the Cambridge University Library, and I thank their staff for their patience and efficiency. As the project was commencing one Armistice Day, the public address system in the latter’s Rare Books Room made the oddly unfeasible request of its readers that they observe a silence for the fallen. Even in the depths of a library, solitude has to be managed. The book was written in a converted pigsty in my garden. It is twenty steps from my desk to my house, from my own company to that of my wife and the intermittent presence of children, grandchildren and friends. To be able to make that journey from one location to the other, from productive solitude to the most profound sociability, is the privilege of my life. A History of Solitude is dedicated to Veronica Weedon née More, to whom I had the good fortune of being related by marriage. After an eventful war-service, which included work at Bletchley Park, she married and had a family, but was early widowed. Her subsequent life throughout nearly six decades, latterly in a mountain village in Majorca, was an exemplary demonstration of how to maintain a balance between her own company and a wide range of family, friends, and outside interests. She was a great reader, and in turn the author of four books, the first published when she was eighty-five. I hope she would have enjoyed this one. Shrawardine, autumn 2019 Solitude and Leisure in the Twentieth Century 5 SOLITUDE AND LEISURE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Peace and Quietness Amongst the witnesses in Margery Spring Rice’s 1939 study of working-class wives was ‘Mrs E. of Forest Gate, East London’, who was thirty-eight years old. The toil of raising six children left her little time for conscious relaxation. ‘She says firmly,’ reported Spring Rice, ‘that she gets no leisure till the evening when the children are in bed and then “I just sit still and say, at last a bit of peace and quietness.”’ 1 For many of the labouring poor, just taking a moment’s time to themselves out of the round of daily labour constituted the summit of their expectation. This was particularly so in the case of married women, for whom, as Claire Langhamer has argued, the experience of continuous, unpaid housework made it difficult to conceive, let alone enjoy, structured recreational activity. 2 A generation later, in the midst of the post-war economic boom, Pearl Jephcott visited an east London community. ‘In a very poor area like Bermondsey,’ she discovered, the women have always expected to be over-occupied. It is still a novelty to have any regular stretch of free time, and they hardly know what to do with it. Leisure is still equated with physical rest, work with physical effort. ‘Just sit’, ‘put your feet up’, ‘drop off’, ‘have a lay down’, were phrases used to describe how the wife used her leisure. 3 Their menfolk might have a pub or a club to visit outside working hours, but where there was no employment and no money to spend on any pleasure, the default activity was doing more or less nothing by themselves. 4 ‘Ignorance and poverty,’ wrote Robert Roberts in his Classic Slum , ‘combined to breed, for the most part, tedium, a dumb accidie of the back streets. … How familiar one grew in childhood with those silent figures leaning against door jambs, staring into vacancy waiting for bedtime.’ 5 E. Wight Bakke paid particular attention to the unemployed workers of the 1930s, who so concerned middle-class observers by standing around in public spaces without any apparent purpose. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he insisted, ‘one of the outstanding features of the loafing in Greenwich was the lack of conversation. Men stood alone more often than in groups. The young men were more sociable; so were the older men who, I suppose, were pensioners. The middle-aged men were perfectly willing to talk when I approached them, but more often than not I found them alone.’ 6 Amidst the increasing noise and vitality of popular recreation in the twentieth century, the persistence and value of solitary ‘peace and quietness’ should not be underestimated. It was how most people at most times in the past had sought to recover from physical labour and prepare themselves for the tasks that lay ahead. Outside the home, as Chapter 2 discussed, casual walking in the neighbouring streets or fields served a similar function. The sociable alternative was equally unstructured and inconsequential conversation where that was available. However, change was taking place. The specific recreational activities that were examined in Chapter 3 were beginning to spread into the upper reaches of the working class, and then unevenly by income, age, and gender across the labouring population as a whole. There was generally a cost involved in the widening range of pastimes and hobbies. Money had to be spent on materials and tools, on the associated magazines and books, and perhaps on the membership of a society of fellow enthusiasts. Indirectly all of these practices required a level of household comfort and adequate management of time and space within or outside the home. During the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the pursuit of unstructured quietness never completely disappeared, as will be discussed in the next chapter, but for a growing proportion of the population it was accompanied by an increasing range of separate pastimes. The process of change foregrounded the first of the three functions of solitude in the response to modernity. In general terms it both accompanied and enabled proliferating forms of personal choice and companionate domesticity. Both were driven by the twin forces of change in this arena: domestic living standards and mass communication. Increasingly it became possible to move between divergent forms of sociable and solitary recreation as taste permitted. There were iconic activities that were performed always alone or in company. Patience as a card game, which continued to develop new versions after 1900, might be an example of the former; team sports an example of the latter. But in many cases it was possible to move between contrasting registers of association according to the profile of the pastime and the desire of the practitioner. Some long-established collective pursuits took on more solitary forms, such as the consumption of alcohol following the rapid growth of home-consumed canned beer from the 1960s and the increasing availability of wine and spirits in off-licences and supermarkets. 7 Within the home, different leisure activities created a territory for shared endeavour on a scale rarely feasible in earlier periods at any level of society. At the same time, they established space within which a husband and wife, a parent and child, could retreat from each other’s company and find personal expression and fulfilment. There was a further extension of the networked solitude that had begun to take shape in the previous century. Mass communication firstly in the traditional but highly innovative category of the printed word, and then in cinema and the electronic media, extended and reconfigured the ways in which an individual could associate with a larger community in the consumption of pleasure. The final transformation in this respect, the digital revolution, will be the subject of the concluding chapter. Comfort and Communication The prospect of solitary leisure was increased after 1900 by two long-term and often uneven developments. The most obvious was domestic space. In her famous essay of 1929, Virginia Woolf was clear-sighted not only about the necessity of ‘a room with a lock on the door’ but also about the cost, which she calculated to be at least ‘five hundred a year’. 8 This placed the privilege out of reach of any householder below the upper reaches of the middle class. Kathleen Dayus, growing up in Edwardian Birmingham, described her experience of a family crammed into two sleeping spaces with one downstairs room for all the daily life of parents and children: My mum and dad slept in the main bedroom over the living-room and my brothers, Jonathan and Charlie, slept in another bed in the same room. My other brother, Francis or Frankie, and my sister, Liza, and I slept in the attic over the bedroom and my eldest sister, Mary, had her bed in the other corner of the attic facing ours. Mary was twenty and was going to be married soon, when she was twenty-one. 9 In her world, only in the short child-free periods at the beginning and end of a married life might there be a possibility of more rooms than occupants. Private, lockable space was a dream not only of aspiring writers, but of all adolescent children. Few teenagers at the beginning of the century could slam their bedroom door in the face of a protesting parent. If permanent use of a private room was out of reach, opportunities for retreat from the company of others were growing. The Tudor Walters report of November 1918 consolidated the improvements of post-1875 by-law housing and set the standards for the forthcoming programme of estate construction. It confirmed the expectation of two downstairs rooms plus a scullery, and two or three bedrooms, and tentatively explored the use of the parlour for purposes other than formal gatherings. Such a space, the report suggested, could be employed ‘in cases of sickness in the house, as a quiet room for convalescent members of the family, or for any who may be suffering from long-continued illness or weakness’. 10 More positively, with complete nominal literacy amongst those of marrying age lately achieved, and an expanding education system, it envisaged that the parlour might be ‘generally required for home lessons by the children of school age, or for similar work of study, serious reading, or writing, on the part of any member of the family’. 11 The subsequent transformation was a function of both accommodation and demography. Public and private builders constructed four million houses according to basic standards between the wars and a further seven million in the quarter of a century following 1945. 12 At the same time, families of six children, which Kathleen Dayus had experienced, became increasingly uncommon. By the end of the inter-war period, the working class were beginning to display the same reproductive behaviour as their social superiors. Completed family size rapidly fell towards the current average of 1.91. As the period of a marriage devoted to child-rearing shortened and life expectancy increased, the proportion of households containing no more than two people began to grow. By 1961, just over two-fifths contained less than three occupants, a figure rising to two-thirds in the 2011 census. The most dramatic change, which more than any other separated modern domestic living from any preceding era, was in the numbers of people living alone. The early twentieth century inherited a tradition of no more than one in twenty single-person households, comprising 1 per cent of the population. The incidence of lone households had grown to 17 per cent by the mid-1960s, and to 31 per cent by 2011, embracing some eight million people. 13 The graphs of change conceal significant variations in experience and behaviour over the period. Social investigators continued to discover overcrowding and inadequate provision of basic services until well into the third quarter of the twentieth century. Electricity did not become a near-universal provision until the 1970s. 14 The working-class wives examined by Marjory Spring Rice in 1939 and by Hannah Gavron in 1966 contained in their midst levels of domestic discomfort that were common in their grandparents’ generation. 15 Programmes of slum clearance left substantial minorities living in officially condemned accommodation, such as the home in which the future Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson was raised in the London of the 1950s. 16 In the middle decades of the century, the range of conditions within the working class was probably greater than at any time in history, with persistent numbers living in Dickensian squalor whilst their more fortunate contemporaries enjoyed the space, warmth, and domestic appliances which had become the birthright of their social superiors. 17 A critical turning point was the Parker Morris report of 1961, which set out new official standards for private as well as public housing. The central recommendation of Homes for Today & Tomorrow was that domestic space at every level of income needed to permit both social and solitary activities. Post-war prosperity had created ‘a social and economic revolution’ which foregrounded what the report termed the ‘dual tendency in family life’. 18 It was no longer sufficient to supply basic shelter for the collective household. The essence of the modern home was movement between degrees of sociability determined by personal inclination and the family life cycle. Appropriately designed and heated space should enable the occupants to exercise choice about when and how they interacted with each other. ‘Family life is both communal and individual,’ explained the report. ‘There is the process of coming together for activities in which the family joins as a whole – meals, conversation, common pursuits, and so on; and there is the need for privacy to pursue individual activities such as reading, writing, and following particular hobbies.’ 19 The direction of change was towards more opportunity for withdrawal from the company of others. It applied not only to the increasing numbers of households of one or two people, but also to parents with growing children. ‘This desire to live their own lives for an increasing part of the time they spend at home is spreading through the family as a whole,’ wrote Parker Morris. Teenagers wanting to listen to records; someone else wanting to watch the television; someone going in for do-it-yourself; all these and homework too mean that the individual members of the family are more and more wanting to be free to move away from the fireside to somewhere else in the home – if only (in winter at any rate) they can keep warm. 20 A common thread running through the evolving pattern of recreation was the consumption of mass communication. At one level it was the further development of practices which, as we saw in Chapter 3 , were becoming commonplace in middle-class homes in the nineteenth century and through a flourishing second-hand market were frequently visible in poorer households. The change was partly a function of the late attainment of universal literacy. The achievements of the Victorian schools had left cohorts of older men and women in the population whose command of the written word had been fixed by earlier shortcomings in educational opportunity. 21 The need for the young to read to their parents or grandparents did not disappear until the end of the inter-war period. After 1945 the elderly increasingly turned to reading as a pastime. 22 The further decline in the cost of full-length texts, accompanied by the continuing growth of public libraries, finally tipped the balance away from collective to personal consumption of literature. The newspaper press reached a peak national circulation in 1951, and the weekly periodicals began to embrace a socially inclusive readership before and after the Second World War. 23 In some form the written word was now available to anyone in a household who sought to entertain or improve themselves, however fleetingly. Whilst a minority of serious men and women engaged in sustained reading of full texts, the attraction for most consumers of print, particularly the hard-pressed household managers, was that it could be picked up and put down in what the Social Survey of Merseyside referred to as ‘the bits of time left over from doing other things’. 24 Electric light, still a novelty for the wealthy at the beginning of the century, was being installed as standard in inter-war council houses and had reached three-quarters of the population by the time the post-war slum-clearance programme commenced. Reading no longer demanded the concentrated abstraction from the noisy life of the home clustered around the fireplace. Together with the improved heating that Parker Morris thought so important, it was now increasingly possible to find a private space in which to lose yourself in the realm of print. Mass communication also continued to develop its symbiotic relationship with domestic pastimes and what increasingly were referred to as ‘hobbies’. Established patterns of supporting individual practitioners through networks of publications became more extensive. ‘The literature of this hobby,’ wrote a guide in 1915, ‘is undoubtedly the most extensive and complete ever devoted to a scientific pastime, though philately is at the most only just over sixty years old.’ 25 As the market became more commercial, entrepreneurs became publishers, selling their products not just by advertising in other periodicals, but also by launching their own to promote their brand, introduce new items and connect users working away in secluded corners of their homes. The first magazine to carry the title Hobbies was launched in 1895 by an East Anglian manufacturer of fretwork tools and supplies. By the turn of the century, it had reached a circulation of 50,000, expanding its coverage to collecting coins and stamps, book binding, electrical devices, experimental chemistry and ‘novel kinds of fancy work’ for women. 26 The great innovator in toys for children and their parents, Frank Hornby, invested money and effort in the literature of his products, beginning with the Meccano Magazine in 1916, and repeating the process when he expanded into model trains. 27 His periodicals were designed not merely as a sales catalogue and as an advertising medium for suppliers in related fields, but also as a means of creating a conscious community of enthusiasts. Hornby valued his ‘organ’ for ‘the opportunity it affords its readers of discussing not only their models, but also their own aims and ambitions, with the Editor and his staff, whose interest in their lives has given the Magazine great social importance’. 28 His audience should feel that it had a personal relationship with Hornby himself and his team of writers. A similar ambition drove the expansion of magazines for women, which continued to offer advice and information on a range of domestic pastimes. Woman reached a circulation of three and a half million by the late 1950s on the basis of a deliberate strategy of ‘reader identification’. 29 Through a combination of the tone and subject matter of the articles and the extensive use of correspondence pages, it sought to engage each purchaser as a particular friend. The intimacy of immediate family and neighbourhood was to be replicated by communication with the voice of the writer and participation in the broader network of readers. The pervasive presence of print was centuries in the making. Electronic communication had a much shorter history and at first sight a much more dramatic impact on the social organization of the household. The wireless was a universal presence in homes with electricity by 1939, although receivers were too large and expensive for most households to install them in more than one room. Experiments in the transmission of moving images were halted by the outbreak of war but resumed with the return of peace. Television sets were installed in almost half of households by the mid-1950s, and reached near saturation coverage by the early 1960s. 30 The new media had the apparent effect of relocating recreation from the streets and public arenas into the home, and, within the domestic interior, of providing a virtual fireplace around which family members clustered to enjoy their entertainment. Television presented the most dramatic narrative. Its introduction was faster as the purchase of sets led the post-war consumer boom. And its impact was highly visible as what had become the most popular form of public recreation, the cinema, was immediately driven into a long-term decline. 31 It was intrinsically a more attention-demanding medium than radio. The latter could readily be used to accompany rather than displace more solitary practices. Housework and repetitive leisure activities such as knitting or sewing or minor household repairs were combined with listening to a programme. Music might be playing while reading or during other activities requiring greater concentration. Television, on the other hand, invited the attention of the eyes as well as the ears, placing it intrinsically in opposition to the conduct of any other task or recreation. In the very early years, the sets were so rare and exciting that neighbours and friends would gather in the home fortunate enough to possess them, most notably for the 1953 Coronation. where the broadcast was watched by ten times more people than actually had a licence. 32 As television, whether owned or rented, became universal, and viewing figures climbed towards an average of twenty-four hours a week, it threatened an epochal change in the spatial and social organization of leisure. 33 In retrospect, however, the effect was both less radical and more transient than at first seemed likely. By the 1980s, with television available on competing channels, social investigators were beginning to look more closely at what actually happened in the living room. Laurie Taylor and Bob Mullan were amongst the first to discover that the attention paid to the screen was considerably at variance with the expectations of the broadcasters and the fears of critics. The television tended to be switched on permanently, providing the same kind of generalized warmth as the fireplace, but otherwise disregarded unless a particularly popular programme brought the family together. For the most part the life of the household went on much as before, with its members occupied with their particular concerns. Taylor and Mullan cited the response to their inquiry of a thirty-one-year-old housewife: ‘We have it on but we don’t sit watching it. We turn it on first thing in the morning when we come down and it’s on till late at night. I’m out in the garden, doing the gardening, going back and forth – I’m not watching telly all the time – it’s just there and it’s on.’ 34 As had always been the case in households before electricity, the pursuit of any available pleasure was in part dependent on a capacity for abstraction from whatever else was being said or done. The essence of home life was movement between alternate states of collective and private activity. The flickering screen merely added a layer of complication to this task. ‘All this,’ Taylor and Mullan concluded, ‘is a long way from the silent rows of people sitting in semi-darkness on their television chairs. Today’s television may be lucky to win itself a glance from people who are busy rushing past it on their way to other business.’ 35 Where a member of the family did look out for a particular programme, this was not necessarily at the expense of other interests. In the early days of television, popular figures such as Philip Harben on cooking, Barry Bucknell on do-it-yourself and Percy Thrower on gardening expanded rather than confined the personal interests of individuals within the household. Furthermore, the era of the exclusive radio receiver in the living room was coming to an end while its effects were still being assessed. Portable radios were introduced in the late 1950s, enabling programmes to be listened to in kitchens, bedrooms or out of doors. 36 The motor car was ceasing to be a privilege of the middle class, providing a new arena of private space, increasingly equipped with a radio. By the time of Taylor and Mullan’s survey in the mid-1980s, a third of households had four or more transistors, and there were eleven million car radios on the road. Televisions were becoming sufficiently small and cheap for additional sets to be installed in other rooms in the house. Video recorders were on sale from the mid-1970s, freeing viewers from the tyranny of the programme schedules. The most revolutionary innovation of the final quarter of the century shifted the balance of recreation decisively towards the solitary consumer. In 1979, the Sony Walkman ushered in the world of fully mobile, wholly personalized, high-quality entertainment. Whether within the house or out of doors, surrounding noise and conversation could be diminished whilst the wearers were immersed in their own soundscape. Conversely, the use of a small earphone reduced the interference that one person’s pleasure might cause to another. The tradename emphasized the ancient pleasure of pedestrian locomotion and it soon became associated with the increasing enthusiasm for jogging. It was equally usable when sedentary at home or in the garden. In that the Walkman enabled any kind of music to be listened to at any time in any space, it was a genuinely innovative product, a multi-million-selling forerunner of the iPhone and other portable digital media. But in another sense it was just a technical solution to a task that had faced the members of crowded households down the generations: how to tune out the noise of others in order to concentrate on a personal recreational project; if still expensive, it was now so much easier. The Pleasures of Solitude In the mid-1920s a pastime crossed the Atlantic from the United States, where it had lately become a craze. It was initially described as a ‘new form of puzzle in the shape of a word square’. 37 Games with words had long distracted the educated, particularly the acrostic, which was a favourite of Queen Victoria. 38 The crossword, as it became known, rapidly established itself as the pre-eminent literary pastime. Britain’s contribution was the cryptic clue, introduced in the Observer in 1926 by Edward Powys Mather, who took his penname from the figure of Tomás de Torquemada, the late fifteenth-century Dominican and Grand Inquisitor of Spain, who tortured and burned around two thousand alleged heretics who failed to give correct answers to his questions. In 1930, the Times finally recognized the popularity of the puzzle and began publishing what became the most famous of all the newspaper crosswords. As with many other recreations, the crossword was at once a solitary endeavour and a social enterprise. The puzzle solver was essentially alone with a pencil and a page of the newspaper, or a collection of games anthologized in book form. Completion was a personal achievement, whether or not it was undertaken within the mythical target of the four-minute boiling of an egg set by a former Provost of Eton. But conversation ensued with other members of the family, or colleagues at work, when faced with a difficult clue. For the expanding newspaper industry, the daily or weekly crossword was its most interactive element, more extensive than the correspondence column. 39 The games were presented as competitions, with small cash prizes or appropriate gifts of a literary artefact such as a dictionary. Like stamp collecting, the new passion was given a royal seal of approval in the person of Queen Mary, and as with popular pastimes from the late Victorian period onwards, the growing number of enthusiasts was translated into organizational form as the National Crossword Puzzle Association. The crossword was suited to the rhythms of a mature capitalist society. It was a challenge requiring an educated mind capable of concentration and effective target-setting. A partly completed puzzle was a failure. Solving the final clue demanded many of the same skills as a successful professional, entrepreneurial or even, as it appeared, espionage career. 40 Yet it was fundamentally unnecessary and unproductive. It had economic value for the newspapers and book publishers, but otherwise belonged to the realm of idleness. Whilst it might display a familiarity with literary culture, it lacked the imaginative or intellectual profit of serious reading. A finished crossword was a personal achievement that had no lasting meaning once it had been checked in the next day’s paper. As Stephen Gelber has argued, such pastimes at once reflected the growing divorce between work and play and endorsed disciplines associated with economic endeavour. 41 In common with other hobbies, whether mental or manual, they celebrated the achievement of the twentieth-century economy in providing more opportunity to escape labour, and more income to invest in alternative activities. They displayed free choice in the consumption of leisure, but were also oriented towards regular, disciplined outcomes. 42 The crossword was one amongst a range of distractions that gave shape to the hours that, for men at least, surrounded the ever-more sharply defined working day. And unlike more practical spare-time activities, the puzzle was essentially portable. As more time was spent commuting to work, or spending salaries on travel to distant holidays, so the crossword held boredom at bay. The crossword was unusual amongst popular pastimes in that it was almost free. The newspaper might well have been bought anyway, and at a time when correspondence was still the principal means of networking over distance, despite the gradual arrival of the telephone, there were bound to be writing instruments in the house. Elsewhere, solitary pleasures increasingly were an emblematic form of consumption. They constituted an arena in which individuals expressed their identity by the purchase of goods. In the case of collecting, material acquisition was the central objective. Whilst, as we have seen, a range of secondary purposes could be associated with, say, stamp collecting, at the heart of the activity was the potentially limitless investment of money, which, if well judged, might itself become a source of income. This was most obviously so where the object of the collector was money itself. ‘Coin collecting,’ explained a guide to the practice, ‘is one of the few hobbies one can enjoy over the years and still stand to make a profit.’ 43 Even where the central purpose was itself non-financial, there were continual demands on the pocket of the enthusiast. The hobby magazines were full of advertisements not just for the particular project but for a wide range of tools and associated materials. Entrepreneurs such as Frank Hornby quickly realized that the key to commercial success was to ensure that no set-up was ever complete. Always there was an extra model to be purchased, a further addition to a track layout, an extension into ancillary model-making of buildings and landscapes. In its more extreme form, particularly with outdoor pursuits such as fishing, there developed a fetishization of objects, the pleasure of possession of instruments or clothing because they were the latest, best designed or most expensive, or because through their ownership practitioners could demonstrate their superior discernment. It was a means of both self-display and policing the boundaries of the collective pursuit. The multitude of fishing memoirs in the early decades of the twentieth century, for instance, contained descriptions of watery contests which must have been incomprehensible to contemporary non-enthusiasts, let alone later readers. John Waller Hills’s Summer on the Test , first published in 1924, was exclusively concerned with one man, the river and his kit. ‘At last there was movement under my bank,’ he wrote, ‘it might be a rat, but let us try my dark olive quill; its size was 0, and my gut 3x. The first cast was swept aside by the wind, but at the second there was a confident rise and a good fish careered downstream.’ 44 The making and selection of flies to catch salmon and trout became a literary genre in its own right. 45 In all these solitary pursuits, indoors or out, the claim of mere self-indulgence was evaded by the purposeful nature of the activity and, unlike drinking, the avoidance of obvious harm to the practitioners or those around them. The multiplying opportunities for personal consumption facilitating time alone reflected the growing specialization of leisure. Activities which once had been part of the daily round of managing a home or earning a living increasingly were seen as discrete forms of behaviour. Gardening, for instance, had for centuries been both a source of pleasure and a critical means of supplementing a stressed family economy through the provision of home-produced vegetables. The satisfaction of growing your own remained and took on new forms, but the allotment movement reached its peak during the Depression, and after the government-inspired drive for self-sufficiency in the Second World War, vegetable gardening gradually ceased to be a material necessity. 46 By the early twenty-first century, it was calculated that around twentyfive million adults regularly engaged in the pastime. 47 It fell into the increasingly capacious category of a hobby, which embraced both time-honoured pastimes and new technically based tasks such as chemistry or radio construction. In the first decade of the post-war boom, identifiable expenditure on sports and hobbies increased by 50 per cent. 48 ‘The range of pastimes, which are collectively known as hobbies,’ observed Ferdynand Zweig his 1952 study The British Worker , ‘is enormous and satisfies a great variety of interests.’ 49 ‘Useful crafts,’ reported a contemporary survey of working-class families, ‘find a surprising number of devotees. There is a lot of satisfaction expressed in “pottering”, “tinkering”, “fiddling about”.’ 50 Projects requiring serious individual concentration away from the rest of the family were promoted in the burgeoning periodical literature. 51 The lead item in the 1959 edition of Hobbies Annual was a detailed plan for the construction of a ‘Musical Swiss Clock’. This told the time, played tunes, had an illuminated clock-face and could be used for holding ‘trinkets or cigarettes’. ‘It can easily be made up by even the average worker,’ assured the journal, ‘with but a few simple tools, and makes an excellent choice as a gift.’ 52 Undertaking odd jobs around the house took on a new identity with the emergence of the ‘do-it-yourself’ movement in the mid-1950s. As with the related notion of hobbies, there was an element of continuity in the activities the term embraced. What was new was the sense of an historical change in the relation of householders to their accommodation. The occupants of the publicly financed estates did not wait for council workmen to mend faults or improve the decorations, but set about improving their living space. 53 Owner-occupation generated rising spending on furnishings and fittings. In October 1955, Newnes launched a journal, Practical Householder , to cater for the market. Within less than two years it claimed a circulation of over a million. 54 In the rapidly expanding medium of television, the resident DIY expert Barry Bucknell received up to thirty-five thousand inquiries a week, and needed ten secretaries to respond to them. 55 The illustrations of Practical Householder often featured all the family, including children, ‘making and repairing things and doing jobs around the home’. 56 In the more home-centred society, there was a greater sense of a collective project in the expenditure of time and money on projects such as making ‘garden chairs and a garden swing’, or constructing a ‘studio couch’. 57 The decision-making may more often have been shared, as also the enjoyment of the completed task, but with the possible exception of painting and decorating, the actual labour for the most part remained separate and gendered. Pedestrian locomotion also could be found under the heading of a hobby. Older forms of walking were slow to decline. Casual strolling out of the house became increasingly feasible for women, particularly with the expanding provision of municipal parks. 58 Despite the use of trains and buses, travelling to work in the towns and cities long remained a matter of physical exercise. Mass Observation surveys during and just after the Second World War indicated that around a third of male breadwinners left home in the morning on foot and another fifth on a bicycle. Only those earning over £10 a week used their own vehicle for travel to their employment office. 59 By the end of the post-war boom, access to personal transport had been transformed. There were two million cars on the road in 1950 and nearly ten million two decades later. 60 Ownership became sufficiently widespread for manual workers who had been dispersed to the suburbs by slum clearance to begin to enjoy the most private and solitary of all journeys: the commute to work in a car occupied only by its driver, with or without a radio playing. 61 In one regard, nineteenth-century practices of solitary strolling continued to grow. Urban dog-walking showed a relentless increase, with four million animals requiring exercise in the 1960s and eight million by 2012. 62 Essentially these were lone practices, although they could provide opportunities for social encounters between dog-owners in streets and parks. 63 Elsewhere, however, changes were taking place towards the world Rebecca Solnit has described in which ‘walking ceased to be part of the continuum of experience and instead became something consciously chosen’. 64 This might mean an essentially social activity. Pedestrian exercise as an organized weekend activity expanded with the aid of urban clubs and improving train services. 65 There was a class distinction between hikers, who set off with a minimum of specialized clothing, and ramblers, who inherited the high intellectual purpose of Leslie Stephen and his colleagues and changed into knee-breeches and tailored jackets for their expeditions. 66 Whatever the dress, the continuing proliferation of printed guides enabled those who chose their own company safely to reach a destination on foot. Solo walking that was neither a necessary element of everyday living nor directed to a particular place gained a higher profile. In 1927, Virginia Woolf celebrated the possibility of women joining the established tradition of the urban flâneur. She described an expedition whose ostensible goal was merely the purchase of a pencil. ‘As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six,’ she wrote, ‘we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s own rooms.’ 67 As with Dickens, the pleasure lay in the contactless contact with a cast of strangers. Knowledge was constructed by means of a deliberate bricolage. Random mobility revealed fleeting biographies which enriched and entertained without compromising the privacy of the passer-by. It exposed patterns in urban living that were concealed by the formal language of planners and the objective depictions of maps. In our own time, Will Self decries the steady decline since the early twentieth century when ‘90% of journeys fewer than six miles were taken on foot’. 68 Where in his youth he had walked because he could afford no other means of travel, now he made long expeditions on foot solely for pleasure. Iain Sinclair, the leading modern practitioner of this mode of urban exploration, insists on the synthesizing function of directionless strolling. ‘Walking,’ he writes, ‘is the best way to explore and exploit the city; the changes, shifts, breaks in the cloud helmet, movement of light on water. Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode, tramping asphalted earth in alert reverie, allowing the fiction of an underlying pattern to reveal itself.’ 69 Hobbies, home improvement and other domestic recreations were voluntary activities undertaken in free time. They were at once a celebration of growing prosperity and a compensation for the stultifying means by which the increased income was often gained. ‘Work is often simply something which gives him a living,’ Ferdynand Zweig observed of the post-war employee, ‘something he dislikes and would not do unless he is forced to it. But in his hobbies he regains his freedom; they are often the last thing left to modern man in which he can find freedom.’ 70 There was, however, a less positive aspect to the proliferating forms of leisure activity. In 1925, the Manchester Guardian published an article on the crossword ‘epidemic’ that was sweeping through the United States and beginning to reach Europe. It quoted the judgement of Ruth Hale, President of the newly formed National Crossword Puzzle Association. ‘When life is entirely without satisfactions,’ she explained, ‘as it is most of the time even for the best of us, there is nothing to do but leave it – temporarily, of course, but completely. Now a game of bridge will do a little and a ball game will do even better, but a cross-word puzzle does best of all.’ 71 Tackling the daily puzzle was a defence against unfulfilled time or unproductive company. It was embraced when there was no profit in conversation, and no immediate prospect of taking up arms against a sea of discontents. Alongside the crossword, the jigsaw puzzle became a widespread diversion between the wars. Unlike the new word game, the pastime had a long history in British culture. Its origin lay in the dissected map invented by John Spilsbury in 1769, principally as an educational amusement for the children of prosperous families. 72 During the nineteenth century it was embraced by upper-class women, including Queen Victoria, seeking a decorous means of consuming the acres of empty time with which they were faced. Hand-cut wooden puzzles remained an expensive toy, but technical advances in between the wars, particularly in the mass production of die-cut cardboard versions, made the recreation more broadly available just as the workers in the family found themselves with unwanted time on their hands. 73 Thereafter it enjoyed a popularity unconfined by age, class, or gender. It remained a toy for young children, but was widely attempted by all those in possession of a flat surface which could be undisturbed for a period of time. As with stamp collecting, it continued to enjoy the patronage of royalty, including the Duke of Windsor and Queen Elizabeth, but otherwise met a wide range of tastes ranging from photographs of holiday views to reproductions of the best of the world’s art constructed out of thousands of pieces. In common with other long-term projects, such as knitting, the composition of puzzles could be accompanied by intermittent conversation. Other members of the family might share the task or even, to entertain themselves, engage in competitive puzzle making. Essentially, however, it was a personal project, a form of concentrated withdrawal from company or the consumption of long periods when no society was available. When Margaret Drabble turned aside from fiction to the composition of a memoir, she structured her account around her lifelong passion for jigsaws. In common with crosswords, their attraction lay partly in the finite quality of the endeavour. Unlike more serious tasks in life, there was a frame, a given picture and, with sufficient application, a guarantee of completion. Where knitting might fail through some mistake, or a handicraft reveal shortcomings in skill, there was no inherent reason why a puzzle once commenced should not be finished. Although some professional writers embraced word games as a relaxation, Drabble found the non-verbal nature of the task a relief from her working life. There was the additional pleasure afforded by high-end boxes of an education in art history. At the same time, the immersion in what she termed ‘a solitary time killer’ had a deeper purpose. 74 ‘Doing jigsaws,’ Drabble explained in the preface to her account, ‘and writing about them has been one of my strategies to defeat melancholy and avoid laments.’ 75 At a given moment, personal relationships were as much a cause of as a solution to depression. Drabble revived an earlier enthusiasm for puzzles at the death of her parents. To be by herself for hours on end, making frames and patterns without the immediate distraction of other people, was a necessary device for managing her spirits and maintaining her social identity. Many other solitary pastimes offered similar possibilities of therapeutic absorption. Hunter Davies’s lifelong passion for stamp collecting continued throughout the travails of a busy writing life. The essence of its appeal was the enclosed order of the pursuit. ‘So far,’ he wrote, ‘I’ve had endless pleasure out of stamps, and I can think of no other hobby which is so harmless, so easy to organise, so neat and tidy, which upsets nobody else and doesn’t frighten the horses.’ 76 He was intimidated by the ‘big wide professional stamp world’, celebrating instead the privacy of the time spent managing and reviewing his collection. 77 Simon Garfield’s memoir, The Error World , is similarly insistent on the attraction of a universe from which messy, sometimes unmanageable social relationships were excluded. The usual pressures of adolescence were compounded by the early deaths of his older brother and his mother, and he early found comfort in the dependable silence of his stamp collection. ‘Whatever else was happening around me,’ he recalled, ‘– the family disintegrations, pressures of exams and then work, romantic complications – here was a comforting and reliable constant. It was flat, stowable, secret. Stamps seldom disappointed and never left you.’ 78 A hobby common to many schoolchildren gained extra meaning as he began to concentrate his collecting on misprinted stamps. ‘The period of greatest involvement and expenditure on errors,’ he wrote, ‘coincided with the strongest feelings of grief over the loss of my family.’ 79 He made increasing use of dealers, but kept the larger community of collectors at bay. His was a private solution to personal needs. In adult life his enthusiasm faded but returned as his marriage failed, his retreat into what became an expensive pastime at once a cause of and a response to relationship problems. Most of the multiplying solitary recreations required, as we have seen, expenditure both on the immediate materials and on the time and space needed to enjoy them. Important though their activities were to middle-class practitioners such as Drabble and Garfield, it can be argued that the benefit was in inverse proportion to opportunity. There was a difference between those spending increasing spare income game fishing on Highland estates or consuming empty hours in country houses completing jigsaws or tapestries, and poor working-class women desperate to find any opportunity for a moment of private leisure. The interviews collected by Margery Spring Rice painted ‘a picture in which monotony, loneliness, discouragement and sordid hard work are the main features’. 80 She began her chapter on ‘The Day’s Work’ with a case history of a woman finally driven to a complete breakdown by the absence of any relief from her solitary toil of raising five children. 81 In these circumstances, it was the fleeting moments of personal leisure that had the greatest impact on physical or mental survival. Some were sociable in the form of encounters with other women on the doorstep or in the corner shop. But many were valued because of the absence of company in the form of wailing children or an uncommunicative husband home from work. Loneliness turned into solitude when the woman was able to take pleasure from her own company in the course of a freely chosen walk, or half an hour with a book or a newspaper, or needlework undertaken for some purpose other than keeping the family’s meagre stock of clothing in working order. Even at this level of society, additional diversions were becoming ava	788,529
A Philosophy of Loneliness (Lars Svendsen) (Z-Library).epub	Philosophy of Loneliness FOUR Loneliness and Trust No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. GEORGE ELIOT , Romola S tudies have demonstrated a clear inverse correlation between loneliness and generalized trust: the more trusting you are, the less lonely; and the less trusting you are, the more lonely. 1 It is difficult to determine the nature of the causal relation here, or if a causal relation even exists, but there seems to be more evidence that a lower degree of trust leads to loneliness than there is for the reverse. 2 The connection between loneliness and trust appears to be strong both on an individual level and when we examine countries as a whole. A comparative study in Norway and Denmark showed that trust placed in other people was one of the key explanatory factors regarding the variation in the loneliness experienced in both countries. 3 It is striking that Paul Auster, when he describes his father’s abyssal loneliness in The Invention of Solitude , places such great emphasis on his father’s inability to trust anyone, himself included. 4 The ability to trust others and the ability to develop attachments are closely related. As we saw in Chapter Three , lonely people interpret their social environment as threatening to a greater degree. 5 They perceive others as being less reliable and supportive than do non-lonely individuals, 6 and regard others as being less similar to themselves than do non-lonely individuals. 7 However, it is well-known in research on trust that similarity builds trust. We simply have an easier time trusting people who resemble – or whom we at least believe resemble – ourselves. If a person regards themselves as different from others, that will weaken the trust they can place in them. Trust has been described in many ways: as a feeling, a perception, a belief, a relation or a behaviour. All of these descriptions capture important aspects of trust. No one can live completely without trust, and philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and John Locke have correctly observed that human life would be impossible without trust. Georg Simmel remarks that society would simply disintegrate without the generalized trust humans beings place in each other. 8 In almost every daily situation in which you find yourself, you rely on other people; for example, you trust that they are not a suicide bomber, that a person is generally telling the truth, and so on. Without this kind of trust, you would become paralysed. A lack of trust, furthermore, prevents actions that presuppose trust. Yet mistrust is much more demanding that trust, because it is exhausting to always be on the lookout, to constantly be supervising your actions and those of others, hunting for signs that their intentions are on a collision course with your desires, and so on. It is not easy living with the attitude that Tony Montana has in the movie Scarface (1983): ‘Who do I trust? Me!’ Cultures of Trust The connection between trust and loneliness can be observed both on an individual and a state level. Countries whose inhabitants exhibit higher degrees of interpersonal trust are consistently those with a relatively low prevalence of loneliness. Similarly, countries with low trust levels are consistently those with high loneliness levels. That is, apparently, one of the key explanations for why the loneliness prevalence is so low in the Nordic countries and so high in countries such as Italy, Greece and Portugal. Likewise, we find extremely low trust levels and extremely high loneliness levels in the former Communist countries in Eastern Europe. I have not succeeded in finding prevalence studies exploring loneliness in West and East Germany respectively, but given that trust levels are significantly lower in areas formerly belonging to East Germany, there is reason to assume that loneliness levels are higher there as well. In Norway and Denmark, a clear majority of citizens believe that one can rely on most people, whereas only one in ten people believes the same thing in Brazil and Turkey. 9 The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s ( OECD ) surveys suggest that nine out of ten Norwegians and Danes have a ‘high level’ of trust in others, while only four in ten Greeks and Portuguese have the same. 10 It is obvious that such diverse levels of generalized trust must significantly impact people’s interaction in these countries. We also find that Norway and Denmark have among the lowest figures of loneliness in Europe, whereas Greece and Portugal have among the highest. There has been little research conducted on loneliness in China, but there is reason to believe that levels are high there as well. 11 The inverse correlation between trust and loneliness shows up on both individual and national levels. Of course, there are exceptions – there always are – and perhaps the clearest example is Japan, where there are extremely high levels of both trust and loneliness. It is often suggested that the Western world – and other parts of the world, for that matter – is experiencing a trust crisis, but not much evidence indicates a general decrease in trust levels. Of course, these levels do change over time and from sphere to sphere. For example, the financial crisis prompted a decrease in trust of financial institutions, and, in many countries, also of public authorities, but in some countries, such as Switzerland and Israel, we saw an increase in trust of authority. 12 Meanwhile, we find no basis on which to talk about a decrease in generalized trust, that is, in the trust we have towards each other as a whole, and it is this form of trust that is so significant for loneliness. Indeed, if we look at the Nordic countries, for example, generalized trust has been strongly increasing for decades, and that is from already high levels. 13 Naturally, trust is threatened – it is always threatened for the simple reason that trust is easy to break down and difficult to build up – but we have no reason to believe that trust is any more threatened today than earlier. It is disputed what exactly creates high levels of trust in a country. Many factors come into play, such as a solid rule of law, a strong civil society, low corruption, cultural homogeneity, prosperity, economic equality and so on. 14 Furthermore, higher levels of education within a country are correlated with higher trust. There also seems to be a clear correlation between individualism and generalized trust, where trust levels are higher in individualistic societies than in collective ones. A weak state or one with corrupt authorities, such that one cannot rely on one’s rights being protected, has an extremely destructive effect on generalized trust within that state. 15 Social segregation also has an extremely negative effect. In the Norwegian debate, it has been common to assert that higher trust levels are due to the welfare state. In one study, however, Andreas Bergh and Christian Bjørnskov convincingly argue that the reverse is in fact the case: that it is trust that has enabled the Norwegian welfare state. 16 This does not preclude the possibility that the development of a welfare state can in turn have a beneficial effect on trust levels, but it suggests that the key influence runs the opposite way. Having examined 77 countries, Bergh and Bjørnskov argue that a welfare state’s extent can be predicted according to historic trust levels. They attempt to demonstrate this by, among other things, considering trust levels among the offspring of emigrants from Scandinavia to the USA from 150 and 70 years ago; they find that trust levels among those individuals is far higher than in the general U . S . population. Totalitarian Loneliness Hannah Arendt mentions loneliness in her analysis of political totalitarianism. Totalitarianism destroys the space between individuals in which they can interact freely. It destroys social space, and therefore also the distinction between private and public. It is an organized loneliness. 17 Arendt is correct that totalitarian regimes create loneliness in the populace, but it is difficult to grasp her explanation for why exactly this occurs. The weakness in Arendt’s analysis is simply that trust is missing from her discussion, despite the fact that she does mention the importance of a relationship to ‘trusting and trustworthy . . . equals’. 18 Presumably, the least trusting society in history must be the Soviet Union in the 1930s. 19 There you basically could not trust anyone, nor could anyone could trust you. 20 No one could know who was an informant for the secret police, and even if you had done nothing wrong, there was always a looming danger of being arrested and sent to prison or a labour camp. Because citizens had to prove trustworthy to the regime, they could not trust each other. 21 During the 1930s, the purging of ‘enemies’ increasingly ran out of control, and to create the appearance of order, quotas of alleged ‘traitors’ were established that had to be filled, though it actually was completely unpredictable who would fit those quotas from one week to the next – it could be enough, for example, to be a philatelist. In that society, it was crucial not to reveal too much about yourself to others. Extreme caution was called for when it came to word choice, even in seemingly harmless situations, and how one expressed one’s feelings. The safest approach was simply to minimize personal contact. A strong rule of law is an essential prerequisite for trust in modern societies. Arendt underscores this in a note from 3 September 1951: Politics exists in order to guarantee a minimum of trust. The law that states: when you do this and that, this and that will happen; the agreement that states: when you fulfil this and that, I will fulfil this and that – these create a framework of predictability amid the unpredictable. Morality does the same. Politics and constitutions, therefore, become even more inexorable the less one can rely on morality – that is, in eras characterized by an expanding world where different moralities are relativized by their collision. 22 Unfortunately, Arendt did not draw this point into her analysis of loneliness in a totalitarian society, and this makes it difficult to see, in the context of such analysis, why totalitarianism produces loneliness. Indeed, it should be mentioned that Arendt continues her analysis from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) to The Human Condition (1958), and she asserts in the latter work that the same loneliness that characterizes totalitarian societies also makes itself generally felt in modern mass societies, where loneliness ‘has assumed its most extreme and most antihuman form’, on account of the breakdown in the distinction between private and public. 23 At this point, Arendt makes a mistake in her diagnosis, which she furthermore supports with nothing more than a reference to The Lonely Crowd (1950) by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney. She is correct that modern mass societies are characterized by a breakdown in distinction between private and public, but that breakdown is of an entirely different type from what is found in totalitarian societies, because it does not simultaneously imply that the space for free interaction between individuals is closed. This in turn has consequences for people’s trust of others, which also has consequences for loneliness. When it comes to trust and interpersonal relationships, there are significant differences between democracies and totalitarian or authoritarian societies. Indeed, Aristotle already anticipates this point when he observes that friendship only exists to a small degree in tyrannies and to a larger degree in democracies. 24 Trust in Interpersonal Interaction It is not difficult to see why trust plays such a decisive role in the loneliness problematic. Lack of trust produces a caution that undermines the immediacy that is so important in our attachment to others. As we find in George Eliot’s Middle-march : ‘He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?’ 25 Mistrust isolates you completely. When you demonstrate trust in someone, you become vulnerable, and when you demonstrate trust regarding something or someone important to you, you become extremely vulnerable. If you confide in them, you lose control over that information. If you attempt to form ties to them, you run the risk of rejection. Therefore it can be tempting to dismiss trusting people as naive. However, good evidence suggests that trusting people actually have a more accurate assessment of other people’s personalities and intentions. 26 They are also more nuanced in that assessment, and they react quicker, so that interactions with others proceed more smoothly. Trust solves a problem regarding interpersonal uncertainty. There are always risks involved in interaction with others. You can never know exactly what a person is thinking or what they might do. Strictly speaking, of course, you can never be sure what you yourself are thinking and might do either, but that is a separate issue. In close friendships and family relationships, you will overlook this risk. Indeed, a friendship cannot be real if you do not overlook this risk. Of course, one does not need to trust a particular individual in every respect: I can, for example, trust a friend to babysit my child without relying on him to also perform brain surgery on me. Some generalized trust must exist, however, and a generalized mistrust is a violation of the norm for friendship. Therefore, what La Rochefoucauld writes is accurate: ‘It is more shameful to mistrust our friends than to be deceived by them.’ 27 Mistrust shows that you are not a true friend, and if you are not a true friend, you might deserve to be let down: ‘Our own mistrust justifies other people’s deceptions.’ 28 In Francis Fukuyama’s words, we can say that mistrust increases the ‘transaction costs’ in human interaction. 29 That makes being together more difficult. Of course, we all show each other trust, since it is impossible to live entirely without it. Yet trust comes in degrees and varieties. Therefore, it is also misleading when the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup basically describes the matter as a clear dichotomy in The Ethical Demand (1956): It is characteristic of human life that we normally encounter one another with natural trust. This is true not only in case of persons who are well acquainted with one another but also in the case of complete strangers. Only because of some special circumstance doe we ever distrust a stranger in advance . . . Initially we believe one another’s word; initially we trust one another. This may indeed seem strange, but it is a part of what it means to be human. Human life could hardly exist if it were otherwise. We would simply not be able to live; our life would be impaired and wither away if we were in advance to distrust one another, if we were to suspect the other of thievery and falsehood from the very outset . . . To trust, however, is to lay oneself open. 30 Løgstrup emphasizes trust as a basic characteristic of human existence. And that is certainly accurate. Without an innate trust, we would not be able to grow up. However, we are not all trusting to the same extent, and mistrust need not be tied to the belief that another will betray us, but rather perhaps only to the idea that another person will not necessarily like or accept us. Humans with low generalized trust do not necessarily view others as malicious, but rather as risky – as people who could hurt them. Untrusting individuals are less likely to reveal personal information because they fear the response will be negative or that others could spread that information further. This hypothesis, meanwhile, distinguishes itself from the hypothesis that lonely people lack social skills. Fear and mistrust also become self-perpetuating. Mistrust fosters more mistrust, because, among other reasons, it isolates individuals from situations where they could have learned to trust others. Lonely people perceive their social surroundings as threatening to a greater extent than do non-lonely people, 31 and this fear hinders the precise thing that could cause it to decrease: human contact. Social fear undermines immediacy regarding other people, thereby undermining social relationships. Does low trust produce greater loneliness or the reverse? Or are they mutually reinforcing? The matter is difficult to determine, but there seems to be more support for the hypothesis that low trust levels produce loneliness than the reverse. 32 One study of American students showed that those who were taught that they should not trust strangers experienced higher levels of loneliness as adults, and this effect was stronger among women than men. 33 A considered trust is always associated with a consciousness of risk, and it contains a kernel of mistrust. It is limited and contingent: considered trust is possible only when those who demonstrate it are willing to accept that a certain risk or vulnerability exists. Yet when we show trust, we assume precisely that this exposure or vulnerability will not be exploited. When we rely on others, we consistently interpret their words and actions in a more positive light than when we do not. 34 From a distrustful perspective, on the other hand, a person has a tendency to interpret everything in the worst light, making it difficult to enter into any relationship that might have taught the individual that people can be relied on. If you do not trust others, you will limit your interactions, and that in turn means there will be fewer chances to disprove your assumption that people are untrustworthy. Mistrust prevents you from reaching outside yourself. By shutting others out, you also shut yourself inside. And loneliness will most likely accompany you there. Philosophy of Loneliness ONE The Essence of Loneliness The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people – not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also of the huge unhappiness of the average soul, as evidenced by the innumerable strident words of abuse, hatred and contempt, mistrust, and scorn that forever grate upon our ears as the manswarm passes us in the streets – we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness. THOMAS WOLFE , The Hills Beyond T here are various definitions of loneliness, but they do have some things in common: a sense of pain or sadness, a perception of oneself as being isolated or alone, and a perceived lack of closeness to others. Most definitions are variants of these basic traits. Such definitions, however, leave the door open as to whether the emotion has internal or external causes – whether it is the result of the individual’s own constitution or the conditions under which he or she lives. In contrast, it does not work to define loneliness, as does the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, in terms of failed social support or the like, for the simple reason that there are also people with adequate social support, as we typically understand it, who nonetheless suffer from chronic loneliness. 1 On the other hand, there are numerous people who experience poor social support but who are not plagued by loneliness. Statistical relationships between social support and loneliness do exist, but there is not a necessary connection, and loneliness must therefore be defined based on subjective experience rather than objective determinants such as a lack of social support. ‘Lonely’ and ‘Alone’ The first recorded use of the word ‘lonely’ in English occurs in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and is used to indicate the state of utter aloneness. This fact might lead us to assume that loneliness is largely synonymous with aloneness, and indeed the idea does seem to be widespread that people who are lonely are more alone, and that those who are alone more often are lonelier. However, as we shall see, loneliness is logically and empirically independent from aloneness. What matters is not the extent to which an individual is surrounded by other people – or animals, as the case may be – but rather how that individual experiences his relationship to others. We can say that every person is alone when it comes to experiencing the world. When you listen to a lecture, surrounded by hundreds of other people, you are in a certain sense alone with the words you are hearing. At a large concert, though surrounded by thousands, you are alone with the music, because it concerns your experience of it. Obviously, we also share these experiences with others – we process their reactions and communicate ours with words, we mime and gesture our experience of the lecture or concert – but our experience will always contain a private component that cannot fully be shared with others. Pain, for its part, cannot be shared. When it becomes strong enough, pain destroys a person’s world and language. Pain pulverizes speech. 2 One can say that something hurts, but when the pain becomes too great, even that ability is lost. Great pain cannot be shared with others, simply because there is no room for anything else when pain becomes one’s entire world. Of course, we can do more than imagine others’ pain – we can also feel it to some extent, because it hurts when we realize that another person is suffering. Nonetheless, there is a chasm between the pain another person feels and our reaction to that pain. Such experiences show the impenetrable gulf that exists between ourselves and everyone else. We are all alone in a certain sense. This is the thought that strikes Celia in T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1949) after Edward, her lover, decides to return to his wife. She says that the break-up has not simply left her alone right at that moment, but rather has made her aware that she has always been alone, that she will always be alone, and that this realization does not merely concern her relationship to Edward but to every single person: people are always alone, they make sounds and engage in mimicry, and they believe they are communicating with and understanding each other, but in reality all that is just an illusion. 3 Even though Celia uses the word ‘alone’ here, it is loneliness she is describing, the painful feeling of being disconnected from others. And Celia is right that, in a certain sense, we are born, live and die alone. We all have a self that relates to itself and is conscious of its separation from others. Indeed, one can experience a metaphysical loneliness, where one believes oneself doomed to be perpetually lonely, cut off from others because the world is structured so that we are all ultimately left to our own devices. 4 A related variant is epistemic loneliness, which is the conviction that one can never communicate with or understand any other person, and that therefore one certainly cannot be understood by others. Bertrand Russell writes about such forms of loneliness in his autobiography: Everyone who realizes at all what human life is must feel at some time the strange loneliness of every separate soul; and then the discovery in others of the same loneliness makes a new strange tie, and a growth of pity so warm as to be almost a compensation for what is lost. 5 Paradoxically enough, the insight that every person is a lonely creature reveals for Russell a connection between people that is almost capable of overcoming loneliness. Such experiences and thoughts concern something far different than mere aloneness. ‘Alone’ is basically a numerical and physical term that indicates nothing beyond the fact that a person is not surrounded by others, and the word makes no evaluation about whether that fact is positive or negative. In context, ‘alone’ can certainly attain value, such as when one declares ‘I am entirely alone’ in a tone that reveals one’s emotional state as either dejected or upbeat. ‘Lonely’, on the other hand, is always value-laden. For the most part, ‘lonely’ is used to express a negative state. On the other hand, one can also talk about ‘enjoying being alone’. That is to say, ‘lonely’ contains an emotional dimension that ‘alone’ does not necessarily possess. We can distinguish between different forms of aloneness depending on the type of relationship one has to others in that state. We can choose to be alone by heading off into nature, for example, away from others. There is also an institutionalized form of aloneness, which recognizes a person’s right to a private life. Private life, after all, is an institution whereby the social community remains intact, even though a person is permitted to withdraw from it. Finally, a person can be alone because he is socially isolated, where the desire for social relationships remains unfulfilled. There are people who, typically speaking, spend all their time alone without being plagued by loneliness, and others who feel exceptionally lonely though they are surrounded by friends and family most of the time. Indeed, an average person spends almost 80 per cent of their waking hours together with others. 6 That is also true of the lonely. If we consider the group of people who on different surveys answer that they feel lonely ‘often’ or ‘very often’, it is a common feature that these people spend no more time alone than the group who answer that they do not feel lonely. 7 Indeed, in a review of over four hundred essays devoted to the experience of loneliness, one researcher found no correlation at all between the degree of physical isolation and the intensity of the loneliness felt. 8 As such, the actual number of people by whom a person is surrounded is uncorrelated to the emotion of loneliness. There are certain indications, however, that the strongest experiences of loneliness occur in situations where the lonely individual is, in fact, surrounded by others. Being alone and being lonely are logically and empirically independent from each other. In news reports dwelling on loneliness, usually around holidays such as Christmas and Easter, the people featured are often those who are both alone and lonely. This helps create the impression that those people are lonely because they are alone. Indeed, that can seem logical. Certainly when it comes to elderly individuals who have lost a spouse, it seems clear that their loneliness is largely due to aloneness. Nonetheless, it would be premature to conclude that people who are alone and lonely are lonely because they are alone. The opposite can also be the case. As we will see, lonely individuals have character traits that complicate their ability to form connections with other people. Loneliness as such cannot be predicted by the number of people that surround an individual, but by whether the social interactions that individual has satisfy his or her desire for connection; that is, by whether they interpret those social interactions as meaningful. 9 Loneliness is a subjective phenomenon. It is experienced as a lack of satisfying relationships to others, whether because the subject has too few relationships or because their existing relationships do not provide the desired form of closeness. In order to explain the contingent relationship between social isolation and loneliness, the so-called cognitive discrepancy model of loneliness was developed. 10 According to this theory, individuals develop an inner standard or expectation against which they measure their relationships to others. If their relationships meet this standard, they will be satisfied with those relationships and will not experience loneliness. Conversely, they will experience loneliness if those relationships do not meet that standard. In the meantime, multiple studies have, surprisingly, discovered that loneliness actually increases when a person has more friends than what he or she considers ideal. 11 The four people closest to an individual in their social network provide the strongest protection against loneliness, and additional relationships yield only marginally better protection. 12 One will also be less likely to feel lonely if one has diverse relationships, with stronger ties to some and looser ties to others, and is connected to both friends and family. When asked which they prefer, most people unambiguously respond that they prefer a smaller number of closer friends instead of a larger number who are less close. 13 The quality of social networks is more important than their quantity, but under otherwise identical conditions, people with larger social networks are less lonely than people with smaller ones. One social cognitive theory of loneliness considers loneliness to be generated by higher sensitivity to social threats. 14 That is to say, lonely people fear a lack of connection to others, and therefore look for signs of failure in their relationships, which in turn undermines their connections to others, additionally reinforcing loneliness. Social rejection, furthermore, creates sensitivity to new rejections, and may again prompt a person to look for new signs of rejection. That creates a norm of caution over spontaneity in social situations, which leads to a behaviour that can increase the risk of new rejections. In Chapter Three we will examine empirical evidence that supports such a social cognitive theory. Loneliness and Life Meaning It is an established fact that both chronic loneliness and experimentally induced social isolation are connected to lower levels of experienced life meaning. 15 Life meaning can of course be studied from a variety of different approaches, but a common attribute seems to be that a person’s relationships to others plays a decisive role. 16 Without these relationships, existence seems to collapse. As William James so precisely observes: No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met ‘cut us dead,’ and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all. 17 It would be intolerable to live in a world where one’s existence, where one’s being or non-being, seemed completely irrelevant to everyone else. As Dostoevsky’s underground man writes: ‘At that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy, ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with no one and positively buried myself more and more in my hole.’ 18 He feels that his colleagues view him with disgust, and he regards them with both fear and contempt. Even as he cultivates such distance, however, he is also desperate for attention, and he tries to start fights simply so someone will take notice of him. As Kierkegaard formulates it, the self is a relation that relates to itself, 19 but it also relates to other selves that relate to their own selves in turn. We are capable of considering what others think and feel about us, and we find other people’s evaluations of us meaningful. Not meriting other people’s attention is, therefore, destructive to our self-relation. People are essentially social beings, a fact which is indisputable. In studies of subjective well-being, a life partner and friends have far greater impact than do wealth or fame. As we shall see, social isolation therefore has an extremely negative effect on both psychic and somatic health. Banishment from society has long been regarded as one of the harshest punishments a person can suffer, and in antiquity it was considered almost as severe as the death penalty. In today’s prisons, isolation is seen by many as a gruesome form of punishment. Adam Smith writes about how ‘the horror of solitude’ forces us to seek out other people, even when, for example, we are ashamed and want to escape the judgemental gaze of others. 20 He emphasizes that those who grow up in solitude will never learn to know themselves. 21 And those who live in solitude will misjudge themselves, and overvalue both the good deeds they have done and the damage they have suffered. 22 We need the eyes of others upon us. British Enlightenment philosophy consistently emphasizes the dark and destructive side of loneliness. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl Shaftesbury, writes that humans are more incapable than any other creature of tolerating loneliness. 23 Edmund Burke describes total solitude as the greatest imaginable pain, because an entire life spent in such a state conflicts with our life’s very purpose. 24 John Locke is clear in his evaluation of loneliness as an unnatural human state. God so created man in such a way that he is forced into fellowship with others of his own kind. 25 Loneliness, on the other hand, can be described as a dangerous state where emotions can easily take control of one’s mind. 26 Similarly, David Hume writes: A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoyed apart from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable. Whatever other passions we may be actuated by; pride, ambition, avarice, curiosity, revenge or lust; the soul or animating principle of them all is sympathy; nor would they have any force, were we to abstract entirely from the thoughts and sentiments of others. Let all the powers and elements of nature conspire to serve and obey one man: Let the sun rise and set at his command: The sea and rivers roll as he pleases, and the earth furnish spontaneously whatever may be useful or agreeable to him: He will still be miserable, till you give him some one person at least, with whom he may share his happiness, and whose esteem and friendship he may enjoy. 27 As such, Hume regards the kind of solitude praised by religious thinkers as completely unnatural, much like celibacy, fasting and other things. 28 There are evolutionary explanations for loneliness that emphasize the fact that we have developed to live in groups, together with others. 29 Undoubtedly, there are good evolutionary reasons to live in groups, such as the fact that one enjoys better protection from predators and can share resources. However, compelling evolutionary reasons can also be found for a creature not to live in a group, such as the fact that it makes hiding from predators easier, there is no sharing of resources, and there is no need to struggle for a place in the group hierarchy. 30 We also find that some species are more closely tied to groups than others. For example, we observe that chimpanzees are group animals to a greater extent than are orang-utans. Through a biological lens we can always say that it is ‘natural’ for humans to seek a social community, but it does not therefore follow that it is ‘unnatural’ to desire solitude or that spending a lot of time alone is necessarily negative for a person. It depends on how the individual relates to that condition. For most of us our connection to a limited number of people constitutes the majority of our life meaning. Indeed, much of the meaning in our existence seems to disappear when we lose one of our nearest and dearest. Just how much of our life meaning is bound up with our relationship to them is, unfortunately, often clear only after we have lost them. As John Bowlby writes: Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a school-child but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and on into old age. From these intimate attachments a person draws his strength and enjoyment of life . . . 31 Bowlby is perhaps a degree more unequivocal than he ought to be, because some people’s lives revolve around something other than attachments to others – for example, a researcher who spends almost all his or her time and attention on a research subject or a musician who is far more connected to his or her instrument than to any other person – but for most of us, Bowlby’s description is quite accurate. That is why it is so painful when we fail to create and maintain those attachments. The Forms of Loneliness We can distinguish between chronic, situational and transient loneliness. 32 As the name suggests, chronic loneliness is a condition in which the subject experiences constant pain on account of having insufficient ties to others. Situational loneliness is caused by life changes, such as when a close friend or a family member dies, a romantic relationship ends, children move away from home and so on. A glimpse into this type of loneliness can be found, for example, in Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary , which he wrote following the death of his mother, with whom he had lived his entire life. Barthes confesses, A cold winter night. I’m warm enough, yet I’m alone. And I realize that I’ll have to get used to existing quite naturally within this solitude, functioning there, working there, accompanied by, fastened to the ‘presence of absence’. 33 Transient loneliness can overtake us at any moment, whether we are at a crowded party or home alone. Situational loneliness, for its part, can be more intense than chronic loneliness, since it is due to a life upheaval and constitutes an experience of loss. However, because it can be attributed to a specific event – for example, a divorce or a death – we can also imagine that situational loneliness, in contrast to chronic loneliness, may be overcome by forming attachments to new people. On the other hand, the loss experience can be so powerful that it actually becomes impossible to form new ties. A literary example of this is Haruki Murakami’s protagonist Tsukuru Tazaki, whose four closest – and only – friends suddenly inform him that they have no desire to see him or talk to him again. 34 This experience shapes the rest of the man’s life and all of his relationships – both to himself and others – and he is never really able to form attachments again. Situational loneliness, we find, is due to external causes. Chronic loneliness, in contrast, seems to be rooted in the self, because external changes in circumstance make so little impact on it. Therefore, we can perhaps distinguish between endogenous and exogenous loneliness, depending on whether the loneliness emotion has its main cause in the subject or in his or her surroundings. Of course, it will often be difficult to determine to what extent the loneliness emotion is endogenous or exogenous, simply because it is a relational phenomenon whose subject experiences an unfulfilled need for attachment to others. Nonetheless, the distinction does have a certain plausibility. A person who is plagued by loneliness throughout his or her life, no matter what their surroundings and even with a loving family and a solid social network, should presumably be placed in the endogenous category. On the other hand, a person who previously has not had problems with loneliness but who has been struck by the feeling after being a victim of social exclusion, perhaps of bullying, should be placed in the exogenous category. In most cases, however, it would be logical to include both internal and external causes. Indeed, any attempt to determine to what extent internal or external, characterological or situational variables have the strongest predictive force will show that both parts are needed to explain loneliness. 35 The sociologist Robert S. Weiss distinguishes between social and emotional loneliness. 36 Social loneliness is a lack of social integration, and the socially lonely desire to be part of a community. In contrast, the emotionally lonely lack a close relationship to someone specific. According to Weiss, these two forms are distinct – they are qualitatively different. A person can suffer from one form of loneliness without suffering from the other, and can relieve one form without relieving the other. He or she can find a place in a community, and still feel emotionally lonely. On the other hand, a person can develop a close attachment to someone and still suffer from social loneliness. 37 If an individual’s partner or spouse is away for a time, emotional loneliness can make itself felt – they miss the close relationship in their existence, and contact via telephone or email is no adequate substitute. Furthermore, trips to the cinema or to concerts with friends can fulfil much of one’s social requirements and also provide distraction from the loved one’s absence, but friends are no substitute for the significant other. As the saying goes: ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ Separation increases the joy we take in those we care about. On the other hand, as Charlie Brown puts it: ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.’ We can take the other into our loneliness and relate to them mentally in a manner that is unobtainable when they are actually present. Loneliness creates a space in which we can reflect on our relationship to others, and feel how much we actually need them. In modern marriage and cohabitation, we find a development where the relationship to the partner displaces other social relationships, allowing social loneliness to arise even though the need for emotional closeness is satisfied. Similarly, children need both same-age friends and caring parental figures. A child who lacks one of these will suffer from substantial deprivation. If a child is socially isolated at school, a caring parent can improve the situation, but the parent is no adequate replacement for same-aged friends. In contrast, good school chums are no substitute for an emotionally absent parent. 38 Furthermore, there seems to be a difference in age when it comes to which form of loneliness will dominate: among younger people, it is social loneliness, and among older, emotional. 39 Nevertheless it ought to be underscored that emotional and social loneliness typically occur together. Loneliness and Health In the mass media, loneliness is often represented as a public disease or a public health problem. However, loneliness is not a disease, but a general human phenomenon. To experience the social hunger that loneliness implies is no more a sickness than feeling physically hungry because you have not eaten. However, loneliness can also develop such that it dramatically increases the risk of both mental and somatic disorders. Lonely individuals consume health services at a higher rate than do non-lonely individuals. 40 A meta-study of 148 studies examining the relationship between loneliness and health showed that loneliness was a strong mortality predictor, even though, for methodological reasons, suicide-related deaths were not considered. 41 The effect on mortality risk can be compared to smoking ten to fifteen cigarettes a day, and is greater than the impact of obesity or physical inactivity. Loneliness affects blood pressure and the immune system, and causes an increase of stress hormones in the body. 42 It also increases the risk of dementia, and generally weakens the cognitive faculties over time. Loneliness also appears to speed up the ageing process. 43 Lonely people sleep just as much as do non-lonely people, but they experience lower sleep quality and wake more often. 44 It is the subjective emotion of loneliness, as mentioned earlier, not the actual quantity of social support, that is correlated to poorer mental and somatic health. 45 As such, if we are to predict negative health outcomes, then subjective social isolation – that is, a person’s feeling of loneliness – is a much more precise variable than objective social isolation, that is, a person who is alone. Loneliness is not a psychiatric diagnosis, nor should it become one. Loneliness can become pathological, when the chronic and painful experience of being unable to truly form ties with someone affects a person’s every relationship, so that the lonely person will interpret every relationship to others as lacking in closeness. Nonetheless, loneliness as such is not a pathological phenomenon, just as not all shyness can be regarded as social anxiety. I will not discuss loneliness in the context of psychiatric diagnoses such as social anxiety or the Jungian distinction between introvert and extrovert personalities. 46 I will, however, briefly remark that a high degree of loneliness is strongly correlated to meeting the criteria for depression, but even then it is basically unclear which is the cause and which is the effect – or whether there is even a causal relationship, for that matter. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that loneliness can be used to predict an increase in depressive symptoms, but depressive symptoms are no predictor of loneliness. 47 Ultimately, these are two distinct conditions, and a person can be lonely without being depressed and depressed without being lonely. Furthermore, strong correlations exist between loneliness and suicidal thoughts and behaviours. 48 Loneliness appears to have consequences for our capacity to function in daily life. The psychologists Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge have conducted multiple experiments exploring the effects contained in the experience of social exclusion. 49 In one experiment, students were assembled in small groups and were given fifteen minutes to get acquainted with each other. After that they were separated and asked to write down the names of two people from that group with whom they wished to work. Finally, they were randomly sorted into two groups again, with one group being told that everyone wanted to work with them, and the others told that no one wanted to work with them. In another experiment, students were given personality tests, and afterwards one group was informed that they would have good relationships, friends and family in their lives, while the other group was told they were doomed to loneliness. A third group, which was the control group, was told that their lives would be full of upheaval. Baumeister and Twenge have also conducted a number of other, similar experiments. The central question is what effect hearing that they had been or would be socially excluded had on these students. The results were that: 1) they became more aggressive, not merely towards the people who had hurt them, but also towards others; 2) they made self-destructive decisions; 3) they performed poorly on tests of rational ability; 4) they gave up demanding tasks more quickly. Baumeister and Twenge concluded that social exclusion cripples our capacity to self-regulate. Obviously, self-regulation is a central component of our relationships to others, and it appears that any weakening in our relationships to others – even the perception of such a weakening – cripples our ability or our will to regulate ourselves. There is also evidence that people who feel lonely in their job perform worse at work than people who do not feel lonely. 50 Loneliness itself should not be regarded as a disease. After all, everyone experiences it occasionally and it can be regarded as a natural component of our emotional defence system. Furthermore, just as fear is not a disease, loneliness is not itself pathological. However, just as the emotion of fear can develop along pathological lines, becoming too strong and excessive, such that a person’s functionality is severely weakened, loneliness can also develop in a similar way. In this case, loneliness implies enormous consequences for a person’s mental and somatic health. Philosophy of Loneliness A PHILOSOPHY OF LONELINESS Philosophy of Loneliness For Siri, Iben and Luna Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London N 1 7 UX , UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published in English 2017 English-language translation © Reaktion Books 2017 English translation by Kerri Pierce This book was first published in 2015 by Universitetsforlaget, Oslo under the title Ensomhetens Filosofi by Lars Fr. H. Svendsen Copyright © Universitetsforlaget 2015 This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library e ISBN : 9781780237930 Philosophy of Loneliness Acknowledgements Thanks to Siri Sørlie, Marius Doksheim, Jan Hammer and Erik Thorstensen for their comments on the text. A special thanks to Thomas Sevenius Nilsen for help in organizing the data from Norway’s Survey of Living Conditions. And last but not least, thanks to my editor for many years, Ingrid Ugelvik, for once again providing good advice and insight. Philosophy of Loneliness References Introduction 1 Stendhal, On Love , p. 267. 2 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves , p. 12. 3 Simmel, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, p. 108. See also Simmel, Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms , p. 95. 4 Simmel, The Philosophy of Money , p. 298. 5 Tocqueville, Democracy in America , pp. 665, 701. 6 Tocqueville, Sel	325,351
Feeling Lonesome the Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness (Mijuskovic, Ben Lazare) (Z-Library).epub	Feeling Lonesome “Each man is like a nautilus, who lives in a house of his own making, and carries it around on his back.” —Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought Feeling Lonesome Feeling Lonesome The Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness Ben Lazare Mijuskovic Feeling Lonesome Contents Introduction Chapter 1. Historical and Conceptual Overview Chapter 2. Philosophical Roots: Self-Consciousness/Reflexivity Chapter 3. Philosophical Roots: Intentionality/Transcendence Chapter 4. Loneliness and Phenomenology Chapter 5. Psychological Roots of Loneliness Chapter 6. Loneliness and Language Chapter 7. The Unconscious and the Subconscious Chapter 8. Therapeutic Measures Afterword Index Feeling Lonesome Chapter 1 Historical and Conceptual Overview The basic assumption of this study is that the cluster of phenomena that we commonly describe as instances of loneliness cannot be addressed and penetrated unless a preliminary investigation is initially secured in terms of how certain philosophical and psychological theories of human consciousness interact with each other in accounting for human loneliness and its disquieting sense of isolation, alienation, and estrangement. The primary task of this study is the final ascertainment of just such a comprehensive theory, methodology, and paradigm sufficient to account for the feeling, meaning, and dynamic of loneliness. Accordingly, the present work seeks to fuse (1) a traditional theory of self-consciousness or reflexivity—promoted by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Husserl, and many others—with (2) the much later paradigm, although of equal importance, of intentionality, transcendence, or freedom—first suggested by Descartes and subsequently advocated by Fichte (again), Brentano, Husserl (again), and Sartre—and then to synthesize both within a cognitive as well as a motivational theory of a priori (i.e., universal and necessary) loneliness (Mijuskovic, 1988, pp. 39–50). Against this position, the combined tenets of materialism, empiricism, and behaviorism are arrayed, which collectively argue that loneliness is temporary and sporadic. Man alone, from the very inception of his awareness that there are other conscious beings, struggles to connect, to supplicate, to influence, or to master the other self in order to lessen his own sense of frightening loneliness. Most current researchers studying loneliness contend that it is caused by external and physical conditions—environmental, cultural, situational, and even chemical imbalances in the brain—and hence transient and avoidable. By contrast, I argue that loneliness is innate; that it is constituted by the intrinsic activities and structures of both self-consciousness and intentionality and therefore permanent and unavoidable. Scientific, causal explanations operate externally in the world and allegedly would continue to do so independently of the existence of human consciousness. By contrast, constitutive acts emanate from the internal resources of the mind and proceed to structure a world beyond ourselves. That being the case, without the activities of human consciousness, causal events would disappear from the fabric of reality without minds to actively structure them. In effect, the controversy pits Science against Humanism, materialism against idealism (Mijuskovic, 1976, pp. 292–306; 1984). Accordingly, in previous publications, I have argued in support of a universal principle of loneliness, insisting that all human existence, without exception, is innately lonely; that the fear of loneliness permeates and colors all aspects of life; and that once the biological needs for air, water, food, and sleep are met, the psychological drive to escape loneliness is the most insistent motivator in all mankind and certainly more powerful than the desire for sexual fulfillment or gratification. And I have sought to show why this is the case by appealing to a theory of a genuine self, in turn grounded in a Janus-faced dynamic of an active consciousness, which is both able to look within as well as without as emanating from the self. Consciousness on this view is (a) reflexive, that is, self-conscious as well as (b) creatively thrust “beyond itself,” intentional, transcendent, meaning-intending in the classic phenomenological sense of the term. The first mental activity of the infant mind strives to unify its own sensations, feelings, and thoughts as directly “belonging to its self” and as actively unified by the self. Consciousness is thus constituted as a mental entity (a self) as well as an activity, which progressively views its self as separate from surrounding objects and as it further develops in terms of loneliness distinct from other selves as well. Awareness also exhibits a principle of intentionality, a power of transcendence, the freedom to explode beyond the relative confines of reflexion, which allows the self to escape from its prison of solipsism. These two activities of the mind, though mutually constitutive, display distinct powers (Mijuskovic, 1977a, pp. 113–132, 1977b, pp. 202–216, 1977c, pp. 19–32). In the last chapter, I will also propose several beneficial measures by offering some therapeutic principles to aid us in dealing with our separate sense of isolation. Loneliness: An Intrapsychic or Interpersonal Phenomenon? Before continuing, however, I need to make a vital distinction concerning loneliness as an ultimate principle dwelling within human consciousness. My contention is that in order to understand loneliness, we must first initially approach it intrapsychically as opposed to interpersonally; psychologically as opposed to sociologically. It is one thing to claim (1) that man is a social or political animal, one among many other animals that are “social,” which, according to Aristotle, even includes certain insects, such as bees ( Politics, I, 2, 1253a, 25–31). Or, similarly, to assume, as sociologists do, that considerations focusing on the relations among the family, group, community, and polis members come first and are determinant in the formation of individual consciousness and only later does loneliness follow. But it’s quite another matter to insist, as I do, (2) that loneliness is original and primary because it is constituted by the activities and structures of self-consciousness and intentionality and therefore universal and inescapable, while, by contrast, social relationships are derivative and secondary. My view is not only that man is the loneliest of all animals precisely because of the depth and intensity of human reflexivity but that first loneliness is felt and only subsequently conceptually recognized as a problem to be overcome and transcended by social interaction. For only after experiencing a sense of isolation do issues concerning intimacy, friendship, and all the other strategies of “socialization” follow as “solutions” to the original problem, which is always dependent on the awareness of loneliness. The desire to be with and among others is only grasped within the context of possible answers to human existence after one has initially felt, acknowledged, and understood the pervasive sense of isolation that haunts the human soul. This means that loneliness is the preexisting concern, the presupposition, to invoke a Kantian concept, and socialization subsequently follows as the pursued remedy. It also means that in order to understand human existence deeply, one must first address why and how loneliness emerges and develops within the human psyche, its meaning, and its dynamic. And that can only come after considering the strengths and weaknesses between the two doctrines of reflexivity and intentionality, on the one hand, versus causal mechanisms and behaviorism on the other hand. Whatever loneliness is, it implies separation. The three primary sources of cataclysmic and traumatic separation in humans consist initially in the infant’s ejection from the womb during the violence of birth (object–object separation); second, the realization of separation of the subject/self from the external world (subject–object separation); and third, the subject’s separation from the mother (subject–subject separation). Initial confirmation for the primacy of loneliness in terms of individual human development, in opposition to theories of a social grounding, can be shown by the fact that very young infants can achieve self-consciousness before they are aware of the mother as a distinct consciousness or separate self. Ego identity and narcissistic self-centeredness precede the realization of the need for socialization and intimacy. Thus, for instance, Harry Harlow’s infant rhesus monkeys, reared in complete isolation from other primates, are able to survive physically apart from any awareness of separation from their mothers. They are self-conscious and recognize their distinctness, their separation from the material objects that surround them, since they are restricted in their primary functions to interacting with lifeless sculpted constructions made of wire, terrycloth, and button eyes serving as surrogate “mothers.” Thus, their interaction within their severely limited environment is conducted solely in the context of inanimate objects. The point is that self-consciousness can exist independently of a social environment. That means that the dynamic of separation–isolation is instituted and prevalent before socialization has had a chance to occur. It also follows that when the distress of loneliness is extreme, the self perceives the universe through the lenses of consciousness as a lifeless, impersonal, and uncaring world. Following that, it is true, as the work of Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Rene Spitz, and John Bowlby have amply demonstrated, after the child forms a bonding relation to the mother, the child will dramatically regress if the mother’s care is withdrawn. Thus, at this third developmental level of consciousness of affective and cognitive separation, when the infant realizes pronounced withdrawals of care and attention provided by a responding and nurturing other, the child will release its interest in an interactive social world and retreat inwardly, deeply within its self, by pulling back toward the womb. We can conclude therefore that initially the infant is self-aware of objects before it is conscious of the other self (the mother) and only subsequently of its separation from its caretaker (Mijuskovic, 1990, 1991, pp. 39–48). As we shall show, both Kant and Freud will argue the same, namely, that self-consciousness is first based in a dual relation holding between an animate self and inanimate objects. It’s only at a later stage of development, when the more sophisticated and complex dyadic relation of self-mother (subject–subject separation) takes place, that the child develops a sense of social loneliness by realizing his separation from a responding self-consciousness —as opposed to the separation from lifeless objects. As Margaret Mahler reports, not until five to ten months of age is the infant able to distinguish its self from a separate world of objects (Mahler et al., 1975, p. 213). Thus, only later does the child recognize another level of deeper separation, this time from the mother and/or other selves. The importance of this distinction is that in order to understand loneliness, we must trace its development through all phases of separation because the early patterns imprinted within the human psyche will serve as prototypes for subsequent senses of separation. According to Mahler et al., it is only in the third stage that the child recognizes for the first time his separateness from his mother. This is an achievement of [cognitive] representational intelligence that makes possible the internal capacity to differentiate self representation. This brings in its wake (in normal development) the gradual realization on the part of the child that he is relatively small and helpless and has to cope with overwhelming odds as a relatively weak and lonely (because separate) individual. (Mahler et al., 1975, p. 213) We may conclude then that after the trauma of birth and the infant’s physical separation from the womb, two other crises of painful disruptions/separations follow: The self becomes self-aware of its distinction from a sphere of inanimate objects and only later from the mother as a distinct other self. Both crises involve major developmental adjustments and future implications in terms of loneliness. The fear of loneliness grounded in perceived neglect, rejection, abandonment, or betrayal is innate and lasts throughout our lives—from infancy until we expire. No human being would ever wish to be immortal at the price of existing as the only conscious creature in an otherwise completely lifeless universe. In emphasizing this critical affective and cognitive principle, I am reminded of Kant’s retelling of “Carazan’s Dream” from the Bremen Magazine. The following passage represents the most extreme metaphysical argument—a “clinching proof”—depicting the fear of cosmic loneliness and the threat of eternal isolation that the human spirit can possibly conceive. The more his riches had grown, the more did this miserly man bar his heart to compassion and the love of others. Meanwhile, as the love of mankind grew cold in him, the diligence of his prayers and religious devotion increased. After this confession, he goes on to recount: One evening, as I did my sums by my lamp and calculated the profits of my business, I was overcome by sleep. In this condition, I saw the angel of death come upon me like a whirlwind, and he struck me, before I could plead against his terrible blow. I was petrified as I became aware that my fate had been cast for eternity, and that to all the good I had done nothing could be added, and from all the evil I had done, nothing could be subtracted. I was led before the throne of he who dwells in the third heaven. The brilliance that flamed before me spoke to me thus: Carazan, your divine service is rejected. You have closed your heart to the love of humankind and held on to your treasure with an iron hand. You have lived only for yourself, and hence in the future you shall also live alone and secluded from all communion with the entirety of creation for all eternity. In this moment, I was ripped away by an invincible force and driven through the shining edifice of creation. I quickly left innumerable worlds behind me. As I approached the most extreme limits of nature, I noticed that the shadows of the boundless void sank into the abyss before me. A fearful realm of eternal solitude and darkness! Unspeakable dread overcame me at this sight. I gradually lost the last stars from view and finally the last glimmer of light was extinguished in the most extreme darkness. The mortal terror of despair increased with every moment, just as every moment my distance from the inhabitable world increased. I reflected with unbearable anguish in my heart that ten thousand years were to carry me further beyond the boundaries of everything created. I would still see forward into the immeasurable abyss of darkness without help or hope of returning—In this bewilderment I stretched my hands out to actual objects with such vehemence that I was awakened. And now I have been instructed to esteem human beings for even the least of them, whom in the pride of my good fortune I had turned away from my door, would have been far more welcome to me in that terrifying desert than all the treasure of Golconda. (Kant, 2011, pp. 16–17) As Carazan’s description of his despair and dread testifies, the ultimate terror of absolute and perpetual loneliness demonstrates that the primary psychological and motivational drive in mankind is first to avoid isolation and second to secure divine, human, or sentient contact at any cost. The drive to escape loneliness animates all our passions, thoughts, and actions; all we feel, think, say, and do. The highest goal and protection against loneliness is intimacy, the ability to fill the emptiness of loneliness through an emotional fusion with another sentient, thinking being. I have quoted this passage from Kant at length because I believe it conveys both the essential fear of loneliness, which inhabits the human psyche, while at the same time it provides a promise of its resolution. Thus, at the heart of Carazan’s nightmare is the unspoken implication that no human being would ever choose to be immortal at the price of being the only self-conscious existence within the cosmic dimensions of infinite space and eternal time. That would be an unbearable metaphysical and psychological loneliness! In those frightening circumstances, the mind would simply self-destruct. First Principles. Aristotle defines philosophy as the search for first principles, basic assumptions, underived premises (Aristotle, 1941). First principles are always critically important because the construction of the ensuing system is designed to follow as consistently as possible from the assumed basic premise(s). However, it’s vital to notice that ultimately all first principles are a matter of the heart and not the head (Pascal, Pensees, # 423); the result of our passional natures (James, “The Will to Believe”); or, in the last analysis, a final choice simply made by personal interest or inclination between either idealism or materialism but not both (Kierkegaard). Neither of these two systems [of idealism and materialism] can directly refute its opposite, for their quarrel is about the first principle, which admits of no derivation from anything beyond it; in each of the two, if only its first principle is granted, refutes that of the other; each denies everything in its opposite, and they have no point at all in common from which they could arrive at mutual understanding and unity.… Now the presentation of the independence of the self, and that of the thing, can surely coexist [as in dualism], but not the independence of both. Only one of them can be the first, the initiatory, the independent one: the second, by virtue of being second, necessarily becomes dependent on the first, upon which it is to be conjoined. Now which of the two should be taken as primary? Reason provides no principle of choice; for we deal here not with the addition of a link in the chain of reasoning, which is all that rational grounds extend to, but with the [volitional] beginning of the whole chain, which, as an absolutely primary act [of the will], depends solely upon the freedom of thought. Hence the choice is governed by caprice, and since even a capricious decision must have some source, it is governed by inclination and interest. The ultimate basis of the difference between idealists and dogmatists [or materialists] is thus the difference of their interests. (Fichte, 1970, pp. 12, 15–16; emphasis in the original) It’s also crucial to notice that first principles, as Fichte indicates, cannot be combined; they are mutually exclusive: One is either pregnant or not pregnant; one cannot be a “little bit” pregnant. In what follows, I intend to investigate, compare, and contrast two sets of opposing first principles and their generated paradigms that are directly relevant to the Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness. Accordingly, I propose to demonstrate that there exists a universal and necessary, that is, a priori relation between metaphysical dualism and an epistemic subjective idealist theory of consciousness, which I wholeheartedly support, and the inevitability of human loneliness. Although there are four notable paradigms of awareness that dominate Western thought, I shall leave aside consideration of William James’s 1904 essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?” (James 1962, pp. I, 207–221) and Bertrand Russell’s lengthy treatise, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1966), both of which argue in behalf of neutral monism, as well as Sartre’s neutered version of the intentionality principle in the Transcendence of the Ego (Sartre 1970) because of their joint rejections of (1) a viable concept of the self; and (2) self-consciousness. Consequently, we are left with two strong candidates of competing philosophical and psychological systems : (a) materialism, empiricism, phenomenalism, nominalism, behavioral therapy, evidence-based practices, and science on the one hand versus (b) idealism, rationalism, phenomenology, existentialism, conceptualism, insight-oriented therapy, and humanism on the other hand. It further follows that the therapeutic interventions designed to address loneliness as the most significant crisis facing each of us individually—apart possibly from death—will ultimately depend on which of the two conflicting principles and systems of the brain or mind we will decide to endorse. Materialism versus Idealism. Now that we have started in earnest and before continuing any further, it’s obviously important to provide some more adequate working definitions for our discussion. Roughly, in terms of metaphysics, materialism is the thesis that all that exists is reducible to matter plus motion (gravity/energy). It assumes that the sun, the moon, and stones would still exist apart from the presence of any sentient creatures; it is causal and mechanistic in intent. The brain is like a computer, and it is programmed by external physical motions, by stimuli that cause behavioral responses and reactions (Democritus, Hobbes, Skinner). Psychological behaviorism is a natural and logical outcome of materialism. Science itself is materialistic in its intent and procedures. It assumes the existence of a domain of things, of objects independently of human consciousness. By contrast, following G. E. Moore’s definition, idealism is the thesis that all that exists is, in the last analysis, mental, mind-dependent, or spiritual; that the concepts of matter, space, time, and “physical objects” are only meaningful as creations of the human mind (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel). Dualism is the thesis that there are two irreducible substances, matter and mind(s) or extension and thoughts; and hence two sorts of radically separate realities. More specifically, there are (c) inert, spatially extended objects, passive sensations, stimulus-response mechanisms, and brains on the one hand (Democritus, Hobbes) as opposed to (d) active thoughts, concepts, rational inferences, and minds on the other hand (Plato, Descartes, Kant). Empiricism versus Rationalism. In an epistemological context, empiricism is the premise that all our ideas are derived from precedent sensations and therefore passively generated from without by external causes; or, alternatively, there is no idea in the mind which is not first given in experience. The mind is like a tabula rasa, a blank tablet upon which experience “writes” (Aristotle, Locke). The key notion of causality is attributed to the imagination , to habit, and to custom—but not reason—which results in the “principle of the “association of ideas.” The ideas of cause and effect are contingently related when sensations are experienced together through contiguity and resemblance, thus resulting in a sense of “constant conjunction,” a psychological feeling of anticipation, of “necessity” and succession; a belief that certain events will be followed by similar events in the future (Hume). A further meta-principle in empiricism is the assumption of the “uniformity of nature,” that the future will repeat and resemble the past (Mill). (Hume, however, had already shown, before Mill, that the inductive principle of the uniformity of nature has no basis in either reason or experience.) Phenomenalism, a species of empiricism, is the premise that the external world, other selves, and even the self are “constructions” of discrete mental impressions, sensations, sense data, or qualia (Hume again). The mind is thus restricted to subjective perceptions and ideas. Further, nominalism argues that only particulars exist and thus our knowledge can be reduced to a fortuitous composition of simple sensations. In opposition, rationalism is the opposing premise that there are some ideas, often technically termed “pure” or nonsensory concepts, as well as structural laws, which are actively generated from within the mind, from its own internal resources, and thus presupposed independently of sensation and experience. These concepts include relations, categories, and connecting links that are created or produced by the activities of the mind, as, for example, substance-attribute and cause-effect, which function as unifying principles of connection that are universal (true in any conceivable universe) and necessary (the opposite assertion implying a contradiction); in short, they are a priori (Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant). Or, as Leibniz quips, there is nothing in the mind which is not first given in experience, except the mind itself. Phenomenology rests on the premise that consciousness is actively intentional; it is consciousness of or about something other than itself; something beyond or transcendent to the self; it is meaning-intending; it “points toward” or “targets” objects, emotions, moods, laws, values, and so on, as meanings constituted by acts of intentional consciousness (Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre). Conceptualism holds that both particulars and universals exist, the first in external reality and the second in the mind. Existentialism is the conviction that the human condition should be described and expressed in terms of ultimate concerns, such as the individual’s sense of loneliness, meaninglessness, freedom, and death (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger (?), and Sartre). The battle over the ultimate origin and force of loneliness is arrayed between these two lines of engagement: materialism, empiricism, and behaviorism on the one side and idealism/dualism, rationalism and insight on the other side. The Metaphysical Issue of “Whether Senseless Matter Can Think?” The controversy between the priority of the brain over the mind, or the reverse, forms one of the most important philosophical issues in the history of Western thought. It consists in the “Battle between the Giants and the Gods” prefigured in Plato’s Sophist (Plato, 1966b, pp. 245e–246e). It is grounded in the conflict between materialism and empiricism versus idealism and rationalism, both of which ultimately underlie their respective disagreement concerning first principles and their ensuing radically opposed systems in regard to the issue concerning reality, consciousness, knowledge, and, for our purposes, most importantly loneliness. It pits Democritus against Plato; Epicurus against Plotinus; Skeptics and Atheists against Augustine and Aquinas; Valla against Ficino; Hobbes against Descartes; Locke against Leibniz; Marx against Hegel; Mill against Bradley; Gilbert Ryle and D.M. Armstrong against H.D. Lewis and Richard Swinburne; and so on. The crux of the continuing disagreement between materialists and empiricists against idealists/dualists and rationalists is centered on a single question: “whether senseless matter can think?” It is helpful to keep this issue in mind throughout the course of this study because it not only makes a difference, it makes all the difference. Because this controversy has a special application to man’s sense of loneliness and isolation, in what follows I intend to volley back and forth by alternating between key advocates for both of these two antithetical positions while criticizing the behavioral agenda, and at the same time attempting to make the strongest case possible in behalf of the humanist approach to loneliness. More specifically, we may ask how does all this relate to our discussion of loneliness and whether its occurrences are transient or permanent? And what are the implications for possible therapeutic approaches and strategies in addressing issues of human loneliness? Because behaviorism is a form of materialism, it ultimately reduces the “mind” to the brain, the central nervous system, and finally to physiology. And although it invokes terms such as “sensation,” “thought,” “consciousness,” and “mind,” in the last analysis they all reductively point to physical substances, to aggregations of cells situated in the skull, which, when triggered by sensory stimuli from outside and external to the brain elicit behavioral responses. Our brains react to external, material stimuli through our five senses, thus causing physical behaviors, which, in turn, can be monitored and recorded by a machine, an electroencephalograph. As William James said, “We do not cry because we are sad; we are sad because we cry.” In effect, it eliminates the mind by substituting in its place the brain as a passive recipient, which remains inactive by its very nature unless jostled by external physical forces. Hence, the term “patient” implying passivity is usually used by clinicians and behaviorists sympathetic to the model instead of the term “subject,” which rather implies an active agent. Behav iorism stresses physical factors as well as stimulus-response mechanisms; it emphasizes quantitative features as opposed to qualitative ones; observable and measurable physiological and chemical reactions; it favors both physical and psychological determinism over freedom; and control and predictability over choice and creativity. But even so, although an electroencephalograph can tell us that a person is thinking, it cannot tell us what they are thinking. But most importantly, materialism, empiricism, and behaviorism all deny any significant reality to a “stable” self. The only possible recourse in terms of a criterion of “personal identity” or “selfhood” for behaviorism is to refer to the individual’s stable DNA molecular structure as the criterion of “identity,” since already in the eighteenth century anatomists were well aware that all the cells in the body undergo a complete transformation within seven years time and therefore personal identity could not be established on the basis of bodily identity alone. Behaviorism, together with its attendant doctrines, is the position I shall challenge as an inadequate explanation for human loneliness. Accordingly, I shall argue that materialism, empiricism, and behaviorism are unable to account for the reality of the self and the mental activities of reflexion and intentionality. Improved Behavior or Insight? What Is the Goal and Criterion of Successful Treatment? Therapeutically, the two viewpoints also differ in the following regard: Behaviorism favors formal written “contracts” between the therapist and the patient designed to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time limited (SMART). The contracts are frequently used, not unexpectedly because of their fundamental material grounding in the brain, in conjunction with psychiatric medications. Thus, behavioral and cognitive therapies favor empirical, evidence-based practices, which focus on the present in promoting psychological relief. Further, behaviorism believes that all disorders are caused by operant conditioning and/or chemical imbalances in the brain. Indeed, contemporary physiological science is currently promoting a doctrine of “neuroplasticity,” which subscribes to the thesis that (mental?) emotions actually cause a physical restructuring of the brain as the scientific wave of the future. This view, for example, has been advocated very recently in John McGraw’s comprehensive Volume I of his study on loneliness (p. 21). Of course, illicit street drugs do the same. (McGraw’s claim, however, doesn’t resolve the question of whether these emotions are physical or mental.) But if loneliness is reducible to operant conditioning, then conceivably one could self-administer an electric shock each time he felt or thought about being lonely and then it would magically extinguish the emotion and no one would ever feel or be lonely again. By contrast, insight treatments are grounded in reviving and reliving the past and exploring the unconscious, hidden, and long-forgotten feelings and meanings embedded within the self. By a process of excavating and uncovering the irrational and dysfunctional connections within the mind, it seeks to liberate the self. Insight therapy posits the active nature of the mind; it promotes self-conscious or reflexive mental activity as well as acts of intentionality, transcendence, freedom, spontaneity, and the creative aspects of consciousness. And, just as importantly, it defends the existence of a stable self, a real self. By a “real self,” I simply mean that the ego, at the very least, displays some cognizable temporal duration and continuity within consciousness. Further, it will turn out that the filament of the unconscious is actually continuous throughout life and therefore constitutes a contributing condition serving as a criterion for ongoing personal identity (Mijuskovic, 2010, pp. 105–132). Loneliness and the History of Philosophy and Ideas. My training is in the History of Philosophy and more specifically in the discipline that goes by the title of the History of Ideas, which traces “unit” concepts, premises, or arguments by applying an interdisciplinary method throughout various historical periods as defined by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1964). I have strong sympathies with these two disciplines, as will be apparent throughout the present text. But I should caution the reader that in the process of tracing the conceptual history of loneliness, the emphasis is always on its theoretical flowing stream of principles, concepts, and arguments rather than on any particular swimmer who plunges into its waters either briefly or permanently. Over time, however, I developed a special interest in theories of consciousness, and in this context the present study is an effort to connect a specific historical and contemporary view of consciousness with the reality and power of loneliness. Many years ago, I became involved in ferreting out the multiple implications embedded in a unique Platonic premise that has been repeatedly invoked in behalf of four distinguishable conclusions throughout the History of Philosophy: (a) the immortality of the soul; (b) the unity of consciousness; (c) personal identity; and (d) epistemological or transcendental idealism. The principle (or assumption) connects two interrelated mental aspects: (1) the mind is an immaterial substance; a self; and (2) thinking is an activity of consciousness. In Plato’s dialogue, Phaedo, he enlists the premise in his second argument for the individual immortality of the rational soul by contending that whatever is both immaterial and active cannot be destroyed because it has no parts; it is “simple.” And since mortal destruction is defined as the decomposition of a compound, it follows that the soul “escapes” when the body disintegrates, and hence death is avoided (Plato, 1966b, pp. 78b–81a). Citing my discussion of the Phaedo in The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments (1974), Raymond Martin and John Barresi connect the immortality argument and the substantial nature of the self with early conceptions of personal identity (Martin & Barresi, 2006, pp. 6, 13–16, 35). Following Plato, Plotinus will connect it to inferences concerning the unity of consciousness. And in the seventeenth century Descartes will initiate its employment in arguments entailing epistemological and eventually transcendental idealism. The term “transcendental” refers throughout this study to the a priori conditions which underlie the possibility of human cognition; for without these conditions being fulfilled, consciousness could not exist; indeed, awareness would not be possible. For example, without some structural notion of the relation of causes to effects; or without some internal account for time-consciousness, human thought would be an inexplicable mystery (Kant). Objects would appear and disappear at random, and time sequences would be nonexistent or at best completely random, unexpected, and utterly disorganized. Five years later, in Contingent Immaterialism, I argued for three additional uses for the Achilles or Simplicity Argument, which will be shown to provide strong supportive roles in the Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness. They consist in: (e) the immaterial nature of meanings and relations (Mijuskovic, 1976, pp. 292–306; 1984); (f) the freedom or transcendence of self-consciousness (Mijuskovic, 1978b; 1984); and (g) immanent or personal time-consciousness (in opposition to time as interpreted by classical Aristotelian physics and later Newtonian mechanics as the external movement of objects through empty space (Mijuskovic, 1978a, pp. 276–286; 1984). All seven uses depend on (a) an immaterialist and (b) active theory of the mind and finally lead to a paradigm of enforced solitude. With the exception of its employment in proofs for personal immortality, the remaining half dozen inferences all assume significant roles in the dynamics of loneliness. But whether one is convinced of only one or all seven applications of the Achilles Argument, it follows that even if one agrees with a single use, it opens the possibility of viewing loneliness through idealist and rationalist lenses. The Inadequacy of Behavioral, Cognitive, and Psychoanalytic Methodologies and Treatments. In the following, I intend to reject three current theories of therapy in regard to loneliness: behavioral treatment because it is stuck in the brain; cognitive treatment because it is stuck in the present; and psychoanalytic treatment because it is stuck in “scientific” determinism. Lest the reader consider these metaphysical and epistemological issues as irrelevant or unduly esoteric digressions, allow me to point out that Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, for example, started from a materialist neurological base but later depended heavily on rather humanistic metaphors involving Greek myths in order to “explain” sexual urges and internal conflicts as grounded within an unchanging conception of human nature. Although Freud depends on insight through a “free associative” process focused on uncovering the repressed sources of anxiety to enlighten individuals about their internal conflicts, to my knowledge he never explicitly undertakes to account for self-consciousness itself, thereby taking it for granted and thus leaving his notion of insight rather unclear. And how exactly does the Oedipal conflict relate to neurons? He seems to have one foot in biology and the other in the mind. Beyond that, he says very little about loneliness—though a great deal about erotic and unrequited love and the loss of the “love object.” However, there is a notable passage in which he cites a little boy’s anxiety in his dark bedroom yearning to be reassured by his aunt’s voice of her continued presence close by confirming that he is not alone (Freud, 1920, pp. 340–355). In Mourning and Melancholy , Freud, to be sure, discusses the distress and sense of loss in losing a “love object” when death intervenes but it’s primarily from a therapeutic point of replacing it. REFERENCES Aristotle. (1941). Physics, Book I, 184a, 9–12. Descartes, R. (1955). Philosophical Works of Descartes. New York: Dover. Fichte, J. W. (1970). Science of Knowledge. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Freud, S. (1920). Part Three: General Theory of Neuroses: XXV. Fear and Anxiety. In A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York: Boni and Liveright. Hume, D. (1973). A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. James, W. (1962). Does consciousness exist? In Twentieth Century Philosophy. W. Barrett & W. Aiken (Eds.). New York: Random House. Kant, I. (2011). Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings. Frierson, P., & Guyer, P. (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lovejoy, A. O. (1964). The Great Chain of Being. New York: Harper & Row. Mahler, M, Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant. New York: Basic Books. Martin, R., & Barresi, J. (2006). The Rise and Fall of the Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity. New York: Columbia University Press. Mijuskovic, B. (1974). The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments: The Simplicity, Unity, and Identity of Thought and Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Mijuskovic, B. (1976). The simplicity argument versus a materialist theory of mind. Philosophy Today, 20:4. Mijuskovic, B. (1977a). Loneliness: an interdisciplinary approach, Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 40:2; reprinted in Hartog, J., Audy, J., & Cohen, Y. (Eds.). (1980). New York: International Universities Press. Mijuskovic, B. (1977b). Loneliness and the reflexivity of consciousness, Psychocultural Review, 1:2. Mijuskovic, B. (1977c). Loneliness and a theory of consciousness. Review of Existential Psychiatry and Psychology, X:1. Mijuskovic, B. (1978a). Loneliness and time-consciousness. Philosophy Today, 22:4. Mijuskovic, B. (1978b).The simplicity argument and the freedom of consciousness: Hegel and Bergson. Idealistic Studies, VIII:1. Mijuskovic, B. (1984). Contingent Immaterialism: Meaning, Freedom, Time and Mind. Amsterdam: Gruner. Mijuskovic, B. (1988). The self-contained patient: reflexivity and intentionality, The Psychotherapy Patient, 3:4; reprinted in Stern, M. (Ed.). (1989). Psychotherapy and the Self-Contained Patient . New York: Haworth Press. Mijuskovic, B. (1990). Loneliness and intimacy. Journal of Couples Therapy, 1:3/4; reprinted in Brothers, B. (Ed.). (1991). Autonomous Intimacy: Intimate Autonomy. New York: Haworth Press. Mijuskovic, B. (2010). Kant’s reflections on the unity of consciousness, time-consciousness, and the unconscious. Kritike, 4:2. Mijuskovic, B. (2012). Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature . Blooming, IN: iUniverse. Plato. (1966a). Collected Dialogues of Plato . Hamilton, E. & Cairns, E. (Eds.). New York: Pantheon. Sophist. Plato. (1966b). Phaedo . Russell, B. (1966). The philosophy of logical atomism. In Logic and Knowledge. London: George Allen & Unwin. Sartre, J.-P. (1970). The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. New York: Noonday Press. Feeling Lonesome Chapter 4 Loneliness and Phenomenology As a waiver for the ensuing discussion, I intend to put aside Sartre’s technical distinction between “reflective” and “pre-reflective” consciousness and instead confine myself to what I consider to be the traditional historical meaning of the term “self-consciousness” or “reflexion” as I have outlined it throughout the present study, which provides me with the advantage of accessing a span of two-and-a half millennia covering the ancient, modern, and contemporary discussions on the subject. The threefold goal in the present chapter is to show: (a) that Husserl’s phenomenological method inevitably leads to a substantial ego; (b) how his constitutive acts of intentionality contribute a vital insight into the temporal acts that terminate in an isolated, lonely self; and (c) that both intentionality and reflexivity are necessary to understand the dynamics of loneliness. Before beginning, however, one of the obvious hurdles to my interpretation is that Husserl initially in his writings brackets and “puts out of gear” any and all considerations that the ego is a substance, something I am concerned to assert. Indeed, the preposition of or about in phenomenology fundamentally implies nonreflexive intentionality. An essential feature of the representational theory of knowledge is that the world and other selves are inferred. Husserl’s epistemic program instead focuses on the immediate, intuitive “givenness” of meanings, the “things themselves.” His overall purpose then is to ground his phenomenological method in a presuppositionless beginning (as was Hegel’s before him). Whereas Leibniz and Kant presuppose a priori mediate concepts, categories, judgments, and principles (in opposition to the presuppositions of empiricism and phenomenalism regarding the immediacy of sensations or impressions), Husserl begins with the immediately present to consciousness by emphasizing the active principle of intentionality. In pursuing this interpretation, I also expect to show that Husserl’s intentionality eventually will lead him to accept self-consciousness or reflexivity as well in his description of the dual constitutive acts of the mind. Thus, as his view of the phenomenological method develops, I argue that he progressively becomes constrained to turn inwardly toward transcendental subjectivity, the ego, and its contribution to the constitutive acts generative of consciousness, meaning, and loneliness. A helpful contrast can be drawn between Husserl and Sartre. Sartre accepts the principle of intentionality but rejects Kant’s and Husserl’s structural activities emanating from the undisclosed ego in The Transcendence of the Ego. Sartre’s answer is Being and Nothingness, wherein the ego is presented as a “nothingness” without either Kantian or Husserlian structures contributing to the opacity, the distortion of the “seen.” But in terms of our interest in tracking the import of phenomenology in the context of a Philosophy and Psychology of Loneliness, Husserl’s concentration on Kantian constitutive, structural acts emanating from the ego presents an important shift in favor of both the reality of the self and the synthetic a priori relation holding between intentionality and reflexion. In effect, Husserl’s thought evolves from initially seeking to phenomenologically “discovering” the truth to later “spontaneously creating” it along more “idealist” and Kantian lines (Ricoeur, 1966). Husserl’s debt to Descartes is twofold, and we will acknowledge them in the same order as they are presented in Descartes’s Meditations. First, the universal doubt, the classic skeptic’s “suspension of judgment,” which he announces in Meditation I: Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful, his hyperbolic doubt . This includes the existence of the external world, the “objective” reference of his sensations, mathematical certainty, and even his own existence. Husserl’s own version follows. We can now let the universal epoche (abstention) in the sharply defined and novel sense we have given to it step into the place of the Cartesian attempt at universal doubt.… If I do this, as I am fully free to do, I do not then deny this “world,” as though I were a sophist, I do not doubt that it is there as though I were a sceptic; but I use the “phenomenological” epoche, which completely bars me from using any judgment that concerns the spatio-temporal existence ( Dasein ). ( Ideas [1962], Section 32; cf. Crisis [1970] , Section 17) The second “borrowing” from Descartes is addressed to the theme of intentionality. Again, in Descartes’s Meditation II, titled Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is more easily known than the Body, Husserl argues in agreement with Descartes for a direct access to the contents and acts of consciousness. It is in this sense that the cogito will “lend” its indubitable certainty, its absolute truth-value to the entire synthetic a priori structure of ego-cogito-cogitatum. Thus, Husserl declares: It is intentionality which characterizes consciousness , in the pregnant sense of the term, and justifies us in describing the whole stream of experience as at once a stream of consciousness and unity as one consciousness.… Intentionality the unique peculiarity of experience “to be the consciousness of something, maybe a thing.” It was in the explicit cogito that we first came across this wonderful property in which all metaphysical enigmas and riddles of the theoretical reason lead us eventually back; perceiving is the perceiving of something, maybe a thing; judging the judging of a certain matter; valuation; the valuing of a value; wish, the wish of the content wished, and so on.… In every wakeful cogito a “glancing” ray from the pure ego is directed upon the “object” of the correlate of consciousness for the time being, the thing and so forth.” ( Ideas, Section 84) Husserl’s hallmark description is seconded in the following commentary by Maurice Natanson: The essence of consciousness is directionality [or intentionality]. All perceptual acts, according to Husserl, have one dominant characteristic; they point toward, or intend, some object. Thus, all thinking is thinking of something; all willing is willing of something; all imagining is imagining of something. Perception is not a state but a mobile act- ivity. In its essential dynamic, perception (in the widest possible sense) projects itself toward its intended object but that object is not to be understood as a “thing” but rather as the correlate of its attending act or acts. (Natanson, 1973, p. 85) But in the beginning there is no possibility of accessing or intuiting the ego itself. Intentionality is not of or about the ego itself. There can be no self-conscious eidetic intuition of the ego by and for its self. Consequently, I wish to show that although Husserl begins by “bracketing” the ego as a substance and stresses intentionality at the expense of reflexion, in the end he will depend on both for their theoretical advantages in fully accounting for the consciousness of loneliness. In effect, I will show that both reflexivity and intentionality are compatible through their common source: the activity of consciousness. We recall that during our earlier discussion of first principles, I stated that differing ultimate assumptions cannot be combined or synthesized and that is true. But both reflexion and intentionality are activities of consciousness, and that is their grounding basis of compatibility and synthesis. Together, they constitute an	555,648
Finding Your Way through Loneliness (Elisabeth Elliot) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Finding Your Way through Loneliness 9 A Love Strong Enough to Hurt The loss of someone we love, whether by death or otherwise, brings us to the brink of the abyss of mystery. If we wrestle, as most of us are forced to do, with the question of God in the matter, we are bound to ask why He found it necessary to withdraw such a good gift. We will not get the whole answer, but certainly one answer is the necessity of being reminded that wherever our treasure is there will our hearts be also. If we have put all our eggs in the basket of earthly life and earthly affections, we haven’t much left when the basket falls. Christians, being citizens of Another Country, subject of a Heavenly King, are supposed to set their affections there rather than here—a lesson few learn without mortal anguish. Sheldon Vanauken’s love for his wife, Davy, as he writes in A Severe Mercy , was an all-consuming love—passionate, romantic, and, as his friend C. S. Lewis pointed out to him, selfish. In their pre-Christian days a shortsighted view of happiness led them to exclude all others, to the point of Vanauken’s refusal even to allow children to “mar” what he and Davy had. When they became Christians he began to feel that she was “holier than necessary,” and to see God as his rival. One night Davy offered up her life for her husband, that his soul might be fulfilled. Had they not had all anyone could ask for fulfillment ? Davy knew they had not. She had found hers in Christ, and longed that her husband too should find his there. It was a drastic prayer she prayed, one that she knew would cost her something. It did. God accepted her surrender, and a year later she died. A strange answer, some would say. The end of a “perfect” marriage. Stripped at last of the object of a passion that had shut out all else, Vanauken did, through much anguish, find the fulfillment for which Davy had prayed. Her death was what his friend Lewis called a severe mercy. Might God sometimes take from us our love because we love too much? I don’t think so. Surely it is impossible to love “too much,” for love is from God, who is Love. Usually we love too little and too sentimentally. Our love, God-given though it be, is usually mixed up with possessiveness and selfishness. It needs strengthening and purifying. Human love is often inordinate, which means disorderly, unregulated, unrestrained, not limited to the usual bounds. If we love someone more than we love God, it is worse than inordinate—it is idolatry. When God is first in our hearts, all other loves are in order and find their rightful place. If God is not first, other loves, even those which are in no sense sexual, easily turn into self-gratification and therefore destroy both the love and the beloved. Vanauken had constructed a world for himself and the woman he loved, and thrown up around it what they called The Shining Barrier. Shutting out all else, they determined to make things work their way. It was a rigid structure, perilously maintained, and when Christ came into their lives it cracked. “Any man who falls on that stone will be dashed to pieces; and if it falls on a man he will be crushed by it” (Luke 20:10 NEB). Lewis helped Vanauken to see that his very agony was the mercy of God. In His mercy God stands silently by and permits us to agonize. We simply cannot turn to Him until we have nowhere else to turn. Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven” describes a lonely man’s attempt to flee Him and find solace elsewhere. I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from him . . . He tried romantic love, he tried the love of children, he tried Nature, while Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following Feet. . . . At last the Hound chases him to earth. He hears a Voice around, “like a bursting sea,” which says: “All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, but just that thou shouldst seek it in My arms, All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home; Rise, clasp My hand, and come!” “Not for thy harms.” Like a skilled surgeon, God may have to hurt us, but He will never harm us. His object is wholeness. “Stored for us at home.” Everything we have lost? Did we only fancy it as lost? How can this be? We may not ask too many questions about the hows of God’s secret work. Consider this list of questions: Can God spread a table in the wilderness? Has your God been able to save you from the lions? Can these bones live again? How is the Lord to save Jerusalem? Is this your care for the widow? Which way are we to turn? Why wait any longer for him to help us? Where can we buy bread? How can a man be born when he is old? How can you give me living water? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? How is it that this untrained man can teach? What is the good of that for such a crowd? Who will roll away the stone? 1 We may add our own burning question about how God stores things for us at home. If a child has died, the answer may not seem too difficult—the child is in heaven. But other losses? The Bible is a book about the mysterious ways of God with individual men. It shows us on every page that there is a Controller. We have a tendency to dismiss the possibility of mystery in our own lives, even when we are faithful readers and professed believers of the Bible, with remarks like, “Oh, but that was back then.” Jesus Christ is the same. Yesterday. Today. Forever. We have innumerable promises that the Seen is not the whole story. The Unseen is where it is to be finally unfurled. “Our troubles are slight and short-lived; and their outcome an eternal glory which outweighs them far. Meanwhile our eyes are fixed, not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen: for what is seen passes away; what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17–18 NEB). How shall we be sure that the word “not for thy harms” is true? How shall we fix our eyes on things unseen? There is no answer but faith, faith in the character of God Himself. That and no other is the anchor for our souls. Finding Your Way through Loneliness To the memory of Katherine Morgan Blessed are [those] whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs. . . . They go from strength to strength. Psalm 84:5–7 RSV Finding Your Way through Loneliness 13 Married but Alone If I try to write for all who experience aloneness in any form, I tread often on unfamiliar ground. I have not been there, and I cannot say, “I understand perfectly. I know exactly what you are going though.” In various wildernesses, I have found the companionship of Him who is “no High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses—he himself has shared fully in all our experience of temptation, except that he never sinned” (Heb. 4:15 Phillips). Think of it: Every one of our human weaknesses is intelligible to Him. He understands. He shares fully. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to have a Companion all the time. But that does not mean we will never suffer loneliness. In fact, it means that we may be lonely in ways we would not have been if we had not chosen to be disciples. When people who are contemplating becoming missionaries ask me, “But what about loneliness?” I tell them, Yes. You’ll be lonely. It’s part of the price. Strangers in strange lands are lonely. You accept that in advance. As in discipleship, so in marriage. One of the surprises in store for most brides and grooms is that they are still lonely. A common but unreasonable expectation about marriage (and there are many unreasonable ones) is that the partner will now fill the place of everybody on whom one depended before—father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends. Because “falling in love” is an all-consuming, preoccupying, and exclusive phenomenon, it can be very hard on other relationships which no longer seem to be needed. But marriage teaches us that even the most intimate human companionship cannot satisfy the deepest places of the heart. Our hearts are lonely till they rest in Him who made us for Himself. In a question-and-answer session at a women’s conference I was asked, What would you say to a daughter who is about to divorce her husband because he isn’t meeting all her needs? There was a ripple of laughter from the audience. The folly of such a demand! I said I would try to point out to the poor girl that she is asking of her husband what no human being can ask of anybody. Having been married to three very different men, all of them fine Christian husbands, I have found that no one of them, or even all three of them together if I had been a polyandrist, could “meet all my needs.” The Bible promises me that my God, not my husband, shall supply all my needs. Writes Paul Tillich, “Man and woman remain alone even in the most intimate union. They cannot penetrate each other’s innermost center. And if this were not so they could not be helpers to each other; they could not have human community.” 1 Failure in communication, according to a recent poll, is the number one cause of divorce. Recently the exuberant and blunt Oprah Winfrey was questioning people on what went wrong in marriage. “If I hear that word communication ONE—MORE—TIME—,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then she turned to the “expert” (which usually means anybody who has written a book on anything) and asked what communication means. “It doesn’t MEAN A THING!” was his answer. “Thank you,” said Oprah. So much for that. But one way or another, we must get through to people occasionally, and we all fail in that sometimes, not only with spouses but with others. We don’t take the time to write the letter, make the phone call, visit, sit down and listen. If we are hungry to talk to someone about something we can’t always find anyone who will listen. Some people are gifted communicators, but most of us, gifted or not, could do better. Given the ontological difference which Tillich describes, plus differences in personalities, background, education, language, and interests, communication can never be perfect, but it is not unreasonable to ask for improvement in this area. Jim, Add, and Lars (my husbands, in that order) have differed in ability, and I have had to learn to be realistic and reasonable in my expectations. Add, who was a very popular speaker and the author of eight books, was, in my opinion, a communicator of the first water. His love letters during our courtship were such masterpieces that I have actually considered publishing them (and thought better of it) as Love Letters of a Theologian . What he thought and felt about me he knew how to put into words. He did not stop doing that when I became his wife, but I found him strangely reticent to speak of many things which profoundly affected his life. To find someone who “reads” us, responds wholeheartedly to us, and with real understanding, is a rare gift. Many people find themselves married to partners who are on a totally different intellectual or spiritual wavelength, as Ruth Sanford describes in her book, Do You Feel Alone in the Spirit? 2 I gather from the number of women who speak to me about this kind of loneliness and isolation that it is a common one. One gets the impression that most husbands now are caught up in their work at least five days a week, and when they come home want only to “relax,” which does not mean sitting down and talking with wives and children, but turning on the television, picking up the newspaper, or going to the health club. I suppose the same could be said of some working wives. If both work, it is hard to imagine how they will manage even to be friends. Each expects the other to be available when wanted. If the other isn’t, the loneliness that results is hard to take. A woman whom I’ll call Priscilla told me of an experience of loneliness in marriage unlike any I had heard of. Her husband, who is a professing Christian and seemed in a casual meeting a decent sort, has turned out to be quite uncivilized and quite unchristian. Although they live together as husband and wife (she says he can be wonderfully loving and appreciative), he has in a very strange way abandoned her. He appears to have made a decision before they were married (of which he told her nothing) that she would pay all the bills. When this became apparent after the honeymoon, the only explanation he offered was that she has a good job, she was doing very well before she married him, it doesn’t cost much for him to live in her comfortable condominium and eat at her table—why shouldn’t she foot the bills? Poor woman. Thinking she had married a husband, she finds she has married a nonpaying guest. She’s isolated. She’s shocked, baffled, lonely. “Why am I in this?” she asked me. It echoes the cry of so many. We were sitting by the fire in her beautifully decorated living room. We had just finished an excellent dinner which she had cooked. As always, she was elegantly dressed. I was thinking how fortunate her husband is to possess such a woman—pleasant, gentle, sweet-spirited, thoroughly feminine, a real homemaker who also holds a high-paying job. How could he treat her in the ways she described? Of course I know only a fraction of the story, her version. What would his be? I did not know what to say. The question of what to do with a husband like that I could not answer. I had never been in her shoes, but I had certainly asked the more fundamental question in situations which had nothing to do with marriage: Why am I in this? Sometimes the answer included mistakes of my own, sometimes those of others, sometimes nobody’s. This is not a book on marital counseling. There is no shortage of those. We are here attempting to face the ultimate questions, such as the one Priscilla asked. There may be many things she can do as time goes by, but before any hint of a change takes place in her situation or her husband, she can go directly to God. He knows why she is in this. The ultimate answer goes to the Origin of things. Why am I widowed? Why has God allowed a divorce? Why hasn’t He given me a wife (or a husband)? Why do my friends misunderstand me? Why would God give me a husband who doesn’t accept responsibility? Why can’t we communicate? Why did I lose the person who meant most to me in all the world? Why should I, why should anybody be all alone? Where there are no answers in the present, my mind insists on pushing the questions as far back as possible. Everything that comes up has something to do with God . It is meant to bring me face-to-face with Him and to teach me something about His ways with us. How far back can we push this question of loneliness? Is Priscilla’s or yours or mine the result of circumstances or people we can’t control? Is anybody in control? Are we all adrift in nothingness, or is there someone in charge of the whole scene? Science is always explaining causes and effects, but to the question of the Original Cause—how did the universe begin?—science gives us strange answers. The explosion theory is one of them. The scientist can tell us exactly why an explosion occurs, whether by choice in a laboratory or by accident in or out of a laboratory. It is the result of the sudden production of great pressure. In other words, it is caused . We can count on that. Something made it happen. Everything, including the universe itself, they tell us, is caused. That’s what science is about. The idea of a Primary Cause, however, is usually ruled out—because, as one scientist stated, “to the scientific mind it is simply intolerable.” Science is content to say that matter produced mind. It refuses to entertain the possibility that Mind produced matter. 3 But this original Big Bang—are we to believe that it alone, among all explosions, was not preceded by the sudden production of pressure? Was there no cause at all? Wrong question, we are told. Irrelevant. Unnecessary. It happened. There comes a point where you stop asking about causes. The notion of an Originator is not susceptible to laboratory testing. Perhaps we can stop with that so long as our thinking is merely theoretical. It’s when things personal occur that the question breaks out most insistently. As Kierkegaard said about Hegelianism, the science of his day: “Hegel explained everything in the universe except what it is to be an individual, to be born, to live, and to die.” 4 When I sit on Priscilla’s sofa and look at the pain in her eyes, I am thrown back again to the prior questions. What is it to be an individual, to be born, to live, to die? What does it all mean? Priscilla’s husband is the immediate cause of the pain. She has tried talking to him. She has done her very best to make him see what he is doing to her. She has pleaded with him to be a man. But if she cannot change him (and of course she cannot), is she at his mercy, or is there another Mercy to appeal to? Dr. Cressy Morrison, president of the New York Academy of Sciences back in the 1930s, once gave a talk on the Law of Chance. If you take ten pennies and mark them with numbers one through ten and put them in your pocket, he said, your chances of pulling out Number One first would, of course, be one in ten. Your chances of pulling out all the pennies in numerical order would be one in ten billion. He then raised the question of what would be the chances of the universe having just “happened,” that life sprang spontaneously from utter lifelessness, that the prodigious intricacies of the human mind originated in mindlessness, that Something came from absolutely Nothing. The odds against all that would be incalculable, Dr. Morrison said. But he happened to be a Christian. He believed in God. So does Priscilla, yet she felt as though she were helplessly sinking into an abyss. Had God forgotten to be gracious? Had He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Why am I in this? Is it for nothing? Or is it for something? Months have gone by since that evening by the fire. Friends and family have urged Priscilla to get rid of this man. Divorce is the obvious answer, but it is not an answer she will accept. She has been through one of those and knows she does not want another. Human reason would conclude that a separation at least is the only possible course. Yet—and here is the point—she writes of the presence of God, of a deep heart-desire to learn of Him in the midst of it all, of a determination to fulfill her vows at any cost. Who can say that she is mistaken? Who knows the gains which may come of her daily losses? Her latest letter, depicting an even worse scenario, ends with: But the Lord has been so faithful . In agony I have lain prostrate before Him and “wailed.” I had to have chosen the wrong one. He so graciously gave me His word in John 6:70, “Did I not choose the Twelve of you myself? Yet one of you is a devil.” And so He has assured me that even in our finite poor judgment in choosing, I know He has gone before. Words written to people in trouble many centuries ago by a man who knew a great deal of trouble at firsthand show that there is another level on which the happenings in our lives may be understood: In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has in store for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God! Romans 8:18–21 Phillips There is a future and a plan. There is another reality. This is Priscilla’s hope. It is what makes her see things so differently from those who would advise a different course. I cannot say that she is right or wrong, but I am sure God honors an obedient faith. He too walked this lonesome valley. He bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, and died. It is he who heals the broken in spirit and binds up their wounds, he who numbers the stars one by one and names them one and all. . . . The L ORD gives new hearts to the humble and brings evildoers down to the dust. He veils the sky in clouds and prepares rain for the earth; he clothes the hills with grass. . . . He gives cattle their food. . . . His pleasure is in those who fear him, who wait for his true love. Psalm 147:3–4, 6, 8–9 NEB Finding Your Way through Loneliness 17 The Glory of Sacrifice As the widow of Zarephath busied herself to bake that little cake for Elijah, I wonder if she muttered something like, “What is he talking about? A handful of flour and a nearly empty cruse of oil—I’m supposed to make two cakes out of that? But—‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.’ Well, here’s one stick. ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.’ Over there’s another one. Light the fire. Mix up the cake. We’ll see.” When all we have to offer seems pitifully small and woefully poor, we must offer it nevertheless, in obedience like the widow’s, and in the simplicity of a little child who brings a crushed dandelion to his mother. The child is not bitter and resentful at the poverty of his offering. He is happy to have something . Quantity and quality are not always under our control, and what the Lord can possibly make of it is no concern of ours. That part is under His control. He Himself knows what He will do. Let our offering be free, humble, unconditional, given in the full confidence that His transforming energy can fit it into the working of His purposes. A few days after Addison Leitch proposed to me he wrote what I called his “geriatric letter.” He was sixty, I was forty-two, and he did not want me entering into marriage to an old man with my eyes closed. He outlined some previews of coming attractions. The day would come, he predicted, when I would have to clean his glasses, take over the driving, and various other more onerous duties. Was I ready for that? His closing line was unforgettable: “Yet here I am, all of me, for you, forever. But what kind of an offer is that? ” I accepted the offer. I loved him. Nothing else mattered. His predictions came true in exactly the order given, but love is a transformer. When we give ourselves to God—“all of me, for You, forever”—or when we present to Him so apparently useless a thing as loneliness, what kind of an offer is that? Never mind. Our offerings become a part of Christ’s offering of Himself. He did it for love of the Father (“Lo, I come . . . to do thy will, O God”; “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” [Heb. 10:7; Luke 23:46 KJV]). He did it also for love of us who so sorely needed it. Can we follow him here, loving the Father enough to give ourselves wholly to Him, and putting ourselves out for love of those who do not seem (God forgive us for our pride!) to “deserve” it? “Live your lives in love— the same sort of love which Christ gives us and which he perfectly expressed when he gave himself up for us in sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2 Phillips, italics added). The same note is struck by the apostle Peter when he tells us that as we are built into a spiritual House of God, we become holy priests (we? holy priests? just imagine!) who may offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God. 1 If the primary function of the priest is to offer sacrifice, then that is to be our primary function as His priests. The whole of life becomes a continual offering up for His praise. Can we give up all for the love of God? When the surrender of ourselves seems too much to ask, it is first of all because our thoughts about God Himself are paltry. We have not really seen Him, we have hardly tested Him at all and learned how good He is. In our blindness we approach Him with suspicious reserve. We ask how much of our fun He intends to spoil, how much He will demand from us, how high is the price we must pay before He is placated. If we had the least notion of His loving-kindness and tender mercy, His fatherly care for His poor children, His generosity, His beautiful plans for us; if we knew how patiently He waits for our turning to Him, how gently He means to lead us to green pastures and still waters, how carefully He is preparing a place for us, how ceaselessly He is ordering and ordaining and engineering His Master Plan for our good—if we had any inkling of all this, could we be reluctant to let go of our smashed dandelions or whatever we clutch so fiercely in our sweaty little hands? “We have not loved thee with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” 2 If with courage and joy we pour ourselves out for Him and for others for His sake, it is not possible to lose, in any final sense, anything worth keeping. We will lose ourselves and our selfishness. We will gain everything worth having. What if we hold back? There is an old story of a king who went into the village streets to greet his subjects. A beggar sitting by the roadside eagerly held up his almsbowl, sure that the king would give handsomely. Instead the king asked the beggar to give him something. Taken aback, the beggar fished three grains of rice from his bowl and dropped them into the king’s outstretched hand. When at the end of the day the beggar poured out what he had received, he found to his astonishment three grains of pure gold in the bottom of his bowl. O that I had given him all! One aspect of sacrifice as seen in Scripture is glory. That element, though not always apparent, is always there. In the Old Testament we find the magnificent story of Abraham’s obedience when asked to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. What depths of suffering he endured for the love of God, what a revelation he was given of God’s love for him, what a demonstration to every succeeding generation of the meaning of faith and obedience. There was none of this in his tortured mind as he climbed the mountain, no inkling of glory but only of a bloody holocaust. His father-heart endured agony because he loved his son and he loved his God. But the glory followed— Inasmuch as you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you abundantly and greatly multiply your descendants until they are as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. . . . All nations on earth shall pray to be blessed as your descendants are blessed, and this because you have obeyed me. Genesis 22:16–18 NEB When, long afterward under King Hezekiah, the house of the Lord was repaired and purified, there was a great celebration with sacrifices and music. At the moment when Hezekiah gave the order for the whole-offering to be laid on the altar and burnt, the singers began to sing, the trumpets sounded, the whole assembly prostrated themselves. Great joy accompanied great sacrifice. Why should it not be so for us also? After the Crucifixion came the Resurrection. After the Resurrection the Ascension. Because Jesus wore a crown of thorns, He now wears a crown of glory. Because He became poor, He now sits enthroned. Because He made Himself of no reputation, He now has a name which is above every name. Because He was willing to become a slave, He is now Master of everything. Because he was obedient to death, He is Lord of Life and holds the keys of hell and of death. Because He made Himself of no reputation, every knee will someday bow before Him. Every renunciation led to glory. God could not more fully and plainly show us the glorious truth of life out of death than in these paradoxes of Jesus’ own life and death. Is it not clear to us that the sacrifice of Calvary was not a tragedy but the release of life and power? Do we believe this? How hard it is to believe that our own self-offering to Him will work in the same way. How easy it is for most of us to live as though we do not believe it. He asks us to share with Him not only His Cross but also His glory. “If we died with him we shall also live with him: if we endure we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12 Phillips). And as Lilias Trotter’s seed paintings show us, a deeper dying has endless powers of multiplying life in other souls. Is He a hard Master to ask us to suffer with Him? Do we think it mean and unfair and unloving? But these are His promises : “God . . . fulfills his purpose for me.” “Thy wonderful purposes are all for our good.” “All things serve thee.” “Everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.” “In Christ . . . we have been given our share in the heritage, as was decreed in his design whose purpose is everywhere at work. For it was his will that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, should cause his glory to be praised.” “Our mortal part may be absorbed into life immortal. God himself has shaped us for this very end.” 3 Six verses out of many which are divine guarantees. To take them into my heart as well as into my head alters my understanding of the meaning of life. If I am in Christ I really can’t lose. It is an old, old story. And it’s mine, too. This is my story and this is my song. Jesus Christ has given me Living Water. Jesus Christ is my Bread. Jesus Christ is my Life. He is Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. I am the same body, the same temperament, with the same passions and the same history, but I know that all of those “givens” are capable of transformation. This is why That old rugged Cross, so despised by the world, holds a wondrous attraction for me. Finding Your Way through Loneliness Finding Your Way through Loneliness Landmarks Cover Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments 1. The Sudden Tide 2. Fierceness and Tenderness 3. Loneliness Is a Wilderness 4. The Pain of Rejection 5. All My Desire Is before Thee 6. The Gift of Widowhood 7. Under the Same Auspices 8. Divorce: The Ultimate Humiliation 9. A Love Strong Enough to Hurt 10. Death Is a New Beginning 11. The Price Is Outrageous 12. The Intolerable Compliment 13. Married but Alone 14. Love Means Acceptance 15. A Field with a Treasure in It 16. Make Me a Cake 17. The Glory of Sacrifice 18. A Share in Christ’s Sufferings 19. A Strange Peace 20. Help Me Not to Want So Much 21. Turn Your Solitude into Prayer 22. How Do I Do This Waiting Stuff? 23. A Pathway to Holiness 24. Spiritual Maturity Means Spiritual Parenthood 25. An Exchanged Life 26. A Gate of Hope Notes Back Ads Back Cover Finding Your Way through Loneliness Sign up for announcements about upcoming titles. Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest Finding Your Way through Loneliness Table of Contents Cover Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments 1. The Sudden Tide 2. Fierceness and Tenderness 3. Loneliness Is a Wilderness 4. The Pain of Rejection 5. All My Desire Is before Thee 6. The Gift of Widowhood 7. Under the Same Auspices 8. Divorce: The Ultimate Humiliation 9. A Love Strong Enough to Hurt 10. Death Is a New Beginning 11. The Price Is Outrageous 12. The Intolerable Compliment 13. Married but Alone 14. Love Means Acceptance 15. A Field with a Treasure in It 16. Make Me a Cake 17. The Glory of Sacrifice 18. A Share in Christ’s Sufferings 19. A Strange Peace 20. Help Me Not to Want So Much 21. Turn Your Solitude into Prayer 22. How Do I Do This Waiting Stuff? 23. A Pathway to Holiness 24. Spiritual Maturity Means Spiritual Parenthood 25. An Exchanged Life 26. A Gate of Hope Notes Back Ads Back Cover 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 61 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 Finding Your Way through Loneliness 16 Make Me a Cake When Maria von Trapp was a young woman, she loved the mountains of her native Austria. She thrilled to think that God had given her those mountains as a gift to enjoy. “If God has given me all of this,” she said, “what can I give Him?” Thinking over what she had to give, she saw how paltry it all was. She knew that she must give everything, which to her meant giving her life in a most literal way—going into a convent, becoming a nun, and never coming out. As many disciples discover, the will of God turns out to be quite different from their expectations. Maria went into the convent, but was soon sent out again to become governess to a widower’s children. Thence began the story of The Sound of Music , familiar to thousands. To give God everything must mean that I give Him not only my body as a living sacrifice but everything else as well: all that I am, all that I have, all that I do, and all that I suffer. That covers a lot of territory, but the particular ground we are discussing is one form of suffering: loneliness. I have said that it can be seen as a gift—something received and accepted. A gift may also be something offered. Maria von Trapp began by offering to God the gift of herself. We must begin there too. We do not thereby “enrich” the Lord for, as the old prayer says, “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” We have nothing but what was His in the first place. “With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you . . . as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him (Rom. 12:1 Phillips). Here is the place to start. In His wisdom and loving-kindness He gave each of us a particular body, of His design and construction, prepared for us, bearing His image, yet distinct from all others. We cannot offer it unless we first “receive,” that is, accept it—with its beauties, its imperfections, its limitations, it potentialities. This body and nobody else’s is my offering. It is not, however, mere blood, bone, and tissue. It is the dwelling of the “self”—spirit, mind, heart, will, emotions, temperament. It must be offered wholeheartedly, in simplicity, with no quibbles about its fitness. It is holy as the vessels of the tabernacle (pots, shovels, firepans, snuffers, and all the rest, commonplace as they might be) were holy— because they were offered (consecrated and set apart) for that service. All offerings made to God matter to Him because of the single, unique offering of Christ for us. We unite ourselves with Him in this—we are actually “crucified with” Christ. Then this body, which is the dwelling of myself, becomes the dwelling of God Himself—a temple of the Holy Spirit. It is not my own. It is acceptable to God because I am one with Christ and my offering is taken up into His offering. The love of God in accepting such an offering is like the love of a father whose little child gives him a present bought with money the father gave him. It is a very tender, sympathetic love. It recognizes that the child’s loving gift comes out of his utter poverty. The father, who has already given everything (“My dear son, you have been with me all the time and everything I have is yours” [Luke 15:31 Phillips]), gives something more in order that his child may have something to give. Having presented our bodies, is there anything else we may give? The answer is yes, there is everything else—everything God has given us. When the people of God present their gifts to Him in church—music, prayers, money, bread, and wine—they present only what has been given by His gracious bounty. And again they present themselves under these tokens, for only the gift made by self-giving love can be offered. Here we enter into the great mystery of the Bread and Wine. Christ has gone before us, giving Himself: this is My body; this is My blood . We love because He first loved us. We offer ourselves because He first offered Himself, each saying to the other, My life for yours. The great mystery of the Bread and Wine is Christ offering Himself in love to us and for us—“My life for yours.” It is important to understand very clearly that we have nothing at all to add to the complete sacrifice of Christ which is our very salvation. His offering was perfect. It lacked nothing. Nor is there any need for the old order of sacrifices (the blood of lambs and bulls and all the rest), for Christ establishes “a new order of obedience to the will of God, and in that will we have been made holy by the single unique offering of the body of Jesus Christ. . . . By virtue of that one offering he has perfected for all time every one whom he makes holy” (Heb. 10:9–10, 14–15 Phillips). And so He allows us to come. And so He receives our offerings, given by virtue of something He gave us when He made us: freedom of choice, that we might freely choose to love Him and to give ourselves to Him. No wonder Paul said, “What do you possess that was not given you?” (1 Cor. 4:7 NEB). Having given my all, I may specifically offer my time, my work, my prayer, my possessions, 1 my praise, and—yes—my sufferings. It is in this mysterious sense that I see loneliness as a gift: it is not only something to be accepted, but something to be offered, as Matheson gave not only the life he owed, but the unsatisfied desire of his heart. Is it not legitimate, then, to think of loneliness as material for sacrifice? What I lay on the altar of consecration is nothing more and nothing less than what I have at this moment, whatever I find in my life now of work and prayer, joys and sufferings. Some people see singleness as a liability, a handicap, a deprivation, even a curse. Others see it as a huge asset, a license to be a “swinger,” an opportunity to do what feels good. I see it as a gift. To make that gift an offering may be the most costly thing one can do, for it means the laying down of a cherished dream of what one wanted to be, and the acceptance of what one did not want to be. How changed are my ambitions! the apostle Paul may have thought, for he wrote, “Now I long to know Christ” (Phil. 3:10 Phillips). During the months of my second husband’s terminal illness, I sometimes felt I could not bear one more day of seeing him suffer, or one more visit to the doctor who would tell us terrible things that must be done next—things like removing the lower jaw because of the lip cancer, or castration because of the prostate cancer. Everything in me said NO NO NO NO. Add’s suffering became mine. The wee hours were filled with nightmarish images of things far worse than death, and I was afraid. What to do? The answer came to me. “Offer it up.” My eyes had been opened to this possibility through the reading of Evelyn Underhill’s classic, The Mystery of Sacrifice . I had never before been taught the deep truth of making all of life an oblation, but this little book had come into my hands just three months before we discovered my husband’s illness. I do not know what I would have done without it. Offer up what ? I felt like the destitute widow of Zarephath, about to use the last of the flour and oil which stood between her son’s and her own starvation, when along came Elijah and told her to bake him a cake first. Because it was the word of the Lord, she obeyed. The effects of that obedience went far beyond her imagination. “There was food for him and for her and her family for a long time. The jar of flour did not give out nor did the flask of oil fail, as the word of the Lord foretold through Elijah” (1 Kings 17:15–16 NEB). It was only a vaguely remembered fragment of a poem by Amy Carmichael that brought to mind the analogy between suffering and the poverty of the widow of Zarephath. I give it here in full: Nothing in the House Thy servant, Lord, hath nothing in the house, Not even one small pot of common oil For he who never cometh but to spoil Hath raided my poor house again, again, That ruthless strong man armed, whom men call Pain. I thought that I had courage in the house, And patience to be quiet and endure, And sometimes happy songs; now I am sure Thy servant truly hath not anything, And see, my song-bird hath a broken wing. My servant, I have come into the house— I who know Pain’s extremity so well That there can never be the need to tell His power to make the flesh and spirit quail: Have I not felt the scourge, the thorn, the nail? And I, his Conqueror, am in the house, Let not your heart be troubled: do not fear: Why shouldst thou, child of Mine, if I am here? My touch will heal thy song-bird’s broken wing, And he shall have a braver song to sing. 2 I had nothing in the house. Nothing except this pain. Pain—an offering? What could the Lord possibly make of that? “Make me a cake.” In other words, Elijah said: There is one thing you can do. Even from your poverty, you can give me something. It may not seem like much, but it is the very thing I need. If you will give it to me I can do something I could not do without it. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51:17 KJV). So, as best I could, I offered it up. That was fifteen years ago. It has taken me a long time to assimilate this great lesson. I have not yet mastered it. But my understanding of sacrifice has been transformed. It has also transformed my life. The emphasis now is not on loss, privation, or a price to be paid. I see it as an act of intelligent worship, and as a gift God has given me to give back to Him in order that he may make something of it . When Add died in September of 1973, the Lord in His mercy helped me to see a little more clearly in my second widowhood what I had only dimly descried in the first: a gift, a call, and a vocation, not merely a condition to be endured. Paul’s words came alive: “Each one must order his life according to the gift the Lord has granted him” (1 Cor. 7:17 NEB). So it was the Lord who had put into my hands this gift of widowhood. Is this the little “cake” You need from me, Lord? Then I’ll bake it for You, Lord. Please have it. And what next? “I will offer . . . the sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Ps. 116:17 NKJV). It is wonderfully comforting to be absolutely sure that we do the will of God. Here is one matter about which there can be no doubt: “Be thankful, whatever the circumstances may be. For this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18 Phillips). Finding Your Way through Loneliness 12 The Intolerable Compliment When the king of Aram planned to attack Israel, God revealed this to the prophet Elisha, who then warned the king of Israel. Thinking a traitor was responsible for the leak, the king of Aram asked who it might be. One of his staff said, “Don’t blame us! Why, you can’t even talk in your own bedroom without Elisha the prophet in Israel knowing what you say!” “Go and find out where he is,” said the king, “and I will seize him” (2 Kings 6:13 NEB). Early the next morning Elisha’s disciple saw that the city of Dothan was surrounded by horses and chariots. “Oh, master,” he said, “which way are we to turn?” “Do not be afraid,” was Elisha’s reply, “for those who are on our side are more than those on theirs.” The prophet had long since learned a lesson which was new to the young man: Invisible forces are always at work. The God who made us does not then leave us to fend for ourselves. He is still Emmanuel, “God with us,” even when to all appearances we stand alone against frightening forces. Perhaps you have left home for the first time. I remember how daunting a prospect that was for me as a fourteen-year-old, about to travel a thousand miles by train to boarding school. I was excited until my parents and younger brothers and sister began almost imperceptibly to slide out of my vision as the silver streamliner, the Tamiami Champion , pulled slowly out of the Philadelphia station, bound for Florida. Suddenly there was a great sickening hollow in the middle of my stomach as I realized how very much my family and my home meant to me. I would not see them again for nine long months. Perhaps you are just starting college, or have moved to a new town where you know no one. You are a stranger and people scrutinize you strangely. You have a new job, new responsibilities you are not sure you can meet. Maybe you have no job at all because you’ve been fired or are retired. Maybe your situation is that of being the only believer among nonbelievers. Good recipes for loneliness, all of them. For one reason or another you are like Elisha’s servant, in a panic, feeling defenseless and alone, wondering which way to turn. Our faithful heavenly Father knows what a battle it is for us flesh-and-blood creatures to focus on the spiritual. As long as we live in a material world, it will be a battle. But He is there to help and cheer us if we’ll ask Him to. He will open our eyes to the Unseen if we’ll pray for it. Remember Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians, how he reminded them that the outcome of human problems is “a weight of glory,” when we fix our gaze on things unseen, which will never pass away, rather than on things seen, which will all pass away. Is it easier to see Elisha’s disciple as surrounded by chariots of fire than it is to see ourselves so surrounded? Has God, in our case, forgotten to be gracious? Are we at the mercy of the king of Aram, or have we faith to see what the prophet saw? Last spring I met a young detective from Belfast who has a particularly lonely job. His work takes him into the most dangerous sections of that torn city, and he was afraid. He knew that a bomb or a gun might go off at any moment and he could be killed or “kneecapped” or disabled in some other way. Being a husband and father, he feared not primarily for himself but for his family. Someone gave him the story of the five missionaries in Ecuador. He told me how he would take that book to bed with him at night, read a little, cry over it, pray, and then reread the passage. He had planned to read a chapter a night, but found himself reading and rereading, crying and praying his way through it. “It gave me courage!” he said, his face shining. “I saw that those men did what they did believing that God was in charge of the outcome. I’m not a missionary, but I’m under the same Lord. If those men could do it, I could too.” Even as I write, I see from my window a baby rabbit dart out from the underbrush, followed by the mother. She chases him in a circle for a minute, so fast it looks as though they forget who is chasing whom. Suddenly they both disappear into the underbrush. A minute later a young woodchuck waddles out, vacuums the grass slowly with his black snout, and waddles back. I scan the slope anxiously for a predatory cat that spends a good deal of his time crouching and creeping along the edges of the rabbits’ playground. He is not there. The word I was about to write just before these furry things appeared take on a wider meaning: “No one of us lives, and equally no one of us dies, for himself alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Whether therefore we live or die, we belong to the Lord” (Rom. 14:7–9 NEB). And are we not of much greater value than many sparrows—or bunnies or woodchucks? The life and death of all of us is in the same Hands. We are always surrounded by the Unseen, among whom are the angels, ministers of fire, explicitly commissioned to guard us. He who keeps us neither slumbers nor sleeps. His love is always awake, always aware, always surrounding and upholding and protecting. If a spear or a bullet finds its target in the flesh of one of His servants, it is not because of inattention on His part. It is because of love. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. 1 Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Live each hour of each day with Him as Lord , for “this is why Christ died and came to life again, to establish his lordship over dead and living” (Rom. 14:9 NEB). If His lordship is really established over me, it makes no difference (I might even say it’s “no big deal”) whether I live or die. I am expendable. That knowledge is freedom. I have no care for anything, for all that I am, all that I have, all that I do, and all that I suffer have been joyfully placed at His disposal. He can do anything He wants. What do we think He wants? Gerard Manley Hopkins expressed the answer most beautifully in “The Golden Echo”: See, not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least last lost; every hair Is, hair of the head, numbered. Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept, This	239,132
Hermits The Insights of Solitude (Peter France) (Z-Library).epub	Hermits About the Author Peter France spent the first 15 years of his working life as a civil servant in the Fiji Islands. After a spell as an academic, he joined the BBC, first in radio where he launched and presented Kaleidoscope , and later in television, where he wrote and presented programmes such as Everyman and Timewatch . His most recent books are The Rape of Egypt and Greek as a Treat . He lives in Devon but spends much of his time on the Greek island of Patmos. Hermits Bibliography Anson, Peter, Hermit of Cat Island , London, 1961. Anson, Peter, The Call of the Desert , London 1964 Athanasius, Life of St Antony in Ancient Christian Writers: the Fathers in translation , trans. R.T. Meyer, London, 1950 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives (various editions) Auster, Paul, The Invention of Solitude , London, 1988 Banerji, G. C., Keshab Chandra and Ramakrishna , Madras, 1931 Bazin, R., (ed.), Charles de Foucauld; hermit and explorer , London, 1933 Bazin, R., (ed.), Meditations of a Hermit , London, 1930. Beausobre, Julia de, (ed.), Macarius: Russian Letters of Direction , London, 1944 Bell, Rudolph, Holy Anorexia , Chicago, 1985 Bennet, Glin, Beyond Endurance , London, 1983 Berdyaev, N. A., Solitude and Society , London, 1938 Bodley, R. V. C., The Warrior Saint , London, 1954 Boissieu, P. de, Le Père de Foucauld , Paris, 1945 Bolshakov, S. Russian Mystics , London, 1977 Bolton, J. D. P., Glory Jest and Riddle , London, 1973 Bouyer, Louis, etc., A History of Christian Spirituality , 3 vols., New York, 1963–69 Bratton, Susan Power, Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife , New York, 1933 Brown Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity , London, 1989 Budge, Wallis, The Wit and Wisdom of the Christian Fathers , London, 1934 Butler, Cuthbert, The Lausiac History of Palladius , 2 vols., Cambridge, 1898–1904 Carrouges, M., Charles de Foucauld, explorateur mystique , Paris, 1954 (Eng. trans. Soldier of the Spirit , London, 1956) Cashen, R. A., Solitude in the thought of Thomas Merton , London, 1981 Castillon du Perron, Marguerite, Charles de Foucauld , Paris, 1984 Chadwick, Owen, John Cassian: A Study in Primitive Monasticism , Oxford, 1950 Chitty, Derwas J., The Desert a City , London, 1966 Clay, R. M., The Hermits and Anchorites of England , London, 1904 D’Anvers, N., Lives etc. of the Hermits (4th-8th cent.) , London, 1902 Darwin, Francis, The English Medieval Recluse , London, 1944 Davies, K. R. Anabaptism and Asceticism: a study in intellectual origins , London, 1974 Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational , California, 1951 Dreiser, Theodore, The Living Thoughts of Thoreau , London, 1939 Dudley, D. R., A History of Cynicism , London, 1938 Dunlop, John B., Staretz Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky’s Staretz Zossima , Belmont, Mass., 1972 Eliade, M., (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion , article on ‘Eremitism’. New York, 1987 Evening, Margaret, Who Walk Alone: a study of the solitary life , London, 1974 Festugiere, A. J., Personal Religion among the Greeks , Berkeley, 1954 Fosbroke T. D., British Monachism , London, 1817 Fox, Robin Lane, Alexander the Great , Harmondsworth, London, 1986 Freemantle, Anne, Desert Calling , London, 1950 Furlong, Monica, Merton: A Biography , London, 1980 Gale, N. R., Solitude , London, 1913 Gautier, E. F., Oasis Sahara , London, 1905 Gougaud, L., Ermites et Reclus , Paris, 1928 Halmos, P., Solitude and Privacy , London, 1952 Hamilton, Elizabeth, The Desert is my Dwelling; a study of Charles de Foucauld , London, 1968 Hannah, Ian, Christian Monasticism , London, 1924 Hannay, James O., The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism , London, 1903 Harding, Walter, The Days of Henry Thoreau , Princeton, 1982 Hardman, O., The Ideals of Asceticism: An essay in the comparative study of religion , London, 1924 Harper, R., Seventh Solitude – Man’s Isolation , London, 1965 Hawes, John C., Soliloquies of a Solitary , London, 1952 Hérisson, R., Avec le Père de Foucauld et le Général Laperrine , Paris, 1937 Hillyer, Philip, Charles de Foucauld , Minnesota, 1990 Hoistad, R., Cynic Hero and Cynic King , Oxford, 1948 Huxley, Aldous, Heaven and Hell , London, 1956 Isherwood, Christopher, Ramakrishna and his Disciples , London, 1965 Isherwood, Christopher, (ed.), Vedanta for Modern Man , London, 1952 Jones, Barbara, Follies and Grottoes , London, 1953 Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E., The Presocratic Philosophers , Oxford, 1957 Lacarrière, Jacques, The God-Possessed , London, 1963 Les Sentences des pères du désert , Solesmes, 4 vols 1966–1981 Leyser, Henrietta, Hermits and the new Monasticism , London, 1984 Lialine, Clément, and Doyère, Pierre ‘Eremitisme’ in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité , Vol 4, Paris 1960 Lloyd, T., Desert Call, the story of Charles de Foucauld , London, 1948 Louth, Andrew, The Wilderness of God , London, 1991 Malherbe, Abraham J., Cynic Epistles; a study edition , Scholars Press, Montana, 1977 Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander , New York, 1968 Merton, Thomas, Contemplation in a World of Action , London, 1971 Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation , New York, 1962 Merton, Thomas, ‘Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude’ in Disputed Questions , London, 1961 Merton, Thomas, Raids on the Unspeakable , New York, 1964 Merton, Thomas, The Monastic Journey , London, 1978 Merton, Thomas, The Seven Storey Mountain , New York, 1948 Merton, Thomas, The Sign of Jonas , New York, 1953 Merton, Thomas, The Way of Chuang Tzu , New York, 1965 Merton, Thomas, Thoughts in Solitude , New York, 1958 Mott, Michael, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton , Boston, 1984 Müller, Max, Ramakrishna: his life and sayings , London, 1898 Neihardt, John G., Black Elk Speaks … 1932, repub: Nebraska, 1961 Nikhilananda, Swami, Ramakrishna: Prophet of New India , London, 1951 Oman, J. C., The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India , London, 1905 Picard, Max, The World of Silence , London, 1952 Plato, The Symposium , trans. W. Hamilton, Harmondsworth, 1951 Pourrat, P., La Spiritualité Chrétienne , 4 vols Paris, 1920–28 Powys, John Cowper, A Philosophy of Solitude , London, 1933 Preminger, Mation M., The Sands of Tamanrasset , London, 1963 Price, R. M., (trans.), Lives of the Monks of Palestine, by Cyril of Scythopolis , Cistercian Studies, 114 Quesnel, R., Charles de Foucauld , Paris, 1956 Rolland, Romain, Prophets of the New India , London, 1930 Rousseaux, Philip, Ascetics, Authority and the Church , London, 1978 Saradananda, Swami, Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master , Madras, 1952 Saudreau, A., La Pieté à travers les Ages , Paris, 1927 Sayre, F., The Greek Cynics , London, 1948 Sayre, Robert F., Thoreau and the American Indians , Princeton, 1977 Seabrook, J. R., Loneliness , London, 1973 Six, J. F., Itinéraire Spirituel de Charles de Foucauld , Paris, 1958 Soloviev, Vladimir, The Justification of the Good , London, 1918 Storr, Anthony, Solitude , London, 1988 Suso, The Life of Blessed Henry Suso by Himself , trans. T. F. Knox, London, 1913 Theophan, Bishop, ed Unseen Warfare , trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer, London, 1952 Thoreau, Henry David, Walden (1st publ. 1854), Signet Classics, 1960 Tournier, P., Escape from Loneliness , London, 1962 Turnbull, P., Sahara Unveiled , London, 1940 Voillaume, R., Seeds of the Desert , Paris, 1955 Waddell, Helen, Beasts and Saints , London, 1949 Waddell, Helen, The Desert Fathers ,, London, 1936 Whicher, George P., Walden Revisited , Chicago, 1945 Winnicott, Donald, ‘The Capacity to be Alone’ in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment , London, 1965 Woodcock, George, Thomas Merton: Monk and Poet , Edinburgh, 1978 Workman, Herbert B., The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal , London, 1913 Yale, John, A Yankee among the Swamis , London, 1961 Zaehner, R. C., Evolution in Religion: A study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , Oxford, 1971 Zaehner, R. C., Mysticism Sacred and Profane , Oxford, 1957 Zimmerman, Johann George, Solitude , London, 1797 Hermits CHAPTER FIVE Light from the East: Ramakrishna The role of the hermit in the West has always been that of the outsider: the individual who chooses solitude because he hears a different drummer. Even when large numbers have withdrawn from Western society to seek a life of asceticism and isolation, as in the age of the Desert Fathers, they have been seen as a distinct and particular order: they are not as other men are. In the more ancient civilisations of the East, however, the condition of the hermit has long been held to be the natural and proper culmination of all human life. In the Upanishads, the Sanskrit writings which underpin Hindu philosophy, the ascetic calling is obligatory and all men are expected, at a certain stage in life, to abandon their homes and possessions and to retire to the forest. Life, for the Hindu, was divided into four stages: the first stage, of bramacarya , is the period of apprenticeship when the student had to live in the house of the teacher and learn the sciences and arts. The teacher would live in a hermitage in the forest not far from a town. The student saw the teacher as spiritual father and learned through word of mouth and by contact with nature. The second stage, of garhastha , or householder, is that of shouldering the responsibilities of life, marriage and children. The duty of the householder is to acquire wealth and dispose of it justly. The next stage is of vanaprastha , the forest dweller or ascetic: ‘When the householder sees wrinkles [in his skin] and greyness [in his hair] and the son of his son, let him retire to the forest.’ 1 He relinquishes the responsibilities which restrict his life and sets off on a spiritual path. This is to prepare him for the final stage of sannyasa , the life of renunciation. The sannyasin is the ideal man who has renounced all worldly cares to attain the supreme goal of enlightenment. The hermit was so generally accepted a feature of Indian society that the Laws of Manu 2 set out in detail regulations covering his way of life and economic responsibilities: … let him live without a fire, without a house, wholly silent, subsisting on roots and fruit … chaste, sleeping on the bare ground, dwelling at the roots of trees. A potsherd [for an alms bowl], the roots of trees [for a dwelling], coarse, worn-out garments, life in solitude and indifference towards everything are the marks of one who has attained liberation. An ascetic, a hermit in the forest and Brahmanas who are students of the Veda shall not be made to pay a toll at a ferry. For secret converse with female ascetics, a small fine is payable. Eight mouthfuls are the meal of an ascetic, sixteen that of a hermit in the woods, thirty-two that of a householder, and an unlimited quantity that of a student. 3 The sannyasin , then, is the ideal to which all can – and should – aspire. He lives a life of complete independence and solitude, without possessions, pondering on the mysteries of life and wandering the world as the spiritual sentinel of the human race. He is highly respected in society but is indifferent to praise or blame, success or failure. He is the ideal but he occupies a stage in life’s journey through which we must all pass. In the words of the first guru of the modern age: ‘The last part of Life’s road has to be walked in single file.’ Those words were spoken by Sri Ramakrishna, who was described by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, as ‘completely beyond the average run of men. He appears, rather, to belong to the tradition of the great rishis of India who have come, from time to time, to turn our attention to the higher things of life and of the spirit.’ 4 His appearance in India coincided with a high tide of secularising pressures from the West. It was becoming the fashion for the more affluent youth of Calcutta to abandon traditional ways and adopt the eating of beef and drinking whisky as emblematic of a more evolved civilisation when Ramakrishna began his spiritual disciplines in the solitude of a nearby temple. His teachings were to make him famous throughout India and across the seas in America and Europe. He revived an interest in the ancient truths of Hinduism within his own culture and then was the most influential of the gurus who introduced nineteenth-century Europe and America to the spiritual treasures of the East. Life of Ramakrishna He was born the son of a poor but orthodox Brahman on 20 February 1833 in the village of Kamarpukur, which is in the Hugli district of Bengal. There was a pilgrim road to Puri passing the outskirts of the village, and a rest house for pilgrims in the village where ascetics and religious men would stay. As a boy, Ramakrishna used to spend time with them, hearing about their travels and their faith. He loved the Teligious dramas and used to organise the children of the village to act them out in the fields. He was familiar at a very early age – his biographer Max Müller 5 claims at six years old – with the great Hindu epics of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas , which he learned from a class of men who travel about reading them to the illiterate peasantry. At the age of sixteen, his father took him to visit his elder brother, Ramkumar, who ran a school in Calcutta. The idea was that he should settle there for a while to be educated, but he was very soon disillusioned with formal education. He found that there was much rarefied talk of religious matters, of the nature of being and non-being and of the liberation of the soul, but the scholars who spent their time discussing such matters were as aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and malicious as academics anywhere. He decided against education. He would seek alone for a direct experience of God. On the banks of the Ganges, about five miles north of Calcutta, is the temple of the goddess Kali at Dakshinervara. Here Ramakrishna came to settle as an assistant to another brother, who was chief priest. Shortly afterwards, his brother became too ill to carry out his duties and asked Ramakrishna to take his place. He did so and quickly came to see himself as priest and worshipper of the goddess. Because Kali became so central to the life of Ramakrishna, it is important to try to understand her significance. This is not easy for the Westerner. Her statues are gruesome and terrifying. She is usually depicted with a girdle of severed arms and a necklace of skulls. She is black, with blood-red palms to her hands. She sticks out her tongue in a grimace interpreted as lapping up blood. She has four arms: one holds a decapitated head, one a bloody sword, one confers blessings, and one is raised in a gesture which means ‘be without fear’. So Kali is the bringing together of contradictions. She is the universal mother and the universal destroyer – the one who gives life and death, blessings and curses, pleasures and pains. Ramakrishna became obsessed by the desire to see the reality which lay behind the image of Kali which he tended every day at the temple, and he fasted and prayed continuously. To humble himself, he cleaned out the temple privies with his bare hands and ate the remains of food which had been left by the beggars. He then swept and washed clean their eating place. He cultivated an indifference to worldly goods which he would express by taking a pile of coins in one hand and earth in the other, shouting ‘Money is dirt! dirt is money!’ before throwing both into the Ganges. In his search for direct religious experience, he frequently fell into trances from which it became more and more difficult to revive him. He would weep for hours when he came round. His parents thought him ill or possessed. They consulted doctors who gave him medicines, and priests who performed exorcisms, but all to no effect. Finally, they decided that he should get married, hoping this would bring him down to earth; but he lived alone after the ceremony and continued his ascetic practices. Then came his period of life as a hermit. He set out, in fact, on a vision quest, searching, through solitude and asceticism, for a direct vision of the goddess. To the north of the temple was a patch of forest covered in thick undergrowth which had once been a burial ground. It was avoided by everybody for fear of ghosts, but Ramakrishna began to spend his nights there in prayer and meditation. Eventually he gave up his duties at the temple and lived alone in this area for twelve years. The various lives of Ramakrishna 6 have different versions of his life in solitude. Some say that he prayed and meditated continually while the birds sat on his head and pecked his hair for grains of food. Snakes crawled over his body. Neither the birds nor the snakes nor Ramakrishna was aware of the presence of the others. There are two traditional Hindu approaches to ultimate reality for the seeker: the way of discrimination and the way of devotion. The choice depends on temperament. The first is through the rejection of all that is not Brahman. This is the way of the Buddha. He looks at phenomena and says ‘not this, not this’ rejecting all that is impermanent. In this way he passes through life constantly reminding himself that all he sees around him is fleeting and unreal. The only permanent reality is unseen. This is the way of discrimination. The way of devotion is by saying ‘this, this’, in recognition of the fact that all is Brahman. This way recognises the reality behind the phenomena. This was the way of Ramakrishna. He practised the different yogic disciplines at this time under the guidance of a Brahmin holy woman and began to develop psychic powers. These were commonly demonstrated in India by holy men as a sign of their sanctity. They were the most eye-catching feature of Indian religious life and spiced many travellers’ tales; but Ramakrishna was wary of them. He said that psychic powers were an obstacle to enlightenment, because aspirants to spiritual progress would often be distracted by having developed and then becoming inordinately proud of them. He was echoing the experience of the Desert Fathers and, like them, had a story to demonstrate his thesis: A man had two sons. The elder left home while he was still young and became a monk. The younger got his education and became learned and virtuous. He married and settled down to fulfil his duties as a householder. After twelve years the monk came to visit his brother, who was overjoyed. When they had eaten together, the younger said: ‘Brother, you have given up our worldly pleasures and wandered around as a monk all these years. Please tell me why. What have you gained by it?’ The elder brother said: ‘You want to see what I have gained? Come with me!’ So he took his brother to the bank of a neighbouring river and said: ‘Watch!’, and then he stepped out on the water and crossed the river, walking on the surface. When he reached the other bank he called to his brother: ‘Did you see that?’ But the brother had paid half a penny to the ferryman to row him across and he went up to his brother and said: ‘Didn’t you see me cross the river by paying half a penny? Is that all you’ve gained by all your austerities?’ Hearing his brother’s words the elder understood his mistake. And he began to set his mind to realise God. 7 In 1865 a wandering ascetic called Tota Pura arrived to visit Ramakrishna for the customary three days’ stay – a wandering monk must travel on continuously like a wandering stream without attachment. He was of the Naga sect of naked religious beggars and had been the head of a monastery before taking to the road. He saw the special quality of Ramakrishna and stayed with him for eleven months, during which time he initiated him as a sannyasin . Then he left and was never seen again. After his departure, it is said that Ramakrishna stayed in a continuous state of trance for six months, being fed by a holy man who would strike him with a stick so as to bring him close enough to consciousness to be able to take food. When he recovered he set out to understand other faiths. He went to live with an Islamic holy man and adopted his dress and way of life. Then he had a vision of Jesus, after which he could not speak for three days. These experiences confirmed his belief that all religions are true: they are simply different paths to the same end. By the early 1870s he was becoming famous and became influential in the revival of Hinduism which was then taking place. One consequence of the Christian missionary activity in India was that young educated Hindus, while rejecting missionary claims, took a closer look at their own faith. They decided that Hinduism could be purged of its superstitions and obsolete customs and, as they saw it, brought into line with other world religions. This would bring the religious systems of India into the modern world. Some used the beliefs of Hinduism as a unifying force in the nationalist movement. They said that spirituality had always been the great strength of India and it was time to reassert her spirituality as a first step to regaining political freedom. Ramakrishna influenced but kept apart from these reforming movements. His diagnosis of the human malady was that it was spiritual. Only when men came to realise God dwelling within them could society improve. Human relationships could find their true meaning only through the knowledge of men’s relationship with God. The only true foundation for ethics was a realisation of the oneness of existence and the solidarity of mankind. During the last seven years of his life he talked constantly with his visitors but never wrote anything. His disciples made notes of his sayings in Bengali, and these were later published. In 1885 he developed throat cancer and was advised by his physicians to stop talking. He refused and, on 15 March 1886, fell into a trance from which he never recovered. Ramakrishna lived a very simple life without possessions. He had an aversion to gold and silver so great that, if he were to touch them, the mere contact, even when asleep, would make him shake convulsively. He had no formal education; he knew no Sanskrit or English or even scholarly Bengali. As he was not trained in systematic philosophy or theology, he picked up all he knew from holy men and prayer. He never claimed to found a new faith but simply to teach the old one. His faith was simply that God, the ultimate reality, is unknowable and beyond the reach of human intelligence. On the other hand, every human being is a manifestation of God and contains the indwelling Spirit. These beliefs he shared with traditional Christianity. His affinity with the Desert Fathers and with the mystical theology of Eastern Orthodoxy extends to the teaching that religious experience is the only way to become fully aware of religious truths; that the divinity that lies within us can best be contacted through asceticism; and that to set out securely on a spiritual journey we need the company of a spiritual guide. Ramakrishna’s religious insights were passed on to his followers in simple language and they have been preserved by them like the apophthegmata of the Desert Fathers. When we read them today they take us straight to the heart of Hinduism, away from the more colourful and even violent manifestations of particular sects or gurus, to that centre of religious understanding which is the great treasure of India. Max Müller, who first edited these stories of Ramakrishna for a Western readership, explained to a Cambridge audience in 1882 his life-long championship of Hinduism: If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions of some of them which deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant – I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India. 8 The Sayings of Ramakrishna At the heart of Hinduism is the basic conviction that the nature of the ultimate reality is and will remain a mystery, and that the beginnings of wisdom lie in the recognition of this fact. As the Desert Fathers had insisted, the Scriptures can point to but never elucidate this mystery. Ramakrishna told a story which echoes closely their teaching: A man had two sons. The father sent them to a teacher to learn the knowledge of Brahman. After a few years they returned from the teacher’s house and bowed low before their father. Wanting to find out what they had learned, he first questioned the elder: ‘My child, you have studied all the scriptures, now tell me what is the nature of Brahman?’ The boy began to explain by reciting texts from the Vedas. The father did not say anything. Then he asked the younger son the same question. But the boy was silent and stood with downcast eyes. No word escaped his lips. The father was pleased and said to him: ‘You have understood a little of what the Brahman is. It cannot be expressed in words.’ 9 But it is also true that we all have a need for an awareness of that ultimate reality: As the lamp does not burn without oil, so man cannot live without God. * He who has faith has all; he who lacks faith lacks all. So we should all set out on the spiritual journey; but we are held back by our worldliness: So long as the iron is in the furnace it is red hot, but it becomes black as soon as it is taken out of the fire. So it is with the worldly man. As long as he is in church or with pious people he glows with religious emotion; but removed from these associations he loses them all. * Flies sit at times on the sweetmeats that are exposed for sale in the shop of a confectioner; but as soon as the sweeper passes by with his basket of filth the flies leave the sweetmeats to settle on it. The honey bee never sits on filth but only on flowers. Worldly men are like flies. They may get a taste of the Divine Sweetness but their natural tendency towards dirt soon brings them back to the dunghill of the world. The good man is always absorbed in the contemplation of divine beauty. * A group of fisherwomen were on their way home from an afternoon market when they were overtaken by a heavy storm as night fell. They came to the house of a florist who let them in to sleep in one of his store rooms where bunches of flowers were kept. The sweet-smelling atmosphere of the room was too much for the fisherwomen, who could not sleep until one of them suggested: ‘Let us each keep her empty fish basket close to her nose so as to prevent this troublesome smell of flowers from attacking our nostrils and killing our sleep.’ They all agreed and soon began to snore contentedly. Such is the influence of bad habits on those who are addicted to them. * If you move a bound soul to a spiritual environment, he will pine away. The worm surrounded in filth is perfectly happy there. It thrives on dirt. It will die if you put it in a pot of rice. * A boat should stay in the water but water should not stay in the boat. So an aspirant may live in the world but the world should not live in him. But Ramakrishna, too, understood that human kind cannot bear very much reality: Ornaments cannot be made of pure gold. Some alloy must be mixed with it. A man totally devoid of Maya [illusion] will not survive more than twenty-one days. So long as the man has body, he must have some Maya, however small, to carry on the bodily functions. In the search for enlightenment, we all need a guru or spiritual father to point the way: Many roads lead to Calcutta. A certain man set out from his village for the metropolis. On the road he asked a man: ‘Which way must I follow to reach Calcutta quickly?’ The man said: ‘Follow this road’. After a time he met another man and asked him: ‘Is this the shortest way to Calcutta?’ ‘Oh no,’ said the man. ‘You must retrace your steps and take the road to your left’. He did so. After a short distance on the new road he met a third man who pointed out yet another road as being the shortest to Calcutta. So the traveller made no progress but spent the entire day changing one road for another. He should have followed consistently the road shown by the first man. So those who want to find God should follow one and only one guide. On the importance of choosing the right guru: One day as I was … on my way to the pine grove I heard a bull frog croaking. After a while, on my way back, I could still hear it croaking so I looked to see what was the matter and found that a water snake had seized it. The snake could neither swallow it nor give it up so there was no end to its suffering. I thought that if it had been seized by a cobra it would have been silenced after three croaks at the most. As it was only a water snake, both of them had to go through this agony. A man’s ego is destroyed after three croaks if he gets into the hands of a real teacher. But if the teacher if an ‘unripe’ one, then both the teacher and the disciple go through endless suffering. The greatest obstacle to spiritual progress is vanity and the concern for the self: The sun can give heat and light to the whole world but it can do nothing when there are clouds in the sky which shut out its rays. So long as there is egoism in the soul, God cannot shine upon the heart. * The cup which has held garlic juice keeps the smell even though it is cleaned and scoured hundreds of times. So the odour of egoism never completely leaves us. * Water appears to be divided into two parts if one puts a stick across it. But, in reality, there is only one water. It appears as two because of the stick. The ‘I’ is the stick. Remove the stick and there is only one water as before. * A disciple had faith in the infinite power of his guru. So he walked across a river by just pronouncing his name. The guru saw this and said to himself: ‘If there is such power in my name, I must be a great and powerful man.’ And he set out across the river shouting ‘I, I, I!’ He sank and was drowned. Faith can achieve miracles but vanity and egoism is the death of man. * A tree laden with fruit bends low. So, if you want to be great, be meek. On the journey, we can only recognise spiritual truths if we have developed a spiritual sensitivity: A man with ‘green’ bhakti [love of God] cannot assimilate spiritual talk and instruction, but a man with ‘ripe’ bhakti can. The image that falls on a photographic plate covered with black film [silver nitrate] is retained. On the other hand, thousands of images may be reflected on a bare piece of glass but not one of them is retained. As the object moves away, the glass becomes the same as it was before. One cannot assimilate spiritual instruction unless one has already developed love of God. But God gives to those who really search for him the awareness that they need: As a king who intends to visit the house of one of his subjects sends from his own stores the necessary seats, ornaments, food etc., so that his servant may properly receive him, so, before the Lord comes, he sends into our hearts the love, reverence, faith and yearning. And one other prerequisite for wisdom which is widely echoed in many faiths: As long as you are not simple like a child you will not be illumined. Forget all worldly knowledge and become as ignorant as a child and you will know the Truth. Related to this universal truth is the teaching that we can only stop falling over and bumping into things on our spiritual journey when we have come to acknowledge our complete dependence on God: The young of the monkey clasps and clings to its mother. The young kitten cannot clasp its mother, so it mews piteously whenever it is near her. If the young monkey lets go, it falls and is hurt. This is because it relies on its own strength to hang on; but the young kitten runs no such risk, because the mother carries it about from place to place. Such is the difference between self-reliance and complete resignation to the will of God. The sign that real understanding has been achieved is not a missionary sermon but silence: So long as a bee is outside the petals of the lotus and has not tasted its honey, it hovers around the flower buzzing. But when it is inside the flower it drinks the nectar silently. So long as a man quarrels about doctrines and dogmas, he has not tasted the nectar of true faith; once he has tasted it he becomes still. * If you throw an unbaked cake of flour into hot ghee, it will make a bubbling noise. The more it is fried, the less the noise becomes, and when it is fully fried the bubbling ceases. So long as a man has little knowledge he goes about lecturing and preaching, but when he has attained knowledge he stops making vain displays. * And one of the effects of illumination is that we can live on in a worldly society without contamination: Milk and water, when brought into contact, are sure to mix so that the milk cannot be separated again. So if the young man mixes indiscriminately with all sorts of worldly men he not only loses his ideals, but also his faith, love and enthusiasm die away imperceptibly. But when you convert milk into butter it no longer mixes with the water but floats on top. Similarly, when a soul once attains Godhead it may live in any company without being affected by evil influences. * The wind carries the smell of sandalwood as well as that of ordure but does not mix with either. Similarly, a perfect man lives in the world but does not mix with it. * An aquatic bird like the pelican dives into the water but the water does not wet its plumage; so the perfect man lives in the world, which does not touch him. Another effect of enlightenment: Once a holy man, while passing through a crowded street, accidentally trod upon the toe of a wicked person. The wicked person, furious with rage, beat the sadhu mercilessly till he fell to the ground in a faint. His disciples comforted him and when he had recovered a little said to him: ‘Sir, do you recognise who is looking after you?’ The sadhu replied: ‘Yes. He who beat me’. A true sadhu finds no distinction between friend and foe. But this high spiritual state is not for everyone, and Ramakrishna has some practical advice for the would-be sannyasin : A lover of God and a knower of God were once passing through a forest. They saw a tiger at a distance. The knower of God said: ‘There is no need to flee; God will protect us.’ The lover of God said: ‘No, brother. Let us run away. Why should we trouble the Lord to do what we can accomplish by our own exertions?’ * It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked. * God tells the thief to go steal and at the same time warns the householder against the thief. Religion must be experienced and not just discussed or read about: It is easy to pronounce ‘do re mi fa so la’ but more difficult to sing or to play the notes on an instrument. So it is easy to talk about religion but difficult to act it out. But the outward forms of religious ritual are important: Although the germ in a grain of paddy is the important bit for growth, the husk being of no use, yet if you plant a husked grain it will not grow. To get the crop you must sow the grain with the husk on. So rites and ceremonies are necessary for the growth and perpetuation of religion. They are the receptacles which contain the seed of truth; every person must perform them before he can reach the central truth. That central truth, the reality of God, can only be reached if God himself takes a hand. And it is for this that we should pray: A police sergeant goes his rounds in the dark of night with a bull’s-eye lantern in his hands. [N.B. these lanterns had dark glass on three sides.] No one sees his face, but with the help of that light the sergeant sees everybody’s face, and others too can see one another. If you want to see the sergeant, however, you must pray to him: ‘Sir, please turn the light on your own face. Let me see you.’ In the same way one must pray to God: ‘O Lord, be gracious and turn the light of knowledge on thyself so that I may see thy face.’ But even when God reveals himself, we can only know what our perceptions permit: Once a man went into a wood and saw an animal on a tree. He came back and told another man he had seen an animal with a beautiful red colour on a certain tree. The second man said: ‘When I went into the woods I saw that animal. But why do you call it red? It’s green’. Another man who was there contradicted them both and said it was yellow. Then others arrived and they began to argue, some saying it was grey, violet, blue and so on. To settle the argument they all went to the tree. They saw a man sitting under it. When they asked him, he said: ‘Yes, I live under this tree and I know the animal very well. You are all correct. Sometimes it appears red, or green – violet, grey or blue. It’s a chameleon. Sometimes it has no colour at all. In the same way, somebody who constantly thinks of God knows his nature. He can reveal himself to others in various forms and aspects. Then again, sometimes God has attributes, sometimes he has none. Only the man who lives under the tree knows this. The others suffer from the agony of futile argument. * Once some blind men chanced to come across an animal that people told them was an elephant. They were asked what the elephant was like, so they began to feel its body. One of them said the elephant was like a pillar – he had touched its leg; another that it was like a winnowing fan – he had touched its ear; others, touching the tail or belly, gave their different versions. Just so, a man who has seen only one aspect of God limits God to that alone. He cannot see that God can be anything else. It has always been the practice of religion to stress the greater importance of inner thought over outer practices: Once two friends were walking along the street when they saw some people listening to a reading of the Bhagavata. One said to the other: ‘Come, friend, let us hear the sacred book’. And he went in and sat down. The second peeped in and then went away to visit a brothel. But soon he felt disgusted with what he had done, ‘Shame on me!’ he said to himself. ‘My friend has been listening to the sacred words of Hari and see where I am!’ But his friend, listening to the Bhagavata, was also disgusted. ‘What a fool I am!’ he said to himself. ‘I have been listening to this fellow’s blah-blah and my friend is having a rare old time!’ In the course of time they both died and the messenger of Death came for the soul of the one who had listened to the Bhagavata and dragged it off to hell. The messenger of God came for the one who had been at the brothel and led him off to heaven. Verily, the Lord looks into a man’s heart and does not judge him by what he does or where he lives. Only God knows our true self, the one we search for in solitude, and we tend to cultivate a false self, shaped by the expectations of the society we live in: Once a tigress attacked a flock of goats. As she sprang on her prey, she gave birth to a cub and died. The cub grew up with the goats, and when they ate grass the cub did so. When they bleated, the cub bleated too. It grew to be a big tiger. One day the flock was attacked by a tiger, who was amazed to see a grass-eating tiger grazing with them. The wild tiger seized the grass-eating one, which began to bleat. So the wild tiger dragged it to the water and said: ‘Look at your face in the water – it’s just like mine. Stop eating grass, try a little meat.’ And it thrust some meat into its mouth. But the grass-eating tiger spat it out and began to bleat. Gradually, however, it got the taste for meat and would accept small pieces from the wild tiger. Then the wild tiger said: ‘Now you see there is no difference between you and me. Come away with me into the forest.’ So the guru will let you know what your true nature is. Ramakrishna was fond of pointing out what was true and important knowledge and what was irrelevant: Once several men were crossing the Ganges by boat. One of them, a pundit, was making great display of his erudition, saying that he had studied the great books: the Vedas, the Vedanta and the six systems of philosophy. He asked a fellow passenger: ‘Do you know the Vedanta?’ ‘No, Reverend Sir’. ‘The Samkhya and the Patanjala?’ ‘No, Reverend Sir?’ ‘Have you read no philosophy whatever?’ ‘No, Reverend Sir.’ The pundit went on talking in this way and the passenger sat in silence when a great storm rose and the boat began to sink. The passenger said to the pundit: ‘Sir, can you swim?’ ‘No,’ replied the pundit. The passenger said: ‘I don’t know the Samkhya and the Patanjala, but I can swim.’ But his greatest contribution to world religions was the perception that they are all, at heart, a search for the same God. He once said: A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it ‘jal’; at another the Mussulmans take water in leather bags and call it ‘pani’. At a third the Christians call it ‘water’. Can we imagine it is not ‘jal’ but only ‘pani’ or ‘water’? How ridiculous! The substance is one under different names and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament and names create differences. Let each man follow his own path. * It is not good to feel that my religion alone is true and other religions are false. The correct attitude is this: ‘My religion is right but I do not know whether other religions are right or wrong, true or false.’ I say this because one cannot know the true nature of God unless one realises Him. After the death of Ramakrishna, a group of his disciples decided to devote their lives to spreading his teachings. Their leader was Narendra Nath Dutt, who took the name of Vivekananda and attended the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in September 1903. He then lectured in America for two years and visited France and England. He was the first Indian to persuade British and Americans to accept him as a teacher. He was the pre-cursor of many gurus who have carried from. India a message which was seen as a revelation in the West. The story of the gradual corruption of that message into a charter for self-indulgence is one of the clichés of our age. The religious insights of Ramakrishna remain. Hermits Hermits Contents Cover About the Book About the Author Dedication Title Page Prologue: Dawn in China Introduction I The Emergence of the Individual II The Desert Fathers III Lying Low in the Dark Forest: The Russian Startsy Ornamental Hermits: an Interlude IV By Walden Pond: Henry David Thoreau V Light from the East: Ramakrishna VI Hermit of the Sahara: Charles de Foucauld VII The Waters of Contradiction: Thomas Merton VIII A Hermit for Our Time: Robert Lax on Patmos Reference Acknowledgements Bibliography Index Copyright Hermits Index The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader. abi Serour, Mordecai 135 Académie Française 131 Achilles, Abbas 48 Adam brothers 87 Aegean Sea 52 Aeschylus, The Suppliants 15 Africa, European expansion 134–5 Age of Communication 191 Age of Reason 23, 86 agnostics 166 Aids to Reflection 93 Alberic, Father 140, 142 Aldburgham, Miss Cynthia 89 Alexander the Great 13, 15, 18, 112 Alexandria 20 Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow 56 Algeria 135, 143, 148 Algiers, Ecole Supérieure 135 Alsace-Lorraine 131, 135 Ambrose, Archbishop of Moscow 58–9, 76 America Indians 107 north-western states 90 writers 91 Ammonas, Abbas 27, 49 Amvrosy, Fr 77, 79, 84 anaideia 12 Antaeus 97 Antisthenes 8–9, 11–13 Antony, Abbas 46 apatheia 12 Apostles 63 Apostolic Tradition 76 Apuleus 15 Arabs 148, 154, 188 Ardèche 139 Arete 9 Arians 19 Aristodamus of Argos 4 Aristotle 18 Armenia, hermits 51 Arsenius, Abbas 25, 28 Ascetics 21–2 Asekroum 157 Asiatic scriptures 112 Athanasius, Father 65 Athenians 4, 18 Athens 6, 19 Atman 112 Attic farmers 4 Augustan age 17 Augustinian confessions 164 Babel 210 Babylon 210 Bamberger, Dom John Eudes 189 Basil, Emperor 52 Batiushka 79–80 Benedictines 51, 138, 166 Bengal 116 Beni Abbes 152–4, 161 Bergson 200 Bessarion, Abbas 46 Bhagavad Gita 112 Bible 35, 39–40, 49 Black Sea 11 Blackwood’s Magazine 89 Blake, William 165 Bochkov, Father Anthony 63 Book of Genesis 144 Boston 100 Boswell, James 23 Brahmins 15, 112, 117–18, 121 bramacharya 114, see also Hindu, Life, four stages Bramachari 207 British Empire 39 British West Indies 174 Brook Farm 93 Brown, John 100 Bruno, Giordano 89 Buddha 117 Buddhists 183, 185, 188 Burtin, Father 156 Burton, Naomi 182 Byzantine Church 55 laws and religion 53 Byzantium, Emperor of 53 Calcutta 115–16, 122 Camaldolese order 51 hermitages 166, 171 Merton, Thomas 172–3 Cambridge, Clare College 164 Carnegie, Dale 172 Carthusians 51, 168, 170 Cassian 42 Catherine the Great 59 Catholic clergy 148 theologians 185 Catholic Action 167 Catholic Church 168 Catholic Encyclopedia 166–7 Catholicism 165–6, 189 Lax, Robert 192 Cato, Marcus Porcius 22 Celia community 50 Celtic solitaries 185 Chinese 91, 112 Chippendale, Thomas 87 Cholmondley, Thomas 113 Christ 21–2, 38, 47, 74 Church of 55 Christianity 21, 58, 82–3, 112, 137 conversion to 164 Eastern 57 Western 53 Christians 19–20, 23–24, 36, 163 books 137 cenobitic life 50 Church 21 Cynics 19 era 52 eremitism 183 life 72 missionaries 3, 119 monasteries 26, 50 mystics 67 poverty 22, 145 world 57 Chuang-Tzu 183 Church Fathers 19 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 22 Cistercians 168 Abbots, second American Meeting 179 Order of the Reformed 140 Order of the Strict Observance 168 civil disobedience 99–100 liberties, Thoreau, Henry David 90 Civil War 100 Clémence, Mother 142 Climacus, John 70 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 92–3 Colobos, Abbas John 25, 35, 37, 43, 47–8 Columbia Jester 164 University 164 Yearbook 164, 192 companionship 189 Comte, Auguste 131–32 concentration camps 34 Concord 91–3, 95, 98–101 confession 61 Confucius 112 Congregational Church 112 Constantinople Aghia Sophia 53 Imperial Court 25 Patriarch of 56 See of 19 Coptic hermits 174 Corinth 14 Crates 15–19 Cretan Minotaur 6 Crete 3 Crito 6–7 Crusoe, Robinson 177 Cuernavaca, Monastery of Our Lady of the Resurrection 174 The Cynics 8–12, 16–19 Cyprus 52 Cyropaedia 10 Cyrus, king of Persia 9–10 Dakshinervara 116 Daniel, Abbas 31 Dans le désert de Dieu 172 Darius 10–11 Darwin, Charles Robert 131 David, King 83 de Bondy, Marie 137–8, 140, 151–2, 155–6 de Bondy, Vicomte Olivier 137 de Castries, Henri 137, 147 de Foucauld, Charles 130–63 Algeria 148 Beni Abbes hermitage 148–51 Algiers 135 Aunt Inès 136–7 Desert Fathers 145 Desert Hermit 143, 162 family background 130–1 hermit 145, 149 hermitages 159, 162 Holy Land visit 138 Jaffa 144 Marie C 133–4 military career 131–5 Morocco 135–7, 152–61 Nazareth 144 Notre-Dame des Neiges 138–9, 146–7 Paris 136 Pont-à-Mousson 133 religion 131–2, 137 retreats 138 Rome 143 solitude 152, 157 theological studies 141–2 Trappist 161 Trappists 138–44 Tuareg 157 de Gonzague, Dom Louis 143 de Hueck, Catherine 167–8 de Mores, Marquis (later Duke of Vallombrosa) 132 de Morlet, Colonel 131 de Rancé, Abbé Armand-Jean 168 Delphi 11 Delphic oracle 12 Democritus 15 Dendara 21, 50 Desert Fathers 20–51, 53, 71, 75, 84, 114 de Foucauld, Charles 145 Egyptian Thebaid 56 experience 55, 118 hermits 52–3, 186 humility 39–47 Lives of the Desert Fathers 138 Ramakrishna 120 Russian monks 86 solitude 26–30 writings 22, 25–6, 67, 69, 77, 80 Diadochus, Abbas 29–30 Dictionnaire de la Langue Française 131 Diderot, Denis 86 Dimitri, Prince 56 Dimitrov 60 Dinaux, Captain 153 d’Indilly, Arnauld, Lives of the Desert Fathers 138 Diogenes Laertius 11–14, 16 Diogenes of Sinope 11 Dionysius 3 Discourses 86 Dominicans 166, 172 Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus) 18 Dostoevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich 84 Dunmore, Lady 89 d’Urbal, General 132–3 Dutt, Narendra Nath (Vivekananda) 128–9 Eastern Orthodoxy, hermits 55 religions 165 spirituality 112 Edom, King of 44 Egypt 3, 21, 33, 45 hermits 50 monasticism 42, 54 Northern and Middle 50 Thebaid 56 West 51 Elected Silence 163 Elia, Abbas 46 Elijah 21 Embarek, Paul 152–3, 155, 160 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 92–5, 100–1, 103, 108, 111–12 Transcendentalists 92–4 Emerson, William 94 Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers 86 Encyclopédistes 58 Epiphanius, Bishop 44 Epithemius 2 eremitic life 51 Euprepios, Abbas 36 Europe 18 civilisation 1, 15 Euxine Sea 14, see also Black Sea Evagrius, Abbas 36 Everyman Library 211 Evian, Lake Geneva 134 fasting 34–5 Feast of St Louis 183 Finland 59 First World War 159 Ford, Father 165 Fouard, Abbé Vie de Jésus 138 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique 134 4th Hussars 133 France 146–8, 152 Catholics 159 intellectuals 58 philosophers 188 Franciscans 145, 166, 168 Franco-Prussian war 131 Friendship House, Harlem 167–8 Gandhi, Mahatma 90, 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How To Be Alone (Jonathan Franzen) (Z-Library).epub	How to be Alone BOOKS IN BED I N THE EROTIC BROADSHEETS Of the New York Times , which every morning lies on my breakfast table, silently awaiting my attentions, there recently appeared what seemed to me a wholly reasonable op-ed piece by Adam Hochschild on the horror of airport television. “At gates cursed with the TV’s,” Hochschild wrote, “most of the passengers are trying to talk, work or read. But the penetrating TV noise needles itself into the conversations and onto the pages.” His complaint soon brought replies from the Refiners, Resonators, and Rebutters who typically write letters to the Times . One Refiner suggested that airport TVs might play silently with captions. One Resonator wrote movingly of the kindred horror of “smelling and hearing popcorn” in movie theaters; another invited readers to “try spending a night in any moderately priced hotel without enduring the buzz-muffle of televised talk.” (The rage palpable in the word “buzz-muffle”! Nothing more reliably bolsters my faith in humanity than the dyspepsia of letters to the Times.) There was also, however, a classic Rebuttal from the president of Turner Private Networks, who claimed, bizarrely, that airport TV is “not intrusive” and, more persuasively, that Hochschild is “more alone than he might think.” Apparently, Nielsen surveys show that ninety-five percent of air travelers believe that television enhances the airport environment, and eighty-nine percent believe that “it makes the time spent in an airport more worthwhile.” I pitied Hochschild when I read this. Here he is, trying bravely to give voice to a silent majority of sufferers, hoping to incite communal outrage, when along comes somebody with a figure— ninety-five percent —to knock his legs out from under him. He’s mugged by a norm. This business of norms, which are a fixture of the information age—as friends or as tyrants, depending on how normal you are—was on my mind this winter when I embarked on a survey of contemporary popular sex books and was confronted with evidence that I am one of the few heterosexual men in America who’s not turned on by elaborate lingerie. In bookstores, pop-sex books are usually shelved under Health (a topic of such importance to the culture that every book now published, including novels, could arguably be shelved there), and, since sexual “health” is impossible to define objectively, they offer the reader a uniquely rich array of normative pronouncements. “Matching lacy bra and panties, garter belt and stockings, bustiers, G-strings, and teddies—most men can’t get enough of this stuff,” Sydney Biddle Barrows, the Mayflower Madam, writes in Just Between Us Girls . She later adds: “Whatever the reason, bustiers and merry widows seem to be almost universally popular garments.” Dr. Susan Block, in The 10 Commandments of Pleasure , commands the female reader, “Wear lingerie,” and explains that “men who love sex love a woman who thinks about it, dresses up for it.” Susan Crain Bakos, the author of Sexational Secrets , concurs: “Men love it when you come to bed in high heels, bustier, and stockings.” Lest these generalizations seem unscientific, the authors of Sex: A Man’s Guide report that, according to their survey of Men’s Health readers, lingerie is “without a doubt . . . the U.S. male’s favorite erotic aid.” I have no objection to a nice bra, still less to being invited to remove one. But brothelwear of the kind sold at Frederick’s of Hollywood seems to me scarcely less hokey than a Super Bowl halftime show. What I feel when I hear that the mainstream actually buys this stuff is the same garden-variety alienation I feel on learning that Hootie & the Blowfish sold thirteen million copies of their first record, or that the American male’s dream date is Cindy Crawford. In a sense, I’m proud of not being like everybody else. Like everybody else, though, I’m anxious about sex, and with sex the recognition that I’m not like everybody else leads directly to the worry that I’m not as good as—or, at any rate, not having as much fun as—everybody else. Sexual anxiety is primal; physical love has always carried the risk that one’s most naked self will be rejected. If Americans today are especially anxious, the consensus seems to be that it’s because of “changing sex roles” and “media images of sex” and so forth. In fact, we’re simply experiencing the anxiety of a free market. Contraception and the ease of divorce have removed the fetters from the economy of sex, and, like the citizens of present-day Dresden and Leipzig, we all want to believe we’re better off under a regime in which even the poorest man can dream of wealth. But as the old walls of repression tumble down, many Americans—discarded first wives, who are like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory; or sexually inept men, who are the equivalent of command-economy bureaucrats—have grown nostalgic for the old state monopolies. What are The Rules if not an attempt to reregulate an economy run scarily amok? Until the Rules become universal, though, such comfort as can be found in the market economy comes principally from norms. Are you worried about the size of your penis? According to Sex: A Man’s Guide , most men’s erections are between five and seven inches long. Worried about the architecture of your clitoris? According to Betty Dodson, in the revised edition of her Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving , the variations are “astounding.” Worried about frequency? “Americans do not have a secret life of abundant sex,” the researchers of Sex in America concluded. Worried about how long it takes you to come? On average, says Sydney Barrows, it takes a woman eighteen minutes, a man just three. The problem with relying on norms for comfort, however, is not only that you may fail to meet them but that you may meet them all too well. Who really wants to be sexually just like everybody else? Isn’t the bedroom where I expect, rather, to feel special? Unique, even? The last thing I want is to be reminded of the vaguely icky fact that across the country millions of other people are having sex. This is the conundrum of the individual confronting masses about which he can’t help knowing more than he’d like to know: I want to be alone, but not too alone. I want to be the same but different. POPULAR SEX BOOKS are only a part of the sex industry, but one could argue that they’re the most representative wing, in that they are books. If a sexual fetish is understood as a displacement of genital energies, then language, even more than lingerie, is by far the most prevalent paraphilia in the country today. You can’t show a bare breast on network television, but there’s no limit to the backdoor prurience of talk about rape, incest, and sexual harassment. Cybersex and phone sex are vastly more popular ways of avoiding intimate fluids than is the worship of, say, knees or feet. Although our pop sex writers seem to recognize the ascendance of language, they don’t trust their readers to know how, or even when, to use it. In Sex: A Man’s Guide we learn that lovers can be encouraged to talk dirty by making lists of “clinical” and “dirty” terms and comparing them. Dr. Block reels off forty-five possible pet names for a penis, including “peenie-weenie,” “dipstick,” and “lovepump,” and commands her readers: “Take your pick.” (More adventurous souls are urged to “make up something special” to suit their “very special wonder worm.”) Susan Bakos cues Tantric lovers to the appropriate moment for “whispered terms of endearment,” and she suggests that women who want to learn to talk dirty rent some video porn and study it carefully. “Once you are comfortable saying the words as a scriptwriter wrote them,” she tells us, “you can personalize them to make it sound more like you speaking.” Reading a book of expert sexual instruction must rank near the bottom on the scale of erotic pastimes—somewhere below peeling an orange, not far above flossing. One problem is that, although the intention is precisely the opposite, these books collectively and individually make the world of sex seem very small. Never mind that there are only so many ways to fit body parts together or that Alex Comfort has already said and said well, in works that have sold better than eight million copies, pretty much all there is to say about it. There seems, in general, to be far too little lore to go around. Author after author derives the etymology of “cunnilingus,” stresses the importance of doing “kegel” exercises to strengthen the pubococcygeal muscles, and quotes Shakespeare on the topic of alcohol. (“It provokes the desire, but takes away the performance.”) Author after author insists that men are “visual creatures” and that the size of a penis matters less than what its owner does with it. When the lore runs out, the advice turns bleakly otiose. Dr. Susan Block commands lovers: “Use babytalk, or at least ‘pet names.” In Sexational Secrets , whose subtitle promises “exotic advice your mother never told you,” Susan Bakos instructs masturbating men to use, “in various combinations,” the Slow Single Stroke, the Fast Single Stroke, the Slow Two-Hand Stroke, the Fast Two-Hand Stroke, the Cupped Hand, the Finger Stroke, the Wrist Pump, the Slap, the Beat, the Rub, the Squeeze Stroke, the Open-Hand Stroke, and the Vagina Simulator Stroke; instructions for each are provided. The italicized cheerfulness with which pop-sex authors convey the useless and the banal is identical to that of the newscasters on airport TV, whose most striking talent is the ability to summon (or to fake, like an orgasm) fresh wonderment over the latest wrinkle in automobile safety. Trying to make fascinating and new what is neither, the authors tirelessly coin neologisms. They toss off “sexation,” “primemate,” “soulgasm,” and “partnersex” with the supreme self-assurance that American audiences now demand from professional exhibitionists. Dr. Block, who calls herself an “erotic philosopher,” illustrates her commandments with glimpses of her husband and herself in bed: “Max grunts like a bonobo chimp when he wants to go down on me, then moans and coos and tells me I’m delicious as he slurps away.” For people who have never shared a fantasy with their lovers but “would like to try,” the philosopher has this advice: “Watch the Dr Susan Block Show together—that’ll stimulate your fantasies!” Not every pop-sex book points to television quite this literally, but all the books seem bent on enmeshing sex (formerly life’s one free pleasure) in the web of consumer spending. The reader is relentlessly exhorted to buy erotic videos, high-quality lingerie, candles, champagne, incense, oils, vibrators, perfumes, bath-bubble mix. Betty Dodson, Ph.D., sounds less like a prophet of an autoerotic utopia than like an infomercial host; she twice gives readers an address from which her videos may be ordered. Sydney Barrows suggests that renting luxury cars, wearing full-length fur coats, and taking expensive vacations will spice up the deadliest marriage. In Sexational Secrets , Susan Bakos sets out to gather for the presumably impecunious reader the rarefied sexual know-how that members of the moneyed classes spend thousands to obtain. Apparently, the best sex is being had today by a lucky international elite who can afford $625 for multiple-orgasm workshops. Whether Bakos is interviewing “beautiful French courtesans” or a master of Kundalini yoga, she goes out of her way to stress the demographics of their clientele. They are “sheiks,” they live in “secluded” suburban homes, they wear “business suits” and drink “flavored coffees.” As for the benefits of better sex, Betty Dodson reports that after attending one of her lectures on the vulva a woman asked for a raise at work “—and got it!” (Dodson attributes the woman’s enhanced self-esteem to becoming “cunt positive.”) And a raise at work is small potatoes compared to these authors’ promises, expressed and implied, for the sexually liberated society as a whole. We can look forward to the disappearance of “prejudice and bigotry, heartache and misery, loneliness and violence”; the obsolescence of guns and missiles; the release of “the spirit of creativity” and the renewal of “the joy of living.” Here is Dodson’s “futuristic fantasy” of liberation: It’s New Year’s Eve, 1999. All the television networks have agreed to let me produce “Orgasms Across America.” Every TV screen will be showing high-tech, fine-art porn created by the best talent this country has to offer. At the stroke of midnight, the entire population will be masturbating to orgasm for World Peace. It was Mao’s nasty inspiration that for a revolution truly to succeed it must never stop, and our own culture’s version of nonstop revolution is collected and distilled in pop-sex books: a ceaseless propaganda of self-congratulation wedded to a ceaseless invocation of the still-powerful Enemy. If victory in the Sexual Revolution should ever be declared, people might no longer seek instruction and guidance from commercial sources. Consequently, our experts fill their books with reminders of how much better off we all are than our grandparents. They laud the science of Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson; they gleefully puncture the myth of the Freudian “mature” vaginal orgasm; they ridicule, under such banners as “The Annals of Ignorance,” the hopeless stupidity of human beings a century ago. But the running dogs of sexual repression still hunt in packs outside our doors. One author blames “narrow, paternalistic 195osstyle family values” and our “sex-negative, genital-shaming upbringing,” while another blames “traditional marriage” and “anti-porn activists who are intent on preserving their romantic illusions.” Absolutely everyone blames religion. To hear the experts tell it, we live in a sexually repressed nation, under the dark thrall of Catholicism, fundamentalism, and ignorance. I wonder what planet these experts are on. They seem blind to the way today’s fifteen-year-olds act and dress, oblivious to the atmosphere of sexual license of which they themselves are the direct beneficiaries, and wholly ignorant of the large body of recent scholarship, by Peter Gay and others, that has revealed beneath the veneer of Victorian “repression” a universe of sexual experience as richly ramified as our own. There doubtless still exist a few American teenagers who choose to give greater weight in their lives to religious scruples than to pop culture. But who is Dr. Susan Block to tell these kids they’ve chosen badly? As for the overwhelming majority of young people who pay more attention to Baywatch than to the Bible, they are indeed lucky to live in a time when it’s common knowledge, for example, that women have orgasms and that few, if any of them, are vaginal. It’s worth pointing out, though, that what made this knowledge common was the growing power of women, rather than the other way around. However manfully I resist nostalgia, Victorian silences appeal to me. Dr. Block, in an uncharacteristic fit of wisdom, observes, “The irony of creating a taboo is that, once something is forbidden, it often becomes very interesting.” Sex in a time of ostensible repression at least had the benefit of carving out a space of privacy. Lovers defined themselves in opposition to the official culture, which had the effect of making every discovery personal . There’s something profoundly boring about the vision that is promulgated, if only as an ideal, by today’s experts: a long life of vigorous, nonstop, “fulfilling” sex, and the identical story in every household. Although it pains me to remember how innocent I was in my early twenties, I have no desire to rewrite my life. To do so would eliminate those moments of discovery when whole vistas of experience opened out of nowhere, moments when I thought, So this is what’s it’s like. Just as every generation needs to feel that it has invented sex—“Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (Which was rather late for me)” was Philip Larkin’s imperfectly ironic lament—we all deserve our own dry spells and our own revolutions. They’re what make our lives good stories. Unfortunately, stories like these are easily lost amid the slick certitudes of our media culture: that a heavy enough barrage of information produces enlightenment, and that incessant communication produces communities. Susie Bright and Susan Block and Dr. Ruth are loud and cable-ready. You can turn them on, but you can’t turn them off. They yammer on about the frenulum, the perineum, the G-spot, the squeeze technique, bonobo chimpanzees and vibrators, teddies and garter belts, “eargasms” and “toegasms.” Their work creates the bumbling amateur. Their discovery of sexual “technique” creates a population bereft of technique. The popular culture they belong to thus resembles an MTV beach party. From the outside, the party looks like fun, but for passive viewers its most salient feature is that they haven’t been invited to it. “Are some people having multiple orgasms . . . electrifying oral experiences, incredible and emotionally intense lovemaking sessions that last for hours?” Susan Bakos asks the reader. “Unbelievable as it may sound—yes. Why not you?” A lonely reader could be forgiven for replying: Because there’s a television in my bedroom. THE TERM “PARAPHILIA” connotes perversion, something unhealthy. But, while there’s little doubt that our culture promotes a paraphiliac displacement from the genital to the verbal, this displacement is not intrinsically diseased. The reason that reading a sex book can assuage loneliness (at least momentarily) is that sex for human beings is easily as much imaginative as it is biological. When we make love, we forever have in our heads an image of ourselves making love. And, although substituting a hot text for a warm body may be nothing but a way of tricking our genitals, what’s remarkable is that the trick so often works. When I was fourteen I canvassed and recanvassed my Webster’s Collegiate for words like “intercourse.” Scouring Ann Landers Talks to Teenagers About Sex for the dirty bits, I was excited to learn that the mere sight of a “girl in a tight sweater” is sufficient to arouse a teenage boy. For the person who seeks such written thrills but lacks the resources to compile his own supply of frisson-inducing texts, there now exists The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers , a kind of para-paraphiliac volume, by the novelist Elizabeth Benedict. This new Joy consists mainly of sex scenes excerpted from the work of contemporary fiction writers and framed by Benedict’s own chirpy, sanitizing glosses. Whatever subversive thrills Portnoy’s Complaint might provide are unlikely to survive an analysis like this: “Roth manages to turn the cliché of the teenage boy’s first visit to a whore into a rich, sidesplittingly funny scene that leads us back again to the themes of the novel, the struggle between being a good Jew and a good Jewish son and being as naughty as your libido begs you to be.” Benedict confides that a big attraction of writing the manual was that she could “read sexy books and think for long periods of nothing but sex.” That she considers this an enviable circumstance may explain the deep kinship—the quite striking parallels—between her product and the products of pop-sex authors, Its price sticker is its destiny. Like the pop-sexers, Benedict congratulates our age on its enlightenment and congratulates her readers on their good fortune in having come of age after the publication of Fear of Flying . She alludes to the “incalculable tragedies of self-censorship” that befell authors in the dark ages before 196o, and she hints at the evil forces (Puritanism, fundamentalists, sexually repressive governments) that threaten our precarious liberty. Although she, like Dr. Block, briefly acknowledges the excitement that taboo generates (“Now that we can say anything, what else is there to say?”), pursuing this argument would undermine her project, and so she doesn’t. Similarly uneasy is her recognition that divorcing sex-scene technique from the larger challenges of writing good fiction is as useless as divorcing sexual technique from the challenge of loving someone. Good sex writing, it turns out, is a lot like good fiction writing in general. It has, she says, “tension, dramatic conflict, character development, insights, metaphors and surprises.” These qualities are the Slow and Fast One- and Two-Handed Strokes to which Benedict returns, in various combinations, throughout the book. Avoid clichés, she advises—or at least “give them a unique twist.” Try to “make the writing interesting.” Don’t forget: “You need not be explicit but you must be specific.” And if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Although Benedict believes that she can liberate the reader from the “demons” of self-censorship, she’s vague on exactly how this occurs. At one point, she implies that liberation is simply a matter of gumption: “Question: Who are your censors and how do you silence them? Answer: Just do it.” But a book that intends to give us “permission to indulge” new possibilities requires an exemplary performer, and, as with Betty Dodson, whose Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving mainly retails the professional triumphs of Betty Dodson, the work that most interests Benedict is her own. She includes four substantial excerpts from her fiction, and she praises them with charming artlessness. (“These are emotionally complex scenes . . .”) At the same time, she takes care to remind us that her skills didn’t come from any manual. In her own work, she says, she didn’t “consciously try to create conflict or to inject surprises”—although, sure enough, she now realizes “how important those elements are.” The fraud of The Joy of Writing Sex is meaner than the fraud of sex manuals, since every man can be a king in bed and every woman a queen but not everyone can be a successful novelist. Nietzsche said, “Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books; the smell of small people clings to them.” The truth, of course, may be that I’m no larger than the next man. But who wants to know a truth like this? Just as every lover at some level believes that he or she makes love as it’s made nowhere else on the planet, so every artist clings for dear life to the illusion that the art he or she produces is vital, necessary, and unique. Aesthetic elitism, sexual snobbery: these are not the reprehensible attitudes that our culture makes them out to be. They’re the efforts of the individual to secure a small space of privacy within the prevailing din. All people should be elitists—and keep it to themselves. THE ONE WELCOME SERVICE that Benedict performs in Joy is her surgical removal of sex scenes from their context. The more sincerely explicit a novel’s dirty bits, I think, the more they beg to be removed. When I was a teenager, novels were Trojan horses by means of which titillation could sometimes be smuggled into my sheltered life. Over the years, though, I’ve come to dread the approach of sex scenes in serious fiction. Call it the orgasmic collapse: the more absorbing the story, the more I dread it. Often the sentences begin to lengthen Joyceanly. My own anxiety rises sympathetically with the author’s, and soon enough the fragile bubble of the imaginative world is pricked by the hard exigencies of naming body parts and movements—the sameness of it all. When the sex is persuasively rendered, it tends to read autobiographically, and there are limits to my desire for immersion in a stranger’s biochemistry. A few geniuses—Philip Roth may be one of them—have the skill or bravado to get away with explicit sex, but in most novels, even otherwise excellent ones, the corporeal nomenclature is hopelessly contaminated through its previous use by writers whose aim is simply to turn the reader on. Jacques Derrida once demonstrated, in his sublimely contortionist essay “White Mythology,” that language is such a self-contained system that even a word as basic as “sun” cannot be proved, by anyone using language, to refer to an objective, extralinguistic Sun. A candle is like a small sun, but the sun is like a large candle; examined closely, language turns out to operate through the lateral associations of metaphor, rather than through the vertical identifications of naming. So what is “sex”? Everything is like it, and it’s like everything—like food, like drugs, like reading and writing, like deal-making, like war, like sport, like education, like the economy, like socializing. In the end, however, every orgasm is more or less the same. This may be why writing about sex is at once effective and boring. Language of the nominal, hot-slippery-cunt-ramrod-straight-dick variety both aims for and achieves its own closure. The orgasm is a kind of consumer purchase, and, one way or another, the language that attends it always remains a kind of ad copy. Language as sex, on the other hand, is fraught with the perils of an open-ended eros. When I’m in bed with a novel, I hope its author will be faithful to me. Right now I’m reading Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity , an enjoyable sendup of male anxiety in which the narrator’s girlfriend leaves him for his upstairs neighbor, a man he now remembers was “something of a demon” in bed: “He goes on long enough,” I said one night, when we were both lying awake, staring at the ceiling. “I should be so lucky,” said Laura. This was a joke. We laughed. Ha, ha, we went. Ha, ha, ha. I’m not laughing now. Never has a joke filled me with such nausea and paranoia and insecurity and self-pity and dread and doubt. When a full-blown sex scene finally looms on the narrative horizon, a hundred pages into a novel that’s almost entirely about sex, my distaste at the prospect of orgasmic collapse is mitigated by a rare circumstance: I’m actually finding both the female love object (an American folk-rock singer) and the setting (a barren flat in a barren London neighborhood) quite sexy. Though I’m not looking forward to the hardened nipples and spurted semen that seem likely to follow, I’m prepared to forgive them, maybe even enjoy them. But when, after one last eight-page delay for awkward negotiations and precoital anxiety, Hornby gets his lovers into bed, the narrator abruptly declares: “I’m not going into all that other stuff, the who-did-what-to-whom stuff.” Facing a choice between fidelity to “what happens” and fidelity to his reader, Hornby doesn’t let the reader down. In one simple, curtain-dropping sentence he proves to me that he himself, at some point in his reading, has experienced the same uncomfortable suspense that I have just experienced, and for a moment, though I’m alone in bed with a book, I don’t feel alone. For a moment, I belong to a group neither as big as a statistically significant sample nor as small as the naked self. It’s a group of two, the faithful writer and the trusting reader. We’re different but the same. [1997] How to be Alone SIFTING THE ASHES C IGARETTES are the last thing in the world I want to think about. I don’t consider myself a smoker, don’t identify with the forty-six million Americans who have the habit. I dislike the smell of smoke and the invasion of nasal privacy it represents. Bars and restaurants with a stylish profile—with a clientele whose exclusivity depends in part on the toxic clouds with which it shields itself—have started to disgust me. I’ve been gassed in hotel rooms where smokers stayed the night before and gassed in public bathrooms where men use the nasty, body-odorish Winston as a laxative. (“Winston tastes bad / Like the one I just had” runs the grammatically unimpeachable parody from my childhood.) Some days inNew York it seems as if two-thirds of the people on the sidewalk, in the swirls of car exhaust, are carrying lighted cigarettes; I maneuver constantly to stay upwind. To stem the emissions of downstairs neighbors, I’ve used a caulking gun to seal gaps between the floorboards and baseboards in my apartment. The first casino I ever went to, in Nevada, was a vision of damnation: row upon row of middle-aged women with foot-long faces puffing on foot-long Kents and compulsively feeding silver dollars to the slots. When someone tells me that cigarettes are sexy, I think of Nevada. When I see an actress or actor drag deeply in a movie, I imagine the pyrenes and phenols ravaging the tender epithelial cells and hardworking cilia of their bronchi, the monoxide and cyanide binding to their hemoglobin, the heaving and straining of their chemically panicked hearts. Cigarettes are a distillation of a more general paranoia that besets our culture, the awful knowledge of our bodies’ fragility in a world of molecular hazards. They scare the hell out of me. Because I’m capable of hating almost every attribute of cigarettes (let’s not even talk about cigars), and because I smoked what I believed was my last cigarette five years ago and have never owned an ashtray, it’s easy for me to think of myself as nicotine-free. But if the man who bears my name is not a smoker, then why is there again a box fan for exhaust purposes in his living-room window? Why, at the end of every workday, is there a small collection of cigarette butts in the saucer on the table by this fan? Cigarettes were the ultimate taboo in the culturally conservative household I grew up in—more fraught, even, than sex or drugs. The year before I was born, my mother’s father died of lung cancer. He’d taken up cigarettes as a soldier in the First World War and smoked heavily all his life. Everyone who met my grandfather seems to have loved him, and however much I may sneer at our country’s obsession with health—at the elevation of fitness to godliness and of sheer longevity to a mark of divine favor—the fact remains that if my grandfather hadn’t smoked I might have had the chance to know him. My mother still speaks of cigarettes with loathing. I secretly started smoking them myself in college, perhaps in part because she hated them, and as the years went by I developed a fear of exposure very similar, I’m convinced, to a gay man’s fear of coming out to his parents. My mother had created my body out of hers, after all. What rejection of parentage could be more extreme than deliberately poisoning that body? To come out is to announce: this is who I am, this is my identity. The curious thing about “smoker” as a label of identity, though, is its mutability. I could decide tomorrow not to be one anymore. So why not pretend not to be one today? To take control of their lives, people tell themselves stories about the person they want to be. It’s the special privilege of the smoker, who at times feels so strongly the resolve to quit that it’s as if he’d quit already, to be given irrefutable evidence that these stories aren’t necessarily true: here are the butts in the ashtray, here is the smell in the hair. As a smoker, then, I’ve come to distrust not only my stories about myself but all narratives that pretend to unambiguous moral significance. And it happens that in recent months Americans have been subjected to just such a narrative in the daily press, as “secret” documents shed light on the machinations of Big Tobacco, industry scientists step forward to indict their former employers, nine states and a consortium of sixty law firms launch massive liability suits, and the Food and Drug Administration undertakes to regulate cigarettes as nicotine-delivery devices. The prevailing liberal view that Big Tobacco is Evil with a capital E is summed up in the Times’s review of Richard Kluger’s excellent new history of the tobacco industry, Ashes to Ashes . Chiding Kluger for (of all things) his “objectivity” and “impartiality,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt suggests that the cigarette business is on a moral par with slavery and the Holocaust. Kluger himself, impartial or not, repeatedly links the word “angels” with antismoking activists. In the introduction to his book he offers a stark pair of options: either cigarette manufacturers are “businessmen basically like any other” or they’re “moral lepers preying on the ignorant, the miserable, the emotionally vulnerable, and the genetically susceptible.” My discomfort with these dichotomies may reflect the fact that, unlike Lehmann-Haupt, I have yet to kick the habit. But in no national debate do I feel more out of synch with the mainstream. For all that I distrust American industry, and especially an industry that’s vigorously engaged in buying congressmen, some part of me insists on rooting for tobacco. I flinch as I force myself to read the latest health news: S MOKERS M ORE L IKELY TO B EAR R ETARDED B ABIES, S TUDY S AYS. I pounce on particularly choice collisions of metaphor and melodrama, such as this one from the Times: “The affidavits are the latest in a string of blows that have undermined the air of invincibility that once cloaked the $45 billion tobacco industry, which faces a deluge of lawsuits.” My sympathy with cohorts who smoke disproportionately—blue-collar workers, African-Americans, writers and artists, alienated teens, the mentally ill—expands to include the companies that supply them with cigarettes. I think: We’re all underdogs now. Wartime is a time of lies, I tell myself, and the biggest lie of the cigarette wars is that the moral equation can be reduced to ones and zeroes. Or have I, too, been corrupted by the weed? I TOOK UP SMOKING as a student in Germany in the dark years of the early eighties. Ronald Reagan had recently made his “evil empire” speech, and Jonathan Schell was publishing The Fate of the Earth . The word in Berlin was that if you woke up to an undestroyed world on Saturday morning you were safe for another week; the assumption was that NATO was at its sleepiest late on Friday nights, that Warsaw Pact forces would choose those hours to come pouring through the Fulda Gap, and that NATO would have to go ballistic to repel them. Since I rated my chances of surviving the decade at fifty-fifty, the additional risk posed by smoking seemed negligible. Indeed, there was something invitingly apocalyptic about cigarettes. The nightmare of nuclear proliferation had a counterpart in the way cigarettes—anonymous, death-bearing, missilelike cylinders—proliferated in my life. Cigarettes are a fixture of modern warfare, the soldier’s best friend, and, at a time when a likely theater of war was my own living room, smoking became a symbol of my helpless civilian participation in the Cold War. Among the anxieties best suited to containment by cigarettes is, paradoxically, the fear of dying. What serious smoker hasn’t felt the surge of panic at the thought of lung cancer and immediately lighted up to beat the panic down? (It’s a Cold War logic: we’re afraid of nuclear weapons, so let’s build even more of them.) Death is a severing of the connection between self and world, and, since the self can’t imagine not existing, perhaps what’s really scary about the prospect of dying is not the extinguishment of my consciousness but the extinguishment of the world. The fear of a global nuclear holocaust was thus functionally identical to my private fear of death. And the potential deadliness of cigarettes was comforting because it allowed me, in effect, to become familiar with apocalypse, to acquaint myself with the contours of its terrors, to make the world’s potential death less strange and so a little less threatening. Time stops for the duration of a cigarette: when you’re smoking, you’re acutely present to yourself; you step outside the unconscious forward rush of life. This is why the condemned are allowed a final cigarette, this is why (or so the story goes) gentlemen in evening dress stood puffing at the rail as the Titanic went down: it’s a lot easier to leave the world if you’re certain you’ve really been in it. As Goethe writes in Faust , “Presence is our duty, be it only a moment.” The cigarette is famously the herald of the modern, the boon companion of industrial capitalism and high-density urbanism. Crowds, hyperkinesis, mass production, numbingly boring labor, and social upheaval all have correlatives in the cigarette. The sheer number of individual units consumed surely dwarfs that of any other manufactured consumer product. “Short, snappy, easily attempted, easily completed or just as easily discarded before completion,” the Times wrote in a 1925 editorial that Richard Kluger quotes, “the cigarette is the symbol of a machine age in which the ultimate cogs and wheels and levers are human nerves.” Itself the product of a mechanical roller called the Bonsack machine, the cigarette served as an opiate for assembly-line workers, breaking up into manageable units long days of grinding sameness. For women, the Atlantic Monthly noted in 1916, the cigarette was “the symbol of emancipation, the temporary substitute for the ballot.” Altogether, it’s impossible to imagine the twentieth century without cigarettes. They show up with Zeliglike ubiquity in old photographs and newsreels, so devoid of individuality as hardly to be noticeable and yet, once noticed, utterly strange. Kluger’s history of the cigarette business reads like a history of American business in general. An industry that in 1880 was splintered into hundreds of small, family-owned concerns had by 1900 come under the control of one man, James Buchanan Duke, who by pioneering the use of the Bonsack roller and reinvesting a huge portion of his revenues in advertising, and then by alternately employing the stick of price wars and the carrot of attractive buyout offers, built his American Tobacco Company into the equivalent of Standard Oil or Carnegie Steel. Like his fellow monopolists, Duke eventually ran afoul of the trustbusters, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered the breakup of American. The resulting oligopoly immediately brought out new brands—Camel, Lucky Strike, and Chesterfield and Marlborough—that have vied for market share ever since. To American retailers, the cigarette was the perfect commodity, a staple that generated large profits on a small investment in shelf space and inventory; cigarettes, Kluger notes, “were lightweight and durably packed, rarely spoiled, were hard to steal since they were usually sold from behind the counter, underwent few price changes, and required almost no selling effort.” Since every brand tasted pretty much the same, tobacco companies learned early to situate themselves at the cutting edge of advertising. In the twenties, American Tobacco offered five free cartons of Lucky Strike (“it’s toasted”) to any doctor who would endorse it, and then launched a campaign that claimed “20,679 Physicians Say Luckies Are Less Irritating”; American was also the first company to target weight-conscious women (“When tempted to over-indulge, reach for a Lucky instead”). The industry pioneered the celebrity endorsement (tennis star Bill Tilden: “I’ve smoked Camels for years, and I never tire of their smooth, rich taste”), radio sponsorship (Arthur Godfrey: “I smoked two or three packs of these things [Chesterfields] every day—I feel pretty good”), assaultive outdoor advertising (the most famous was the “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel” billboard in Times Square, which for twenty-five years blew giant smoke rings), and, finally, the sponsorship of television shows like Candid Camera and I Love Lucy . The brilliant TV commercials made for Philip Morris—Benson & Hedges smokers whose hundred-millimeter cigarettes were crushed by elevator doors; faux-hand-cranked footage of chambermaids sneaking smokes to the tune of “You’ve got your own cigarette now, baby”—were vital entertainments of my childhood. I remember, too, the chanted words “Silva Thins, Silva Thins,” the mantra for a short-lived American Tobacco product that wooed the female demographic with such appalling copy as “Cigarettes are like girls, the best ones are thin and rich.” The most successful campaign of all, of course, was for the Marlboro, an upscale cigarette for ladies that Philip Morris reintroduced in 1954 in a filtered version for the mainstream. Like all modern products, the new Marlboro was intensively designed. The tobacco blend was strengthened so as to survive the muting of a filter, the “flip-top” box was introduced to the national vocabulary, the color red was chosen to signal strong flavor, and the graphics underwent endless tinkering before the final look, including a fake heraldic crest with the motto Veni, vidi, vici , was settled on; there was even market-testing in four cities to decide the color of the filter. It was in Leo Burnett’s ad campaign for Marlboro, however, that the real genius lay. The key to its success was its transparency. Place a lone ranch hand against a backdrop of buttes at sunset, and just about every positive association a cigarette can carry is in the picture: rugged individualism, masculine sexuality, escape from an urban modernity, strong flavors, the living of life intensely. The Marlboro marks our commercial culture’s passage from an age of promises to an age of pleasant, empty dreams. It’s no great surprise that a company smart enough to advertise as well as this ascended, in just three decades, to a position of hegemony in the industry. Kluger’s account of the triumph of Philip Morris is the kind of thing that business schools have their students read for edification and inspiration: to succeed as an American corporation, the lesson might be, do exactly what Philip Morris did. Concentrate on products with the highest profit margin. Design new products carefully, then get behind them and push hard . Use your excess cash to diversify into businesses structurally similar to your own. Be a meritocracy. Bid preemptively. Avoid crippling debt. Patiently build your overseas markets. Never scruple to gouge your customers when you see the opportunity. Let your lawyers attack your critics. Be classy—sponsor The Mahabarata . Defy conventional morality. Never forget that your primary fealty is to your stockholders. While its chief competitor, R. J. Reynolds, was growing logy and inbred down in Winston-Salem—sinking into the low-margin discount-cigarette business, diversifying disastrously, and nearly drowning in debt after its leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company—Philip Morris was becoming the global leader in the cigarette industry and one of the most profitable corporations in the world. By the early nineties, its share of the domestic nondiscount-cigarette market was eighty percent. The value of a share of Philip Morris stock increased by a factor of 192 between 1966 and 1989. Healthy, wealthy, and wise the man who quit smoking in ’64 and put his cigarette money into Philip Morris common. The company’s spectacular success is all the more remarkable for having occurred in the decades when the scientific case against cigarettes was becoming overwhelming. With the possible exception of the hydrogen bomb, nothing in modernity is more generative of paradox than cigarettes. Thus, in 1955, when the Federal Trade Commission sought to curb misleading advertising by banning the publication of tar and nicotine levels, the ruling proved to be a boon to the industry, enabling it to advertise filter cigarettes for their implicit safety even as it raised the toxic yields to compensate for the filters. So it went with the 1965 law requiring warning labels on cigarette packs, which preempted potentially more stringent state and local regulation and provided a priceless shield against future liability suits. So it went, too, with the 1971 congressional ban on broadcast cigarette advertising, which saved the industry millions of dollars, effectively froze out potential new competitors by denying them the broadcast platform, and put an end to the devastating antismoking ads then being broadcast under the fairness doctrine. Even such left-handed regulation as the 1982 increase in the federal excise tax benefited the industry, which used the tax as a screen for a series of price increases, doubling the price per pack in a decade, and invested the windfall in diversification. Every forward step taken by government to regulate smoking—the broadcast ban, the ban on in-flight smoking, the welter of local bans on smoking in public places—moved cigarettes a step further back from the consciousness of nonsmoking voters. The result, given the political power of tobacco-growing states, has been the specific exemption of cigarettes from the Fair Labeling and Packaging Act of 1966, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the Consumer Product Safety Act of 1972, and the Toxic Substances Act of 1976. In the industry’s defense in liability suits, the paradox can be seen in its purest form: because no plaintiff can claim ignorance of tobacco’s hazards—i.e., precisely because the cigarette is the most notoriously lethal product in America—its manufacturers cannot be held negligent for selling it. Small wonder that until Liggett broke ranks this spring no cigarette maker had ever paid a penny in civil damages. Now, however, the age of paradox may be coming to an end. As the nation dismantles its missiles, its attention turns to cigarettes. The wall of secrecy that protected the industry is coming down as surely as the Berlin Wall did. The Third Wave is upon us, threatening to extinguish all that is quintessentially modern. It hardly seems an accident that the United States, which is leading the way into the information age, is also in the forefront of the war on cigarettes. Unlike the nations of Europe, which have taken a more pragmatic approach to the smoking problem, taxing cigarettes at rates as high as five dollars a pack, the antismoking forces in this country bring to the battle a puritanical zeal. We need a new Evil Empire, and Big Tobacco fills the bill. THE ARGUMENT for equating the tobacco industry with slave traders and the Third Reich goes like this: because nearly half a million Americans a year die prematurely as a direct consequence of smoking, the makers of cigarettes are guilty of mass murder. The obvious difficulty with the argument is that the tobacco industry has never physically forced anyone to smoke a cigarette. To speak of “killing” people, therefore, one has to posit more subtle forms of coercion. These fall into three categories. First, by publicly denying a truth well known to its scientists, which was that smokers were in mortal peril, the industry conspired to perpetrate a vast and deadly fraud. Second, by luring impressionable children into a habit very difficult to break, the industry effectively “forced” its products on people before they had developed full adult powers of resistance. Finally, by making available and attractive a product that it knew to be addictive, and by manipulating nicotine levels, the industry willfully exposed the public to a force (addiction) with the power to kill. A “shocking” collection of “secret” industry documents, which was released by a disgruntled employee of Brown & Williamson and has now been published as The Cigarette Papers , makes it clear that Big Tobacco has known for decades that cigarettes are lethal and addictive and has done everything in its power to suppress and deny that knowledge. The Cigarette Papers and other recent disclosures have prompted the Justice Department to pursue perjury charges against various industry executives, and they may provide the plaintiffs now suing the industry with positive proof of tortious fraud. In no way, though, are the disclosures shocking. How could anyone who noticed that different brands have different (but consistent) nicotine levels fail to conclude that the industry can and does control the dosage? What reasonable person could have believed that the industry’s public avowals of “doubt” about the deadliness of its products were anything but obligatory, ceremonial lies? If researchers unearthed a secret document proving that Bill Clinton inhaled, would we be shocked? When industry spokesmen impugn the integrity of the Surgeon General and persist in denying the undeniable, they’re guilty not so much of fraud as of sounding (to borrow the word of one executive quoted by Kluger) “Neanderthal.” “The simple truth,” Kluger writes, “was that the cigarette makers were getting richer and richer as the scientific findings against them piled higher and higher, and before anyone fully grasped the situation, the choice seemed to have narrowed to abject confession and surrender to the health advocates or steadfast denial and rationalization.” In the early fifties, when epidemiological studies first demonstrated the link between smoking and lung cancer, cigarette executives did indeed have the option of simply liquidating their businesses and finding other work. But many of these executives came from families that had been respectably trading in tobacco for decades, and most of them appear to have been heavy smokers themselves; unlike the typical heroin wholesaler, they willingly ran the same risks they imposed on their customers. Because they were corporate officers, moreover, their ultimate allegiance was to their stockholders. If simply having stayed in business constitutes guilt, then the circle of those who share this guilt must be expanded to include every individual who held stock in a tobacco company after 1964, either directly or through a pension fund, a mutual fund, or a university endowment. We might also toss in every drugstore and supermarket that sold cigarettes and every publication that carried ads for them; the Surgeon General’s warning, after all, was there for everyone to see. Once the companies made the decision to stay in business, it was only a matter of time before the lawyers took over. Nothing emerges from Ashes to Ashes more clearly th	520,228
Invitation to Solitude and Silence (Ruth Haley Barton) (Z-Library).epub	Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence G ROUP G UIDE Sharing silence is a profound act of trust, love, and courtesy. It is a mutual gift, a necessity, a helping hand, a path, and a discipline. G UNILLA N ORRIS PREFACE: Invitation to Solitude and Silence Opening Silence. For this first session only, the leader will open with a prayer for wisdom and guidance as you begin this experience together. Then work through the logistical decisions described on page 141 before moving into the following questions for discussion. Spiritual Listening. Introduce yourselves to each other by sharing a little bit about who you are, your stage of life, and what is drawing you to explore solitude and silence at this time. Then have a free-flowing conversation around the following questions. In the foreword, Dallas Willard quotes Blaise Pascal as saying that “all the unhappiness of man arises from the single fact that they cannot stay quietly in their room so they turn to diversions to distract themselves.” That’s a pretty bold statement! He goes on to say that even when we attempt to rest, we are confused and “aim at rest through excitement” — in other words, through more stimulation. How do you see evidence of this in our culture and in your own life? Dallas Willard says that the way to liberation and rest lies through a decision and a practice — the decision to release the world and your fate, including your reputation and “success,” into the hands of God through the radical disciplines of solitude and silence. How do you feel about making the decision to “practice” these radical disciplines over the next twelve weeks? What hesitations or concerns, if any, do you have? In the introduction, the author shares her own struggle to trust herself to “the mystery that is God in the silent places beyond all the things I think I should know.” She acknowledges the “inner demons” of desire to perform, to be seen as competent, productive, culturally relevant and balanced as major obstacles to this journey. At the same time, she acknowledges the delight of being invited by God to greater intimacy and notices that more and more often the delight is overpowering the demons. What are the inner demons you notice in your own life that prevent you from entering into solitude and silence? How are you experiencing God’s invitation to you in the midst of these challenges? (Optional) What are the practical arrangements you will need to make in your own life to begin creating space for exploring and practicing solitude and silence this week? At the end of this session, have someone read the story of Elijah from 1 Kings 19:1-12 without comment. Closing Silence. Take a moment or two in silence for reflecting on what you have shared and received. Experience your gratitude for what God has done in each individual’s life and also in the sharing that has taken place. Listen for any encouragement, instruction, guidance or invitation that the Holy Spirit is impressing on your heart, and claim what you want to take with you into the next week. The leader can close this time with a brief prayer expressing gratitude and commitment or just say, “Thanks be to God.” If you would like to pray the Lord’s Prayer together, see page 144. CHAPTER 1: BEYOND WORDS Opening Silence. The facilitator or designated leader invites the group into silence using the phrase “Be still and know that I am God.” When the agreed-upon time frame is up (three, five or ten minutes), close the time of silence either with a spontaneous prayer inviting the Holy Spirit’s guidance or the simple prayer “Come Holy Spirit.” Spiritual Listening. Give each person your undivided attention as they share their experience of practicing solitude and silence during the past week. Use the following questions as a guide to get you started, and then after a moment of quiet reflection, respond to the person who has shared. I look at God, I look at you, and I keep looking at God. J ULIAN OF N ORWICH How, when and where were you able to practice solitude and silence this week? Note any words or phrases in this chapter that helped articulate what you are experiencing in your own life. Consider, for example, “desperation, plain and simple,” “things that needed fixing in my life,” “longings that were painfully unmet,” “inner chaos,” “enormous questions under the surface of my life” and “there has to be more to the spiritual life than this.” Page 32 says, “When we make room for silence, we make room for ourselves... the unknown, the untamed, the wild, the shy, the unfathomable.” How did silence make room for more parts of you to find expression? Were you able to just be with yourself and be with God with what surfaced? How did you experience God with you (or not) during your times of silence? Are there any other questions or observations that surfaced? After each person shares be still for a moment to reflect on what has been said. Then the group can feel free to make observations, offer comments that validate that person’s experience, or ask a question that might clarify or lead to a deeper level of insight or noticing. Closing Silence. After everyone has shared, the leader should lead the group in a time of closing silence. CHAPTER 2: BEGINNINGS Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. Describe the steps you took this week to begin incorporating solitude and silence into your life on a regular basis. Were you able to set aside a sacred space and time? What was your modest goal? What happened as you asked God to give you a simple prayer that expresses your spiritual desire? If you would like to share your prayer word or phrase with the group, feel free to do so, but do not feel that you have to. What were the distractions that came? How did you deal with them? How did you deal with any tendency you might have to judge yourself or your experience? How did you experience God with you (or not) in your times of solitude and silence this week? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 3: RESISTANCE Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. When did you notice resistance (pushing you away from solitude) and desire (pulling you toward solitude) functioning within you at the same time? How did you respond? What cares, concerns or distractions do you find you need to entrust more deeply to God in order to be fully present with God in times of solitude? Did you notice any fear or anxiety about the experience of solitude itself? Were you aware of that fear actually sabotaging your efforts to enter more deeply into solitude and silence? Were you able to be with that fear in God’s presence? What happened? What does your desire feel like, sound like, look like these days? Is there an image or a metaphor that captures it for you? How did you experience God with you (or not) in the midst of your desire? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 4: DANGEROUSLY TIRED Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. Where do you see yourself on the “dangerously tired” continuum? On pages 58-60, the author describes some of the symptoms of being dangerously tired. Do you recognize any of these symptoms in your life? Which ones? What insight have you gained as you have recognized symptoms (and maybe even sources) of being dangerously tired, as you have “given in” to your tiredness in times of solitude and asked God, “What are we going to do about that?” How have you experienced God with you in the midst of what you are noticing? What was it like to experience solitude as a place of rest in God? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 5: REST FOR THE BODY Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. When have you experienced (or witnessed) the “beyond words” togetherness with God or with another human being as described at the beginning of this chapter? Are you one who is able to rest and be at peace in God’s presence, or are you more like the child who is always flailing around and working against the nourishment that is being offered? How do you respond to the idea that one of the first things God might ask us to do in solitude is to pay attention to our bodies? How comfortable are you with beginning to care for your body as a spiritual discipline? As you paid attention to your body this week what did you notice? How did you sense God inviting you to listen to your body, rest your body and honor your body as one aspect of your spiritual journey? How did you say yes to this invitation? Closing Silence. Given the emphasis on the body in this week’s lesson, encourage each person to take several deep breaths as a way of releasing tension and receiving God’s affirmation of our life as experienced through the gift of our breath. Close with a spoken prayer or say the Lord’s Prayer together. CHAPTER 6: REST FOR THE MIND Opening Silence. During your silence, remember to breathe deeply as a way of releasing tension and opening to the Holy Spirit who gives us each and every breath we take. Spiritual Listening. On page 71 the author describes her realization that it is one thing to rest the body; it is quite another thing to rest the mind. When have you been most aware of the unceasing nature of your mind’s work? For example, when have you noticed that your mind is “tired of trying to hold it all together, figure everything out, make something happen” (p. 72)? When have you experienced the limits of your mind or “hit the wall of mental impasse” (p. 73)? How do you respond to the idea that the mind is very limited in its capacity to move us toward union with God and that knowing about someone is not the same thing as being in relationship with them? How would you characterize your relationship with God in regard to the mind? Do you know about God, or do you feel like you are in a relationship with God? Are you able to tell the difference between what goes on in the mind and what goes on in the heart — particularly in your relationship with God? What is it that you need to know in the stillness that you haven’t been able to know in the noisiness and busyness of your life? What was it like to “sit with God” with your question (p. 76)? How was God with you in the midst of your question? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 7: REST FOR THE SOUL Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. The content of this session may be particularly tender and vulnerable so the group needs to be encouraged to listen well, to be sensitive to the personal nature of what is being shared, and to be very careful not to fix, problem-solve, give advice or even say things like “I know exactly how you feel.” None of us know exactly how another person feels, and it is best to stay away from making this kind of statement, no matter how well-intended. How do you respond to the idea that the soul at rest in God is like a child? What images or experiences come to mind as you contemplate this idea? When was the last time you got to be like a child? On page 78 solitude is compared to the game of musical chairs. “While the music of life plays you go around and around and around, but when the music stops you sit down right where you are, and that’s where you are.” As you silenced the music of your life this week and you were willing to use your times in solitude to just “be where you are” in God’s presence, what happened? Was there something you were especially grateful for — some place where you experienced life and authentic connection with God and others? some particular grace or goodness in your life that you were able to be with in God’s presence? What was it like to just “be with” your gratitude? Was there any grief you had been holding in that came to the surface? Were you able to just experience your grief in God’s presence? Did you notice what your body needed or wanted to do, and were you able to do it? What was it like to create space for your grief? How did you experience God with you in your gratitude and/or your grief? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 8: EMPTINESS Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. Again, the things shared in this session will probably be very tender and “in process.” Resist the temptations toward fixing, or offering easy answers or empty clichés. As we deepen our experience of solitude and silence and become more rested, we gain more clarity and resolve about what we want (p. 86). We start to have a better sense of what is truly called for in our lives. Do you find yourself becoming clearer about what you want and need from God? Is there anything you have felt called to walk away from, let go of or leave behind in order to walk into a deeper level of intimacy with God? We all have places in our lives that feel empty; sometimes they exist simultaneously with places that are very full. What are the empty places in your life right now — the ones you usually try to avoid? What are your “usual escapes” that you know God is calling you to refuse? What was it like to sit in your emptiness (rather than giving in to your usual distractions) and experience that emptiness as a place of openness, receptivity and spiritual possibility? How did you experience the presence of God (or not) in the midst or your emptiness? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 9: FACING OURSELVES Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. As you heard God ask the question “What are you doing here, __________?” how did you answer? On page 97, the author describes her experience of seeing herself more clearly in the context of an extended time in solitude. Is there any way in which you are seeing yourself more clearly (what is true and what is false) as you continue to practice solitude and silence? What is “the good, the bad, and the ugly” for you? Are you safe enough with yourself and with God to risk an honest answer, or do you find yourself still struggling with feelings of shame that make it hard to be that honest? On page 99, the author describes questions that rocked her world in solitude. What questions are coming up for you as you have gotten quieter over the last few weeks? Is there a gift that you are beginning to glimpse as you wait through the chaos that your questions are stirring up in your soul? How is God inviting you to wait “actively” rather than just being passive? Closing Silence. CHAPTER 10: PURE PRESENCE Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. Everyone’s pace is different, and God deals with each one of us uniquely. There may be some people in the group who are experiencing God’s presence very strongly as a result of their reading and practice, and others who are not. Whatever happens in solitude and silence takes place at God’s initiative and is not right or wrong, better or worse than what someone else is experiencing. It just is exactly as God intends it to be. One role of the group is to encourage each other by maintaining confidence in God’s presence whether we are “feeling” it or not. Parker Palmer writes that “solitude eventually offers us a quiet gift of grace, a gift that comes when we are able to face ourselves honestly.” What is the grace that you are experiencing as you move deeper and deeper into self-knowledge? Is there some truth about yourself that you need to face bravely? If so, is there some glimmer of hope or freedom that you can glimpse on the other side of facing this truth? This chapter describes a broad range of experiences in solitude that can take place over a long period of time. As you read this chapter, where did you find yourself saying, That’s where I am! That’s exactly what it’s like for me right now? Perhaps you are in a pre-awareness stage: you know something is not quite right but you’re not sure what it is. Perhaps you are in the midst of seeing yourself in ways you have not seen yourself before, and it’s fairly disorienting. Maybe you are at the point of desperation, and you are finally willing to lie back and let God do the work of stripping away some of the knottiest layers of your false self. You may even be experiencing the silence that is fully the presence of God, and you’re not quite sure you can trust it. As you listen to one another describe how you are experiencing God’s presence in solitude, consider reverent silence (as Elijah was silent in God’s presence) as a possible response to one another’s descriptions. Closing Silence. On this day, close by saying the Lord’s Prayer together. As you consider letting go of one of the handholds of the false self, envision yourself joining with Christ as he prays this prayer with the disciples. Allow this prayer to help you invite God’s kingdom to come in your life. Allow it to deepen your trust that God is able to deliver you from the temptation to live out of your false-self patterns. Affirm God’s power to provide you with everything you need to continue the journey for his glory. On this day, we may need help finding words to pray; let these words speak what you may not know how to speak. CHAPTER 11: RECEIVING GUIDANCE Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. This week it may be very tempting to give advice to others regarding decisions they are facing, but resist the urge! Ask questions and offer comments that assist the person in continuing to listen to the Spirit of God deep within. Is there an area of your life where you are aware of your need for guidance? If so, describe it to whatever extent feels comfortable. Dallas Willard says that the first objective in the discipleship process is to bring apprentices (that’s us!) to the place where they are quite certain that there is no catch, no limit to the goodness of God’s intentions or his power to carry them out. Are you convinced of God’s love and goodness as it relates to the issue you are facing, or do you find yourself fearful that if you trust yourself to God, he might give you something you don’t want or withhold something that you do want? What do you need to say to God about this? How has your practice of solitude and silence helped you to become more familiar with God’s voice as described at the top of page 119? Are you more in touch with that place deep inside where God’s Spirit witnesses with your own spirit about things that are true (Romans 8:16)? Have you taken this issue “into the silent places of the heart” with complete openness to God? What have you noticed about the subtle differences between the false self and the true self, consolation and desolation, and so on? What wisdom has come from this noticing? What steps will you take to live into what this wisdom is telling you? Closing Silence. Receive your breath as God’s affirmation of your life and your next steps in following the wisdom he is giving you. CHAPTER 12: FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS Note for the leader: This session will be very full because you are sharing on the theme of the assigned chapter plus summarizing overall learnings and inviting people to articulate and make an ongoing commitment to solitude and silence. Thus you will need to manage your time well or build in extra time. You may also want to plan some facet to this meeting that gives the group a way to celebrate the journey they have been on together. Opening Silence. Spiritual Listening. Somewhere along the way on this journey into solitude and silence we start to feel more “full” of the presence of God rather than feeling so empty. Take a moment to notice and share the changes that have already taken place in your relationships with others as you have stayed faithful to your practice of solitude and silence. Is there any way in which you have been able to experience solitude as an “inner condition” as much as it is an outward circumstance? How are you experiencing the dynamic interplay between solitude and community as Bonhoeffer describes it (p. 132)? In what ways are you dangerous in community when you are not practicing solitude? How are you experiencing solitude as being “for others” — making you safer and having more to give when you are with others in community? How have you experienced the danger of being in solitude without some kind of spiritual community? Give each person an opportunity to share a summary of what they have experienced in solitude and silence over the last twelve weeks. Who were you when you began, who you are now, and what changes have taken place along the way that seem to be related to your practice of solitude and silence? Identify the rhythms of solitude and silence that have brought forth this good fruit. Based on what you have experienced, what rhythms will you establish in your life that will continue to create space for God’s good work in your life? Closing Silence. After everyone has shared, take a few moments to sit quietly, allowing each person to savor what they have spoken and what they have heard and to reflect on what they would like to take with them as this study concludes. If your group feels comfortable, pray around the circle, with each person praying for the person on their right — thanking God for the fruit seen in that person’s life, praying for them as they commit themselves to the rhythm they have identified and asking God to help them say yes to God’s invitations in their life. Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence Formatio books from InterVarsity Press follow the rich tradition of the church in the journey of spiritual formation. These books are not merely about being informed, but about being transformed by Christ and conformed to his image. Formatio stands in InterVarsity Press’s evangelical publishing tradition by integrating God’s Word with spiritual practice and by prompting readers to move from inward change to outward witness. InterVarsity Press uses the chambered nautilus for Formatio, a symbol of spiritual formation because of its continual spiral journey outward as it moves from its center. We believe that each of us is made with a deep desire to be in God’s presence. Formatio books help us to fulfill our deepest desires and to become our true selves in light of God’s grace. Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence P REFACE T o fill a book with words on moving beyond words into solitude and silence is a daunting task; it is laughable really, once one sees the irony. I have found myself alternately drawn to the task and strangely resistant. On the one hand, I have been drawn to the task because my journey into solitude and silence has been the single most meaningful aspect of my spiritual life to date — a pretty strong statement for one who has been a Christian since she was four years old! On the other hand, solitude and silence represent a continuing challenge for me. Though it has been well over ten years since I first said yes to God’s invitation to enter more intentionally into these disciplines, I still find it challenging to protect space for these times apart which satisfy the deep empty places of my soul. Like you, I wrestle with the influences of the secular culture and even religious subcultures that in overt or subtle ways devalue nonproductive times for being rather than doing. And I struggle to trust myself to the mystery that is God in the silent places beyond all the things I think I should know. By now I know better than to blame my struggle on forces “out there.” I am more aware than ever that I have my own in ner demons that are easily enticed — demons of desire to perform, to be seen as competent (at least!), productive, culturally relevant, balanced. I still battle these demons regularly when it is time to enter into these important disciplines. But what a delight to keep experiencing God’s invitations amidst all the challenges! And what a joy to notice that more and more the delight is overpowering the demons. For it is a wonderful thing to be invited. Not coerced or manipulated, but truly invited to the home of someone you have looked forward to getting to know, to a party with fun people, on a date with someone who is intriguing. There is something about being invited that makes the heart glad. Someone is seeking me out, desiring my presence enough to initiate an encounter. The invitation to solitude and silence is just that. It is an invitation to enter more deeply into the intimacy of relationship with the One who waits just outside the noise and busyness of our lives. It is an invitation to communication and communion with the One who is always present even when our awareness has been dulled by distraction. It is an invitation to the adventure of spiritual transformation in the deepest places of our being, an adventure that will result in greater freedom and authenticity and surrender to God than we have yet experienced. God’s invitation is a winsome one, but it is not casual; it is an invitation from his very heart to the depths of our being. It warrants serious consideration because it is an invitation to a journey, a quest really, for something we have been longing for all our lives. Unlike a trip designed to get us somewhere as efficiently as possible, a quest requires us to leave familiar dwelling places for strange lands we cannot yet envision, without knowing when we will return. This journey requires a willingness to say goodbye to life as we know it because our heart is longing for something more. When we embark on such a journey, we understand there will be challenges along the way, unexpected encounters that stretch us to our limits and change the shape of who we are. We know we will emerge changed, bearing the marks of the journey on our soul and body. Our friends may not recognize us when we return; we may not even recognize ourselves! Such a journey requires commitment — willingness to press on through sunlit days and dark nights, unspeakable beauty and terrible danger, sometimes finding companionship and sometimes feeling utterly alone, sometimes sure we are headed in the right direction, other times afraid we have completely lost our way. It is that perilous and priceless journey inward to that place at the center of ourselves where God dwells. My guess is that because you have this book in your hand, you are already sensing God’s invitation to solitude and silence and a longing to say yes is stirring within you. This book offers spiritual guidance for your journey, helping you to hear God’s invitation more clearly and giving you concrete ways of saying yes. Each chapter offers teaching and reflection on different aspects of the journey, but more important, there are practices that will help you to actually enter into solitude and silence. The practices are very simple, but don’t be deceived: many of them involve significant paradigm shifts, and we need practice to actually make the shifts. If you are the type that can’t help reading through a book quickly in one sitting, go ahead and do that, but I encourage you then to go back through it, spending time with each reflection and the practice that follows. In fact, it would be best to stay with each chapter and engage the practice until God releases you and indicates you are ready to move on. This book also offers perspective on what you might experience at different points along the way. There have been several times in my own journey when I thought I was falling off the spiritual path and I needed someone to tell me, “This is what it’s like. You haven’t fallen off the path, you are right in the heart of the journey.” It is this kind of reassurance I want to offer, so you don’t give up too soon! The prophet Elijah, whose journey into solitude and silence has been deeply reassuring to me along the way, serves as a biblical companion throughout this book. There is a difference between reading a story and living in a story, and I have lived in Elijah’s story for a very long time. When I began my journey into solitude and silence, it was so challenging and so far outside of my Christian experience that I needed a place in Scripture to land. I needed Scripture that would show me (not just tell me) that I was not alone in what I was experiencing and that the invitation to move from the known into the unknown was a trustworthy one. The concreteness, the humanness and the detail of Elijah’s process of moving into solitude and silence grounded me in spiritual reality when it felt as if the foundations of my life were being shaken to the core. Because Elijah’s story has informed my own journey so powerfully, I invite you into Elijah’s story as well, not so much to gain information as to allow you a place to settle in Scripture when your questions are swirling. You might wonder why this book is about solitude and silence rather than solitude and Scripture, or solitude and prayer, or solitude and journaling. All of these elements of the spiritual life find their way into the book in different places, but I have chosen to write about solitude and silence because I believe silence is the most challenging, the most needed and the least experienced spiritual discipline among evangelical Christians today. It is much easier to talk about it and read about it than to actually become quiet. We are a very busy, wordy and heady faith tradition. Yet we are desperate to find ways to open ourselves to our God who is, in the end, beyond all of our human constructs and human agendas. With all of our emphasis on theology and Word, cognition and service — and as important as these are — we are starved for mystery, to know this God as One who is totally Other and to experience reverence in his presence. We are starved for intimacy, to see and feel and know God in the very cells of our being. We are starved for rest, to know God beyond what we can do for him. We are starved for quiet, to hear the sound of sheer silence that is the presence of God himself. The invitation to solitude and silence is an invitation to all of this, and the beauty of an invitation is that we really do have a choice. We can say yes or no. God extends the invitation, but he honors our freedom and will not push in where he is not wanted. Instead, he waits for us to respond from the depths of our desire. When your invitation comes, I pray you will say yes. Ruth Haley Barton Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence C ONTENTS Foreword by Dallas Willard Preface First Kings 19:1-19 1 Beyond Words 2 Beginnings 3 Resistance 4 Dangerously Tired 5 Rest for the Body 6 Rest for the Mind 7 Rest for the Soul 8 Emptiness 9 Facing Ourselves 10 Pure Presence 11 Receiving Guidance 12 For the Sake of Others Appendix: A Day in Solitude Sharing Silence: A Guide for Groups Sources Gratitudes About the Author Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence F OREWORD B laise Pascal, the remarkable scientist, theologian and Christian of the seventeenth century, remarked in his Pensees (section 136) that “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own room.” The reason for this inability, he found, is “the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.” In order not to “think of it closely,” we turn to what Pascal calls “diversion” to distract us from ourselves: Hence it comes people so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. Pascal also observes that we have “another secret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in being stirred up.” This instinct conflicts with the drive to diversion, and we develop the confused idea that leads people to aim at rest through excitement, “and always to fancy that the satisfaction which they do not have will come to them if, by surmounting whatever difficulties confront them, they can thereby open the door to rest.” Of course it is a fallacy to think that one just needs more time. Unless a deeper solution is found, “more time” will just fill up in the same way as the time we already have. The way to liberation and rest lies through a decision and a practice. The decision is to release the world and your fate, including your reputation and “success,” into the hands of God. This is not a decision to not act at all, though in some situations it may come to that. It is, rather, a decision concerning how you will act: you will act in dependence on God. You will not take charge of outcomes. You will do your part, of course, but your part will always be chastened by a sense of who is God — not you! A decision to release the world and our fate to God runs contrary to everything within and around us. We have been had by a system of behavior that was here before we were and seeps into every pore of our being. “Sin,” Paul tells us, “was in the world,” even before the law came. It forms us internally and pressures us externally. Hence we must learn to choose things that meet with God’s actions of grace to break us out of the system. These things are the disciplines of life in the Spirit, well known from Christian history but much avoided and misunderstood. For those who do not understand our desperate situation, these disciplines look strange or even harmful. But they are absolutely necessary for those who would find rest for their soul in God and not live the distracted existence Pascal so accurately portrays. Solitude and silence are the most radical of the spiritual disciplines because they most directly attack the sources of human misery and wrongdoing. To be in solitude is to choose to do nothing. For extensive periods of time. All accomplishment is given up. Silence is required to complete solitude, for until we enter quietness, the world still lays hold of us. When we go into solitude and silence we stop making demands on God. It is enough that God is God and we are his. We learn we have a soul, that God is here, that this world is “my Father’s world.” This knowledge of God progressively replaces the rabid busyness and self-importance that drives most human beings, including the religious ones. It comes to possess us no matter where we are. Now, “Whatever we do, in word or deed, we do in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17). Solitude and silence are not another job. They are not, really, something we have to think to do. They are whom we have become. We still need to cultivate solitude and silence, from time to time going alone and being quiet. But we carry them with us wherever we go. In the contemporary context (especially the religious context) someone needs to tell us about solitude and silence — just to let us know there are such things. Someone then needs to tell us it’s okay to enter them. Someone needs to tell us how to do it, what will happen when we do, and how we go on from there. For Ruth Barton that someone was her spiritual director. Now Ruth tells you. If you would really like to know the “rest appropriate for the people of God” (Heb 4:9), then make the decision to leave all outcomes to God and enter the practice of solitude and silence with Ruth Barton as your guide. As you do so, call upon Jesus to be with you, and trust him. Eventually you will come to know the “rest unto your souls” promised by him who is meek and lowly of heart. It will become the easy and unshakeable foundation for your life and your death. Dallas Willard Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence THE LORD’S PRAYER Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen. Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: email@ivpress.com Second edition ©2010 by Ruth Haley Barton First edition ©2004 by Ruth Haley Barton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press. InterVarsity Press ® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org . Scripture is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. The poem on p. 7 is from Guerillas of Grace, copyright © 1984, 2005 Ted Loder admin. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Reproduced by permission of Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Cover design: Cindy Kiple Cover image: grungy canvas background: ranplett/iStockphoto open window overlooking sea: Magnus Ford/Getty Images ISBN 978-0-8308-7575-7 Invitation To Solitude And Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence 9 F ACING O URSELVES Solitude is the furnace of transformation.... [It] is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter — the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self. H ENRI N OUWEN I f Elijah’s story tells us anything, it tells us that solitude and silence offer no quick fixes. Elijah walked in the outer emptiness of the desert for forty days and forty nights, and God still had not made himself known. As Elijah settled into the cave of his inner emptiness, God had not done anything very Godlike, and all Elijah could do was wait through the darkness of the night. This is the part of Elijah’s story I am tempted to sidestep, because I, for one, do not like to wait. In the grocery store, in the doctor’s office, at the hair salon — if there is even a few minutes’ wait, everything in me rises up in churning rebellion against this nonproductive use of time. My frustration intensifies when I realize that I am caught: caught between my need for what I am waiting for and my impatience with the waiting. Yes, I could leave my cart and walk out of the grocery store, but then I am still without the groceries I need. I could walk out of the doctor’s office in a huff because the wait is too long, but I am still left with my need for medical attention. I could leave the hair salon insulted that the world has not arranged itself for my convenience, but I’m still going to need a haircut. Waiting, in the realm of the soul, presents us with the same agony. We sit in the waiting room of the soul because we need something. Yes, we could get up and leave, but we would be walking away from the very place where our need could be met. And so we remain in the waiting place, totally at the mercy of God’s timing and initiative in our life. And sooner or later God does make himself known. In Elijah’s case he shows up with a question. On the surface it appears to be a simple question, but when it is God doing the asking somehow the question is sharply penetrating. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” It’s a good question, a question I have often asked myself in solitude. What am I doing here? What am I doing? Who am I when I’m not doing? Won’t the world just pass me by while I’m sitting here doing nothing? How easy it would be to fudge on the true reason for being in this waiting room of the soul: I needed a little vacation. Needed a change of scenery. Didn’t have much to do, so I thought I’d hang out here in the wilderness for a while. But it’s best not to mess around with superficial answers to questions that have been uttered by God himself, questions that invite us into deeper levels of self-awareness. It’s best to let the truth pour out — desperation, desire, whatever has driven us to the wilderness and keeps us waiting so far outside our comfort zone. It is best to just come clean as Elijah does. In a rush of self-disclosure he responds, “I have been very zealous for the L ORD , the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” There it is — the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good Elijah could see and name in God’s presence was that he had been zealous for the Lord. He had been an open and unblocked conduit for the power of God to come coursing into physical reality in the presence of many who needed to see it. The bad news was the Israelites had forsaken God and killed some of his prophets, a frightening admission for someone whose vocation it was to keep people on track through the prophetic word. The ugliness Elijah needed to claim as his own was that he had lost his perspective, he was disillusioned and his faith was at an all-time low. Rather than remembering the victories he had experienced, all he could remember were the losses. And even though he was not the only faithful prophet left in Israel, this was how he felt: “I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.” This willingness to see ourselves as we are and to name it in God’s presence is at the very heart of the spiritual journey. But it takes time, time to feel safe enough with ourselves and with God to risk exposing the tender, unfinished places of the soul. We are so accustomed to being shamed or condemned in the unfinished parts of ourselves that it is hard to believe there is a place where all of who we are — the good, the bad and the ugly — will be handled with love and gentleness. Solitude is just such a place, but it takes time to learn to trust it. This is part of what the waiting is about. It is about becoming safe enough with God that we are no longer defending ourselves or hiding ourselves in his presence. It is about waiting for the ego to finally give up trying to control everything and make it look presentable. It is about accepting the emptiness that comes when we let go of our attempts at image management because we are finally ready to deal in truth, at least to the extent that we are able to bear it. All of this just takes time. It took me a long time (I won’t tell you how long!) to become safe enough with myself and with God to allow the good, the bad and the ugly to come pouring out. But eventually the outer chaos settled down, and I could finally hear God’s question as it was addressed to me: What are you doing here, Ruth? I was finally ready to risk an honest answer: I have been very zealous for the Lord. I’ve been investing my life in others. I’ve defended the faith. I’ve taken risks. I’ve been very busy loving and serving and leading others, but the truth is, I am empty. Even though I’ve been really busy with stuff that looks really important, when I am alone with myself I am lonely and sad. To be completely honest, I am angry. I am angry about some of what I have seen and experienced among your people, angry that the Christian life has come up so empty. It scares me to be this angry and this sad. I thought the spiritual life would be something more than this, but now I’m not sure any of it makes much of a difference. It feels like I am the only one. These are hard admissions; they are the kind that expose us for who we are. One would think God might try to engage us in conversation at this point or chide us or do something to fix us. One would think he might try to talk us out of what we are experiencing or give an inspiring speech intended to pull us out of the funk we are in. But he doesn’t; at least that’s not what he does with Elijah. Rather, he instructs Elijah to take his whole self — the good, the bad and the ugly — and go out and stand on the mountain and wait for the presence of the Lord to pass by. There seems to be some connection between the willingness to enter into this kind of self-knowledge and true encounter with the transforming presence of God. But first we must pass through a season of chaos that can be frightening in its intensity. As Elijah waits with his whole self open to God, there is a great wind, so strong it splits mountains and breaks rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord is not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord is not in the fire. I believe there was a literal wind, a literal earthquake, a literal fire. But I also believe that this elemental chaos is a metaphor for the inner chaos that surges within when we stay in the presence of the Unchanging Real long enough for pretense and performance and every other thing that has bolstered our sense of self to fall away. When we have been stripped of external distraction, we face the fact that the deepest level of chaos is inside us, at our very core. In this place we are buffeted by all manner of questions and emotions. False patterns of thinking and being and doing that have lurked unnoticed under the surface busyness of our lives are all of sudden on the surface, wreaking havoc on the structures and foundations on which we have built our identity. Things that seemed sturdy and utterly solid — our sense of who God is and where he can be found, our sense of ourselves and how we identify ourselves in this world, our sense of how much we can control outcomes in our own life and in the lives of others — now swirl around us in broken pieces, propelled by forces that are clearly more powerful than we are. Am I really worth anything if I’m not out there constantly proving myself? Who am I when I am not busy doing things that tell the world who I am? Why is it so hard to stop the frantic pace of my life even when I know it’s hurting me and those I love? What do I do with this pain and sadness? What is true and real in my relationship with God and what is merely illusion — things I would like to believe are true but really aren’t? Is God really enough to satisfy the loneliness, the emptiness, the longing of my soul? These are the questions that have rocked my world in solitude. They have called into question much of what I was doing. I began to see that my motives for much of my activity were not as pure and altruistic and “spiritual” as I had wanted to believe. When these questions came for the first time, I had to face the fact that much of my hard work and service up to that point had been driven by an effort to please others and prove my worth to them — particularly those in positions of authority. Over time I became aware that even though I had a sincere desire to serve God, there was also a compulsive need to prove myself that resulted in drivenness and constant overcommitment. It was confusing and frightening to see this and to name it in God’s presence. Even more devastating was the realization that these patterns of relying on performance to prove my worth were so deeply rooted that I had no idea how to change them. Once I started to see these patterns for what they were, I wasn’t even sure how to function! Your questions and points of awareness may be different than mine, but the experience of the chaos they create is the same. All I can say about this part of the journey is that it is a good thing we took the time to rest early on. It takes every bit of strength we have gained in that resting to stand firm in the midst of the storm that is created by these first glimpses of ourselves as we really are. Perhaps we glimpse an ego-driven self that is bent on control and image management. Perhaps we see an empty self that is hungry to fill itself with the approval of others. Perhaps we glimpse the broken self desperately seeking to preserve its identity as one who has it all together. Or maybe we see a wounded self that has spent untold energy seeking healing where healing cannot be found. I remember a time when my journey into solitude and silence took me to a place of seeing my wounded self more clearly. I was in the process of writing a book on relationships between women and men in the Christian community. At one point I had completed five chapters and decided to take a day in solitude and silence for the sole purpose of reading those chapters to see how I felt about them. I began the day at 9:00 in the morning, and after an initial period of silence and prayer in which I invited God to show me what I needed to see, I read all five chapters straight through. And guess what? I hated them! Taken all together, the tone of the book was angry and strident, relying primarily on preaching and argumentation to get my point across. I noticed that even though the book was meant to appeal to both men and women, it was clearly weighted toward the experiences and perspectives of women without fair representation of the experiences and concerns of men. Furthermore, it seemed like a regurgitation of other people’s research and writing rather than offering any fresh insight. With a sinking heart I realized that, as far as I could see, there was nothing that made it worth publishing. At that point the book served as a mirror reflecting my lack of healing in a very important area. As I looked into that mirror, I saw that my unresolved hurt and anger had seeped into the book. I saw myself as the argumentative and hard-edged person I was, trying to prove myself once again. I saw a person who still hadn’t learned how to love — particularly, in this case, my brothers i	254,996
Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World (Krishnamurti Jiddu Others) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Inward Revolution: Bringing About Radical Change in the World Inward Revolution: Bringing About Radical Change in the World Copyright © 1971, 2005 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd Edited by Ray McCoy Inward Revolution: Bringing About Radical Change in the World Seven How do you look at your life? It seems to me that one of our great difficulties, especially where tradition is strong, is that we have to apply our minds and hearts to find out how to live quite differently. Isn’t it important that we should radically change our lives? Not according to any particular plan or ideology or to fit into some kind of utopia, but seeing what the world is, how extraordinarily violent, brutal, and laden with an enormous amount of sorrow it is, it obviously becomes the responsibility of each one of us to change our lives, the ways of our thinking, the ways of our behavior, the attitudes and the impulses that we have. We are going to talk over together what life actually is and what love is and what the meaning of death is; and, if we can, find out for ourselves what a religious life is and whether such a religious life is possible in the modern world. We are also going to talk together about time, space, and meditation. There are so many things to talk over, and probably most of you, unfortunately, have already acquired a great deal of knowledge about all these things, knowledge that others have given you, that your books, your gurus, your systems, your culture have imposed upon you. That’s not knowledge; that’s merely a repetition of what other people have said, whether it be the greatest of teachers or your local guru. In understanding daily life we need no guru, no authority, no book, no teacher. All we have to do is to observe, be aware of what we are doing, what we are thinking, what our motives are, and whether it is at all possible to change totally our human ways, beliefs, and despairs. So first let us look at what our daily life actually is. Because if we don’t understand that, if we don’t bring order into it, if we merely slur over our daily activity or escape into some ideology or just remain superficially satisfied with things as they are, then we have no basis for a life, a way of thinking, a way of action which will be right, which will be true. Without order one must live in confusion. Without understanding order, which is virtue, then all morality becomes superficial, merely influenced by the environment, by the culture in which one lives, which is not moral at all. So one must find out for oneself what order is and whether order is a pattern, a design, a thing that has been put together by man through various forms of compulsion, conformity, imitation, or whether it is a living thing and therefore can never possibly be made into a pattern, into conformity. So to understand disorder we must examine our life as it is. What is our daily living? If you can bear to look at it, if you can observe it, what actually is your everyday life? You can see that in that living there is a great deal of confusion, there is a great deal of conformity, contradiction, every person against another person—in the business world you are ready to cut another’s throat. Politically, sociologically, morally there is a great deal of confusion, and when you look at your own life you see that from the moment you are born till you die, it is a series of conflicts. Life has become a battlefield. Please observe it. Not that you must agree with the speaker, or disagree with him, but just observe it. Just watch your actual daily living. When you do so observe, you cannot help seeing what is actually going on, how we are in despair, lonely, unhappy, in conflict, caught in competition, aggression, brutality, violence. That is actually our daily life, and that we call living. And not being able to understand it or resolve it or go beyond it, we escape from it into the ideology of some ancient philosophers, ancient teachers, ancient wisdom. And we think that by escaping from the actual we have solved everything. And that is why philosophy, ideals, all the very various forms of networks of escape have not in any way resolved our problems. We are just as we were five thousand or more years ago; we are dull, repetitive, bitter, angry, violent, aggressive, with an occasional flash of some beauty, happiness, and are always frightened of that one thing which we call death. Your daily lives have no beauty. Your religious teachers and your books have said, “Don’t have any desires; be desireless. Don’t look at a woman, because you might be tempted. And to find God, truth, you must be celibate.” And our daily life is contrary to all the sayings of the teachers. We are actually what we are—very petty, small, narrow-minded, frightened human beings. And without changing that, any amount of seeking truth, of talking valiantly and in most scholarly ways, or interpreting the innumerable sacred books has no value at all. So you might just as well throw away all the sacred books and start all over again, because they, with their interpreters, their teachers, their gurus, have not brought enlightenment to you. Their authority, their compulsive discipline, their sanctions have no meaning at all. So you might just as well put them all aside and learn from yourself, for therein lies truth, not in the “truth” of another. So, is it possible to change our life? Your lives are in disorder; your lives are in fragmentation—you are one thing at the office, another in the temple (if you are still inclined that way), something entirely different with the family, and in front of a big official you become a frightened, desperate, sycophantic human being. Can we change all this? Because without changing our daily life, asking what truth is, asking if there is a God or not, has no meaning whatsoever, because we are fragmented, broken-up human beings. Only when one is a whole, complete human entity, is there a possibility of coming upon something that is timeless. First we must look at our lives. Now how do you look at your life? This is a very, very complex problem; and a very complex problem of existence must be approached very simply, not with all the theories and opinions and judgments you have because they have not helped at all. All your religious conclusions have no meaning. You must be able to look at this life that you lead every day and be able to see it exactly as it is. The difficulty is to observe. Now, what does that word observe mean? There is not only the sensory perception with the eye. You see a bougainvillea with sensory perception. Then you observe its color. You already have an image of it; you have a name for it; you like it or dislike it; you have a preference about it. So you see that flower through the image you have of it. You don’t actually see it; your mind sees it more than your eye. Right? Please do understand this very simple fact. Nature is being destroyed by human beings through pollution and all that is going on in this terrible world, but we look at nature with eyes that have accumulated knowledge about nature, and therefore with an image. We also look at human beings with our various forms of conclusions, opinions, judgments, and values. That is, you are a Hindu, another is a Muslim; you are a Catholic, another is a Protestant, communist, and so on and on and on. There is division. So when you observe yourself, your life, you observe it through the image, through the conclusions that you have already formed. You say, “This is good,” or “This is bad,” or “This should be,” and “That should not be.” You are looking with the images, conclusions, that you have formed, and therefore you are not actually looking at life. So in order to look at our life as it is, there must be freedom of observation. You must not look at it as a Hindu, as a bureaucrat, as a family man, as God knows what else! You must look at it with freedom. And that is the difficulty. You look at your life, the despair, the agony, the sorrow, this vast struggle with eyes and ears that have said, “This must be changed into something else. This must be transformed in order to make it more beautiful.” So actually when you are doing that, you are not directly in relationship with what you see. Are you following this? Not the explanation that the speaker is giving, but are you actually observing your life and actually observing how you look at it? Do you look at it with an image, with a conclusion, and therefore are not coming directly into contact with it? When you look at the life of your daily existence—not at a theoretical life, not at an abstract life where “all human beings are one, all is love” and all that tommyrot—when you observe it, you see that you are looking with your past knowledge. You are looking with all the images, the tradition, the accumulation of human experience. That prevents you from actually looking. It’s a fact which must be realized that to observe your life actually you must look at it afresh; that is, to look at it without any condemnation, without any ideal, without any desire to suppress it or change it; just to observe. Are you doing this? Are you using the speaker as a mirror in which you are seeing your own life? And are you seeing that looking from a conclusion prevents you from looking at it directly, being in contact with it? Are you doing this? If you don’t do it now you won’t do it later. If you are not doing it then don’t bother to listen. Look at the sky, look at a tree, look at the beauty of light, look at the clouds with their curve, with their delicacy. If you look without any image, you have understood your own life. When you are looking as an observer at yourself, at your life as something to be observed, there is a division between the observer and the observed. Isn’t that simple? If you are looking at your life as an observer separate from your life, there is a division between the observer and the observed. Now, this division is the essence of all conflict, the essence of all struggle, pain, fear, despair. Where there is division between human beings—of nationalities, of religions, socially—there must be conflict. This is law; this is reason, logic. Externalized division with all its conflict is the same as the inward division of the observer and the observed. If you don’t understand this, you can’t go much further, because a mind that is in conflict cannot possibly ever understand what truth is. Because a mind in conflict is a tortured mind, a twisted mind, a distorted mind; and how can such a mind be free to observe the beauty of the earth or the beauty of the sky, a tree, the beauty of a child or a beautiful woman or a man, and the beauty of extreme sensitivity and all that is involved in it? Without understanding this basic principle, not as an ideal but as a fact, you are inevitably going to have conflict. In the same way, as long as there is an observer and the thing observed, there must be conflict in you. And when there is conflict in you, you project that conflict outwardly. Now, most of us realize this. And we do not know how to observe without the observer, how to dissolve this conflict. And therefore we resort to the various escapes, leaders, and ideals, and all that nonsense. Now, we are going to find out for ourselves—not from the speaker—whether it is possible to end this division as the observer and the observed. Please, this is important if we are really to move any further because we are going to go into the question of what love is, what death is, what is the beauty of truth, what meditation is, and the mind that’s totally still. And to understand the highest, one must begin with the ending of conflict, and this conflict exists wherever there is the observer and the observed. So, what is this observer who has separated himself from the observed? Please, this is not a philosophy, an intellectual affair, a thing which you can discuss, deny, agree or disagree about; this is something you have to see yourself, and therefore it is yours, not the speaker’s. You see that when you are angry, at the moment of anger, there is no observer. At the moment of experiencing anything, there is no observer. Please look. When you look at a sunset, and that sunset is something immense, at that moment there is no observer who says, “I am seeing the sunset.” A second later comes the observer. You are angry. At the moment of anger, there is no observer, no experiencer; there is only that state of anger. A second later comes the observer who says, “I should not have been angry,” or the observer says, “I was justified in being angry.” The second later, not at the moment of anger, is the beginning of division. So, how does this happen? At the moment of experience there is total absence of the observer. How does it happen that a second later the observer comes into being? You are putting the question, not I, not the speaker. Put it for yourself and you’ll find the answer. You have to work because this is your life. But if you say, “Well, I have learned something from the speaker,” then you have learned absolutely nothing. You have just collected a few words, and those few words put together become an idea. Ordered thought is idea, and we are not talking about ideas, we are not talking about a new philosophy. Philosophy means the love of truth in daily life, not the truth of some philosophical mind that invents. So, how does this observer come into being? When you look at a flower, at the moment you observe it closely there is no observer, there is only looking. Then you begin to name that flower. Then you say, “I wish I had it in my garden or in my house.” Then you have already begun to build an image about that flower. So the image-maker is the observer. Watch it in yourself, please. So both the image and the image-maker are the observer, and the observer is the past; the “me” as the observer is the past. The “me” is the knowledge that I have accumulated, knowledge of pain, sorrow, suffering, agony, despair, loneliness, jealousy, the tremendous anxiety that one goes through. That is all the “me,” which is the accumulated knowledge of the observer, which is the past. So when you observe, the observer looks at that flower with the eyes of the past. You don’t know how to look without the observer, and therefore you bring about conflict. So now our question is, Can you look, not only at the flower, but at your life, at your agony, at your despair, your sorrow, without naming it, without saying to yourself, “I must go beyond it; I must suppress it”? Just look at it without the observer. Do it please as we are talking now. That is, take envy, which most people have. You know what envy is very well, don’t you? You are very familiar with that. Envy is comparison, the measurement of thought comparing what you are with what should be , or with what you want to become. Now just look. You are envious of your neighbor who has got a bigger car, a better house. When you suddenly feel envious, you have compared yourself with him, and envy is born. Can you look at that feeling without saying that it is right or wrong, without naming it, without saying that it is envy? Look at it without any image; then you go beyond it. Instead of struggling with envy, feeling that you should or should not be envious, that you must suppress it, without going through all that struggle, observe your envy without naming it. Because the naming is the movement of the past memory that justifies or condemns. If you can look at it without naming then you will see that you go beyond it. The moment you know the possibility of going beyond what is , you are full of energy. A person who doesn’t know how to go beyond what is , doesn’t know how to deal with it, is afraid, escapes. Seeing the impossibility of it, a person loses energy. If you have a problem and can solve it, then you have energy. Someone who has a thousand problems and doesn’t know what to do with them loses energy. So in the same way, look at your ugly, petty, shallow, extraordinarily violent life. These are all words to describe what is actually going on, not only the violence in sex, but the violence that abides with power, position, prestige. Now, look at it with eyes that don’t immediately jump in with images. Now, that’s your life. And look at your life in which there is what you call love. What is love? We are not discussing the theories of what love should be. We are observing what we call love. I don’t know what you love. I doubt if you love anything at all. Do you know what it means to love? Is love pleasure? Is love jealousy? Can a man love who is ambitious? He may sleep with his wife, beget a few children. And there is the person who is struggling politically to become an important person, or in the business world, or in the religious world wanting to become a saint, wanting to become desireless. All that is part of ambition, aggression, desire. Can a man who is competitive love? And you are all competitive, aren’t you? You want a better job, a better position, a better house, more noble ideas, more perfect images of yourself. And is that love? Can you love if you are going through all the tyranny of dominating your wife, or husband, or your children? When you are seeking power, is there a possibility of love? So in negating what is not love, there is love. You have to negate everything that is not love: no ambition, no competition, no aggression, no violence either in speech, in act, or in thought. Now when you negate that which is not love, then you will know what love is. And love is something that is intense, that you feel very strongly. Love is not pleasure; therefore one must understand pleasure, not aim to love somebody. So when you see what your life is, in which there is no love, no beauty, no freedom, you ought to shed tears. You see actually how barren your life is; and this barren life is the result of your culture, of your sacred books, that say not to look at the sky because there is beauty and that beauty might be transferred to a woman; that say that if you are to be a religious man you must withdraw from the world, deny the world; that the world is an illusion, so escape from it. And your life shows that you have escaped from it. So if you can observe your life, you will find out for yourself what love is; in that lies great passion. Not love, passion; the word passion comes from sorrow. The root meaning of that word passion is sorrow. Do you know what it means to suffer? Not how to escape from suffering, or what to do about suffering, but to suffer, to have great pain inwardly. When there is no movement of escape from that sorrow, out of that comes great passion, which is compassion. And we must also find out what death is—not at the last minute, not when you are sick, unconscious, diseased, incapable of observing with clarity. Old age, disease, and death happen to everybody, so find out while you are young, fresh, active, alive what death means. The organism does wear out; old age is natural. The organism can last longer depending on the kind of life one leads; if your life is a battlefield from the moment you are born till you die, then your body is worn out quicker; through emotional tension the heart becomes weaker. This is an established fact. To find out the meaning and significance of death when one is active, there must be no fear. Most of us are frightened of death, frightened of leaving the things that we have known, frightened of leaving our family, frightened of leaving the things that we have accumulated, of letting go of our knowledge, our books, our office, all that we have collected. Not knowing what is going to happen when you die, the mind, which is thought, says that there must be a different kind of life, that your individual lives must continue somehow. Then you have the whole structure of belief. You speak of reincarnation, but have you ever looked at what is going to incarnate in a next life? What is it that is to be reborn in a next life? All your accumulations of your knowledge, right? All your thoughts, all the activities, all the goodness or the evil or the ugly things that you have done. Because you think that what you do now is going to react in a next life. You all believe that most hopefully, don’t you? If you really believe it, then what matters is what you do now , how you behave now , what your conduct is now , because in the next life you are going to pay for it. That is if you believe in karma. So, if you are really caught in the network of this belief, then you must pay complete attention to your life now: what you do, what you think, how you treat another. But you don’t believe it so deeply. That’s just a comfort, an escape, a worthless word. Find out what it means to die—not physically, that’s inevitable—but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day. To incarnate the next day is far more important than in the future, so that your mind is astonishingly innocent. The word innocence means a mind that is incapable of being hurt. Do you understand the beauty of it? A mind that can never be hurt is an innocent mind. Therefore a mind that has been hurt must die to the hurts every day so that it comes the next morning fresh, clear, unspotted, with no scars. That is the way to live. That is not a theory; it’s for you to do it. That is a mind that is without effort. We have understood how effort comes into being when there is conflict, when there is the observer and the observed. So from that you have order, because order comes when you understand what disorder is. Your life is disorder, but when you understand it, not intellectually but actually, out of that comes order. And that order is virtue; that order is rectitude. It’s a living thing. A man who is vain tries to have humility. See the contradiction. I am vain and I have tried to become humble. In that attempt to become humble there is a conflict. Whereas if I face the fact that I am vain and understand that and go beyond it, then there is humility without any attempt to be humble. So there must be the understanding of oneself completely. There must be order that is not habit, that is not practiced, that is not the cultivation of some virtue. Virtue comes into being like a flower of goodness when you understand disorder in your life. Out of disorder comes order. Then you can begin to inquire into what it is that mankind has sought throughout centuries upon centuries, asking for it, trying to discover it. You cannot possibly understand it, or come upon it if you have not laid the foundation in your daily life. And then we can ask what meditation is. Not how to meditate or what steps to take to meditate or what systems and methods to follow to meditate, because all systems, all methods make the mind mechanical. If I follow a particular system, however carefully worked out it is by the greatest, purest, intellectual guru you can possibly imagine, that system, that method makes the mind mechanical. And a mechanical mind is the most dead mind. And that’s what you are all seeking when you ask how to meditate. At the end of a year of practicing you will have a dull, stupid mind, a mind that can escape, that can hypnotize itself. And that’s not meditation. Meditation is the most marvelous thing. We will see what meditation is not; then you will know what meditation is. Through seeing what it is not, through negation, you come upon the positive. But if you pursue the positive it leads you to a dead end. We say that meditation is not the practice of any system. You know people who sit and become aware of their toes, of their bodies, of their movements, who practice, practice, practice. A machine can do that. Systems cannot reveal the beauty and the depth of the marvelous thing called meditation. Meditation is not concentration. When you concentrate, or attempt to concentrate, in that concentration there is the observer and the observed. There is the one who says, “I must concentrate; I must force myself to concentrate,” so concentration becomes conflict. When you do learn to concentrate, like a schoolboy, then that concentration becomes a process of exclusion, building a wall against thought, which is another movement of thought. Concentration is not meditation. Meditation is not an escape from the understanding of what yourself actually is. So there must be complete self-knowledge—not of a higher-self or the Atman and all that rubbish, which are all inventions. What is fact is real, inventions are not. So, a mind that has understood through negation that there is no system, no method, no concentration becomes very quiet naturally. In that, there is no observer who has achieved some kind of silence. In that silence there is the emptying of the mind of all the past. Unless you do this in your daily life, you won’t understand the marvel, the subtlety, the beauty, the extraordinariness of it. Don’t merely repeat what the speaker says. If you repeat, it becomes propaganda, which is a lie. So when the mind has complete order, mathematical order, and that order has conie into being naturally through the understanding of the disorder of our daily life, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet. This quiet has vast space. It is not the quiet of a little room. It is not the silence of the ending of noise. It is of a mind that has understood the whole problem of existence, love and death and living, the beauty of the skies, the trees, the people. All your religious gurus have denied beauty, and that’s why you destroy your trees, nature. When you have understood all this, then you will know what happens in that silence. Nobody can describe it. Anybody who describes it doesn’t know what it is. It is for you to find out. You must ask questions, not only of the speaker but of yourself, which is far more important. Ask yourself why you believe, why you follow, why you accept authority, why you are corrupt, angry, jealous, brutal, violent. Question that and find out the answer; and you cannot find out the answer by asking another. You see, you have to stand alone, completely alone, which doesn’t mean you become isolated. Because you are alone then you will know what it means to live purely. Therefore you must endlessly ask questions. And the more you ask of yourself, do not try to find an answer but ask and look. Ask and look and when you ask there must be care, there must be affection, there must be love in your asking of yourself, not beating yourself with questions. Questioner : When you say the one who says he knows doesn’t know, what do you mean? Must you not know yourself to say that? Krishnamurti : Let’s proceed. We have said that he who says he knows does not know. You hear that and you say, “What are you talking about? What do you mean by that?” So you have to find out what the word know means. What is involved in the word know ? When you say you know your wife or your husband, what do you mean? Do you know her or him? Or do you know the image that you have about her or him? The image that you have is the past. So to know is to know something that’s over, something that’s gone, something that you have experienced. Right? When you say, “I know,” you are looking at the present with the knowledge of the past. Now, I want to know myself, understand myself. Myself is a very living thing; it isn’t a static thing; it is changing all the time, adding, subtracting; it’s taking on, putting off. One day I want joy, I want pleasure; the next day I am frightened. Everything is going on in me. Now, I want to learn about that. If I come to it saying, “I know what I am,” then I won’t learn, will I? I must come to it each time as though I am learning about it for the first time. I look at myself and in looking at myself I find I am ugly or extraordinarily sensitive, or this or that. And in looking and translating what I am looking at it becomes knowledge, and with that knowledge I look at myself the next minute. Therefore what I see will not be fresh; it will be seen with the eyes of the known. So, to learn about myself there must be the ending of knowing myself each time so that I am learning; each time there is a learning about myself afresh. Now, the one who says he knows does not know. Saying “I have experienced God. I know what it means to have enlightenment” is the same as saying “I know the way to go to the station, because the station is a fixed place.” There are many paths to the “station” and there are many gurus for each path, and they all say, “I know; I have experienced.” Which means what? They have known something and they hold on to something that has been experienced, that is dead. There is no path to truth because truth is a living thing; it isn’t a fixed, static, dead thing. Like you. What are you? Are you static? Aren’t you changing every day for the worse or the better? So I can never say, “I know you.” It’s a most stupid thing to say. When I say, “I know you,” it is a kind of consolation, a kind of security for myself to think I know you. Do watch it; don’t bother about your questions. When you understand this one question completely, you have understood so many things. So distrust anyone who says he knows, anyone who says he will lead you to enlightenment, who says that if you do these things you will achieve. Have nothing to do with such people. They are dead people because they are only living in the past with things they do not know. Enlightenment, truth, is a timeless state, and you cannot come upon it through time. And knowledge is time. So, as we said, die every day to every knowledge that you have and be fresh the next morning. Such a mind never says, “I know,” because it’s always flowering, it’s always coming new. Q: You don’t want us to read the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, or the great epics. What’s wrong with them? Why are you so hostile toward our great saints? [ Laughter ] K: First of all, I don’t know your great saints. I don’t want to know them. I don’t see the point of knowing them. I want to learn about myself, not about them. They were probably conditioned by their culture, by the society, the religion they were born in. A Christian saint is not accepted in India as a saint. Your saints are conditioned by the culture in which they have lived. We are not hostile to them; we are just stating the facts. They are tortured human beings, with their discipline. They detach themselves, or they are tremendously devoted to God, whatever that word may mean, to their own visions, to their own ideas, to their own culture that has brought them to believe in God. If they were born in communist Russia they wouldn’t believe in God. There would be no saints; they would be Marxists. They would become marvelous bureaucrats. And they may in the future be the great saints. [ Laughs ] Now, sir, I don’t read Mahabharata and Ramayana and Gita and all the rest of these books. Why do you read them? Do you read them for the literature, for the beauty of language? Or do you read them as the most terribly sacred thing, and think by reading you will achieve nirvana or heaven or whatever it is? Do you read them as escape literature? Q: [ Inaudible ] K: Yes, sir. The gentleman says Mahatma Gandhi and the greatest men have read the Gita and so on. I don’t know why you call them great because they read the Gita. You call them great because they fit into your pattern. Right? They fit in according to your culture. Q: No! For their love of mankind. K: Right. For the love of mankind. They loved mankind and therefore you love them? Which means you love mankind? No, sir, be honest about all these things. [ Laughter ] Sir, if you want to turn this meeting into an entertainment and merely a debating society, the speaker will withdraw. What we are asking is why you read these books. If you read the book of yourself, that’s far more important than any other book because your book, the book which is you, contains the whole of mankind, all the agonies we have been through, the misery, the love, the pain, the joy, the suffering, the anxiety. There is that book in you, and you go and waste your time reading somebody else’s book. And that you call love of mankind, and you say men are great because they come in the pattern of your particular culture. Q: What is the reason for the grievances that sex has brought to the world in spite of the fact that it is the greatest energy of man? K: All right, let’s go at it. Have you noticed throughout the world, and therefore in your own life, how sex has become extraordinarily important? Have you noticed it? You are all very strangely silent. Talk about the Ramayana and the Gita, and you all burst with energy. Talk about your daily life, and you subside. Why has sex, the act, the pleasure, become such a colossal thing in the life of everybody? In the West they put it out in the open; in India you all hide it, are ashamed of it; you duck your head when you talk about sex. Look at your faces. It’s so obvious. [ Laughter ] You are frightened; you are nervous, embarrassed, shy, guilty, which all shows that it has become tremendously important in your life. Why? I’ll show you why. Don’t accept what I am saying or disagree with it. Observe it. Intellectually you have no energy because you repeat what others have said. You are prisoners to theories, speculations, and therefore you have no capacity to reason, observe with logical, healthy minds. You have mechanical minds. You go to schools where you cram in facts and repeat the facts, and that’s all. Intellectually you are not aware; your minds are not sharp, clear. Therefore your intellectual energy is almost nil because intellectually you are mechanical machines. Aren’t you? Face it; look at it. A man who asks what is wrong with reading the Mahabharata or the Gita shows what kind of minds you have—mechanical, repeating what others have said. And your life going to the office day after day for forty years is a mechanical life. Whether it is of a prime minister or a politician or a guru or yourself, it is a mechanical life. Isn’t that so? And your behavior, all your habits, have become so mechanically repetitive that there is no intellectual freedom. Freedom means energy, vitality, intensity. When you can see the whole structure of thought and go beyond it, it gives you tremendous energy. And you deny that totally because you accept authority, not only the authority of the professors, but of your spiritual leaders. They are not spiritual when they become your leaders. So you are not free intellectually. And emotionally you are sentimental, tremendously devoted to some god, to some person. That is not energizing; that doesn’t give you energy, because in that there is fear. Energy comes only when you completely lose yourself, when there is total absence of yourself. And that takes place when you have sex. For a second everything ends, and you have the pleasure of it. Then thought picks it up, forms images, wants it more and more and more. Repetition. Therefore that becomes the most extraordinarily important factor of your life because you have nothing else. You have no brain capacity; you are confused, miserable, unhappy human beings. You are not intense; you have no passion intellectually to stand alone, to see clearly and stand by it. You are frightened. And what have you left? Sex. And all your religions said, “Don’t have sex.” So you battle. Some poor, neurotic person says that to find God you must not have sex; and you are full of sex and try not to be sexual, and so you have a battle with yourself. The more you battle the more important it becomes. So you see your life for what it is. You have no love but only pleasure. And when you have pleasure you are frightened of losing it. Therefore you are never free, though you may write volumes about freedom. So when you understand all this, not intellectually but in your daily life, you see what you have reduced mankind to through your religion, through your Mahabharatas, Gitas, and gurus; you see that you have reduced yourselves to mechanical, unhappy, shoddy little entities, tortured and in agony. And with this little mind you want to capture the vast, timeless space of truth. Inward Revolution: Bringing About Radical Change in the World Eight Can there be an inward, and therefore an outward, revolution? First of all, I would like to say how important it is to find out for oneself what learning is, because apparently all of you have come here to learn what somebody else has to say. To find out one must obviously listen, and it is one of the most difficult things to do. It is quite an art, because most of us have our own opinions, conclusions, points of view, dogmatic beliefs and assertions, our own peculiar little experiences, our knowledge, which will obviously prevent us from actually listening to another. All these opinions and judgments will crowd in and hinder the act of listening. Can you listen without any conclusion, without any comparison and judgment, just listen as you would listen to music, to something that you feel you really love? Then you listen not only with your mind, with your intellect, but also with your heart; not sentimentally—which is rather terrible—or emotionally, but with care, objectively, sanely, listen with attention to find out. You know what you think; you have your own experiences, your own conclusions, your own knowledge. For the moment at least, put them aside. That is going to be rather difficult because you live on formulas and words, on speculative assumptions, but when one is trying to find out, to inquire really very seriously into the whole problem of existence, one has obviously to put aside any projection of particular little idiosyncrasies, temperaments, conclusions, and formulas. Otherwise, obviously, one can’t investigate, learn together. And we are going to learn together because, after all, the word communication means to have something in common around which we can cooperate, which we can think over together, share together, create together, understand together. That is what communication really means: to have something in common which we can think together, understand together. It is not that the speaker explains and you merely listen, but rather that we understand together what truth is, what living is, and the complex problems of our daily activities. We are going into all that. To really investigate, to learn together implies that there is no authority. The speaker is sitting on a platform, but he has no authority. He is sitting on a platform merely for convenience, and that doesn’t give him any authority whatsoever. Please let’s understand very clearly that we are examining together, learning together. The implication of “together” surely is that we both must be serious, we both must be at the same level, with the same intensity, with the same passion; otherwise, we will not meet each other. If you are deeply interested in a problem and another is not, there is no communication at all. There is verbal understanding, but a verbal explanation is never the thing. So the description is never the described. And as we are going to find out together, we must be serious, because this is not an entertainment, this is not something that you can discuss by arguing, opposing one opinion against another. Opinions have no value. What has value, what has significance, is to observe actually what is , not only outwardly but also inwardly, to see what is actually taking place. Therefore there is no interpretation, no conclusion, but mere observation. What we are going to do is observe what is actually going on, both outwardly in the world and also inwardly. When you perceive what is actually, then you can do something about it, but if you observe what is with a series of conclusions, a series of opinions, judgments, formulas, you will never understand what is . That is clear, isn’t it? If you observe the world as a Hindu or as a Muslim or as a Christian, then obviously you cannot see clearly. And we have to see together very, very clearly, objectively, sanely. If we can observe very clearly, that in itself is a form of discipline. We are using that word discipline not in its orthodox sense. The very meaning of that word is “to learn.” The root of that word means “to learn”; not to conform, not to control, not to suppress, but to learn and to see very clearly what is happening inwardly and what is happening outwardly, to see that this is a unitary movement, not a separate movement; to see it as whole, not divided. What is actually happening outwardly all over the world? What is actually taking place? Not the interpretation or the explanation or the cause of what is taking place, but what is actually happening? If a madman were to arrange the affairs of the world, he couldn’t do worse. That is a simple, obvious fact. Sociologically, economically, culturally, there is disintegration. Politicians have not been able to solve problems; on the contrary, they are increasing them. Countries are divided—the affluent societies and the so-called undeveloped countries. There is poverty, war, conflict of every kind. There is no social morality; what is considered social morality is immorality. All the religious organizations, with their beliefs, with their rituals, with their dogmas, are really separating people, which we can see obviously. If you are a Hindu and I am a Muslim, we must be against each other. We may tolerate each other for a few days, but basically, inwardly, we are against each other. So where there is division, there must be conflict, not only outwardly but also inwardly. You can see exactly what is going on in this unfortunate world, the extraordinary development of technology, social changes, permissiveness, all that. And inwardly we are a mass of contradictions. Please, as I said, do observe yourself; watch yourself, not what the speaker is saying. Listen to what the speaker is saying as a way of observing yourself. Look at yourself as though you are looking at yourself in a mirror. Observe what is actually going on, not what you would like it to be. You see, don’t you, that there is great confusion, contradiction, conflict, a great deal of sorrow, and the pursuit of pleasure ideologically as well as sensuously? There is sorrow, confusion, conflict, occasional flashes of joy, and so on. That is actually what is taking place. So our problem is, Can all this be radically changed? Can there be an inward, and therefore an outward, revolution? Because we cannot possibly go on with our old habits, with our old traditions, with our old thinking. The very structure of our thought must change; our very brain cells themselves must undergo a transformation to bring about order, not only within ourselves but also outwardly. That is what we, you and the speaker, are going to share together, learn about together. The mind has been put together through time. The brain cells, which have evolved through millennia, centuries upon centuries, have acquired tremendous knowledge, experience, have collected a great deal of scientific, objective knowledge. The brain cells, which are the result of time, have produced this monstrous world, this world of war, injustice, poverty, appalling misery, and the division of people racially, culturally, and religiously. All this has been produced by the intellect, by thought, and any reconstruction by thought is still within the same field. I don’t know if you see that. Thought has produced this division among people for economic, social, cultural, linguistic, and ideological reasons. It is not very complex; it is very simple. Because of its very simplicity, you will discard it, but if you observe, you will see for yourself very clearly that the intellect, with all its cunning reason both objective and nonobjective, has brought about this condition, this state, both inwardly and outwardly. You are caught by the way you think and the way another thinks—the way you think as a Hindu, as a Muslim, as a Christian, as a communist, and God knows what else. You are conditioned by the past, and you think along those lines. That very same thought tries to find a way out of this confusion, but that confusion has been created by thought. It is not what the speaker says; it is what you have discovered for yourselves. Are you listening with passion to find out? Because we have to change. We can’t go on as we are, lazy, satisfied with little things, accepting certain doctrines as truth, believing in something about which we know absolutely nothing, following somebody—the various gurus with their concentration camps—hoping that they will lead us to enlightenment. This is dreadfully serious. All this has been produced by thought. And thought is the response of memory. If you had no memory, you couldn’t think. Memory is knowledge, gathered experience, and thought is the response of the past. Obviously. And we are trying to solve immense, complex problems of human relationship in terms of the past, which is thought. Are we moving together? It is only the serious person that lives; it is only the serious person who can understand totally the whole significance of this, not someone who just casually takes an interest for a few days and drops it. We are concerned with changing our daily life, not substituting one belief for another belief. We must negate everything that thought has put together; otherwise, we cannot possibly find a new dimension. Are we going together? Please don’t agree. It’s not a matter of agreement or disagreement; it’s a matter of perception, seeing actually what is going on. So, thought has brought about the cultures, Hindu, Christian, communist, or what you will. It is thought which is the response of memory, which is knowledge, that has created such confusion, misery, sorrow in the world. How can the very brain cells themselves that contain the memory undergo a radical mutation? Knowledge is necessary; otherwise, you can’t go home, write a letter, speak English, understand each other. Scientific knowledge, technological knowledge, is absolutely necessary to function. We see that. If you would communicate in Italian, you must learn Italian, study the meaning of words, the verbs, how to put the sentences together, and accumulate knowledge of Italian. In order to communicate in Italian, you must have knowledge, which is again the product of thought cultivating memory of the language and then speaking that language. One sees also that thought has created divisions between people through their religious absurdities, through their nationalism, and linguistically and culturally. It has created division between you and another, between you and your wife, between you and your children. Thought has divided, and yet thought has produced extraordinary technological knowledge, which you must have. Do you see the problem? Thought has brought about great contusion, misery, wars, and thought also has produced extraordinary knowledge. So there is a contradiction in the very functioning of thought; it divides, separates, psychologically as well as outwardly. Thought has gathered extraordinary knowledge and thought uses that knowledge to sustain the separateness of people. The question is whether thought, though it must function within the field of knowledge, can cease to create separation. Really, basically, fundamentally, that is the problem. Thought is old because memory is of yesterday. Thought is never free, because it can function only within the field of knowledge. Thought is the response of memory, and that memory is within the very structure of the brain cells. Is there a perception—not a way, or a system, or a method; those are all mechanical and absurd and lead nowhere—in which the very seeing is the acting? Are we going together? Don’t agree too quickly because that is childish. You see, you are not used to investigating, you are not used to observing yourself. You are accustomed to reading what other people say and repeating it. You know, it would be marvelous if you never said a word that is not your own discovery. Never to say anything that you yourself don’t know means you put away all your gurus, your sacred books, religious books, theories, what the philosophers have said. Of course you will have to keep your scientific, technological books, but that’s all. If you never say anything that you do not understand, that you have not discovered yourself, you will see then that the whole activity of your mind undergoes a tremendous change. Now we are secondhand human beings or thirteenth-hand human beings, and we are trying to find out a way of living that is really timeless. Thought is time. Time means putting things together, a process. To get from here to there requires time because you have to cover space. Thought thinks in terms of time, thinks of life as a process, getting from here to there. Now, we are asking for a way of living in which time does not exist at all except chronologically. Because what we are concerned with is change, a revolution, a total mutation of the very structure of the brain cells. Otherwise you cannot produce a new culture, a new way of living, and live in a different dimension altogether. So we are asking—the word how is not right—is there an action of perception in which thought doesn’t enter except technologically? Look, one has lived in the same old pattern, in a small corner of this vast field of life, and in that corner there is extraord	394,997
Lead Yourself First Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (Erwin, Michael S. Kethledge, Raymond M.) (Z-Library).epub	12. “No Never Alone”: Martin Luther King Jr., 1956 CHAPTER 12 “No Never Alone” Martin Luther King Jr., 1956 “And he said, Certainly I will be with thee.” — EXODUS 3:12 There are sources of moral courage that lie latent within us. The source might be one’s bond with a friend or mentor to whom one has not spoken in years—but still could call upon now. It might be an important life event whose implications one has not fully explored. It might be a relationship with a respected colleague, which, if one merely asked, could be a source of strength. When clarity about the reasons for his actions is no longer enough to sustain a leader, he can seek out these sources. What he seeks, usually, is not still more clarity about the reasons for his actions, but simply reassurance—reassurance that what he is doing is right, that he is doing his best, that he is a good person notwithstanding what the moral critics say. To sustain moral courage, a leader must tend to the soul as well as the mind. He can seek sources of reassurance by quiet reflection upon his life as a whole—the relationships that have been important to him, the things he would have done differently, the experiences that affected him most. (The second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor concerto captures the mood of this kind of reflection.) In that quietude, and with that broader perspective, an intuition will often surface about where he can find reassurance. Martin Luther King Jr. had the utmost clarity about the reasons for his actions as leader of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56, though that role came to him unsought. And yet after two months, worn down by moral criticism and an increasing flow of hostile phone calls and death threats, King contemplated abandoning his leadership role altogether. But late one night in January 1956, when he was ready to give up, King sat down at his kitchen table and reflected on his life. Then he realized there was one relationship he could draw upon more deeply—his relationship with God, which even as a pastor he had not yet fully developed. After King stood up from that table, his courage would never leave him again. The greatest American civil rights leader was at first a reluctant one. When Marin Luther King Jr. moved to Montgomery, Alabama, with his wife, Coretta, in September 1954, he did so to realize his career goal of becoming a pastor—a position he had accepted at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He was then only twenty-five years old and had just finished studying for his doctorate at Boston University. King threw himself into his new responsibilities at Dexter, preparing a hard-nosed statement of governing principles—“ Leadership never ascends from the pew to pulpit,” King advised his new congregation, “but invariably descends from pulpit to pew”—in addition to spending hours each week writing and then memorizing his sermons. Meanwhile, the Kings settled into the church’s parsonage, the home provided for King as pastor. On November 17, 1955, their first child, Yolanda, was born. Around the same time, the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP—of which Rosa Parks was the secretary—offered King the chapter’s presidency, having heard him deliver an impressive speech to the chapter’s members a few months before. King declined, citing his responsibilities as a new pastor and father. Only weeks later, however, leadership for King would no longer be a matter of choice. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery. Almost immediately, the city’s black leadership organized a boycott of the city’s buses for the following Monday. In the meantime, two of the city’s leading black activists, E. D. Nixon, an older man and a porter for a railroad company, and Ralph Abernathy, a young pastor and already a close friend of King, organized a meeting of the city’s black leadership for that Friday night. Nixon called King Friday morning to ask if the meeting could be held at Dexter and to solicit King’s support for the boycott. At first King hesitated: “Brother Nixon, let me think about it awhile, and call me back.” Then Abernathy called King, who agreed to host the meeting and support the boycott effort so long as he “did not have to do the organizational work.” At the meeting that night, the group agreed to proceed with the boycott on Monday and to distribute leaflets about the boycott over the weekend. On Monday morning, only a handful of black passengers rode on Montgomery’s buses. Meanwhile, hundreds of blacks walked to work or gathered for rides in cars driven by friends and acquaintances. The leadership group met again that afternoon. By then they had decided to create a new organization dedicated to the boycott, which at Abernathy’s suggestion they named the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). King thought that a prominent member of his church, Rufus Lewis, should be president of the new organization. But Lewis had other ideas: at the Monday meeting, Lewis promptly nominated King for the role. As a Baptist minister who was both articulate and extremely well educated, King could appeal to all segments of the city’s black community, working-class and professional alike. No other nominations were made, and King was asked if he would accept the role. After a pause, King said, “ Well, if you think I can render some service, I will.” Soon thereafter, the meeting’s attendees left to join a mass meeting scheduled for that evening at the Holt Street Baptist Church. As president of the MIA, King would now be the featured speaker. He stopped briefly at home, telling Coretta that he had been chosen to lead the new group. Then an old friend, Elliot Finley, picked up King to drive him to Holt Street. They ran into traffic blocks away from the church and eventually came to a halt, with people streaming past all around them. Finley parked the car. As they got out and began to walk, King paused. “ You know something, Finley,” King said. “This could turn into something big.” It took King fifteen minutes to push his way through the crowd to the church. One thousand people were inside, with another four thousand outside, listening to the proceedings on loudspeaker. Soon after arriving, King was called to the pulpit. For a moment he stood silently in front of the crowd, which was packed into the pews and aisles and balconies. “ We are here this evening for serious business,” King said. “We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens … But we are here in a more specific sense because of the bus situation in Montgomery. We are here because we are determined to get the situation corrected.” King described Parks’s arrest and her character, saying, “Mrs. Parks is a fine Christian person, unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there. And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.” “And you know, my friends,” King continued, “there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” At that, a rising cheer suddenly exploded into deafening applause, rolling on and on, “ like a wave that refused to break, and just when it seemed that the roar must finally weaken, a wall of sound came in from the enormous crowd outdoors to push the volume still higher”—all the while with the thunder of feet stomping on the wooden floor. Finally, King said, “We are here, we are here this evening because we’re tired now.” The church was humming now. “ And we are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing.” King began to belt out the words. “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong!” Again the crowd exploded. “If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth! If we are wrong, justice is a lie.” For a while he could not speak because of the thunderous applause. Then, quoting from the book of Amos, he said, “And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight ‘until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream!’” He began to conclude. “Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really just love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which would work against love.” He called the crowd to action. “Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future,” he said, they will say that here was “a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights.” Then he abruptly closed, saying, “Let us think on these things.” When King was done, Ralph Abernathy rose to read a resolution calling for everyone to continue the boycott until a satisfactory arrangement was reached with the city’s white leadership. The crowd roared its approval. As King walked out of the church, with the applause continuing all around, people reached out to touch him. In the course of a single afternoon and evening, King had gone from a hesitant participant in the boycott to its indisputable leader. The MIA’s leadership thought the city would give in after a week or so at most. Part of the reason for their optimism was the modesty of their demands: the black leadership was not, to the disappointment of the national NAACP, seeking full integration of the city’s buses. The current seating system had a whites-only section toward the front of the buses, a blacks-only section toward the back, and sixteen seats in the middle, where the bus driver would shift the line between the races depending on how the racial composition of the riders might shift. In practice, however, the line shifted only backward, with the bus driver ordering black passengers to move to the rear as additional seats were needed for whites. Moreover, seated whites were never directed to stand to make room for new black passengers, whereas blacks were often ordered to stand to make room for boarding whites. (Hence the driver’s directive to Rosa Parks and a handful of other black passengers on December 1: “I want those two seats.”) What the MIA demanded was simply the same seating plan that the same bus company, National City Lines, used on its buses in Mobile, Alabama: neither race would have a reserved section, whites would seat themselves from the front, blacks from the back, and the dividing line between the races would be wherever they happened to meet. Yet the MIA’s optimism soon began to fade. On December 8—one week after Parks’s arrest—King led a delegation of black leaders in a meeting with the city’s three commissioners and the bus company’s lawyer, Jack Crenshaw. When King proposed that the company adopt the Mobile plan in Montgomery, Crenshaw responded, implausibly, that the state’s segregation law prohibited that approach. Perhaps more to the point, Crenshaw also objected that, under the MIA’s plan, a black male passenger could be “practically rubbing knees” with a white woman. The meeting went nowhere. The two groups met again on December 17, this time joined by three white ministers, who lectured King about the impropriety of “ministers of the gospel leading a political campaign.” That meeting too went nowhere. Meanwhile, the MIA’s leadership began the formidable task of creating a private carpool system for the thousands of black residents who had used the city’s buses. Eventually almost every black-owned car in the city was volunteered for the effort. Even discounting for the black residents who now walked instead of rode to their destinations, however, each car in the effort would need to provide around a hundred rides per day. A similar system had broken down in Baton Rouge after only two weeks. For the time being though, Montgomery’s black residents each found ways to get back and forth to work, and to the grocery store, and to the MIA’s now-frequent mass meetings, while also keeping up with all the other obligations of daily life. At this point the pressure on King began to grow more acute. With the prospects of a quick settlement now dim and logistical difficulties increasing for the MIA, the black and white delegations met for a third time on December 19. Joining them this time, to the blacks’ dismay, was Luther Ingalls, secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the White Citizens Council, a pro-segregation group. When Ingalls began to speak a few minutes into the meeting, King objected, looking directly at Ingalls and saying that some of the whites present had “ preconceived ideas” and their “minds already made up.” That in turn angered some of the more open-minded whites. Trembling with indignation, Mrs. Logan Hipp told King, “I resent very deeply the statement that we have come here with preconceived ideas. I most certainly did not.” A white businessman added that he had come “prepared to vote for liberalization of interpretation of the city’s laws with certain conditions. We have some whose minds are made up and I think Reverend King is one of them.” Taken aback, King explained that he thought only some of the whites were biased. The chairman of the white delegation, the Reverend Henry Parker, retorted that, “if that’s true, then you should not be here. Your stand has been made clear.” King was speechless, and no one else spoke. “For a moment,” King recalled later, “it appeared that I was alone. Nobody came to my rescue.” Then Ralph Abernathy stood up and said that King spoke for all the members of the black delegation. A short while later the meeting came to a bitter end. Afterward, King felt what he described as a “ terrible sense of guilt.” He feared that his outburst had ruined the negotiations, just as the boycott’s burdens grew heavier for the city’s black community. King was also dismayed at the perception, among the white delegation at least, that his comments had put the whites on the moral high ground. Later that day he called Reverend Parker to apologize. Parker was taken aback at the gesture, which suggested equality, and nervously repeated the points he had made in the meeting that day. In the days that followed, the city’s white leadership described King as the primary obstacle to a settlement, and wondered aloud “ why the older, long-established leaders of black Montgomery had ceded authority to this young newcomer.” Whites also began a whispering campaign that King was skimming from donations made to the MIA. King “almost broke down from the continual battering,” he said later. At an emotional meeting of the MIA’s board, King offered to resign. The board rejected the offer and instead rallied around him. Meanwhile the whites’ position hardened. On January 6, Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers—an ardent segregationist—strode down the aisle of a 1,200-person meeting of the Montgomery White Citizens Council and announced that he was joining the organization. He received a standing ovation. Afterward the city’s leading newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser , reported that, “in effect, the Montgomery police force is now an arm of the White Citizens Council.” Also on January 6, the Montgomery city attorney wrote to a state solicitor, arguing that the MIA’s actions violated a state anti-boycott law. And membership in the Montgomery White Citizens Council was surging, from three hundred the previous October to six thousand by the end of January. At the same time, the MIA’s carpool system was strained to the limit, and the MIA itself was nearly out of funds. The MIA began looking for a way out. King requested a meeting with Sellers and the city’s three commissioners, which took place on January 9. This time the MIA’s attorney, Fred Gray—rather than King—spoke for the black delegation. Gray offered the whites a major concession, namely that black passengers would voluntarily reseat themselves to the rear of buses as necessary to make room for boarding white passengers. (Theoretically whites would do the same for black passengers, though no one expected that to happen in practice.) Sensing weakness, the white delegation rejected the proposal out of hand. Three days later, at an MIA board meeting, the mood was gloomy. The group concluded, “It seems that it is now a test as to which side can hold out the longer time, or wear the other down.” The group also noted that the national NAACP would not support their efforts unless the MIA abandoned its seating plan and instead sought full integration of the buses through litigation. The board began discussions about whether to file suit in federal court. For King, the pressures at this point became even more intensely personal. Day and night his home phone rang with calls, sometimes from blacks complaining about some aspect of the carpool, but more often from hostile whites, some making death threats. On January 19, the Advertiser ran a front-page article with the headline THE REV. KING IS BOYCOTT BOSS . A citywide rumor campaign followed, with whites saying to black acquaintances that King was an ambitious, “ highfalutin preacher” who had never ridden a bus himself. Soon King also found himself caught up in a campaign of police harassment. On January 22, presumably at Sellers’s direction, Montgomery police began pulling over carpool drivers wherever they saw them, issuing tickets for equipment violations and bogus charges of speeding or failure to signal. On January 26, King was driving home from work along with several passengers. A pair of police motorcycles began to tail behind. King slowed to a crawl, but the motorcycles continued to follow. When King stopped to let out some passengers, one of the officers pulled up next to the driver’s window. “Get out, King,” the officer said. “You’re under arrest for speeding 30 miles an hour in a 25-mile zone.” Stunned, King told a remaining passenger to notify Coretta. Then he stepped out of the car. The officers called for a cruiser and put King in the backseat. The officers said nothing as they drove through unfamiliar, desolate parts of town. King silently began to panic, literally trembling in the backseat, seized with fear that he was about to be lynched. But eventually they approached a building with a neon sign outside: MONTGOMERY CITY JAIL . Inside, King was led toward a large cell filled with common criminals. “All right, get on in there with all the others,” the jailer said. A while later, the jailer returned for him. King thought he was being released, but instead he was fingerprinted and returned to the cell. Ralph Abernathy came to the jail and then ran off to get money for a cash bond. As a crowd of black supporters began to gather outside the jail, however, the jailers released King upon his own signature. That night no fewer than seven mass meetings were held at different black churches. The following night—January 27, 1956—King came home very late from work. “It was the most important night of his life,” says King’s Pulitzer-winning biographer, David Garrow, “the one he would always think back to in future years when the pressures again seemed too great.” The house was quiet, and Coretta and Yolanda were already asleep. By then King was reaching his emotional limits. “I felt myself faltering and growing in fear,” he said later. Around midnight, he began to prepare for bed. Then the phone rang. The white on the other end of the line called King the N-word and told him, “We are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.” King had gotten death threats before, but this time something broke loose inside him. Fearful and unable to sleep, he went to the kitchen, made a cup of coffee, and sat down at the table to reflect. “ I started thinking about many things,” he said later. “I was ready to give up.” I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born.… I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted, and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, you can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta 175 miles away. You can’t even call on Mama now. You’ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, the power that can make a way out of no way. At that point King realized that he needed to draw more deeply on his faith than ever before: And I discovered then that religion had become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it … I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.” Then King received his answer: And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world” … I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. “Almost at once,” King said later, “my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared.” Never again would he fear bombings, or any other harm his adversaries could do to him. Three days later, on the night of January 30, Coretta was sitting with a friend in the front room of the parsonage when they heard an object land on the porch outside. They darted toward a guest bedroom as “an explosion rocked the house, filling the front room with smoke and shattered glass.” When King heard the news, he rushed home to find an angry crowd of supporters outside. Police Commissioner Sellers and the city’s mayor were already there. Sellers took King aside and told him, “I do not agree with you in your beliefs, but I will do everything within my power to defend you against such acts as this.” Then King sought to calm the crowd. Raising up one hand for silence, he said, “Everything is all right … everything is under control.” He urged the onlookers not to retaliate. “We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.” Reflecting later, King said he had “accepted the word of the bombing calmly. My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it.” Eventually the MIA filed its lawsuit challenging segregation on Montgomery’s buses as unconstitutional. On June 5, 1956, a divided three-judge panel (with Judge Frank Johnson in the majority) held that that it was. On November 1, 1956, the Supreme Court allowed that decision to stand. The city sought rehearing, which the Court denied on December 20. The following day, segregation on the city’s buses came to an end. But King’s challenges as a leader did not. Exactly one year after his experience at the kitchen table, another stack of dynamite landed on the porch of his home. The fuse was defective and the bomb did not explode. In his sermon the next morning, a Sunday, King again described his religious experience a year earlier, and said, “So I’m not afraid of anybody this morning. Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I’m going to stand up to them; tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I’m going to stand up to them.” For the rest of his short life, King had a strong sense that he would one day be killed in the service of his cause. Because of his experience at the kitchen table, however, he faced that prospect without fear. And though King did not speak of it directly, he was surely aware of a scriptural parallel to his own experience. In the Book of Exodus, God speaks to Moses through the burning bush and orders him to return to Egypt and lead his people to freedom. Moses reacts with self-doubt: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God responds, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:11–12). King had been told the same thing. And he knew that the parallel went a step further. Black Americans have long identified with the Israelites of the Old Testament, who were persecuted by the pharaoh. After Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, they wander the desert for forty years. Finally God tells Moses to “get thee up this mountain,” from whose top God says he will allow Moses to see the Promised Land. And God says he will give this land “unto the children of Israel for a possession” (Deuteronomy 32:48–49). But God will not let Moses himself go there; instead, God says, Moses will die on the mountain. Moses then climbs up the mountain, sees the Promised Land, and dies. And so, on April 3, 1968, King’s audience would have understood his meaning entirely. Before a black congregation in Memphis, King ended the last speech of his life this way: Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. King’s sense from his experience at the kitchen table, that the Lord was with him each step of the way, had grown into a deeper sense that, as with Moses, the Lord himself would decide when his work was done. And the following morning, it was. 2. Analytical Clarity: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1944 CHAPTER 2 Analytical Clarity Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1944 “Make big decisions in the calm.” — DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER The hardest-earned kind of clarity is analytical clarity. Unlike intuitive clarity—which arises more from mental quietude than from strenuous effort—analytical clarity arises from rigorous syllogistic thought. And that kind of thinking—because of its difficulty, and its glacial pace—is best done, and perhaps only done, in solitude. The process is one of breaking down complexity to a single point of decision. The leader must first identify, as clearly and precisely as he can, the goal he seeks to achieve or the problem he seeks to solve. Sometimes that identification is easy, as for a judge who must decide whether the evidence at trial was sufficient to support a defendant’s conviction for a particular crime. Other times—as for one family member troubled by the behavior of another—specifically identifying the problem might begin the process of finding a solution to it. Typically, in situations calling for analytical clarity, the leader confronts a complex and often jumbled mass of information. The leader must sort that information logically: for a corporate leader, for example, some data might pertain to changes in technology; other data might pertain to competitors’ products; still other data might pertain to generational preferences among consumers. Then, having brought some logical order to the information itself, the leader must develop from it a series of logical premises. Those premises typically begin with certain facts that are known or likely to exist. The premises then proceed to include certain rules or principles—the product must be produced for a certain cost, or it must be launched by a certain date, or a certain legal standard must be met—with which the leader’s decision must comply. This stage of the process often reveals that some information, which at first seemed important, is in fact immaterial: it does not affect compliance with a governing rule or principle, and thus cannot affect the decision either way. After this process of sorting and then sifting information, the leader is left with a series of premises—about facts and governing standards—about which she is often quite confident. The harder question usually concerns how those facts and standards intersect. Sometimes (as in, say, legal reasoning) the relevant facts are known; the real question is what, exactly, the governing standard means. But more often some of the relevant facts remain unknown—because the leader’s information is fragmentary, or the relevant events have not happened yet. In either instance, the object of the exercise is the same: identification of the key variable upon which the leader’s decision depends. That variable, depending on which way it breaks, is the one that determines whether the benefits of a particular leadership decision exceed its costs. Identification of that variable is what provides analytical clarity: what began as a mass of undifferentiated information is now a landscape of logical premises that lead to one critical point. As to more difficult leadership decisions, therefore, analytical clarity does not always allow the leader to know which decision is best. But it does allow the leader to focus, clearly and specifically, on the key variable that will determine whether a decision brings success or failure. The leader can then determine—sometimes based on focused analysis of the variable itself, other times based on gut instinct (which is to say intuition)—which way he thinks the variable will break. And from that determination the leader’s decision follows. Dwight D. Eisenhower engaged in this process throughout World War II. That was most notably true in June 1944—when responsibility for the success or failure of the D-day invasion rested on his shoulders alone, and the critical variable, out of all the massive complexity then facing him, was simple: the weather. Dwight Eisenhower was the most extroverted of leaders. Perpetually upbeat, with a wide, infectious grin, Eisenhower was, by his own description, “a born optimist.” Always energetic, he became even more so around people, his hands and facial features continually animated, his pronouncements crisp and decisive. A reporter observed him “walking up and down, pacing patterns on the rug, his flat, harsh voice ejecting idea after idea like sparks flung from an emery wheel.” But unlike Douglas MacArthur—under whom Eisenhower served for seven years after the First World War, and who was more a negative example for Eisenhower than a positive one—Eisenhower was not dictatorial. Instead, throughout his tenure as commander of Allied forces in North Africa and then Europe, Eisenhower was humble, earnestly engaging the people around him, seeking compromise wherever he could. His sincerity was universally recognized; so was his reputation for fair dealing. The overall effect was to energize others as much as they energized him. Even his most prickly lieutenant, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, wrote that Eisenhower drew “the hearts of men towards him as a magnet draws the bits of metal.” Montgomery wrote further, in his diary shortly before D-day: “He has a generous and lovable character, and I would trust him to the last gasp.” Yet even Eisenhower—the most sociable of men—deliberately sought out solitude at the most critical junctures of his leadership. The practice reached back to the very outset of the war. Just five days after Pearl Harbor, then serving as a one-star general in San Antonio, Eisenhower received orders to report immediately to the War Department. Eisenhower had no idea why he was summoned but took the next plane to Washington. Upon arriving, Eisenhower was promptly ushered into a meeting alone with Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. Without preamble, for the next twenty minutes Marshall outlined the United States’ calamitous position in the Pacific. The fleet in Pearl Harbor would be disabled for months. The Japanese had also bombed the Philippines, inflicting unknown but presumably severe damage upon the American aircraft there. The American garrison in the Philippines was tiny, and the Filipino ground forces inadequately trained. And the Japanese meant to overrun the islands as soon as possible. Then Marshall looked Eisenhower in the eye and abruptly asked: “What should be our general line of action?” Eisenhower hesitated for a moment—he had not even unpacked his bag yet—but he had the presence of mind not to answer off the cuff. He asked for “a few hours” to think about it. Marshall agreed. Eisenhower then retreated to a vacant office to prepare the first of many memoranda distilling his thoughts during the war. As he sat there, Eisenhower wrote later, “a curious echo from the long ago came to my aid.” He thought back to his time with General Fox Conner, his mentor during World War I, a man he admired above all others. Conner had told Eisenhower again and again that another great war would come, and that when it did come, the one man who could lead the American military was “Marshall—he is close to being a genius.” With Conner’s description of Marshall in mind, Eisenhower resolved “that my answer should be short, emphatic, and based on reasoning in which I honestly believed.” In his memorandum—entitled “Steps to Be Taken”—Eisenhower asserted that, even though the Filipino cause appeared hopeless, the United States should send an aircraft carrier from San Diego to Australia, build up a strong base of supply there, and make every effort to save the Philippines. The problem, as Eisenhower saw it, was not strictly military. His thoughts reflected the broader political perspective that would prove essential to his leadership throughout the war. Handing the memo to Marshall, Eisenhower said, “We must do everything for them that is humanly possible. The people of China, of the Philippines, of the Dutch East Indies will be watching us. They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.” Marshall quietly replied, “I agree with you. Do your best to save them.” That proved to be the first of many analytical challenges that Eisenhower faced during the war. In 1942, Eisenhower confronted grave and to some extent insuperable logistical problems as he coordinated, from Washington, relief efforts for the Philippines. And later, as commander of Allied forces in North Africa in 1942 and in Italy in 1943, and above all as Supreme Commander of the Allied invasion of France in 1944, Eisenhower confronted leadership questions of the utmost complexity. Those challenges went far beyond engaging and defeating the enemy. They included the creation of a military force large and well-trained enough to confront the triumphant Germans; the maintenance of supply lines across oceans patrolled by German submarines; and the always-delicate process of coordination with America’s British and, to a lesser extent, Free French allies. These issues presented Eisenhower with a staggering amount of information to sort, synthesize, and then act upon. But before Eisenhower could act—before he could lead the legions of men beneath him—he had to achieve clarity in his own mind. And in that process, from Eisenhower’s first meeting with Marshall to the end of the war, solitude played an essential role. For Eisenhower, the most rigorous way to think about a subject was to write about it. And so, on the subjects most important to his work, he made a practice of writing to himself. His son John—himself a West Point graduate who spent weeks by his father’s side during the Normandy campaign—wrote after the war that “throughout his life my father had put many of his thoughts on paper, partly for the information of others but even more to clarify thoughts in his own mind.” That practice had special urgency during the war. In a remarkable February 1943 letter to his wife, Mamie—written just as German General Erwin Rommel began an attack that would rout Eisenhower’s forces at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia—Eisenhower wrote about the “loneliness” of leadership, saying that “subordinates can advise, urge, help, and pray—but only one man, in his mind and heart, can decide, ‘Do we, or do we not?’” He added: “the strain comes from not being sure that the analysis has been carefully and accurately made.” Eisenhower always strove to make sure, before committing his troops to combat, that the analysis had been “carefully and accurately made.” But it was by no means easy for him to find the time to do so. Early in the war he complained about the constant meetings he was forced to attend: “Talk-talk-talk.” Later, while stationed in London, he wrote in a letter to Mamie: “This is the longest stretch I’ve had for writing in a long time. One or two staff officers have been in for a moment since I began the first page, but no real conferences . I’m getting to hate the sound of that word.” He added: “I’ve gotten so hard boiled about turning down invitations that I don’t even see most of them.” In another letter, he told Mamie that “my days are always full. Even when I think I have a couple of hours to myself, something always happens to upset my plans. But it’s right that we should be busy—as long as we can retain time to think.” Another letter sounded the same theme: “My hours in the office are quite crowded, and necessary journeys are always interrupting. The result is that I must take a few hours off, to think quietly, when I can.” And another: “When I get driven to a certain point my natural reaction is to scribble something to you. Sometimes it helps clarify things in my mind.” Eisenhower found time to think and write because he made doing so a priority. His war papers are replete with documents and notes that he wrote not for any official purpose, but specifically to distill his own thoughts. In July 1942, for example, the British rejected an American plan to land Allied forces that fall in Cherbourg, France. The plan was admittedly desperate but was meant to provide emergency assistance to the Russians, whose position then was desperate too. (The Battle of Stalingrad would soon begin.) In a memo for his private diary, Eisenhower concisely described “ the far-reaching import” of the British rejection of the plan—that the Allies could do virtually “nothing to help the Russians remain in the war,” and that the Allies must improve “our own defensive situation in anticipation of a Russian collapse.” Then Eisenhower sketched out the Allies’ only remaining option for offensive action, namely an invasion of North Africa, which in fact took place in November 1942—with Eisenhower in command. A month after the Allied landings in North Africa—code-named Torch—Eisenhower wrote a long and reflective diary entry in which he described the problems facing him in Tunisia and then observed: “An orderly, logical mind” is “absolutely essential” to a leader’s success. To that end, Eisenhower dictated another diary entry a week later, in which he catalogued in careful detail the Allied forces in North Africa, the German forces opposing them, and the risks he then faced. The entry lay in Eisenhower’s desk for two weeks afterward. When Eisenhower’s close friend and senior aide, Harry Butcher, asked him why he had written it, Ike replied: “To crystallize my thoughts.” On other occasions Eisenhower identified questions rather than answers. After a 1942 meeting regarding the shortage of Allied landing craft for amphibious invasions—a problem that would plague him throughout the war—Eisenhower wrote out in his notepad five questions that needed answers, among them “How in hell can we win this war unless we crack some heads?” And in August 1943 Eisenhower wrote out five more questions that needed answers regarding the upcoming Allied invasion of Italy. On still other occasions, Eisenhower reduced a day’s work to a single exhortation or insight: “We must get going!” or “We have got to have ships!” Frequently Eisenhower’s practice of thinking by writing not only clarified his thoughts, but also stabilized him emotionally. Some of Eisenhower’s most difficult moments during the war came in the hours after a major operation began, when success or failure was out of his hands and an infantry lieutenant could do more to affect the outcome than Eisenhower could. His first such moment came on November 8, 1942, during the Torch landings in North Africa, then the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted. Eisenhower waited for news on the island of Gibraltar, in a dank, rat-infested catacomb of limestone tunnels beneath a rocky peak called Mount Misery. There, in a tiny office with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, Eisenhower wrote out on a sheet of notepaper a ten-point memo entitled “Worries of a Commander.” The first was “Spain is so ominously quiet.” The third was that, according to early reports, resistance by Vichy French troops “has blazed up.” Three other worries involved Henri Giraud, a French general who the Allies hoped could convince the Vichy French to stop fighting, and with whom Eisenhower was engaged in frustrating negotiations. (Giraud demanded that he command all Allied forces in North Africa.) Another was that “we don’t know whereabouts or condition of our airborne force.” And the last worry: “We cannot find out anything.” Two months later, at his headquarters in Tunisia, Eisenhower wrote another memo for his diary and stuck it in his desk. Again he explained to Butcher that he had written the memo to “clarify his thoughts.” But the memo’s opening lines state an additional purpose: “The past week has been a succession of disappointments. I’m just writing them down so as to forget them.” Eisenhower then blew off steam on several points: “Each day the tactical situation has gotten worse”; “the aggressive action and local attack I had so laboriously planned for 24th and following days have had to be abandoned”; and “the newspapers want my scalp for ‘political censorship’—but there is none . Has not been for two weeks. Why the yell?” Sometimes Eisenhower used solitude simply to reflect on the “terribly sad” nature of his work. The night before a battle in North Africa, he silently watched an infantry captain address his men. Eisenhower later described the scene: There was no outward stamp of piety on this officer but his words moved me as deeply as any I have ever heard. “Almighty God, as we prepare [for] action from which some of us may not return, we humbly place our faith and trust in Thee. We do not pray for victory, nor even for our individual safety. But we pray for help that none of us may let a comrade down—that each of us may do his duty to himself, to his comrades and his country, and so be worthy of our American heritage.” I walked away with tears in my eyes, dropping into the sand. Eisenhower then “used the occasion to engage in his long-standing habit of seeking solitude,” as he looked out at the moonlit desert in quiet contemplation. On another occasion, in Algiers, Ike was scheduled to meet one morning with Churchill concerning the upcoming invasion of Sicily. Early that morning, a West Point classmate wandered down from the city toward the Mediterranean shoreline. There he saw Eisenhower in contemplation alone: As I approached a deserted section of the beach I saw Ike seated on the wreckage of a small boat, facing out to sea. In his hand was a crusty, ripped canteen cover which had been half buried among the other military debris discarded on the sand. I stopped and watched Ike. He stared at the canteen cover a long while, then looked out across the sea. Finally, he folded the cover carefully and placed it inside the boat, stood up, adjusted his cap firmly, and strode off to his staff car which was parked up the beach. With a renewed “inner peace,” Eisenhower then returned to his office for the meeting. One source of frustration for Eisenhower was the best combat leader under his command, namely George Patton. Patton had already created big trouble for Eisenhower and himself when, in incidents a week apart in August 1943, Patton slapped one shell-shocked soldier and then another at field hospitals in Sicily. Eisenhower agonized over what to do about the incidents; Butcher wrote in his diary that “Ike is deeply concerned and has scarcely slept for several nights, trying to figure out the wisest way of handling this dilemma.” After reflecting on it, Eisenhower wrote a stern letter to Patton—for decades, his close friend—in which he described the incidents as “shocking” and said that “I must so seriously question your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubt in my mind about your future usefulness.” He added: “No letter that I have been called upon to write in my military career has caused me the mental anguish of this one.” Through an intermediary, Eisenhower then directed Patton to apologize to the two men, which he did. (On Patton’s own initiative, he also apologized in general terms to each of his units, in speeches laced with off-script profanity.) To Marshall, Eisenhower described Patton’s superb generalship during the fighting in Sicily, but added, in reference to the slapping incidents, that “General Patton continues to exhibit some of those unfortunate personal traits of which you and I have always known.” Ike concluded of Patton: “He has qualities that we cannot afford to lose unless he ruins himself.” Patton tested the “unless” clause of that sentence eight months later, when in a speech to a British social club he stated that, “since it seems to be the destiny of America and Great Britain to rule the world, the better we know each other the better off we will be.” The press pounced on the statement. (Patton’s offense was to leave the Soviets out of the ruling group.) The Washington Post editorialized, “General Patton has progressed from simple assaults on individuals to collective assault on entire nationalities.” A now-forgotten congressman from North Dakota likewise charged that Patton had slapped “the face of every one of the United Nations, except Great Britain.” The episode came at the worst possible time for Eisenhower, since D-day was then only weeks away, and he was under enormous stress as a result. Eisenhower had a notorious temper, and on this occasion it snapped. To Omar Bradley—other than Eisenhower, the top American general in Europe—Ike said, “I’m just about fed up,” and intimated that he would remove Patton from command. Bradley—dour, gray, humorless, a man who detested Patton from the start—wrote that “I fully concurred in Ike’s decision to send Patton home. I, too, was fed up.” To Marshall, Eisenhower wrote in an April 29 cable that “I have sent for Patton to allow him opportunity to present his case personally to me. On all of the evidence now available I will relieve him from command.” In his place, Eisenhower proposed General Courtney Hodges, who Eisenhower said “can do a very fine job as Third Army commander. The big difference is that Patton has proved his ability to conduct a ruthless drive whereas Hodges has not.” That was a big difference indeed. Ike then went on to discuss potential assignments for Patton after he was sent home. Crucially, however, Eisenhower followed that cable with a letter to Patton himself—in which Ike gave full vent to his anger and frustration with his longtime friend. Eisenhower wrote that “I must tell you frankly that I regard this incident with the utmost seriousness and you should understand thoroughly that it is still filled with drastic potentialities regarding yourself.” Ike went on: “I have warned you time and again against your impulsiveness in action and speech and have flatly instructed you to say nothing that could be misinterpreted by either your own subordinates or by the public.” Then his criticism became even more personal: You first came into my command at my own insistence because I believed in your fighting qualities and your ability to lead troops in battle. At the same time I have always been fully aware of your habit of dramatizing yourself and committing indiscretions for no other apparent purpose than of calling attention to yourself. I am thoroughly weary of your failure to control your tongue and have begun to doubt your all-round judgment, so essential in high military position. In that last sentence—that Ike had “begun to doubt” Patton’s fitness for command—one sees irresolution begin to creep in. Above all, Eisenhower felt overwhelming pressure to make the Normandy invasion, Operation Overlord, a success. Just three days before, Marshall had reminded Eisenhower that “you carry the burden of responsibility as to the success of O VERLORD .” And now Eisenhower had poured out his frustration to Patton in the most brutal and personal terms. The effect must have been cathartic; and at some level Eisenhower must have known that the persons who would be most happy to see Patton sent home would not be members of Congress or Bradley or the Washington Post , but the Germans themselves. They feared Patton as they did no other American general—as Ike well knew. Marshall deftly guided the outcome from there. His response to Eisenhower’s April 29 cable was one of the more consequential of the war. In an earlier cable, Marshall had transcended the emotion surrounding the affair, telling Ike that “like you I have been considering the matter on a purely business basis”—a veiled admonition, to be sure—and noting further that P	443,340
Leaving Loneliness A Workbook Building Relationships with Yourself and Others (Narang, David S) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Leaving Loneliness: A Workbook CONCLUSION How do I wrap up a book such as this?! You have determined which attachment problem you identify with most (i.e., Attachment Anxiety, Attachment Avoidance, or both), and you focused on and experienced the activities specific to that type of attachment problem. Having addressed some of those problems, you then moved on to activities designed to cultivate Earned Secure Attachment to both yourself and to others. Remember, I am flawed, you are flawed, this book is flawed, and we are all also deeply good. Please review and practice the methods in this book that you have used to learn how to build strong attentiveness and responsiveness to yourself. Going forward with that, and the security it builds within you, you can become deeply caring toward yourself and others. With that love, how could you remain habitually lonely?! Loneliness remains part of the human condition, so the occasional pang of loneliness can itself serve to remind you that you indeed are a part of our human world and the human condition. Try to welcome that sweet sadness as a friend. However, while you may certainly feel lonely at times, it is my sincere hope that this book has helped you strengthen your connection to yourself and others. Go forth and connect, to both yourself and others. What is the most important thing you have learned about having a good relationship with yourself? What action will you take based on that awareness? What is the most important thing you have learned about having a good relationship with others? What action will you take based on that learning? Congratulations on having both the care for yourself and the persistence needed to complete this book. “I am open to what may come. I risk myself.” Leaving Loneliness: A Workbook Leaving Loneliness: A Workbook Chapter 5 : Applying the Foundation of Attachment to Self to Your Relationships with Others Children develop secure attachment through receiving their caregiver’s help in attuning to their emotions and physical needs, having his/her assistance in learning to label those emotions and physical needs (e.g., “You look sad,” or “You look sleepy.”), and as frequently as possible, by having the caregiver meet their emotional and physical needs. It is the premise of this workbook that in adulthood, you must do much of this for yourself in working toward Earned Secure Attachment, because as adults, there is no one to parent you in this fashion, at least not to that extent. The early part of this book focused on remedying attachment problems rooted in your historical experiences. In the previous chapter , we moved on to begin work toward Earned Secure Attachment in your relationship with yourself. The current chapter goes one step further, helping you to apply that Secure Attachment with yourself toward your relationships with others, probably the purpose that inspired your work throughout this book. Now, after growing your capacity to stop being lonely with yourself, by learning to provide for your emotional needs and nurture yourself, let’s work toward helping you increase your connection with others. Having learned how to meet yourself, you are in a better position to learn how to meet others. You will work on opening yourself to others and doing so at a healthy pace that is neither too fast nor too slow. Assume a stance of playful curiosity. “Who are these people before me? What are their dreams and day-to-day activities? What do they love doing? What experiences do they prefer to avoid? What makes them happy or sad? If we get closer, how do I comfort them when they are upset, and how do I allow them to comfort me? What things shall we do together to mutually enjoy our time? When it is time, how will I gradually open my boundaries to let them get to know me, not too quickly, nor too slowly? When they hurt me, how do I know whether it is normal or excessive, and if excessive, can I trust myself to close off to those people. If I close off to those people, can I trust myself not to close off to all people?” Let us discuss some activities that help you show others you are ready to meet them and are capable of connecting, starting with light forms of meeting and moving toward more significant connections. Secure Attachment Driving While this activity is not about meeting others on a deep level, it is in fact very much about relating to yourself and others. It is possible that your driving style may reflect disconnection from yourself and others. Below are topics to consider on the road; pick the ones relevant to you to try to remember, as some of them may not apply to you. 1) Do I drive my vehicle in a way that makes it clear I want to remain alive? In contrast, am I driving excessively timidly or aggressively relative to others, such that I am more likely to die in my car? If so, when my driving becomes problematic, in the moment I may say to myself, “Secure Attachment driving,” and then shift my driving style to reflect a will to live. My thoughts: 2) Do I often get mad at others on the road? Do I forget to think of them as my fellow humans versus two-dimension-alizing them as “idiots,” or something comparable? If so, what brief thing should I say to myself on the road to remind myself that they are my fellow humans? 3) Do I try to prove myself on the road (e.g., that I’m smart, strong, or that I do not back down, etc.)? If so, what is a healthier way I can prove my strength to myself? 4) Do I place so much value on accomplishing things that I forget to value my own life while I am on the road, driving in a mad dash to get things done? If yes, what can I say to myself while I am on the road to help me remember to value the lives of both myself and others? 5) Do I drive largely based on my mood, driving smoothly when happy and erratically when upset? If so, what plan can I make now when I am calm that I can follow later when in an emotional storm instead of driving erratically the next time I am very upset? That is, how will I take care of myself and those big emotions so that “road rage” does not compromise my safety? 6) Do I fill my drive time with specific dangers? For example, do I text while I drive or drink to excess before driving, knowing it could potentially kill me and others, but doing it anyway? If so, why, beyond convenience, do I really do this? For example, am I being arrogant in trying to prove I am invincible and cannot die? Am I passively not caring enough if I die? Make a commitment to yourself: “I have things to do in this life. I have purpose. I want to live. I also want others to live and have the chance to go to their work and families. I’ll drive accordingly, talking myself back into healthy driving when I go astray.” What Are Your Social Assumptions? What do you believe motivates others socially? Are they looking for love, money/resources, status, intellectual stimulation, power, etc.? Obviously you do not know for sure, and every person you encounter is different, but try to make some generalizations here: As their highest social priority, what most people want from being social is: As their second highest social priority, they are seeking: As their third highest priority, they are seeking: How can I tell (by their behavior or by what I observe or feel) when somebody truly cares about me instead of just wanting something from me? You attract those into your life who already fit your expectations. In addition, research suggests that once people enter our lives, they actually change their behavior to match our expectations of them 11 whether in a positive or negative direction. Therefore, if you were to attract those with the three priorities you listed above, how would you feel about that? Is there a social priority (e.g., intellectual stimulation, love, travel partner, etc.) you wish those around you had that you did not list in the first three questions above? To attract those with that sort of quality, you will need to begin noticing that quality in other people so that your expectation shifts to assume that some people do have that quality. Think again about people in your life. Who has at least a little of that quality, and how do you know this? Going forward, keep consciously looking for that quality in other people as you watch and interact with them in the next few days. Begin training your mind to expect that this quality does exist in people and to spot it so that you can begin to attract more of that quality into your life. Shaking Off Obstacles to Being Yourself in Conversation The purpose of this activity is to help you build freedom, spontaneity, and ease in being yourself while in social situations. The purpose is not to do so in a way that ignores the feelings and needs of others, but to help you overcome inhibitions inside of you that have nothing to do with serving the needs of yourself or others. Of your social fears, which is most significant? For example, “If I am myself then people will reject me, won’t respect me, will say mean things to me and hurt me, or will make me feel small, et cetera?” In what ways do you defensively attempt to protect yourself from feeling that fear (e.g., keeping distant to avoid getting injured, attacking others preemptively before they can hurt you, being loud and making lots of noise on the surface to prevent people from getting to know who you truly are, avoiding social contact, having tons of social contacts but all of them on a surface level, etc.)? The defense you listed above probably both serves and costs you, because while it reduces your anxiety, it leaves you lonely and unable to make deeper contact with others. What would you say the cost is for you in using this defense? If you got hurt, as for example if the feared event from the first question actually happened, how would you heal the wound created in that interaction? If you opened up and relaxed and behaved more spontaneously as your true self, what would most people think of you, and how would most of them treat you (maybe you can remember a time when you did so)? Remembering that life is relatively short and you do not have a lot of years to be who you are, make a resolution that you will gently work to overcome your fear that you may be more of who you truly are when social, for your own enjoyment and that of others. If You Get Anxious in a Conversation: Reconnecting to Yourself You may find during a conversation that you get shy and start to freeze and withdraw from the conversation. Alternately, your anxiety may take the form of speeding up your speech/dominating, and you just keep repetitively talking, and talking more, with the end of your monologue nowhere in sight. Either way, it is not a problem once you catch yourself. First, breathe and just notice that you are doing that ‘anxious thing.’ Then remember that you are safe, and ground yourself by remembering who you are (i.e., call specific adjectives to mind which describe you). Keep breathing, and now step with your whole self back into the conversation. When you become anxious during a conversation, how can you identify this (i.e., what are the signs)? What thoughts can you use to soothe yourself so that you can calm the anxiety? Summarize a little, to strengthen your purposefulness in using the thoughts you listed above: How would a process of noticing your anxiety and then calming it through breathing and using soothing thoughts allow you to have a more connected conversation with another person? Remember, if you become anxious in a conversation, step one is to simply notice that you have either frozen and withdrawn or become dominating. Step two is to breathe more fully to loosen up, and step three is to use the calming self-talk dialogue you wrote above to calm down and come into the present moment to continue the conversation in a more grounded manner. Don’t Drop My Conversation Partners, or I Lose Them Part of becoming more secure is demonstrated in the moment, building willingness and capacity to tolerate the tensions that are common to experience during a conversation and will be particularly potent until your security increases (e.g., worrying if they like you, worrying whether you have anything interesting to say, or on the aggressive side, thinking you must find the way to make them like you, et cetera). It is important to tolerate these tensions and keep the conversation going, neither dropping your partners by fading on them nor completely dominating the conversation. Practice getting better at holding these worries and tension until the tension begins to dissolve. To give a poignant example, I remember reading a research study showing that men who simply maintain eye contact and communication with a woman are more likely to take her home at the end of the evening than men who do not. Without any intention of offending some female readers, the point here is simply that if you are to keep others interested, you must stay engaged and bring yourself present. If this activity is relevant to you in that you either tend to drop your conversation partners or “over-talk” (particularly when you feel stressed, as with meeting a new person you are possibly attracted to), let’s work on this. 1) Practice your posture while you are alone. Look in the mirror and notice postures and facial expressions that make you look withdrawn/disconnected, pleasantly engaged, and overly aggressive/intense. Practice postures and facial expressions (e.g., eyes neither closing nor popped wide open but rather gently open) signaling your willingness to be known and to get to know others. Spend some time at this, becoming so familiar with the physical sensations that come with these postures and facial expressions that they are easy to put in place when you are with others and do not have a mirror. 2) Imagine talking to someone attractive. Consider the worries or excessively grasping/aggressive thoughts you might have, and the accompanying postures. Now work to return to the open posture and facial expressions of gentle interest. 3) Go out and practice. If you go to a gathering, a party, or are conversing at work, etc., practice an open posture and facial expression. 4) Accordingly, keep the conversation alive. If you feel the desire to withdraw or the pressure to impress, relax your posture first and then remind yourself, “I can handle this, I am strong enough to cope even if I get rejected or fail to impress. I want to enjoy myself right now, and I want to be curious about this person.” 5) Continue with this self-talk, reminding yourself of your desire to enjoy yourself in communication (i.e., release outcome-driven goals such as making them like or respect you, and bring yourself to an intent of simply enjoying being together), and stay in the conversation. Neither drop them, nor dominate the conversation. Instead, work to tolerate the anxiety of staying in the conversation, and without taking full control over it. Try it out, and talk about the experience. How was it? In regard to the five steps above, where are you strong, and what do you need to improve upon? Bringing in People Who Balance You Are you more emotionally changeable (identified more with Attachment Anxiety) or more emotionally detached (identified more with the Attachment Avoidance)? Though you have been working through this book, and are working to increase security, this is a practice over time, and you will likely still have some tendencies to be either emotionally in flux or a little emotionally detached from others. When some quality of yours is extreme, it often feels comforting to have others in your life who are similar to you in that extreme. They validate your way of seeing the world, so that you feel both understood and that your perspective is normal. However, if you are to patch the holes in yourself and become more dynamic, you also need to bring in people who have complementary strengths. For example, if you have Attachment Anxiety and your emotions tend to be in flux, and you become sad about a problem with a family member or friend, it would be nice to have someone who really understands you on an emotional level. However, after a little time being understood, it would also be great to then talk to a friend who is a little more stoic than you and better at coping to help you observe a model of how that person puts the emotion aside in order to continue living and functioning well. Similarly, if you have Attachment Avoidance and can be tuned out from your emotions, it will give you a fuller, richer life to bring people into your milieu that see the emotion in life, appreciate art and music, et cetera. Rather than continuing to glide upon the surface of life, these people could help you learn how to engage with and experience your life more fully. I am not suggesting bringing someone who is the opposite extreme of yourself into your life! The difference between someone who complements your strengths and someone who is the opposite extreme is a matter of degree. For example, if you are working through Attachment Avoidance, don’t bring a hyperemotional, sobbing person into your life. The connection with a person of the opposite extreme might feel amazing for a moment, but this would not last long. Rather, bring in a person who does show some emotion here and there, and who has indeed cried at some point in the last decade. When searching for people who complement you, would those people need to be a little more emotional or a little more stoic than you? Who in your life already has this quality in a way that is complementary, without being extreme? When is it most useful for you to talk to these people? That is, when do you most need their complementary strength? Keep your answer to the last question in mind and seek them out the next time you need their type of strength. Having this awareness allows you to use your available support more specifically and effectively. Meeting People: Posture of Openness Imagine that you are opening your heart to others. A physical stance of openness reminds you that you are coming out of yourself to touch the world, to meet and to be met. Imagine there is a string from the sky connected to your head to hold it level so that you are looking neither up nor down but level, which allows you to see the horizon. Next, straighten your lower back as you walk so that your chest is just slightly outward, as if your chest is touching the world but without bowling it over. As you hold that posture, repeat this thought to yourself, “I am ready and wanting to meet those I encounter today. I am ready to be curious about others and to let them meet me.” You may think, “Why does my posture matter?” As an example, to respond to this question, when you imagine a person who is currently depressed, how do you picture his/her posture? Whatever your specific image is, you probably do have an image. You can probably also imagine a posture for someone who is arrogant, relaxed, etc. This shows you have developed an intuitive understanding that posture is related to attitude and emotional state. Emotional state and attitude do affect posture, and posture in turn affects attitude and emotional state. The goal in building a posture ready to engage with others is to construct one that is neither slumped and saggy nor excessively tense and rigid. Notice yourself: Is your breathing deep and calm, some air reaching your abdomen, or shallow and fast in your chest? Is your gaze looking high enough that you can meet that of others, or are your eyes either at the sky or ground level? Imagine a fishing string pulling up the center of your head from the ceiling. Is your back relatively straight without being stiff? Are your shoulders back a little so your chest cavity can be open and facing others? Is your face tense? If so, gently try the deeper breathing. Practice these by yourself so that you get used to how it feels to have a posture that demonstrates openness and readiness to reach out and meet others and have them meet you. By reminding yourself of this posture and building it, you are also refreshing yourself throughout the day about your purpose of opening yourself to others. Meeting People: Emotional Openness As you develop a posture with which to touch the world, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, you also need a mind with which to “touch” the world. 2 There are reasons we retreat emotionally, often out of fear. We do not want to be misjudged or misunderstood, stepped on, disliked by others, and so we may present a false self (e.g., arrogant “expert,” comedian, etc.), withdraw, or simply stiffen/freeze and present a cardboard version of ourselves. None of these types of retreating ultimately nourish the other person in much depth, because there is too little of us exposed for the other person to attach to. Thus, unless he/she solely wants to use us as a “tool” for meeting his/her needs (e.g., for material gain, for sex, for a consistently one-way listening ear), there is no reason for him/her to further seek us. Rather than working at being incredible at providing, becoming the “best tool” for those who want to consistently use you, you could alternately open yourself to balancing a reasonable level of providing for others’ needs while adding the possibility of being liked genuinely for the person you are, and thus risking the possibility of rejection. You could work at the practice of “making friends with fear,” 12 beginning to free yourself from fear so that you can become vulnerable enough that others can truly begin getting to know you. To assist you in loosening, opening, and risking rejection, you might use the following self-talk: “I open myself to this situation. As I do, I am vulnerable. The worst possibility is that this person/these people may not like me. If the worst happens, I’ll nurture myself rather than kick myself about it. Now, with my open posture and my open heart, I open myself to this situation.” Obviously you use discretion and do not open yourself to a room of social vultures, nor do you sit back forever and play safe. Rather, you decisively conclude when there is reasonable safety, and then take your chances, ready to pick yourself up in the event of injury. Also, you take social conventions into account, so that as you release your own fears, you do not inspire unnecessary fear in others. To clarify, an open stance does not mean telling your life story to a mere stranger. You do not inappropriately change the boundary with a new person so quickly. You simply react to things in the moment (e.g., to what the other person says) genuinely as who you are instead of reacting based on the motive of producing a response intended to make the other person like you or think highly of you. This, of course, can require practice over multiple occasions, so encourage yourself when you get a glimpse of this presence. If you tense up, take a moment to breathe, ask yourself what fear is triggered, and then take care of yourself. 1) What is the nature of my social fear/s (e.g., being judged, not being good enough socially, losing my reputation, etc.), regardless of the specific people around me at a given occasion? 2) How do I respond when I experience these fears (e.g., stiffen like cardboard, withdraw, become overly accommodating, become pushy, forceful, arrogant, present a false self, etc.)? 3) How would I like to respond when I have these fears? 4) Examples of self-talk to use in the social moment, as assistance to opening yourself and to become more present, are provided above in quotation marks. To experience how it feels, please revisit that section now and slowly, and deliberately, repeat it to yourself (altering it to fit your style as desired). Afterward, how do you feel? 5) The attitude of genuineness is essential. To be known, work at being yourself while you are with somebody, responding and reacting as you would if you did not fear their opinion of you, and maintaining adequate interest and curiosity about others. This is distinct from arrogance, as arrogance is needy and tries to produce an impression that one is perfect and flawless. How can you overcome your fears, to become more increasingly genuine in the moment, genuinely yourself and curious about others, instead of fearful for yourself? Remember, if you stay open and you encounter trouble or pain, you will likely have a sane response to that trouble (e.g., licking your wounds if a friend is mean that day versus trashing the whole relationship, leaving the situation if someone is routinely cruel to you and will not change, etc.). If you remember that you have felt pain before, lived to tell the tale, and know that you can recover, that fear of pain becomes less potent to stop you from connecting to others. Meeting People: Replacing Self-Consciousness with Curiosity Now for practice! Notice and accept any anxiety you have about meeting others, and let’s replace being focused on those concerns with getting curious and focused on getting to know them. Become a casual detective. Remember, it is fine (and usually best) to keep it simple, especially when just getting to know somebody. Over a conversation in the near future, find out a bit about as many of the following topics as seems natural/comfortable: What person did you choose for this activity? What activities does this person enjoy most in daily life? What sports or hobbies does he/she like? Does this person appear to enjoy his/her profession, and how could you tell? If the conversation continues, you might learn about this person a bit more in depth. For example: What are his/her biggest satisfactions? Where do members of this person’s family live? Based on your own impressions/ intuition , what are the most courageous aspects of his/her personality? Based on your direct knowledge or your intuition formed by what he/she had to say, what do you imagine his/her dreams consist of? Be ready to give others the same information about you. No fair becoming a ‘television interviewer’ with others while hiding yourself. Also, you will be lonely if you hide, even if you do learn about others. Did you enjoy getting to know this person? If so, what did you enjoy about him/her, and if not, what turned you off? If you would like to meet people similar to this person (or if you want to avoid people similar to this person), you need to know how to spot them. What sort of behaviors or things a person says (or intuitive reaction that you have) would help you know that his/her personality is similar to the personality of the person you have described in this exercise? This exercise involved two primary components: The first was replacing some/all of your social concerns and anxieties with curiosity about the other person. In the course of becoming curious about others, you can begin to develop and/or hone the second component, mind mapping. The last question, and also the two questions to which you responded based on “intuition,” are based on this skill (i.e., mind mapping) of using the data in front of you (e.g., a person’s behavior, body language, and statements, as well as how others who have known the person over time seem to respond to him/her) to understand their personality and to make intuitive guesses about what their thoughts and feelings may consist of. Advanced Topic: Mind Mapping Instead of Projecting People with a history of attachment problems tend to project onto others a great deal. Everyone does this sometimes. To project means that you look at another’s behavior and interpret it through your own way of understanding the world, instead of accurately understanding the intent of the other person. Higher accuracy is based on understanding the other person’s intentions based on his/her own way of understanding the world. Mind mapping involves making guesses about the other person based on the other person’s personality and how he/she views the world. Example: John leaves the toothpaste cap off. His live-in girlfriend, Jennifer, assumes John is selfish and does not care enough about her, or he would put the cap back on as she desires. Jennifer’s assumption could be accurate, based on strong knowledge of what this behavior means when it comes from John. But more likely she is projecting, placing her own purely imagined intent onto his behavior. The projection may come from a couple of places: Most likely she projects meaning based on what it would mean if she did the same thing (if she left the cap off, it would mean she did not care about him), but she could also project based on past experiences (a past boyfriend did not care at all if she was displeased the cap was left off, and generally did not care if he displeased her, and so at that time the behavior was in fact a symbol of the old boyfriend’s lack of care for her). Finally, she could also project qualities she dislikes about herself onto him (i.e., “It is too uncomfortable for me to see myself as inconsiderate, so I cannot see myself as inconsiderate, and instead see that quality in another person close to me”). The toothpaste example was benign, just to provide an example illustrating the meaning of projection. Now let us imagine projections more likely to cause serious and unnecessary harm to a relationship: A friend/partner interprets the other’s repetitive lateness as a sign of lack of love or respect leading to frequent angry fights; a man projects that his girlfriend’s lack of interest in sex for the past two weeks means that she may be interested in somebody else (because if he did not want sex for two weeks, that is what it would mean for him, so he projects the same meaning onto her behavior) and accordingly begins to demand to know her whereabouts and starts checking her phone texting history. You can see how projecting intent onto the behavior of others, instead of asking about their intent, can and often does quickly lead to dramatic conflict, toxic to a relationship. Even small projections can become much larger problems. If a co-worker criticizes a small aspect of your work, does that mean he/she is: helping to improve the work, concerned that the product will be worse if an error is not corrected, a little socially awkward and unskilled at tact, subtly getting you back for a minor offense of your own against him/her by trying to make you look bad in front of others, et cetera? With so many possibilities, how could you know his/her motivations?! The truth could be any of these and more, but what if you projected or assumed negative intent onto the co-worker when in fact he/she had no intent to harm you? How might you unnecessarily interact in a way that causes anger between you, perhaps spiraling into escalating conflict based on initially projecting that the co-worker had aggressive intentions? Similarly, if a man projects a woman has romantic interest in him based on her smiling at him once, he may pursue her in an overly enthusiastic manner, potentially embarrassing himself and her. Whether a projection causes pain or elation is irrelevant; rather, it is the inaccuracy that is relevant. The inaccuracy exists because the projection originates in one’s own interpretation and ways of understanding, instead of being based in the other’s thought process. Thus, when the man smiles that way at a woman, he may himself be romantically interested in her, but when a woman smiles at him in the same way, he would have to find further ways to look at the possibility that she is interested in him, instead of projecting that he ‘knows’ she in fact does have interest and thus jumping into pursuit too intensely. Why would attachment security problems lead one to project frequently? When one lacks security, one is frequently focused on pursuing unmet needs while trying to avoid getting injured, whether by clinging to or avoiding others. Projections are often an attempt to predict the social world, whether to avoid getting hurt or to reassure oneself that another person is perfectly suited to meet one’s unmet needs. However, a secure person achieves harm avoidance by getting to know the reality of the other person and using that accurate knowledge of the other to avoid socially harmful situations where possible and pursues getting needs met by accurately discerning if another can help meet them. However, with Attachment Avoidance or Anxiety, one does not allow enough closeness to actually come to understand the other person, and thus, where does one go to find an interpretation of the other’s actions but into one’s own mind, a tragic if understandable mistake. What is the alternative to projecting when trying to understand the meaning of others’ behavior and when working to understand who they truly are? Mind mapping entails truly understanding another person, what he/she thinks and feels, and also making more accurate intuitive guesses about the intentions behind his/her various behaviors based on the person that he/she is (instead of projecting assumptions about what his/her intentions are based upon who you are and the way that you think). Example: John tells Sandra that he thinks she has made a mistake with part of her project at work, and he tells her this in front of her co-worker. Sandra feels humiliated. At first she feels tempted to project that John said this in front of her co-worker on purpose because he wanted to embarrass her. Next she decides that she may not be correct, but that since she is upset she must find out. She tells John she feels humiliated and asks his intent. He tells her that he is sorry he is so rigid sometimes, but he just wants the team project to be the best it can be. The next time he critiques her work, she mind maps: She assumes now that he merely wants the project to be its best and is not humiliating her on purpose. Based on this, she approaches him, perhaps upset about the humiliation, but responding to him effectively in a way likely to elicit his cooperation based on what she guesses is his actual intent, reminding him that public critique causes her pain, and asking him to give his suggestions one-on-one (thus asking him to also map her mind that she is sensitive to public humiliation, and to respond accordingly). Steps for mind mapping: 1) Become aware when you are projecting. That is, work to increase awareness of instances when you are making assumptions about the intent behind others’ behavior that may be untrue. 2) When intent is ambiguous, know that you may not know their intent, and cope with that ambiguity until their intent becomes clear. Don’t let your anxiety about not knowing force premature and false “understanding.” 3) If the situation allows for it, ask the person about his/her intent. Unless he/she is established as a liar, try to take the response at face value. 4) When you ask about the intent, do so in an emotionally calm way, or their answer will merely reflect reactiveness to your emotionality, instead of accurately reflecting their actual thought process and feelings. 5) Use the information you have gained from them to more accurately interpret their intent in similar future situations. Now you are mind mapping! You are developing intuitions about their intentions, thoughts, and feelings based on who they actually are instead of based upon your own projections. The next time you use these steps toward mind mapping, describe your use of the five steps, as well as the outcome of using the steps: Finding My Mentors For those with Attachment Avoidance, you have been warming up to this whole ‘allow people to get to know you and influence you’ thing. Now it is time to put that work together to step into the major leagues. The next step in this work is allowing others to get close to you, see your flaws, and hence develop you and make you stronger. For those with Attachment Anxiety, you have been working toward realizing your own strength, realizing when you have received enough help from others, and using that help to strengthen you. The next step in this work is to practice seeking help in this new, more empowered manner, resisting temptation to become overly dependent. Ask yourself this question: “Why does one have a mentor?” Your answer probably has something to do with the fact that a mentor is better at something, perhaps many things, in comparison to a mentee. Now what is the difference between mentoring someone and teaching someone a skill? Mentoring usually is a labor of deeper caring and responsibility for the mentee. The mentor is not solely teaching a simple skill and telling you to go fly. No, a mentor takes you on, coaching you each step of the way, giving you feedback, encouraging you where you feel weak, and perhaps pushing you where you are rigid or stubborn. Why would someone be a mentor? Well, some would say giving is natural, so once you have a special ability, you may feel inclined to share that so that it may live on. Those who are willing to mentor are usually those who want to give back to others. A mentoring relationship begins when a potential mentee sees that somebody possesses something special that he/she wishes to build in him/herself. The mentee usually does not intend to become the same as the more skillful person, but rather to integrate some of that person’s way of doing things into his/her own self. After they get to know each other and the mentee senses that the desired mentor may be willing to help, the mentee can ask the mentor for help in a domain (e.g., an area of work, how to meet men/women, how to instill confidence in his/her children, etc.). The relationship may, of course, also begin without any such formal discussion. If the general idea of potentially needing or being able to benefit from a mentor distresses you, especially for those working through Attachment Avoidance, describe, in a sentence or more, the nature of that distress: Even if there is no associated distress, what self-talk would open you most fully to the idea of needing and seeking mentor/s in your life? If you are concerned you might excessively revere a mentor and become too dependent, instead of having him/her show you how to build your own power, especially for those working through Attachment Anxiety, describe your concern: How would you work to stay mindful of the need to be empowered, instead of becoming more dependent, through a mentor-mentee relationship? Regarding increasing your ability to build deep, steady, if not excessively intense/dramatic, securely attached relationships, who would you desire as either a model or, possibly, as a mentor (you should not list a current or desired romantic partner)? How could you bring that person further into your life, so that you could attempt to gain his/her mentoring? What qualities and abilities of that person would you like to build in yourself? Note: The choice to mentor generally includes at least an element of altruism. Therefore, you can find ways to demonstrate that you value him/her and are not merely greedily taking what the mentor offers. A valuable mentee is a mentee who values the connection with the mentor, who values the mentor’s time, and who allows the mentor to assist but without being overly demanding of assistance. This exercise is focused on helping you toward security by seeking and opening to be influenced by another who you view as helpful on your path toward increased attachment security. This book focuses on the development of Secure Attachment to self and others, so further discussion of mentors per se is not relevant to our goal. That said, if you want mentors in other areas of your life, in addition to learning how to build secure relationships (e.g., for building work-related skills), you can apply this exercise to seeking mentors in other areas of your life. The world is full of warm, skillful people who want to teach their skill to others, out of care for others. True Vulnerability Are you vulnerable enough to get closer to those already in your life? Are you really? Once you know people are safe, in that while they may hurt you, they would not intentionally hurt you deeply and repeatedly, well then, it is time to move closer. True vulnerability means that when there is an argument, you can get to the level of discussing intent and feelings instead of just pushing for the outcome you want or overreacting to their push. For example, if they keep pushing, it would be more vulnerable to say, “You keep pushing for what you want, and that makes me feel very unimportant,” if that were your truth, than it would be to simply push back. True vulnerability means giving the thoughts and feelings behind your reaction, instead of giving only the reaction. Vulnerability means letting those close to you get closer by letting them know when you are feeling shy and ashamed, not solely when you feel strong. This is why getting closer to people requires security. Security is a strength that leaves you unconcerned that something another says or does will be powerful enough to destroy you because you trust you can recover, and security also leads you to anticipate that loved ones’ actions are most likely to be supportive and caring. This is easy to say, but can be very challenging to do. It may take you a while to overcome your fear of imagined pain, and to step forward to become appropriately vulnerable with others. Be patient with yourself, but be determined as well. If you are working to move beyond Attachment Avoidance, your vulnerability challenge is in showing people your weaknesses, showing aspects of yourself you feel ashamed of, and also asking for help when needed. Your challenge might also be to tell somebody when they said or did something that hurt you, instead of stiffening up in a state of reactive, ‘righteous’ anger. In contrast, if you are working to move beyond Attachment Anxiety, your vulnerability challenge is to recognize when you are hurt, and then pause before acting. Instead of reflexively blaming others for your wound and feeling they should fix it, you can take a moment to consider their perspective and ask yourself how you may have upset them as well. Rather than reacting to them as the aggressor, explain that you are hurt and ask them to give the intent/motive behind the speech or behavior that hurt you. Then stop explaining your perspective, literally stop talking, and give them lots of room to explain their point of view. Of course, if somebody does in fact repeatedly intend to hurt you, this leads you down a different path of asking yourself why you keep him/her in your life. Many times, however, while the actions of others may hurt you, the injury is not intended, and that difference matters. Your vulnerability work then might be related to coming clean with your own reactions and feelings as they are, and encouraging yourself in your right to have them, but without hiding behind a fortress of outrage where the other person is pigeonholed as ‘aggressor,’ ‘stupid,’ or otherwise ‘bad.’ Based on the above discussion, how would you define your work when it comes to increasing appropriate vulnerability? What is the next small step you want to take toward that work? Secure Attachment Sex If you have a lover, or someone who is perhaps on the way to becoming your lover, this activity will be useful now. If you do not have a lover currently but have had a partner in the past, this exercise may lead you to look back to consider the quality of sex you were having, as well as considering anything you would like to change about that in the future. Secure Attachment kissing and touching means that there is an interest in enjoying the sexual chemistry together, not merely in the sense of a pressure to please yourself or the other partner, but rather in the sense of enjoying the opportunity to be together in those delights. If you are higher in Attachment Avoidance, you may tend to approach sex in a greedy manner, as though the plate may not always have food, so to speak. Being in “feast or famine” mode, you may figure that it is best to gobble the current food greedily in case of famine. The sex may be hot, loaded with fun tension, but ultimately not very intimate. Of course, you have a valid reason to feel greedy. Your history was indeed one of emotional famine, so your desire for hoarding or gluttony is quite reasonable, though in your adult life, this greedy approach may also be quite destructive. The hope is to allow you to truly be present and together with the other person during sex, thus enjoying each other. Among some women with Attachment Avoidance, while they may have the style mentioned above, it is alternately possible that the messiness of sex may stop them from being interested in being touched. Being entered may feel like a chore. If you have Attachment Anxiety, kissing, touching, and sex will provoke hopes for and possibly also fears of closeness. As a result, some people find themselves having more sex with those they do not know well, and later cutting off sex once a partner gets too close as a self-protective mechanism to minimize risk and intimacy. Sex like this can be wonderful and emotionally intense, but as just mentioned, difficult to sustain with the same partner when the partner becomes too close emotionally. Working toward Secure Attachment sex: Try to bring your mind to where your body is, away from any sexual performance pressures or “to-do” task lists. Instead, practice truly being together with your partner, living the experience of having sex together. How does he/she feel against your body? What feels great? What feels less positive or upsetting? How do you know if your partner is having a good time? How does your partner know if you are enjoying it? What is the next step/s for you in working toward Secure Attachment sex? How might the sexual experience change for you when you take that step? How may taking that step change the sexual experience for your current (or future) partner? An Ongoing Checklist about Your Relationship with Yourself This checklist will help you evaluate the extent to which you are securely attached to yourself and are giving yourself the care and attention you must have to maintain good relationships with yourself and others. Consider it a maintenance checkup to help you troubleshoot. Scan this activity to see if it looks useful for you, and if so, consider repeating it monthly, scheduling a reminder (perhaps in your phone), before continuing on. 1) How well are you doing at seeking love from others by being merely yourself versus being sick/wounded to elicit “help” or by being solely a “tool” to help them? If poorly, how will you improve in this area? 2) How well are you doing in working to meet the needs of both others and yourself in your relationships with them? Is there a way you need to improve in this area? 3) How well are you doing at taking care of your ongoing bodily needs (e.g., sleep, meals, some exercise, sex, etc.)? Are any improvements needed? 4) Are you noticing any medical problems while they are mild or moderate, and then doing something about them before you become medically unhealthy? 5) How are you doing in taking care of your emotional health (e.g., avoiding unnecessary escalation of emotionality in conflicts, actively approaching versus avoiding important relationships, ending toxic/abusive relationships, doing things you find fulfilling)? 6) Are you noticing and caring for your emotional health before reaching the point that you are extremely distressed? 7) How are you doing at being strong, by recognizing that you have something to give to others and being able to give it? If you are giving, what is it that you are giving? 8) When you need support, how are you doing at asking for and receiving it? To be specific, what kind of support have you asked for and received recently? 9) What are you doing that you find extremely satisfying? If nothing, what should you now begin or resume doing? Becoming Free Thanks to your work in earlier sections (you must walk before you can fly), you may be ready to begin the practice of transcending attachment. In contrast, when you are feeling anxious, tense, or sad, you need to focus on your needs and on seeking a higher level of security with yourself and others in healthy ways. This has been the focus of this workbook. You will need to return to that work at times, especially when you are highly stressed. However, by now you are building habits that are likely to reduce your ongoing insecurity, so now it may be possible during less stressful times to consider what lies beyond building security. When you are aware of and are actively caring for yourself, and when you are not anxiously preoccupied with how your relationships are going, you become lighter and freer. To do this activity, adapted from the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, you will need to remember the instructions below (this is one reason that the instructions are very brief) and move to an area where you literally can see the sky. The purpose of this activity is to remind you that you are free and can relax at any time. Instructions (read them before beginning the experience): Take off your shoes, and feel your feet firmly on the ground. Press into the ground. Feel the solidness beneath you. Just for now, release your past down into the earth. Pause a few moments here. Next, look up at the sky and notice how vast it is. Release your future into the sky. Then just be here and experience being present here in the wide open sky, bringing your mind back here if it drifts, until you have had your fill of the experience. Without any past or future, you are present. Let any sensory experiences and thoughts register and then pass rig	394,477
Loneliness (Clark E. Moustakas) (Z-Library).epub	Unknown This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books—picklepublishing@gmail.com Or on Facebook Text originally published in 1961 under the same title. © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder. Publisher’s Note Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit. We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible. Unknown LONELINESS BY CLARK E. MOUSTAKAS Unknown Get ready to weep tears of sorrow as bright as the brightest beads, and like the bright beads you string to wear round your throat at the burial, gather your tears and string them on a thread of your memory to wear around your heart or its shattered fragments will never come whole again. From Flamingo Feather by Laurens van der Post, reprinted with permission of The Hogarth Press Ltd. and William Morrow & Co., Inc. 1949. Unknown TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 DEDICATION 6 PREFACE 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 I—THE TERROR AND LOVE IN LONELINESS 10 II—THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING LONELY 15 III—CONCEPTS OF LONELINESS 27 IV—THE ISOLATED MAN 52 V—THE LONELINESS OF PUBLIC LIFE 69 VI—THE VALUE OF LONELINESS 89 BIBLIOGRAPHY 91 REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 94 Unknown DEDICATION For Eve Winn who lives within me in the infinite loneliness of the unique Unknown PREFACE The basic message in this book is that loneliness is a condition of human life, an experience of being human which enables the individual to sustain, extend, and deepen his humanity. Man is ultimately and forever lonely whether his loneliness is the exquisite pain of the individual living in isolation or illness, the sense of absence caused by a loved one’s death, or the piercing joy experienced in triumphant creation. I believe it is necessary for every person to recognize his loneliness, to become intensely aware that, ultimately, in every fibre of his being, man is alone—terribly, utterly alone. Efforts to overcome or escape the existential experience of loneliness can result only in self-alienation. When man is removed from a fundamental truth of life, when he successfully evades and denies the terrible loneliness of individual existence, he shuts himself off from one significant avenue of his own self-growth. I first began to discover the roots of my own loneliness during a family crisis when neither man nor reason could assuage the searing pain in my heart. This crisis was the instrument through which I plunged deeply into an intensive and timeless experience of the self. The sudden recognition and depth of my own loneliness was a revelation which changed the nature of my life. I could never again see the evening sun fading into oblivion without feeling lonely. I could never again pass a troubled person or see pain, misery, suffering, poverty around me without being deeply and sharply touched. This recognition of my own basic loneliness, this penetrating awareness of my own isolated existence, opened within me a flood of painful feeling and left me in a barren and eroded state. At the same time I saw life and nature in more vibrant forms than I had ever experienced before. Each aspect of my life took on a color, a distinctness and vividness, entirely new for me. Something extremely powerful took root in me and I came to know myself in a more honest and fuller sense than I ever thought possible. I learned that I could thrive in lonely silence. This recognition and meaningful awareness of myself as an utterly lonely person opened the way to deeper human bonds and associations and to a fuller valuing of all aspects of life and nature. I realized that man’s inevitable and infinite loneliness is not solely an awful condition of human existence but that it is also the instrument through which man experiences new compassion and new beauty. It is this terror in loneliness which evokes new senses and makes possible the experiencing of deep companionship and radiant beauty. My awareness of loneliness did not come as an idea but from the involvement of my whole being in loneliness. What I have written in this book is an experience of my own existence as a solitary individual, as well as the existence of others, and of the meaning which loneliness has for human growth. One can come to a recognition of loneliness as a condition of human life only through a deep and penetrating voyage of one’s own solitary nature. I hope the experiences presented in the book will provide a primary source, an impetus to self-discovery, and to feeling-knowledge. I know that no person can remain unchanged once he opens himself to loneliness and surrenders himself to the terror and beauty of a totally isolated existence. It is a great gift to be suddenly awakened, to perceive the world from vast, expansive inner openings and new pathways, to see light where there had been darkness, to find beauty in broken bits of stone, to see color where all had been dingy and gray, to hear a human voice and absorb a smile as a precious treasure, to see into the heart of life and to recognize the brevity of life and the necessity of making each moment count, to realize the ecstasy of human companionship—and when someone else sees this vital strand of lonely being not as an insight but with all the feeling of an informed heart, then how sweet is the confirmation. When someone cares enough to see into the deepest roots of one’s nature, though it is heart-rending to be known in this naked sense, it brings the deepest measure of unique and thrilling sensations. Loneliness for me started with a family crisis but my voyage took me into literature and music and art, into history and science. For many, many months I opened myself to the loneliness which surrounded me in my everyday living, to the lonely experiences of my colleagues, friends, and neighbors, to books and articles. I have concluded that loneliness is within life itself, and that all creations in some way spring from solitude, meditation, and isolation. This work is not an exhaustive or comprehensive study, but is a pointed selection of lonely experiences and lonely persons, along with commentary on some of the conditions which penetrate human life and precipitate man’s aloneness. This book grows out of my own search to come to an understanding, awareness, and respect for myself as a solitary, isolated, lonely individual and the gripping, painful, exhilarating, and beautiful experience of being utterly alone and separated from others. In a sense, the book is an inquiry or search, perhaps a personal disclosure into the meaning and essence of loneliness itself, the loneliness of my life and the loneliness of others, which has shaken and stirred me profoundly and opened new channels of awareness and beauty in the world. Man has recognized the importance of companionship. Perhaps this book can strike a chord into the lonely life of others, can be one step not only in experiencing the real terror in loneliness but also in revealing new horizons of love and beauty. Unknown ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the many persons who conversed with me and wrote to me so openly and intimately of their experiences with loneliness, particularly Florence Bedell, Paul Jensen, James Byars, and Glen Christensen. I also thank Melvyn Baer who an atmosphere in which much of the writing was done, Dorothy Lee for her many suggestions in helping me to be myself in this book, Pauline Knapp and the Merrill-Palmer Institute for enabling me to work in my own way, Miss Esther Betz of the University of Michigan Law Library who entrusted to me for an indefinite period the ten volumes of the transcript and documents of the second Hiss trial, Connie Jones who helped prepare the manuscript for publication, Betty Moustakas who stood by silently sharing my pain and suffering during many of my encounters with loneliness, and Jim and Thelma Dimas, Minnie Berson, Eugene Alexander and David Smillie, each in his own way bringing me new depths of feeling and awareness to bear the solitude and isolation and to grow in it. I thank Grace Darling for her inspiring guidance and encouragement during the long wait when she envisioned “Loneliness” as a full-length story rather than as a professional article. Particularly and especially, I wish to express my gratitude to my daughter, Kerry, without whom this book would not have been started and without whom my own self-discovery would have been delayed or permanently denied. Unknown I—THE TERROR AND LOVE IN LONELINESS I have experienced loneliness many times in my life but until recently I lived my loneliness without being aware of it. In the past I tried to overcome my sense of isolation by plunging into work projects and entering into social activities. By keeping busy and by committing myself to interesting and challenging work, I never had to face, in any direct or open way, the nature of my own existence as an isolated and solitary individual. I first began to awaken to the meaning of loneliness, to feel loneliness in the center of my consciousness, one terrible day when my wife and I were confronted with the necessity of making a decision. We were told that our five-year-old daughter, Kerry, who had a congenital heart defect, must have immediate surgery. We were warned, gently but firmly, by the cardiologist that failure to operate would cause continual heart deterioration and premature death. At the same time he informed us that there were many unknown factors in heart surgery and that with Kerry’s particular defect there was about twenty per cent chance that she would not survive the operation. What were we to do? We experienced a state of acute worry, followed by a paralyzing indecision that lasted several days. There was no peace or rest for me, anywhere, at this time. I, who had known Kerry as a vigorous, active child, bursting with energy, whether on roller skates, a two-wheel bike, or in the pool, was suddenly forced to view her as handicapped. In spite of her exuberance and her seemingly inexhaustible energy, there in my mind was the report of the X-rays and the catharization showing a significant perforation and enlargement of her heart. Visions of my daughter were constantly before me. I roamed the streets at night searching for some means, some resource in the universe which would guide me to take the right step. It was during these desperate days and nights that I first began to think seriously of the inevitable loneliness of life. I was overcome with the pain of having to make a decision, as a parent, which had potentially devastating consequences either way. If I decided on surgery, she might not survive the operation. If I decided against it, the possibility of a premature death would always haunt me. It was a terrible responsibility, being required to make a decision, a life or death decision, for someone else. This awful feeling, this overwhelming sense of responsibility, I could not share with anyone. I felt utterly alone, entirely lost, and frightened; my existence was absorbed in this crisis. No one fully understood my terror or how this terror gave impetus to deep feelings of loneliness and isolation which had lain dormant within me. There at the center of my being, loneliness aroused me to a self-awareness I had never known before. At last a decision was made, primarily by my wife, that we had no choice but to go ahead with the surgery, immediately, while we were both alive and able to give Kerry our strength and love. We explained the problem to Kerry simply. She quickly accepted the idea of the operation with that measureless trust and confidence which, a young child feels with parents long before there is any understanding of trust or confidence. The time of waiting during the operation itself was filled with painful anguish, terrifying suspension, and restlessness—but the most terrible loneliness of all occurred several days later. I stood in the dark hallway of the hospital, a place I had repeatedly traversed with restless and weary footsteps. Kerry lay beside me in her wheelcart watching television. The light reflected in her eyes as she watched the program. Momentarily the shots, the tubes, the large incision across her chest were forgotten. I do not know how long I stood beside her. My mind was empty of all thought and feeling. Suddenly she looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. “Daddy, why is that little boy crying?” she asked. I looked for a moment, then I knew; I saw an episode I had witnessed many times in the past week. The boy’s eyes were transfixed, glued to the windows, looking below—expectant, watchful, waiting. Waiting for someone to come to protect and comfort him. Waiting for someone to rescue him from abandonment. Waiting. There was no one. He was alone—totally, utterly alone. Outside, people moved rapidly up and down steps and along the walk. Cars hurried down the highway. Inside, the public address blared out doctors’ names. Nurses’ aides shouted to children to get to sleep. But this child sat up in bed—his small body rigid—his heart breaking. Waiting. I knew in that moment he experienced a crushing loneliness, a feeling of being deserted and forsaken. He was quiet and frightened. Silent tears slipped down his face. What could I say to Kerry? She wept in sympathy. She did not expect an answer. When I could no longer bear his suffering I entered the room. I stood quietly beside him for several minutes. Then the words came, “I know. Right now there’s no one. No one at all. Your Mama has left you.” He burst into painful, racking sobs and sighs. His grief was momentarily broken. All his silent agony burst into convulsive moans and piercing cries. A nurse entered. She glared at me. She spoke angrily, “Now see what you’ve done. Why don’t you leave him alone?” Then, turning to him, she spoke firmly, “You know your mother isn’t here. She left you after supper. She told you she’d be back in the morning. All the crying and shouting you can do will not bring her back. Stop. Stop now. You’re keeping the other children awake. Lie down. Go to sleep. Your mother will come tomorrow.” I stood by silently; as the nurse left the room, I followed her. Walking beside her, I said, “You can’t leave him that way. He is painfully lonely. He feels cut-off from all meaningful ties. He will harbor this terror a long time. Go back. Tell him you care. Hold his hand. Say something gentle.” She answered, “I can’t. I have other duties.” I suggested, “Tell him you would like to stay but you have certain duties to finish first—that you will look in again soon.” Hesitating a few moments, the nurse returned to the child’s room. She spoke softly this time, “I’m sorry your mother isn’t here with you now when you want her. I must give out medicine to other children but I’ll be back. Maybe this will help,” and she handed him a sucker. Beside Kerry again, I could see a faint smile cross the child’s face as he put the sucker in his mouth. There was a moment of peace. Then the silent tears continued to flow until he slipped into heavy, uncomfortable sleep with the sucker still in his mouth. I knew he would never forget this experience of loneliness just as I would never forget sitting alone in my daughter’s room waiting for the slow, restorative process following her heart surgery. For many hours I had been forced to ration to Kerry small cubes of ice—just enough to moisten her lips and mouth—one small piece each half hour. In between Kerry’s begging, pleading voice asked for more. I had stated the limit directly and told her why it was necessary. But her lips were dry. She had been without liquids almost forty-eight hours. I felt dry too. I wanted to share this experience with her and had refrained from liquids myself. I felt her extreme thirst and yet worked feverishly to arouse her interest in other matters. Each new thought excited her momentarily but she always returned to the cry for ice, entreating with such urgency that each episode left me feeling the oppressor. The hours passed slowly and finally the glorious moment arrived when a real portion of liquids could be taken. The surgeon ordered a full glass of Coke. She drank it in a frenzy in two or three gulps and within a few minutes fell into a heavy sleep. I was exhausted, feeling her anguish, hearing her distressing cries for ice, exhausted with the effort of distraction and diversion. It was a peaceful time. I was alone. I felt elated, full—yet empty, and a strange aura of peacefulness settled within me. I stared blankly at the floor. I do not know what forces within me caused me to glance at Kerry, but as I did in an instant an absolute terror overcame me. Suddenly I felt completely desolate and alone. I was aware of being depressed by and conscious of my own solitude. Something vague, hidden, crucial was before me. I could not understand but something seemed wrong in the way she was sleeping. I noticed a slight tensing, her arms pulled away from her body, the fingers twisted and extended. Her entire body grew rigid. She went into a series of jerky, stretching movements—contortions—convulsions—grotesque and terrifying. Immediately I realized she was having a brain seizure. Her entire being was in a state of extreme agitation. She began biting her tongue. I slipped a pencil in her mouth, shouted for the nurse, and urged that the surgeon be called immediately. The nurse looked in briefly and left. I stroked Kerry’s hair and whispered her name, but each time I touched her she moved away with violent, gross movements. I had to hold her body because she twisted and turned so violently there was danger she would fall off the bed. In those moments I experienced indescribable loneliness and fear and shock. In some measure my body writhed with Kerry’s. I paced, and stretched, and turned as I witnessed the seizure. The most intolerable feeling was the realization that she was beyond my reach, beyond my voice and touch. She was in pitiful plight—entirely by herself. She was without anyone or anything. I tried to commune with her. I whispered her name softly, gently, over and over again. “Kerry, Kerry. Kerry, my darling. It’s Daddy. I’m here right beside you. I won’t leave. Kerry, I’m here. Kerry. Kerry. Kerry.” She opened her eyes. A horrible sound issued from her throat—then several more utterances of anguish and pain and fear. She screamed three words as she saw me—three awful words filled with agony and stark terror—words and tones that I shall never forget — “ No You Bad. ” I answered, “It’s all right, Kerry. It’s Daddy. I’m here. I’m beside you.” Her entire body was stiff, yet in constant motion. She jerked up and down, flailed her arms and legs at me, and tried to kick me. I was certain she did not recognize me. She was in a state of shock and experiencing a semi-conscious nightmare. In her dim state of awareness she thought I was a doctor who was about to administer a shot. The muscles in her face were tight. The mouth was open and the jaws distended and distorted. The stretching and agitated movement continued as she seemed to be struggling to escape, to find comfort, to find a resting place. At last the surgeon arrived, took one look and shouted to the nurse, “Brain Edema. I’ll have to give her a shot of glucose.” The word “shot” struck the center of her terror. She tried to form words to speak, but no sound came; she shook violently in an effort to scream out an alarm. Then came an instinctual cry, emitted from deep within her being, a cry of raving terror followed by excruciating moans. I continued saying her name, whispering softly, gently, trying to offer strength, knowing all the while that she was lost to me yet knowing also that I alone realized her pain and terror. Her wails were so piercingly effective they reverberated ceaselessly everywhere inside me and in the room. The doctor asked me to leave but I refused; I knew I had to stay whatever happened. Kerry’s eyes were wide and fitful. She continued moaning and uttering the weird, painful cries. The nurse pushed me aside to hold Kerry while the shot was being administered. Only a small amount had been injected when Kerry gave such a violent jerk that the nurse let go and the needle fell out. Again the moaning continued and one word rang out distinctly, clearly—a plea, a beseeching, final cry for help. She held the word “Mama” a long, long time and then the moans and furious motions and cries resumed. I held her arms as the surgeon inserted the needle again. She looked at me with utter contempt and hatred. Her eyes were full of pain and accusation. I whispered, “I know how much it hurts.” I could feel her pain and terror in my own nerves and bones and tissues and blood, but at the same time I knew in that moment no matter how fervently I lived through it with her, how much I wanted to share it with her, I knew, she was alone, beyond my reach. I wanted so much for her to feel my presence, but she could not. She was beyond my call, beyond the call of anyone. It was her situation in a world entirely and solely her own. There was nothing further I could do. Each time she screamed her voice ripped through me, penetrating deeply into my inner being. At last it was finished. The nurse put up the sides of the bed. Then she and the surgeon left. It was dark. Kerry and I were alone again. Kerry’s cries and the grotesque, agitated body movements continued. All I could do was stand by. I tried to stroke her forehead but when I touched her she stiffened, screamed in pain, and moved violently away. I wanted her to know I was there, extending my compassion; I wanted her to see I suffered too; I wanted her to realize I had not left her. So I repeated over and over again, “My darling, Kerry. My sweet, Kerry. I’m here. Right here. Daddy is beside you. I won’t leave you. Not ever. Not ever.” At length, she fell asleep. I left her room and stood outside her door to keep anyone from entering to disturb her. I stood in a frozen position for several hours, not moving at all, completely without feeling, and in a state of total nothingness. I tried in many ways to express this experience immediately afterwards but I could not. It remained within me, a tremendous constricted mass. Each time I tried to form a word the mass rose within me and I choked and sputtered and the muscles in my body tightened. My mouth closed. The sounds were shut off and the intense experience settled inside me again. There was no way to share this loneliness, this experience of fear, and shock, and isolation. It was an experience which held its own integrity but was so far-reaching and sharp, so utterly pervasive and gripping, that when I tried to speak only weird and painful cries, like Kerry’s, came from me. I distinctly felt that I had failed her and that she had faced this great crisis alone. Later she remembered the doctor who held her while a shot was given her but she did not remember her father who stayed beside her during the terrible ordeal and who suffered along with her, totally isolated and alone. As I dwell upon this experience of mutual loneliness, I realize how completely beyond my most imaginative comprehension is the heart surgery itself, when my daughter lay on the operating table and her heart was removed from her body while a mechanical pump pushed blood through her arteries and veins. Is the horror of this lonely existence perceivable or knowable at all? What does it mean in the life and growth of an individual child? Kerry remained in the hospital two weeks. When we took her home, she was completely recovered physically but her nightmares and terrors continued for several months after she left the hospital. During the two weeks while she was in the pediatric ward, we never left her side. I had many opportunities to observe children experiencing isolation and loneliness. It was at this time that I felt a strong urge to look into the heart of the lonely experience. Starting with these experiences before and during the hospitalization, I began to discover the meaning of loneliness. I began to see that loneliness is neither good nor bad, but a point of intense and timeless awareness of the Self, a beginning which initiates totally new sensitivities and awarenesses, and which results in bringing a person deeply in touch with his own existence and in touch with others in a fundamental sense. I began to see that in the deepest experiences the human being can know—the birth of a baby, the prolonged illness or death of a loved relative, the loss of a job, the creation of a poem, a painting, a symphony, the grief of a fire, a flood, an accident—each in its own way touches upon the roots of loneliness. In each of these experiences, in the end, we must go alone. In such experiences, inevitably one is cut off from human companionship. But experiencing a solitary state gives the individual the opportunity to draw upon untouched capacities and resources and to realize himself in an entirely unique manner. It can be a new experience. It may be an experience of exquisite pain, deep fear and terror, an utterly terrible experience, yet it brings into awareness new dimensions of self, new beauty, new power for human compassion, and a reverence for the precious nature of each breathing moment. Unknown II—THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING LONELY There is a power in loneliness, a purity, self-immersion, and depth which is unlike any other experience. Being lonely is such a total, direct, vivid existence, so deeply felt, so startlingly different, that there is no room for any other perception, feeling, or awareness. Loneliness is an organic experience which points to nothing else, is for no other purpose and results in nothing but the realization of itself. Loneliness is not homelessness. There is no departure or exile, the person is fully there, as fully as he ever can be. Loneliness involves a unique substance of self, a dimension of human life which taps the full resources of the individual. It calls for strength, endurance, and sustenance, enabling a person to reach previously unknown depths and to realize a certain nakedness of inner life. Being lonely is a reality of far-reaching social consequence, yet it is distinctly a private matter. It is an experience of raw sensitivity. It is so entirely pure and complete that there is no room for anything else or anyone else. Feelings of loneliness take root deeply and unfold in varied directions. Being lonely involves a certain pathway, requires a total submersion of self, a letting be of all that is and belongs, a staying or remaining with the situation, until a natural realization or completion is reached; when a lonely existence completes itself, the individual becomes, grows from it, reaches out for others in a deeper, more vital sense. 1. {1} Elizabeth was and never ceases to be. Her whole life consisted of being. We, who knew her intimately became infinitely richer in love and understanding because of her being. She gave with no thought of giving, she loved with no thought of being loved, and she received and created love because she was lovable. We, her parents, her sister of nine, and her brother of six, had waited for her arrival with joy. We prepared for her with loving thoughts and plans, with shopping and sewing and sharing. She began to be and we were happy. We wanted her to be born at home and the doctor consented. The night of her arrival came and she was born attended by the family doctor, her grandmother, her loving aunt, her father, and, of course, me, her mother. The joyful cry of a new-born baby filled the room and then I heard that moment of such quiet silence. Something strange was happening and I was filled with the fear of impending disaster. A baby girl was born, but the doctor, there in that room which was suddenly filled with the anxiety of vitally concerned persons, had to say to all of us that Elizabeth, our baby, through some unforeseen, unpredictable, unknown reason, had failed to develop properly. One of the lower vertebrae had not grown together. This allowed the spinal fluid to escape and form a cyst near the end of her spinal column. Her body was paralyzed below this vertebra, and one foot, especially, had not developed in a normal fashion. However, Elizabeth was , and, being herself as she was at that moment, she created a deep feeling of reverence for life which bound us all together in that moment of shock and despair which none of us shall forget. The lesion was so severe that the doctor felt that Elizabeth should be in a hospital. He was a brave man, with a strength and depth of feeling which I had never suspected, as he had often seemed rather brusk and hurried and unfeeling. But this night he could tell us that we could not expect our baby to live but a very few days, that her condition was so serious it could not be treated by medicine or by operation. Perhaps because he had the courage to be honest and because he expected us to have the strength to face our suffering, we were able to do this, at least partially. Her grandmother and her Aunt Emma bathed and dressed Elizabeth. She was a beautiful baby with soft brown hair and a little round face. Margaret and Paul were gently awakened and came in so happily to see the new baby. But so soon we had to tell them that she was not well and must go to the hospital where they had better facilities for taking care of her. They each held her for a few moments and kissed her goodbye. I felt that my very heart would break. For three days I was numb with grief and shock, with disbelief and pain. I thought I would turn my face to the wall until it was all over and maybe I would never need to look straight into the face of my grief and disappointment. We wanted her, loved her, and longed to keep her. Then that feeling of shame and mortification crept in. We, Clarence and I, had a child that was deformed, was not normal, could we face our relatives and our friends now? What had we done to deserve this kind of punishment? If we had done wrong why should Elizabeth be the one to pay for it? I searched my soul for the meaning of life and for the meaning of Elizabeth’s being. Three days went by, the allotted time the doctor had given her to live, and Elizabeth was. The nurses and specialists at the hospital wondered at her fragile yet tenacious hold on life. A week passed by, and two weeks. Elizabeth was and would not be denied. The doctor said we could have her at home. He felt that we could care for her if they taught me how to keep the cyst covered with Vaseline and gauze. But he said we could not expect her to live even from one day to the next. Her death might occur rather suddenly at any time. I had had two weeks to wrestle with myself. I had had many well-wishing visitors who either talked too much, or were tongue-tied through embarrassment and indecision. I experienced many new thoughts and new feelings during these days. I found the meaning of living one moment at a time. I could only live one moment at a time for I didn’t have the strength to endure more than one moment. I found I could not plan before time what I would say to this person or that person. I could only say what was to be said at the moment when it arrived. I found myself raw with sensitivity to the feelings and embarrassments of my guests and I found a deeper, softer bond between the four of us at home, waiting for Elizabeth to join us. But perhaps more than all of these I found that the length of the life span or the conditions of a person’s body do not detract from the meaning and value of being. I could accept Elizabeth without apology to anyone. We went together to bring her home. This was a moment of joy and sadness. We were together but there were many things we were unable to do for Elizabeth because of her fragile condition. We could not hold her or cuddle her because it was painful for her to be moved. She could be comfortable only on either one side or the other on a firm pillow. We could be close to her, hold her hand, and sing to her, but we couldn’t cuddle and comfort her when she cried. At this time I had another difficult decision to make. I was tempted to bathe and dress the baby before the children awakened in the morning. But bathing the baby was one thing Margaret and Paul had been anticipating for a long time. Now, Elizabeth was a perfectly beautiful, normal baby above the defective vertebra, and guests would remark about what a pretty healthy baby she was, unless they were aware of her difficulty. So should I try to bathe her and dress her alone to protect the other children from the pain of realizing Elizabeth’s real physical condition? They were so eager to be with the baby and to help with everything that I decided I must be honest and we must all live through this experience together. The impact of this experience for me is inexpressible. The children were so happy to do something for Elizabeth. They thought her little foot was so delicate and beautiful. Bath time became a meaningful experience every day in which we each had a part. For a while Elizabeth cried when we gave her a bath and I was afraid it was a painful, physical ordeal for her. But I found her looking at my face and saw that I had an anxious tense expression. I started to smile and we sometimes sang softly or hummed a little during the bath and Elizabeth responded by being happy and not crying. She lived day after day and because we knew we could not expect to keep her we found joy in each moment that we did have her. In this way I found that this was the way that I wanted to live all of the time—each moment to the extent of its possibilities. I learned that, although I could make plans and anticipate the future, life is demanding and unpredictable. In order to live I must be sensitive to these demands and be flexible enough to experience them. We, as a family, found joy and an increase of love, acceptance and understanding. Five months went by and Elizabeth, even through the reality of her pain and immobility, remained loving, giving, and beautiful by being herself. She looked at me with her big brown eyes, which seemed like deep pools of liquid pain, and she talked with me with wisdom and understanding almost beyond my comprehension. The doctors and nurses and other people wondered and were amazed that she continued to live. Elizabeth, by being, seemed to release the love of all the persons who knew her and this releasing of love seemed to spread throughout her family, which included grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Love spread to the neighbors, to friends, to persons in other communities and other states. People who met her were not moved by pity but seemed to become filled with a gentleness and sensitivity. It seemed that Elizabeth was suspended in a rich atmosphere of love which sustained her and permitted us to keep her with us beyond even our expectations. Then the night came; Clarence and I had always taken turns watching her through the long nights, but this night we watched together as her breathing became slower and slower until it seemed she would not breathe again. We held her hands because she seemed to feel comforted by this and because we wanted to hold her hands. The night wore on and at almost dawn for some strange reason Clarence and I both went to sleep for a very few minutes, and then awakened very quickly with a sharpness and clarity of mind and soul. Elizabeth was still and the eastern sky was filled with light as the sun burst forth in the glory of the sunrise. And Margaret and Paul with their playmates picked yellow roses and gave them to Elizabeth. 2. No one understood. No one cared enough to let him live his life his way, and he was not strong enough, not courageous enough, to stand alone. Suffering with tuberculosis, he wanted a program of home treatment, but he was unsuccessful in finding a physician who would care for him. He could not find anyone with whom to share his shattering illness. In the end, his wife and father withdrew their support and told him he had no choice but to enter an institution. The final blow came in the form of a court order instigated by the city health department to force him into a hospital. Bill Downs was completely alone then. He felt his life slipping away. He tried to tell his family he was losing control. Unable to think clearly or talk decisively, he spoke in a confused and desultory manner, in dejected tones. He felt isolated and doomed and on the verge of being destroyed. His inner life was gone. There was nothing left for him but a meaningless existence. He tried in every way to find a way but he felt utterly rejected. He knew with dreaded clarity he would be compelled to enter a sanitarium where there could only be loneliness without relief, days without sunshine and trees and fresh air, nights without the wind and stars and moon, and a life without freedom and joy and love. After many sleepless nights, one gloomy dawn, he arose and without a word, left the house, driving his car to the hospital. He was inducted in a mechanical way, and placed in a small room with four other men. He was told that hospital rules were precise, that he would be put on a strict regime, and would be expected to remain in bed at all times as immobile as possible. Bill noticed his roommates for the first time. He learned that they all spoke only in a foreign language. He would not be able to talk with them. They lay there silent, listless, and severely emaciated. As Bill watched them, the numbness suddenly disappeared. He was seized with a feeling of helpless fear, a feeling so strong that it twisted and turned everywhere in his body. He felt completely removed from the world, utterly alone. He lay back on the pillow overcome with terrifying thoughts. Several hours passed; a tray of food was brought to him. It was tasteless and cold. Tears rolled down his face as he remembered the personal value and significance of his meals at home. His wife created meals with love to serve his heart as well as his appetite. The food before him was ugly, intended only to satiate hunger. He could not eat. He choked as he tried. Food mattered to him only within a shared experience. He felt empty, nauseated. Sharp fear hit him again. His mind whirled. He felt terrifying panic. He knew he would die if he stayed in the sanitarium. The urge to live welled strong in him again. There was only one way. He had to leave, to run, anywhere. He threw on his clothes and ran wildly out of the hospital. The drive home was a nightmare. The anxiety was so strong he was totally unaware of what he was doing, where he was going. Tears streamed down his face. He struggled with choking sensations and feelings of agony. The whole world seemed against him but he would not quit. He would not die without a fight. Somehow he reached his home and collapsed on the couch. When his wife saw him her mind blurred and dizzily she knelt beside him. She put her arms around him. In the torrent of misery, time passed and the intense painful feelings of loneliness and isolation subsided again to a state of numbness. They were together again. This time in hopelessness. Their courage, faith, and conviction had disappeared long ago. But they were reunited. Hurriedly, Mrs. Downs packed their suitcases. She felt that time was precious. She had to hurry. She knew they would have to keep running. She had to stay alive, keep them going. She felt she had failed her husband once. Without knowing it, she had joined the forces against him. She knew she had to help in restoring his faith, not realizing she had lost her own, not knowing she could not strengthen him because she too was friendless, and weak, and alone. Somehow they left the house to say goodbye to their son and Mr. Downs’ father. As they saw these treasured faces, the disintegrating anxiety and loneliness overcame them again. This time they collapsed in separate parts of the house. Frightening feelings shook them completely, subsided momentarily and returned. There was no way to talk to them, to give them hope and renew their courage or to convey human sympathy in any way. The scene severely disturbed the elder Mr. Downs. Little Roger was deeply troubled too. He only partly understood the meaning of his parents’ utter misery. At first father and son tried to talk to the parents, but Mr. and Mrs. Downs could no longer hear any human voice. They were experiencing the most crushing feeling of isolation and worthlessness they had ever known, an experience so complete no other perception was possible. In time grandfather and grandson felt the futility of their efforts and went to another part of the house to sit and wait in silent tears. Then the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Gans from the health department. She brought the family back to fearful reality and the urgency of flight. She threatened the senior Mr. Downs, quietly and politely, “If you do not see that your son returns to the sanitarium by morning I will issue a warrant for the police department to pick him up and take him forcibly.” Mr. Downs could not talk. He replaced the receiver, rested for a moment, then approached his children to tell them they must hurry. Mr. and Mrs. Downs somehow mustered enough strength to get into their car and drive toward a distant spot. After driving a short while, the shocking truth that inner peace and unity were gone, that their family was broken, struck them so sharply with a flood of frightened feeling, they had to stop to rest and recover enough energy to go ahead. A few days later a policeman called the senior Mr. Downs. He gave his first name and indicated he was a friend of Mr. Downs. He wanted to locate him. Mr. Downs asked, “What do you want him for?” The officer stated calmly, “We have a warrant for his arrest and I want to pick him up.” Mr. Downs replied, “I have no idea where he is but I can assure you he is out of the state.” The officer continued, “We have to be absolutely sure about it. I did not want to cause him any embarrassment or anything, but I thought maybe if I were the one who picked him up, it would be easier for him to come along.” Local policemen contacted friends and neighbors of the family to locate Mr. Downs. The story they told was always the same. They were looking for Bill Downs because he had a severe, contagious illness which could easily infect others. One policeman was especially violent in his objection to home treatments. He protested to the neighbors that he would not want a tubercular patient living next door to him. “Just think,” he said, “every morning you’d wake up. The milkman would pick up his empty bottles and the next day he’d bring the filled bottles back to your house. You’d be drinking out of the same bottles that he used the day before, maybe infecting yourself and your children.” Gradually the neighbors in immediate proximity erected barriers to separate their property from the Downs’, as though even the house and the land were afflicted. They told the senior Mr. Downs they would not want Bill or his family back in the neighborhood until his illness was completely arrested. In time, the Downs’ personal belongings and furniture were stored among many relatives in different parts of the state. Their home was sold. There was nothing left to remind neighbors or health and police officials that a diseased family had once lived within their boundaries and endangered community living. But at the same time, there was nothing left of meaning and value in the health department, or in neighborliness; for in the process of destroying the Downs family and forcing them into a lonely and estranged existence, communal humanity and the commandment of “Love thy neighbor” were broken too. 3. What was most painful for me about my mother’s dying of cancer in a city hospital was the feeling of not knowing if, in her dying moments and days, she knew I was there with her, trying to talk with her, comfort her, and love her. For two years she had fought the cancer, trying to become healthy again, making visits to the clinic—all the time becoming physically weaker, thinner, and more jaundiced. Slowly the cancer created a barrier between her and her family, between life and health, arousing feelings of anxiety, concern, and helplessness in all of us. She kept her pain and torment to herself, trying to be herself and make a life, trying to hold off impending death. I arrived at the city hospital, where my mother lay dying, at one-thirty A.M., two days before the Fourth of July. I was taken to her ward room which was also occupied by five other women. The rest of our family, my older brother and sister, my brother-in-law, and a very close friend of the family, almost like a father, sat in the waiting room, despondent in the July heat, waiting anxiously for death to come. The doctors told us she had only hours to live and would not pull through the night. I had not seen my mother since Christmas. Then her body was becoming very frail, but she had managed to appear strong and jovial in making a Christmas celebration for all of us. For she was that way, no matter what befell her—poverty, illness, or deep hurt—she would pull together all her resources and fight what had to be fought within herself, not wanting others to know the real agony she was facing. I became panic-stricken as I approached my mother’s bed, passing by the other women in the ward without a notice, not even stopping to talk to my family. I saw my mother’s completely jaundiced face. Her neck and arms had become so thin her veins and bone-joints protruded. She was under sedation and breathing heavily. Her mouth was parched and the dry skin on her lips was cracked. My whole being became filled with shock and fright, and disgust at what had been done to my mother by the cancer. I kissed my mother’s forehead. In a quivering, crying voice, with tears streaming from my eyes, I spoke, “It’s me, your son, Paul. I have finally arrived. I am here.” There was no answer, no gesture of recognition. She did not lift her hands to my face; she did not embrace me as she had always done before. She lay there, breathing heavily, in agonized gasps. I felt the awful chasm between us; my voice was calling to her, talking to her, crying for her, but there was no answer, no response. I stroked her hair and forehead more than an hour, without stopping to rest or talk to anyone. Then our close friend was at the bedside with me, tears trickling out of his eyes, too, for the woman he had loved so genuinely. I could not talk to him at all. My throat was choked with tearful hurting and a terrible upsurging of lonely, helpless feeling. I refused to sink into loneliness. In her fight now I wanted to fight with her, to suffer for her, to be strong for her. That was all it was humanly possible for me to do, all I could do. Inside I tried to feel with her, to fight with her, for this I knew she was doing inside, even though she could not talk or respond to me. She lived until the Sunday morning after the Fourth of July, occasionally during Friday and Saturday morning stirring and asking for some liquid on her lips or to have her position changed. This was the only kind of communication that came from her. That Thursday night was the most difficult, but it was difficult all the way, for the feelings of warmth that kept trying to emerge and be expressed were futile and frustrated by my mother’s inability to respond to me. I so much wanted to tell her that I had come to realize what a good mother she had really been to me, how much her relation to me had meant in my growth, despite all the arguments, the hurts, and the hates that I had felt so many times in my life. The doctors came in and out through the four days, checking her intravenous feeding apparatus, checking her heart beat, giving her needles. The nurses came in to see if she were all right, the aides came occasionally to bathe her. The other patients had visitors, talking jovially and happily about going home soon, while my family felt the agony of my mother’s dying and waited for it to be over. We had a hard time to keep from feeling that she was already dead, taken from us. It was difficult not to become impersonal toward her, not to talk about the funeral arrangements. Saturday morning my mother was put under an oxygen tent because her breathing had become such painful gasps for air, for life itself. She struggled so to respond to those around her. This day, the feelings of warmth—and those of separation and loneliness—were mingled with the suffering for and with her. I stood by her side as the doctors flicked their fingers before my mother’s eyes, and checked her heart, and told me that she was not in contact, that all she was aware of or could feel or respond to was physical sensation, pains in her body or the prick of a needle going into her thin, frail arms. Some of the family, and I too, talked about funeral arrangements when the doctors stated that she was not in contact and that she would die very shortly. I was bothered by this kind of talk, even though I knew it was important to get things worked out. I could not accept the fact of the impersonality of it and soon I began to feel angry wit	273,127
Loneliness How to be Alone but Not Lonely (June Hunt) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely Dear Friend, Have you ever thought about what God was referring to the first time He said the words “not good” ? Was it going without food or shelter? Was it being selfish or proud? No . In Genesis 2:18 the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” God did not design us to be alone. Although there will be periods when we are alone, that is not to be a permanent state. He knows that after a period of time we certainly can become lonely. Looking back on my life, I remember a time that was painfully poignant. I was stunned by what had happened to a very special relationship. I was so hurt, so deeply wounded, my heart ached with pain. While I had the support of a loving mother and several true friends, I didn’t want to share with them the depth of my pain. Although they knew some details, I didn’t feel like I could unload my overwhelming pain onto anyone. And truthfully, nothing that anyone said or did could have lifted the hurt from my heart. During this time, I went inside a card store, saw a sentiment about tender relationships and suddenly my eyes filled with tears. And, I remember having tears all the way through a movie about a loving relationship. (As a “non-crier,” that was very unusual.) I could hardly believe my response. However, the loss of a relationship—whether by death, divorce, or rejection of any kind—can leave us feeling devastated. We can feel so lonely, so separated, so isolated, thinking no one really understands. Yet God understands our deepest times of loneliness. He knows the heaviness of our hurt. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you” (Matthew 11:29). He is willing, and even wants, to lighten the burden of your heavy heart. Then, in turn, He will use your sensitive heart to be a source of strength to help others. In time, you can be God’s instrument of compassion to come alongside and lighten the hearts of those who are lonely. What I’ve personally learned is this: When my heart has been pressed down with pain, that is when my relationship with the Lord has grown deeper ... deeper ... deeper. In times of loneliness and sorrow, take this verse to heart ... “I cry to you, O L ORD ; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.’” (Psalm 142:5) Yours in the Lord’s hope, Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely LONELINESS How to Be Alone but Not Lonely JUNE HUNT This handy eBook: Gives practical advice and Biblical wisdom from June Hunt, a biblical counselor whose award-winning radio program Hope For The Heart is heard on more than 900 radio outlets around the world. For more than 25 years, she has counseled people, offering them hope for today’s problems. Defines what it means to be alone, explains chronic loneliness, and gives you insight for discerning whether you are suffering because of your loneliness. Shows how to enjoy healthy solitude that will bring you closer to God and how to break free from unhealthy loneliness by reaching out, building bridges in ministry, controlling your emotions, and accepting God’s comfort in loneliness. Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely The printed version of this eBook is the Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely book, ISBN-13: 9781596366909 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, posted on the Internet, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked “NKJV” are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely Copyright © 2013 Hope For The Heart All rights reserved. Aspire Press, a division of Rose Publishing, Inc. 4733 Torrance Blvd., #259 Torrance, California 90503 USA www.aspirepress.com Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely FREE PDF of This eBook! Download the FREE, color, printable PDF version of Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely . Using a computer (recommended), tablet, or eReader, go to: http://www.aspirepress.com/hfth-loneliness-ebook Enter this PASSWORD: BRIDGE Enter your email address and click YES (you can always unsubscribe anytime) Check your email for the link to the free PDF Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely is also available as a Printed Mini-Book FREE Inspirations: Join our family and sign up to get Aspire "Inspirations". Every so often, we will send you free sections of our booklets, mini-books, and pamphlets to inspire healing and wholeness. You'll be able to learn from trusted women who understand life's hardships, like Joni Eareckson Tada, June Hunt, and Michelle Borquez. Sign up now and receive 6 Inspirations right away! Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely CAUSES FOR LONELINESS He is the most respected man in all the land, and no one equals him in wealth and wisdom in the eyes of God. When as judge he took his seat in the city square he said, “the young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet. ... Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. ... They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain” (Job 29:8, 21,23). Therefore, there can be no more dramatic descent than what this man—so marveled by others—experiences as when he is found sitting in a pile of ashes, considered a social outcast, and even worse, a sinner. Once revered, Job is now reviled. Satan has been at work, allowed by God to pummel Job with painful trials and afflictions, including oozing sores from head to toe. All of this occurs not because Job is a “bad man,” but because he is blameless before God and his faith is in the spotlight in a supernatural showdown between God and Satan. Will Job curse God once His hedge of protection is removed? That is the piercing proposition Satan puts before God! And it is the question asked about you when loneliness invades your life, knocking you to your knees. Loneliness. Even the word sounds painful, bringing up unhappy memories from the past. Were you the one teased about your looks in childhood or the shy, quiet one everyone overlooked? Maybe your best friend moved to a different city or your dad moved out of the house when you were young. Everyone struggles with feelings of loneliness, for no one escapes separation, loss, grief, isolation, and the human need for relationships. You were created to live in partnership with others and with God. “The story of Adam and Eve indicates they were partners in relationship to each other, to creation, and to their Creator. ... In life and in death, we long for human community.” 25 As Paul wrote ... “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.” (Romans 14:7) WHAT ARE Situational Causes of Loneliness? Job seemingly has lost it all—his property and livestock, children, health, and friends, except for a trio who further traumatize poor Job with misguided and even malicious counsel. Job languishes in loneliness, longing for the relationships that once so richly blessed his life. “He has alienated my brothers from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My kinsmen have gone away; my friends have forgotten me. My guests and my maidservants count me a stranger; they look upon me as an alien. ... I am loathsome to my own brothers” (Job 19:13–15, 17). “All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me.” (Job 19:19) The one constant in life is change. We all know this to be true. And yet when change happens to us—especially without warning—we often have difficulty adapting. When your world changes and you are no longer able to predict what will happen next, you can lose confidence and feel uncertain, which often leads to fear. This is the perfect “emotional climate” for loneliness to take root. Loneliness is an emotion that can strike anyone, young or old, outgoing or introverted, confident or uncertain. Because you have been created to have a relationship with God and with others, you become especially vulnerable to loneliness when you experience rejection or another significant loss. No one escapes feelings of loneliness. It may help you to remember that God allows these feelings to enter our lives so that we may turn our hearts toward Him for comfort and assurance and toward others who are also lonely. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5) Feelings of loneliness are often associated with: Circumstances Singleness, divorce, death of a loved one, empty nest, loss of a job or home, demotion at work, major move Holidays Unfulfilled expectations, separation from family or friends, loss of traditional celebrations, memories of the past, lack of plans Affliction Physical disability, mental or emotional disability, chronic or terminal illness, aging, abuse Naivety Taking on responsibilities previously performed by another person, lack of experience in new areas of decision making, disloyal family members Goals New career or career change, retirement, job advancement, pursuit of higher education Estrangement Absence of intimacy, rejection by others, adulterous spouse, removal from customary environment, marital separation, living or working in new surroundings, rebellious adult children, conflict with friends or fellow employees When you turn to God in times of loneliness, taking comfort from His steadfast presence and abiding love, your life can be doubly blessed. You can experience God’s peace yourself, which empowers you to reach out to other hurting hearts. In this way, you become a living expression of God’s concern for all who experience trouble of any sort. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4) Major Life Changes Q UESTION: “When is loneliness most likely to occur?” A NSWER: Loneliness is felt most often when a major change in life occurs. Most of us struggle with the realities of change even when the change is ultimately for the best. Most of us resist losing both the comforting support of loved ones and the security of the old and familiar. Grief surrounding a significant loss is fertile ground for loneliness to take root and grow. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1) WHAT ARE Spiritual Causes of Loneliness? Fully aware of God’s sovereignty in his suffering, Job proclaims, “the hand of God has struck me” (Job 19:21). And yet oblivious to the fiery test of faith he is undergoing, Job believes he is being dealt with unjustly and vows he will maintain his integrity to the very end. Job accuses God of stripping him of his honor, blocking his way, and shrouding his paths in darkness. “He tears me down on every side till I am gone; he uproots my hope like a tree” (Job 19:10). And to one of his cantankerous counselors who ignorantly accuses Job of sinning and calls for his repentance, Job proclaims, “ then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me ” (Job 19:6). When bad things happen to you and when it seems as if your whole world has changed overnight, you feel overwhelmed and “disconnected.” Nothing makes sense, and in your frustration and pain, you may blame God or feel unworthy of His love. You may ask yourself, If God loves me, why would He allow me to suffer? Times like these test your faith greatly as you are called to keep on believing in a loving, wise God, who understands your suffering and carries you through dark times. The truth is, it is not for you to figure out why you, or anyone, must endure suffering. That knowledge is God’s alone. In the meantime, take hope from His own promise. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the L ORD , ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:11) Couples often feel spiritually estranged from one another when having marital problems. It is difficult to pray with your mate and experience spiritual oneness if there is discord between you. Prayer can be the one thing that can replace: 26 Misunderstanding with clarity Defensiveness with security Blaming with acceptance Self-interest with mutual interest Power struggles with partnership Isolation with intimacy Anger with patience Dissention with peace “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” (Colossians 4:2) Estranged from God Q UESTION: “Why does God seem so distant when I’m lonely?” A NSWER: It is natural to feel deep loneliness when you experience a difficult change or painful loss in your life. But if you indulge in self-pity and become angry at God for your circumstances, you will begin to feel estranged from Him and will fail to receive His loving comfort. You will also set yourself up to SIN by ... S ELF-PITY Failure to accept responsibility for staying in the rut of your own negative thinking I NDEPENDENCE Seeking to escape the pain of loneliness in your own way instead of seeking God N EGLECT Failure to cultivate your relationship with God and others “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” (James 4:8) WHAT LEADS to Loneliness in Both Men and Women? All people feel lonely at times, but the differences between men and women cause us to experience loneliness in different ways and for different reasons. Unmarried individuals and married couples whose relationships are crippled by loneliness are caught in the current cultural whirlwind of changing roles and misplaced expectations. Relationship rules have changed. Men and women are floundering with no solid, biblical foundation on which to build a stable, secure relationship. They’re unable to build a bridge to one another that can withstand the pressures of a changing society. What worked for our parents and grandparents does not easily work for couples in today’s culture. Many societal supports necessary for forming close family relationships, for building strong emotional bridges, have been discarded. Couples are finding it next to impossible to build something on nothing. Those who try often end up emotionally battered and bruised. Having an understanding of the components leading to loneliness within these relationships can be helpful in trying to follow God’s blueprint for building emotional bridges between marriage partners. In Genesis we learn that ... “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:23–24) When God’s blueprint is not followed ... A woman typically ... 27 Marries or lives with a boyfriend during her early to mid-twenties and begins feeling lonely in her late twenties Becomes frustrated and agitated with her mate in her early to mid-thirties and is depressed in her forties Considers her mate unable or unwilling to give her emotional support Feels left out of her mate’s life and isolated from him even when in the same room together Blames her mate for her loneliness Seeks counseling for depression and/or anxiety Feels isolated and somewhat estranged from other people, even close friends Believes her loneliness will end if her mate was out of her life Fantasizes about her mate dying and/or leaving her Thinks no one really knows or understands her Struggles with emotional exhaustion Seeks to get her emotional relationship needs met through her children or friends “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” (Proverbs 14:1) A man typically ... 28 Has less relational skills than his wife or live-in girlfriend Expresses emotions, empathy, and compassion far less than his female counterpart Develops few close friendships and feels no real need for them Competes excessively with other men to easily form close emotional relationships with them Experiences more isolation but less loneliness than his mate Has an aversion to displaying emotions because of societal taboos Lacks deep relationships due to his reluctance to express his feelings Resists the idea of fellowshipping with other men just for the sake of enjoying one another’s company Gets together with friends for fun and games, but not for in-depth sharing Has no male role model to show him how to drop his “macho mask” and get in touch with his feelings Strives for self-sufficiency and seeks to solve problems on his own without being a burden to others Prioritizes professional success (from which he derives his identity) over relational success “A kind man benefits himself, but a cruel man brings trouble on himself.” (Proverbs 11:17) Lonely Couples Q UESTION: “Why are couples becoming increasingly lonely?” A NSWER: Living with someone—married or not—does not insure emotional intimacy or security in the relationship. Many couples are not emotionally connected because they do not share their dreams or desires, their trials or temptations, their hurts or hopes. They fail to listen to one another and merely share the roof over their heads. Therefore, many couples experience “together loneliness”—being physically together but emotionally estranged and isolated, not feeling understood or appreciated. Instead of feeling wanted inside the warm security of home life, they feel an unwelcome coldness or an apathetic indifference inside their sterile, stymied existence. “I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof.” (Psalm 102:7) WHY DO People Seem to Be Experiencing More and More Loneliness? There are several reasons loneliness is on the increase. 29 People are becoming more urban and less rural. The closer people live to one another, the more they tend to emotionally isolate from one another. The further people live from one another, the more they tend to emotionally become closer. Rural communities have a much greater sense of community than urban communities. People are much more transient than in years past. Those who move on a regular basis are reluctant to “put down roots” anywhere. People who move often “know” more people but don’t know how to “get to know” people in an intimate way. Frequent movers isolate from others, feeling it is emotionally too painful to get close to people and then have to move away from them. People place a high value on mobility , privacy, and convenience. Many people spend their spare time traveling rather than staying home and spending time with their neighbors and friends. The desire for privacy drives many people to fence themselves in and others out. Since establishing relationships takes time and energy—which is often inconvenient—many decide it is not worth the trouble. People are no longer maintaining intact families. The increased divorce rate fragments families and damages or destroys primary relationships. Separation of elderly family members from younger members leads to isolation and a crisis in relationship between generations. Parents having different work schedules become estranged from one another and sometimes from their children. People are becoming less and less involved in neighborhood churches. Many churchgoers see and interact with each other only for a limited amount of time when attending weekly church services. Church “socials” in urban areas are often centered around eating and making light conversation rather than on meeting one another’s emotional needs. Lack of Christian community leads many members to establish superficial relationships rather than deep, Christ-centered friendships. “I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother’s sons.” (Psalm 69:8) WHAT IS the Root Cause of Loneliness? The suffering servant laments, longing for days past “when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil” (Job 29:6). Prosperity, prestige, peace, no longer flow into Job’s life. But he misses something else: the major lesson being reinforced through his trials—the privilege of fellowship with the Lord God Almighty. Wrongly believing that God has abandoned him, Job reminisces about when “God’s intimate friendship blessed my house” (Job 29:4), and it turns out that the traumatic testing and the seeming absence of God has taken a toll. Job indeed may be blameless, exhibiting a life characterized by obedience, but he certainly isn’t sinless. Pride and rebellion surface as Job’s vehemence in defending his integrity soon malign and misrepresent God, prompting a sharp rebuke from God Himself. “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him! ... Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?” (Job 40:2, 8) Job’s story ends with the man of God humbled, repentant, and doubly restored of all he had lost. Job never curses God, yet divine correction still needs to be dispensed. And with that comes a renewed understanding of the importance of submitting to the sovereignty of God, as well as a greater awareness that God’s faithful presence and fellowship are Job’s greatest blessings of all, even when he doesn’t understand or like what’s going on in his life. Your longing to belong is natural because God has placed within each of us a basic need for relationship with Him and with others. Don’t seek to dull the pain of loneliness by finding substitutes to fill the void. Seeking comfort in food, shopping, alcohol, illegal drugs, or sexual encounters may offer fleeting pleasure, but these will cause you emotional or physical harm in the long run. Instead of focusing on your personal need, refocus on your relationship with Christ, leaning on His understanding and drawing from His strength. “I have set the L ORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:8) W RONG B ELIEF: “I must have the love and acceptance of others to feel significant and to fulfill my need to belong.” “You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape.” (Psalm 88:8) R IGHT B ELIEF: “I want to have meaningful relationships with others, but I must first cultivate real intimacy with the Lord, who is always with me and will never leave me. Only out of a secure relationship with Him can I courageously move toward others in love regardless of their responses toward me.” “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:7–10) God’s Plan of Salvation for You Four Points of God’s Plan #1 God’s Purpose for You is Salvation. What was God’s motivation in sending Christ to earth? To express His love for you by saving you! The Bible says ... “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16–17) What was Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth? To forgive your sins, to empower you to have victory over sin, and to enable you to live a fulfilled life! Jesus said ... “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10 NKJV) #2 Your Problem is Sin. What exactly is sin? Sin is living independently of God’s standard—knowing what is right, but choosing what is wrong. The Bible says ... “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” (James 4:17) What is the major consequence of sin? Spiritual “death,” eternal separation from God. Scripture states ... “Your iniquities [sins] have separated you from your God. ... The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Isaiah 59:2; Romans 6:23) #3 God’s Provision for You is the Savior. Can anything remove the penalty for sin? Yes! Jesus died on the cross to personally pay the penalty for your sins. The Bible says ... “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) What is the solution to being separated from God? Believe in (entrust your life to) Jesus Christ as the only way to God the Father. Jesus says ... “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ... Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (John 14:6; Acts 16:31) #4 Your Part is Surrender. Give Christ control of your life, entrusting yourself to Him. “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Matthew 16:24–26) Place your faith in (rely on) Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and reject your “good works” as a means of earning God’s approval. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9) The moment you choose to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior—entrusting your life to Him—He comes to live inside you. Then He gives you His power to live the fulfilled life God has planned for you. If you want to be fully forgiven by God and become the person God created you to be, you can tell Him in a simple, heartfelt prayer like this: PRAYER OF SALVATION God, I want a real relationship with You. I admit that many times I’ve failed to go Your way and instead chosen to go my own way. Please forgive me for my sins. Jesus, thank You for dying on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins and for rising from the dead to provide new life. Come into my life to be my Lord and my Savior. Place Your hope in my heart and teach me to put my confidence in You. Make me the person You created me to be. In Your holy name I pray. Amen. What Can You Expect Now? If you sincerely prayed this prayer, look what God says! “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) If you sincerely prayed this prayer, look what God says about you! “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17–18) Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely NOTES John Haggai, How to Win Over Loneliness (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1988), 20. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary , s.v. “Lonely,” http://www.m-w.com; Don Baker, Lord, I’ve Got a Problem (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1988), 13. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary , s.v. “Lonely.” Wilhelm Gesenius and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc, 2003), 345. James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) , electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), #3670. Tim Clinton and Ron Hawkins, The Quick Reference Guide to Biblical Counseling (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 151. Clinton and Hawkins, The Quick Reference Guide to Biblical Counseling , 151. Clinton and Hawkins, The Quick Reference Guide to Biblical Counseling , 151. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary , s.v. “Alone.” Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) , electronic ed., #3668. Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) , electronic ed., #963. Warren W. Weirsbe, Lonely People: Biblical Lessons on Understanding and Overcoming Loneliness (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 11–12. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary , s.v. “Solitude.” Tom Varney, Loneliness , ( Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1992), 16. Varney, Loneliness , 16. Varney, Loneliness , 16. Paul Tillich as quoted in Mike Nappa, The Courage to Be Christian: Entering a Life of Spiritual Passion (West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing, 2001), 137. J. Oswald Sanders, Facing Loneliness: The Starting Point of a New Journey (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1990), 23–24. Sanders, Facing Loneliness , 24. For this section see Sanders, Facing Loneliness , 23–25. Wiersbe, Lonely People , 11. Wiersbe, Lonely People , 11. See Wiersbe, Lonely People , 11. For this section see Haggai, How to Win Over Loneliness , 35. Stephen S. Ivy, The Promise and Pain of Loneliness (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1989), 19. Gary R Collins, Ph.D., Christian Counseling—A Comprehensive Guide, Dallas: Word Publishing, 1988, pp 94–98 Kerby Anderson, “Loneliness,” Leadership U. (Plano, TX: Faculty Commons, 1993), http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/lonely.html. Kerby Anderson, “Loneliness,” Leadership U. Kerby Anderson, “Loneliness,” Leadership U. Tim Clinton and Ron Hawkins, The Quick Reference Guide to Biblical Counseling , 151–152, 158. Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., Understanding People: Deep Longings for Relationship , Ministry Resources Library (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 15–16; Robert S. McGee, The Search for Significance , 2nd ed. (Houston, TX: Rapha, 1990), 27–30. Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely CONTENTS Summary Letter from June Hunt Introduction Definitions What Is Loneliness? What Is Chronic Loneliness? What Does It Mean to Be Alone? How Does Being Alone and Being Lonely Differ? Characteristics of Lonely People What Is the Language of Loneliness? What Are Psychological Symptoms of Loneliness? What Are the Physical Symptoms of Loneliness? Causes for Loneliness What Are Situational Causes of Loneliness? What Are Spiritual Causes of Loneliness? What Leads to Loneliness in Both Men and Women? Why Do People Seem to Be Experiencing More and More Loneliness? What Is the Root Cause of Loneliness? Steps to Solution How to Evaluate Your Loneliness How to Take Control of Your Feelings How to Build a Bridge to God How to Build a Bridge to Others How to Build a Bridge to Ministry How to Overcome Loneliness How to Replace Loneliness by Reaching Out How to Experience Comfort in Loneliness Scriptures to Memorize Notes Selected Bibliography Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely June Hunt’s HOPE FOR THE HEART booklets are biblically-based, and full of practical advice that is relevant, spiritually-fulfilling and wholesome. Each topic presents scriptural truths and examples of real-life situations to help readers relate and integrate June’s counseling guidance into their own lives. Practical for individuals from all walks of life, this new booklet series invites readers into invaluable restoration, emotional health, and spiritual freedom. HOPE FOR THE HEART TITLES Adultery (ISBN 9781596366848) Alcohol and Drug Abuse (ISBN 9781596366596) Anger (ISBN 9781596366411) Codependency (ISBN 9781596366510) Conflict Resolution (ISBN 9781596366473) Confrontation (ISBN 9781596366886) Considering Marriage (ISBN 9781596366763) Decision Making (ISBN 9781596366541) Depression (ISBN 9781596366497) Domestic Violence (ISBN 9781596366824) Fear (ISBN 9781596366701) Forgiveness (ISBN 9781596366435) Gambling (ISBN 9781596366862) Grief (ISBN 9781596366572) Guilt (ISBN 9781596366961) Hope (ISBN 9781596366558) Loneliness (ISBN 9781596366909) Manipulation (ISBN 9781596366749) Parenting (ISBN 9781596366725) Rejection (ISBN 9781596366787) Self-Worth (ISBN 9781596366695) Sexual Integrity (ISBN 9781596366947) Success Through Failure (ISBN 9781596366923) Suicide Prevention (ISBN 9781596366800) Verbal & Emotional Abuse (ISBN 9781596366459) Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely LONELINESS How to Be Alone but Not Lonely Have you ever wondered: When is the first time God says, “It is not good? ” Is it when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit? Is it when they hide from God? Is it when they refuse to take responsibility for their disobedience? Actually, prior to all these events, God states in no uncertain terms: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) God Himself speaks these words after creating the first human being—the crowning glory of His creation, made in God’s image. Adam is surrounded by indescribable beauty in the Garden of Eden with its unlimited fruit, lush foliage, and a wide array of wildlife. Yet, there is something missing—rather, someone . God causes a deep sleep to come over Adam and removes one of his ribs to form a woman. Then God presents her to Adam, and he is no longer alone . If you are cut off from relationships, living in isolation, coping alone day by day, God considers this “not good.” While the Lord doesn’t lead everyone to marry, He does call everyone to be involved with people. People, not just charming pets, not just prized possessions, but people . You are called to show interest in people, to express care to people, to sacrificially love people. Remember, Adam was surrounded by animals and objects of beauty in the Garden, yet God considered him “alone.” And that is why ... “The L ORD God said ... ‘I will make a helper suitable for him.’” (Genesis 2:18) Loneliness: How to Be Alone but Not Lonely STEPS TO SOLUTION She is a widow who refuses to languish in loneliness. Ruth’s remedy isn’t hastily remarrying or surrounding herself with as many people as possible. It’s in reaching out and building a bridge—to her embittered and widowed mother-in-law—that Ruth finds purpose, fulfillment, companionship, and ultimately reward . Naomi loses her husband and two sons while living in the land of Moab, escaping a lengthy famine in Judah. She urges her two daughters-in-law to return to their homes because, now that food is plentiful, Naomi has decided to go back to her homeland. Both Ruth and Orpah are reluctant to part from Naomi. Love and loss undeniably link the three women together, but the cord of compassion can’t— won’t —be cut by Ruth. Feeling stuck in a state of loneliness is like living without eyes and ears. You are unable to see the loving potential in those around you—those who may be “suitable helpers” and those who may also be searching for a friend. Likewise, you are deaf to the messages of hope and encouragement surrounding you—in your place of worship, in the Bible, and on the lips of friends and loved ones. Through placing your trust in God, you have the power of God available to you to fully see and hear, to move past your barriers of fear and doubt, and to build a bridge of connection to your brothers and sisters in Christ. “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3) When you feel as if the entire world has abandoned you, as if no one understands your pain and sorrow, the Bible promises that the Lord is with you and He will never leave you. KEY VERSE TO MEMORIZE “The L ORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” (Deuteronomy 31:8) Key Passage to Read Psalm 63:1–8 In your loneliness and despair, have you distanced yourself from the Lord? It is never too late to draw near to Him again. You are His precious child. And when you do return to Him, you will be welcomed with open arms. This Scripture reflects the heartfelt joy of the psalmist when returning home to the shelter of God’s unconditional love and acceptance. “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” (Psalm 63:1–8) In these eight verses, David declares ... His relationship with God (v. 1) His pursuit of God (v. 1) His need of God (v. 1) His past experience of God (v. 2) His evaluation of God’s love (v. 2) His response to God’s love (vv. 3–6) His reliance on God (v. 7) His response to God’s help (vv. 7–8) His acknowledgment of God’s support (v. 8) HOW TO Evaluate Your Loneliness Orpah ultimately returns to “her people and her gods” (Ruth 1:15), but Ruth delivers perhaps the most beautiful discourse on commitment in all of Scripture and doggedly determines that Naomi’s God will be her God as well. “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17) And so Ruth begins to serve, going into fields and gleaning behind harvesters, picking up leftover grain to provide for Naomi. By the providence of God, Ruth winds up gleaning in a field owned by a man named Boaz, who is a close relative of Naomi. He is a gracious, well-respected man who protects and abundantly provides for Ruth. Boaz will become an even greater blessing to both women, as God’s perfect provision for their loneliness and need. Even as you learn to walk with the Lord as your constant companion, there will be times of loneliness. The following questions and answers may help you when you are lonely. As you seek to know what your loneliness looks like, answer the following questions. 30 Do you struggle with feelings of loneliness? ___________ When do you feel the loneliest? ___________ What are your thoughts when you feel lonely? ___________ When was the first time you remember feeling lonely? ___________ Do you blame yourself for your loneliness? ___________ Do you blame others for your loneliness? ___________ Have you talked to God about your loneliness? ___________ Have you talked with a friend about your loneliness? ___________ Do you think no one understands your feelings of loneliness? ___________ What have you done in the past to alleviate your loneliness? ___________ Could you try something similar to change your present loneliness? ___________ Does your loneliness ever go away completely? ___________ What does a typical day look like for you? ___________ What are your outside activities? ___________ What are your interests and hobbies? ___________ “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” (Psalm 51:6) HOW TO Take Control of Your Feelings Learning to take charge of your thinking is critically important for one simple reason: Your thoughts exert a powerful influence on your emotions, and together, your thoughts and feelings direct your actions. When the language center of your brain is focused on truthful statements, this positive focus can override your painful negative feelings. In this way, your thoughts determine your emotions. Think of your thoughts as a symphony conductor and your emotions as an orchestra. As such, your thoughts produce and “conduct” your feelings. When you are feeling lonely and sad, evaluate your thoughts , and you will find that they correspond to your emotions. When you change your thoughts, you may find your feelings lining up with what you are thinking. Therefore, the next time you are in the throes of loneliness—with your emotions spiraling downward—empower the language center of your brain by thinking and saying positive comments, and you will diminish the power of your negative feelings! The Word of God is not silent on the importance of thinking. The apostle Paul said .... “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8) To equip you to control your thoughts ... A NALYZE your thoughts when you feel lonely. Realize negative situations contribute to lonely feelings. Ask yourself, “What am I thinking that is making me feel so lonely?” Remember your emotions react before the problem-solving center of your brain can accurately assess a negative situation. Say to yourself, “I need to breathe deeply, pray for wisdom, and give myself time to analyze what is going on inside of me.” Use words to counter your feelings in order to lessen the strength of your painful emotions and take charge of them. Say to yourself, “These cruel words only reflect a wounded heart.” “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12) U SE the language center of your brain to evaluate your emotions. Ask yourself: “Why am I feeling this way?” “What lie(s) am I believing about myself?” “What wrong thoughts am I believing about others?” Evaluate the outcome of your painful situation. “Is it ‘the end of the world’?” (No!) “What is the worst thing that could happen?” “Is God not powerful enough to get me through this?” Identify your losses of love, significance, and/or security (your three basic, God-given inner needs). 31 “Is my need for love not being met?” “Is my need for significance unmet?” “Is my need for security going unmet?” “ ... take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5) E NGAGE the problem-solving portion of your brain to resolve your feelings of loneliness. Look for erroneous thinking, such as overestimating the severity of the present situation. Counter negative thoughts with positive ones. Repeat: “I am not alone.” “I can handle anything with God’s help.” Curtail catastrophic thinking by emotionally detaching from the situation enough to make a truly objective appraisal of the real impact it is having on you and on your life. “What exactly is happening?” “What positive outcome could occur from this situation?” “How might God use this for good in my life?” Determine to practice positive thinking to increase the odds of having a positive outcome. Ask yourself: “What can I learn from this about myself? About God? About others?” “How can I glorify God in this situation?” “How can this situation help me grow in my dependence on the Lord?” “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) E XPOSE your automatic, negative thoughts that lead to excessive feelings of loneliness. If you feel undeserving of meaningful relationships, tell yourself, “I am loved by God, and He has created me for loving, meaningful relationships.” If you belittle yourself by referring to yourself as “stupid, a loser, flawed, or defective,” discard such degrading names and tell yourself truthfully, “I have received genuine compliments from others, and God has promised to be my sufficiency. I am a new creation in Christ and am being made perfect in Him.” If you overgeneralize, you rob yourself of hope, assuming you will “always” be alone or “never” be happy. Drop “always” and “never” from your vocabulary, and celebrate your successes. Tell yourself: “God is in me and is faithfully working to accomplish His purposes through me. My joy is complete in Him.” “I can have the loving relationship He designed for me.” “I can achieve His purpose.” If you live with a dialogue of demands—what you “should, must, have to, or ought to do”—begin thinking in terms of what you would “like, prefer, or wish for.” “I would appreciate being invited to the dinner, but if I’m not, it’s not the end of the world.” “I would prefer to be liked by him, but if I’m not, I will live. After all, God has promised to meet my needs.” “I wish I would be accepted into that organization, but if I’m not, God still has something for me. That is in my best interest.” “I would love to be recognized for my contribution to the team, but God recognizes my accomplishments and is pleased with them.” “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) D ISARM your thoughts that produce loneliness by asking yourself questions that produce valid, optimistic thoughts. If you isolate from others—thinking you will do something embarrassing—ask yourself: “How fatal is embarrassment?” “When was the last time I was embarrassed and what was the result?” “Since everyone feels embarrassed from time to time, does it mean they are stupid or just normal like me?” “Can’t God help me overcome any embarrassing situation I might encounter?” If you assume that others think negatively about you, ask yourself: “Have they done anything to confirm my suspicions?” “If I don’t think negatively about them, why would they think negatively about me? Could they be similarly concerned about what I think about them?” “Why would they be thinking about me in the first place?” “Isn’t God the one I should be concerned about pleasing rather than people?” If you delay starting a new activity because of a fear of failing, ask yourself: “Aren’t my chances of succeeding better if I remain positive in my attitude and just take one step at a time?” “Why am I giving in to fear by procrastinating?” “Can’t God and I successfully meet this challenge together?” If you think you are powerless and unable to cope with a negative situation and unpleasant outcome, ask yourself: “What solid resources do I have in the form of supportive people, finances, health, talents, and skills to help me out?” “What steps can I take to address the situation?” “Hasn’t God been faithful to help me through tough times in the past?” “Can’t I count on Him to be there for me now?” “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) By dealing with the mental aspects of loneliness—practicing the skill of controlling your thoughts —you are laying a foundation necessary for removing the power of loneliness from your life. The book of Lamentations emphasizes the impact of your thoughts, of what you say to yourself, and what you call to mind: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the L ORD’S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The L ORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’” (Lamentations 3:21–24) HOW TO Build a Bridge to God Isn’t it interesting that not until God and Adam had an established relationship did God create Eve to be Adam’s companion? In fact, there is no indication that Adam was even aware of his “aloneness” until he was naming the living creatures and realized there was no suitable mate for him (Genesis 2:19–22). The implication is that we are created first for a relationship with God and second for a relationship with one another. Your bridge to God must be strong and sturdy, like a cable-stayed bridge replete with steel. Large, upright, steel supports and strong steel cables guarantee this bridge to weather the strongest storms. Other bridges around you may falter and crumble, but this one promises to stand firm, to faithfully function when you need it the most. If you reverse the order and make relationships with others your primary focus and God your secondary focus, you will have misplaced priorities and collapsing bridges. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love others. Only as you find your security and stability in God will you be healthy enough to form secure and stable relationships with others. Your completeness must be found in Him. Otherwise, you will be looking for it in others but experiencing one frustrating relationship after another, looking to people for that which can be found only in God. Before seeking to build bridges to others through personal relationships or through ministry relationships, first build a bridge to God. Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37–39). Go to God’s Word. Read your Bible on a daily basis, following a specific reading plan (for example, read through the four Gospels to learn the life of Jesus, or read one chapter in Proverbs and five Psalms each day—completing both books in one month). Identify verses or passages that seem especially poignant to you. Begin to memorize meaningful Bible verses by writing them on index cards and reading them throughout the day. Listen to scripturally sound Bible teachers on Christian radio or television. Look for ways to apply Scripture to your everyday life. “Then they cried to the L ORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and h	89,274
Loneliness Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (John T. Cacioppo, William Patrick) (Z-Library).epub	Loneliness PART THREE finding meaning in connection I remember the year eye contact stopped. It was not some big demo graphic shift. People just seemed to give up on relating to each other. Now this town is one of the loneliest places on earth. People are vaguely paranoid, oversensitive and self-involved. Incomes are high, the cost of living is astronomical, but everybody is in debt, living in million-dollar homes and eating take-out pizza. And when the divorce comes, the guy moves out of the house to live on his boat. —Email from a man in California Loneliness notes CHAPTER ONE: Lonely in a Social World 1. E. Berscheid, "Interpersonal attraction," in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology (New York: Random House, 1985). 2. C. Rubenstein and P. Shaver, In search of intimacy (New York: Delacorte, 1982). D. E. Steffick, "Documentation on affective functioning measures in the Health and Retirement Study," Documentation Report no. DR-005 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Survey Research Center, 2000), retrieved February 7, 2006, from hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/docs/userg/dr-005.pdf. 3. J. S. House, K. R. Landis, and D. Umberson, "Social relationships and health," Science 241 (1988): 540–545. 4. Simply write a down a number between 1 and 4 beside each question in Figure 1 to indicate how often you feel that way. However, note that half the questions are worded in a way that probes what you feel is missing from your life, and the other half are worded in a way that probes what you feel is present. Because both kinds of questions are coming at the same kinds of feelings from opposite directions, we score half the questions with the higher numbers meaning "more often," and half the questions with the higher numbers meaning "less often." For the questions marked with asterisks, write down a number to note how you feel according to this ranking: 1 = Always 2= Sometimes 3 = Rarely 4 = Never For the questions without asterisks, write down a number to note how you feel according to this ranking: 1 = Never 2 = Rarely 3 = Sometimes 4 = Always Then add up the numbers to find your score. High loneliness is defined as scoring 44 or higher. Low loneliness is defined as scoring less than 28. A score of 33 to 39 represents the middle of the spectrum. 5. J. Bowlby, "Affectional bonds: Their nature and origin," in R. S. Weiss, ed., Loneliness: The experience of emotional and social isolation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973), 38–52. 6. P. L. Jackson, A. N. Meltzoff, and J. Decety, "How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy," NeuroImage 24 (2005): 771–779. 7. C. J. Norris, E. E. Chen, D. C. Zhu, S. L. Small, and J. T. Cacioppo, "The interaction of social and emotional processes in the brain," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16 (2004): 1818–29. 8. M. Gazzaniga, The cognitive neurosciences, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). 9. Bruskin Associates, "What are Americans afraid of?" Bruskin Report 53 (1973): 27. 10. K. D. Williams, Ostracism: The power of silence (New York: Guilford, 2001). 11. R. I. M. Dunbar and Suzanne Shultz, "Evolution and the social brain," Science 317 (September 7, 2007): 1344–47. 12. I. S. Bernstein, T. P. Gordon, and R. M. Rose, "The interaction of hormones, behavior, and social context in nonhuman primates," in B. B. Svare, ed., Hormones and aggressive behavior (New York: Plenum, 1983), 535–561. 13. Alexis M. Stranahan, David Khalil, and Elizabeth Gould, "Social isolation delays the positive effects of running on adult neurogenesis," Nature Neuroscience 9, no. 4 (April 2006). 14. R. S. Wilson, K. R. Krueger, S. E. Arnold, J. A. Schneider, J. F. Kelly, L. L. Barnes, Y. Tang, and D. A. Bennett, "Loneliness and risk of Alzheimer’s disease," Archives of General Psychiatry 64 (2007): 234–240. 15. S. W. Cole, L. C. Hawkley, J. M. Arevalo, C. Y. Sung, R. M. Rose, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes," Genome Biology 8 (2007): R189. 16. J. T. Cacioppo, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, M. K. McClintock, W. B. Malarkey, L. C. Hawkley, R. B. Kowalewski, A. Paulsen, J. A. Hobson, K. Hugdahl, D. Spiegel, and G. G. Berntson, "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes: The MacArthur social neuroscience studies," International Journal of Psychophysiology 35 (2000): 143–154. 17. G. R. Semin and J. T. Cacioppo, "Grounding social cognition: Synchronization, coordination, and co-regulation," in G. R. Semin and E. R. Smith, eds., Embodied grounding: Social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches (New York: Cambridge University Press, in press). CHAPTER TWO: Variation, Regulation, and an Elastic Leash 1. D. Weston, The political brain (New York: Public Affairs, 2006). 2. D. I. Boomsma, G. Willemsen, C. V. Dolan, L. C. Hawkley, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Genetic and environmental contributions to loneliness in adults: The Netherlands Twin Register Study," Behavior Genetics 35 (2005): 745–752. 3. J. T. Cacioppo, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, M. K. McClintock, W. B. Malarkey, L. C. Hawkley, R. B. Kowalewski, A. Paulsen, J. A. Hobson, K. Hugdahl, D. Spiegel, and G. G. Berntson, "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes: The MacArthur social neuroscience studies," International Journal of Psychophysiology 35 (2000): 143–154; J. T. Cacioppo and L. C. Hawkley, "Social isolation and health, with an emphasis on underlying mechanisms," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 46 (2003): S39-S52. L. C. Hawkley, R. A. Thisted, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Loneliness predicts reduced physical activity: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses," in a symposium entitled "Health behaviors: The relevance of social context and relationship features," Society for Personality and Social Psychology, New Orleans, LA, January 2005, I. Akerlind and J. O. Hornquist, "Loneliness and alcohol abuse: A review of evidence of an interplay," Social Science and Medicine 34 (1992): 405–414. 4. J. T. Cacioppo, L. C. Hawkley, G. G. Berntson, J. M. Ernst, A. C. Gibbs, R. Stickgold, and J. A. Hobson, "Lonely days invade the nights: Social modulation of sleep efficiency," Psychological Science 13 (2002): 384–387. 5. Cacioppo et al., "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes." L. C. Hawkley, C. M. Masi, J. D. Berry, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure," Psychology and Aging 21 (2006): 152–164. A. Steptoe, N. Owen, S. R. Kunz-Ebrecht, and L. Brydon, "Loneliness and neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and inflammatory stress responses in middle-aged men and women," Psychoneuroendocrinology 29 (2004): 593–611. 6. E. Pennisi, "Why do humans have so few genes?" Science 309 (2005): 80. 7. Internal Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, "Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome," Nature 431 (2004): 931–945. 8. P. T. Schoenemann, M. J. Sheehan, and D. Glotzer, "Prefrontal white matter volume is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates," Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005): 242–252. 9. G. Roth and U. Dicke, "Evolution of the brain and intelligence," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005): 250–257. CHAPTER THREE: Losing Control 1. J. T. Cacioppo, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, M. K. McClintock, W. B. Malarkey, L. C. Hawkley, R. B. Kowalewski, A. Paulsen, J. A. Hobson, K. Hugdahl, D. Spiegel, and G. G. Berntson, "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes: The MacArthur social neuroscience studies," International Journal of Psychophysiology 35 (2000): 143–154. 2. I. Akerlind and J. O. Hornquist, "Loneliness and alcohol abuse: A review of evidence of an interplay," Social Science and Medicine 34 (1992): 405–414. A. W. Stacy, M. D. Newcomb, and P. M. Bentler, "Expectancy in mediational models of cocaine abuse," Personality and Individual Differences 19 (1995): 655–667. D. Coric and B. I. Murstein, "Bulimia nervosa: Prevalence and psychological correlates in a college community," Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention 1 (1993): 39–51. S. K. Goldsmith, T. C. Pellmar, A. M. Kleinman, and W. E. Bunney, Reducing suicide: A national imperative (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002). 3. J. M. Harlow, "Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head," History of Psychiatry 4 (1993): 271–281. 4. A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994). 5. R. F. Baumeister, J. M. Twenge, and C. K. Nuss, "Effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes: Anticipated aloneness reduces intelligent thought," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, no. 4 (2002): 817–827. 6. W. K. Campbell, E. A. Krusemark, K. A. Dyckman, A. B. Brunell, J. E. McDowell, J. M. Twenge, and B. A. Clementz, "A magnetoencephalography investigation of neural correlates for social exclusion and self-control," Social Neuroscience 1 (2006): 124–134. 7. R. F. Baumeister, C. N. DeWall, N. J. Ciarocco, and J. M. Twenge, "Social exclusion impairs self-regulation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 (2005): 589–604. 8. R. S. Weiss, Loneliness: The experience of emotional and social isolation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973). 9. J. K. Maner, C. N. DeWall, R. F. Baumeister, and M. Schaller, "Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the ‘porcupine problem,’" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 42–55. 10. J. M. Twenge, R. F. Baumeister, D. M. Tice, and T. S. Stucke, "If you can’t join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 1058–69. K. Rotenberg, "Loneliness and interpersonal trust," Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 13 (1994): 152–173. 11. J. M. Twenge, R. F. Baumeister, C. N. DeWall, N. J. Ciarocco, and J. M. Bartels, "Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 56–66. J. M. Twenge, K. R. Catanese, and R. F. Baumeister, "Social exclusion causes self-defeating behavior," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 606–615. 12. L. C. Hawkley and J. T. Cacioppo, "Aging and loneliness: Downhill quickly?" Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007): 187–191. 13. Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, and Twenge, "Social exclusion impairs self-regulation." 14. Weiss, Loneliness. 15. Ibid. 16. S. T. Boysen, G. G. Berntson, M. B. Hanna, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Quantity-based choices: Interference and symbolic representations in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 22 (1996): 76–86. 17. J. Vitkus, and L. M. Horowitz, "Poor social performance of lonely people: Lacking a skill or adopting a role," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987): 1266–73. CHAPTER FOUR: Selfish Genes, Social Animals 1. M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and M. T. Brashears, "Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades," American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 353–375. 2. F. Hobbs and N. Stoops, Demographic trends in the 20th century, U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Reports, Series CENSR-4 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002). 3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Everyman ed. (1651; New York: Dutton, 1975), introduction by K. R. Minogue. 4. Ibid. 5. Charles Darwin, Autobiography (1887), in F. Darwin, ed., The life and letters of Charles Darwin (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004). 6. G. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 7. R. F. Baumeister and C. N. DeWall, "The inner dimensions of social exclusion: Intelligent thought and self-regulation among rejected persons," in K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, and W. von Hippel, eds., The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (New York: Psychology Press, 2005), 53–73. 8. The languages of the Kalahari rely on "click" sounds, as well as guttural sounds produced deep within the throat. Thus "!Kung" is pronounced "Gung," as if you were imitating water glugging through a drainpipe, but with a strong initial clicking sound on the hard "g." 9. Bruce Bowere, "Murder in good company," Science News, February 6, 1988. 10. M. Nowak, "Five rules for the evolution of cooperation," Science 314 (2006): 1560–63. 11. R. I. M. Dunbar and Suzanne Shultz, "Evolution and the social brain," Science 317 (September 7, 2007): 1344–47. 12. D. L. Cheney and R. M. Seyfarth, Baboon metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 13. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection. 14. R. L. Trivers, "Parental investment and sexual selection," in B. Campbell, ed., Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871–1971 (Chicago: Aldine, 1972), 136–179. 15. J. T. Cacioppo and L. C. Hawkley, "Loneliness," in M. R. Leary and R. H. Hoyle, eds., Handbook of individual differences in social behavior (New York: Guilford, in press); Dunbar and Shultz, "Evolution and the social brain." CHAPTER FIVE: The Universal and the Particular 1. C. Tucker-Ladd, Psychological self-help (1996), retrieved June 19, 2007, from www.psychologicalselfhelp.org. 2. Marja Jylha, "Old Age and loneliness: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses in the Tampere Longitudinal Study on Aging," Canadian Journal on Aging 23, no. 2 (2004): 157–158. 3. M. B. Brewer and W. Gardner, "Who is this ‘we’? Levels of collective identity and self representations," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71 (1996): 83–93. 4. Ibid. 5. L. C. Hawkley, M. W. Browne, and J. T. Cacioppo, "How can I connect with thee? Let me count the ways," Psychological Science 16 (2005): 798–804. 6. W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, and R. E. Smith, Introduction to personality: Toward an integration, 7th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2004). 7. Clinical depression is a complex diagnosis in which the individual must exhibit a variety of specific symptoms such as difficulty making decisions, difficulty sleeping, or loss of appetite. Depressed affect is a more intuitive, commonsense designation that includes simply feeling down, however briefly. 8. C. Segrin, "Interpersonal communication problems associated with depression and loneliness," in P. A. Andersen and L. K. Guerrero, eds., Handbook of communication and emotion: Research, theory, applications, and contexts (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998), 215–242. 9. L. S. Radloff, "The CES-D Scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population," Applied Psychological Measurement 1(1977): 385–401. 10. R. S. Weiss, ed., Loneliness: The experience of emotional and social isolation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973); J. T. Cacioppo, L. C. Hawkley, J. M. Ernst, M. Burleson, G. G. Berntson, B. Nouriani, and D. Spiegel, "Loneliness within a nomological net: An evolutionary perspective," Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006): 1054–85. 11. P. Watson and P. Andrews, "Toward a revised evolutionary adaptationist analysis of depression: The social navigation hypothesis," Journal of Affective Disorders 72 (2002): 1–14. 12. G. L. Engel, "The clinical application of the biopsychosocial model," American Journal of Psychiatry 137 (1980): 535–544. 13. J. S. Price, L. Sloman, R. Gardner, P. Gilbert, and P. Rhode, "The social competition hypothesis of depression," British Journal of Psychiatry 164 (1994): 309–315. 14. E. H. Hagan, "The function of postpartum depression," Evolution and Human Behavior 20 (1999): 325–359. 15. N. B. Allen and P. B. T. Badcock, "The social risk hypothesis of depressed mood: Evolutionary, psychosocial, and neurobiological perspectives," Psychological Bulletin 129 (2003): 887–913. 16. J. T. Cacioppo, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, M. K. McClintock, W. B. Malarkey, L. C. Hawkley, R. B. Kowalewski, A. Paulsen, J. A. Hobson, K. Hugdahl, D. Spiegel, and G. G. Berntson, "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes: The MacArthur Social Neuroscience Studies," International Journal of Psychophysiology 35 (2000): 143–154. 17. J. M. Ernst and J. T. Cacioppo, "Lonely hearts: Psychological perspectives on loneliness," Applied and Preventive Psychology 8 (1998): 1–22; M. R. Leary and R. F. Baumeister, "The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory," in M. P. Zanna, ed., Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. 32 (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000), 1–62; M. R. Leary, E. S. Tambor, S. K. Terdal, and D. L. Downs, "Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68 (1995): 518–530. 18. Cacioppo et al., "Loneliness within a nomological net." 19. S. M. Kosslyn, W. L. Thompson, M. F. Costantini-Ferrando, N. M. Alpert, and D. Spiegel, "Hypnotic visual illusion alters color processing in the brain," American Journal of Psychiatry 157 (2000): 1279–84. 20. J. T. Cacioppo, M. E. Hughes, L. J. Waite, L. C. Hawkley, and R. A. Thisted, "Loneliness as a specific risk factor for depressive symptoms: Cross sectional and longitudinal analyses," Psychology and Aging 21 (2006): 140–151. 21. Ibid. CHAPTER SIX: The Wear and Tear of Loneliness 1. R. Lewontin, The triple helix: Gene, organism, and environment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). J. Irving, The world according to Garp (1978; New York: Ballantine, 1990), 618. 2. T. C. Pellmar, E. N. Brandt, and M. A. Baird, "Health and behavior: The interplay of biological, behavioral, and social influences: Summary of an Institute of Medicine report," American Journal of Health Promotion 16, no. 4 (2001): 206–219. 3. L. F. Berkman and S. L. Syme, "Social networks, host resistance and mortality: A nine-year follow-up study of Alameda County residents," American Journal of Epidemiology 109, no. 2 (1979): 186–204. 4. J. S. House, K. R. Landis, and D. Umbertson, "Social relationships and health," Science 241 (1988): 540–545. 5. D. Russell, E. Cutrona, A. De La Mora, and R. B. Wallace, "Loneliness and nursing home admission among rural older adults," Psychology and Aging 12 (1997): 574–589. 6. L. Wheeler, H. Reis, and J. B. Nezlek, "Loneliness, social interaction, and sex roles," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45 (1983): 943–953. L. C. Hawkley, M. H. Burleson, G. G. Berntson, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Loneliness in everyday life: Cardiovascular activity, psychosocial context, and health behaviors," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 (2003): 105–120. 7. J. T. Cacioppo, L. C. Hawkley, G. G. Berntson, J. M. Ernst, A. C. Gibbs, R. Stickgold, and J. A. Hobson, "Lonely days invade the nights: Social modulation of sleep efficiency," Psychological Science 13 (2002): 384–387. J. T. Cacioppo, L. C. Hawkley, L. E. Crawford, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, R. B. Kowalewski, W. B. Malarkey, E. Van Cauter, and G. G. Berntson, "Loneliness and health: Potential mechanisms," Psychosomatic Medicine 64 (2002): 407–417. 8. P. A. Nakonezny, R. B. Kowalewski, J. M. Ernst, L. C. Hawkley, D. L. Lozano, D. A. Litvack, G. G. Berntson, J. J. Sollers III, P. Kizakevich, J. T. Cacioppo, and W. R. 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Giacomini, "Anger report predicts coronary artery vasomotor response to mental stress in atherosclerotic segments," American Journal of Cardiology 72(1993): 1361–65. 14. G. Ironson, C. B. Taylor, M. Boltwood, T. Bartzokis, C. Dennis, M. Chesney, S. Spitzer, and G. M. Segall, "Effects of anger on left ventricular ejection fraction in coronary artery disease," American Journal of Cardiology 70(1992): 281–285. 15. N. A. Christakis and J. H. Fowler, "The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years," New England Journal of Medicine 357, no. 4 ( July 26, 2007): 370–379. 16. N. E. Adler, M. A. Chesney, C. S. Folkman, R. L. Kahn, and S. L. Syme, "Socioeconomic status and health," American Psychologist 49, no. 1 (1994): 15–24. G. A. Kaplan and J. E. Keil, "Socioeconomic factors and cardiovascular disease: A review of the literature," Circulation 88 (1993): 141–142. 17. W. B. Cannon, "The role of emotions in disease," Annals of Internal Medicine 11 (1936): 1453–65. 18. G. G. Berntson and J. T. Cacioppo, "From homeostasis to allodynamic regulation," in J. T. Cacioppo, L. G. Tassinary, and G. G. Berntson, eds., Handbook of psychophysiology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 459–481. P. Sterling and J. Eyer, "Allostasis: A new paradigm to explain arousal pathology," in S. Fisher and J. Reason, eds., Handbook of life stress, cognition and health (New York: Wiley, 1988), 629–649. 19. T. E. Seeman, B. S. McEwen, J. W. Rowe, and B. H. Singer, "Allostatic load as a marker of cumulative biological risk: MacArthur studies of successful aging," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (1997): 4770–75. B. S. McEwen, "Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators," New England Journal of Medicine 338 (1998): 171–179. 20. J. T. Cacioppo, M. E. Hughes, L. J. Waite, L. C. Hawkley, and R. A. Thisted, "Loneliness as a specific risk factor for depressive symptoms: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses," Psychology and Aging 21 (2006): 140–151. Loneliness predicts hypertension and cardiovascular disease in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing; J. Smith, personal communication, October 2007. L. C. Hawkley, C. M. Masi, J. D. Berry, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure," Psychology and Aging 21 (2006): 152–164. 21. L. C. Hawkley and J. T. Cacioppo, "Aging and loneliness: Downhill quickly?" Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007): 187–191. 22. Ibid. 23. Hawkley, Burleson, Berntson, and Cacioppo, "Loneliness in everyday life." J. T. Cacioppo, J. M. Ernst, M. H. Burleson, M. K. McClintock, W. B. Malarkey, L. C. Hawkley, R. B. Kowalewski, A. Paulsen, J. A. Hobson, K. Hugdahl, D. Spiegel, and G. G. Berntson, "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes: The MacArthur social neuroscience studies," International Journal of Psychophysiology 35 (2000): 143–154. 24. Hawkley and Cacioppo, "Aging and loneliness: Downhill quickly?" 25. P. L. Schnall, P. A. Landsbergis, and D. Baker, "Job strain and cardiovascular disease," Annual Review of Public Health 15 (1994): 381–411. 26. Cacioppo et al., "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes." Hawkley et al., "Loneliness in everyday life." 27. Cacioppo et al., "Lonely traits and concomitant physiological processes." 28. Ibid. 29. J. T. Cacioppo and G. G. Berntson, "A bridge linking social psychology and the neurosciences," in Paul A. M. Van Lange, ed., Bridging social psychology: The benefits of transdisciplinary approaches (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006). 30. Hawkley et al., "Loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure." 31. R. Glaser, J. K. Kiecolt-Glaser, C. E. 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Social support for positive events," Journal of Person- ality and Social Psychology 91 (2006): 904–917. M. D. Johnson et al., "Problem-solving skills and affective expressions as predictors of change in marital satisfaction," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 73, no. 1 (2005): 15–27. 34. P. L. Jackson, A. N. Meltzoff, and J. Decety, "How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy," NeuroImage 24 (2005): 771–779. 35. P. L. Jackson and J. Decety, "Motor cognition: A new paradigm to study self-other interactions," Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14, no. 2 (2004): 259–263. 36. J. Decety and C. Lamm, "The biological bases of empathy," in G. G. Berntson and J. T. Cacioppo, eds., Handbook of neuroscience for the behavioral sciences (New York: John Wiley & Sons, in press). 37. D. Schiller, ed., The little Zen companion (New York: Workman, 1994). CHAPTER TEN: Conflicted by Nature 1. C. N. Macrae, J. Moran, T. Heatherton, J. Banfield, and W. Kelley, "Medial prefrontal activity predicts memory for self," Cerebral Cortex 14(2004): 647–654. K. N. Ochsner, K. Knierim, D. Ludlow, J. Hanelin, T. Ramachandran, and S. Mackey, "Reflecting upon feelings: An fMRI study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16, no. 10 (2004): 1746–72. 2. H. Shintel, J. T. Cacioppo, and H. Nusbaum, "Accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive? Individual differences in attentional bias to positive and negative information," presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Houston, TX, November 2006. 3. J. Kruger and T. Gilovich, "‘Naïve cynicism’ in everyday theories of responsibility assessment: On biased assumptions of bias," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76 (1999): 743–753. L. Ross, D. Greene, and P. 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Sedikides, "Behavioral and characterological attributional styles as predictors of depression and loneliness: Review, refinement, and test," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66 (1994): 549–558. 6. S. E. Taylor, J. S. Lerner, D. K. Sherman, R. M. Sage, and N. K. McDowell, "Portrait of the self-enhancer: Well-adjusted and well-liked or maladjusted and friendless?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84 (2003): 165–176. 7. L. C. Hawkley, C. M. Masi, J. D. Berry, and J. T. Cacioppo, "Loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure," Psychology and Aging 21 (2006): 152–164. 8. J. E. Nurmi and K. Salmela-Aro, "Social strategies and loneliness: A prospective study," Personality and Individual Differences 23, no. 2 (1997): 205–211. D. Damsteegt, "Loneliness, social provisions and attitude," College Student Journal 26, no. 1 (1992): 135–139. C. S. Crandall and C. 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Martin, "The effects of communication motives, interaction involvement, and loneliness on satisfaction," Small Group Research 26, no. 1 (1995): 118–137. 21. A. Burt and R. Trivers, Genes in conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). CHAPTER ELEVEN: Conflicts in Nature 1. R. L. Trivers, "Parent-offspring conflict," American Zoologist 14 (1974): 249–264, 261. 2. F. de Waal, Our inner ape (New York: Riverhead, 2006). 3. M. Doebeli, C. Hauert, and T. Killingback, "The evolutionary origin of cooperators and defectors," Science 306 (2004): 859–862. 4. O. Gurerk, B. Irlenbursch, and B. Rockenbach, "The competitive advantage of sanctioning institutions," Science 312 (April 7, 2006): 108–111. 5. Richard Dawkins, The selfish gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). 6. B. Sinervo, A. Chaine, J. Clobert, R. Calsbeek, L. Hazard, L. Lancaster, A. G. McAdam, S. Alonzo, G. Corrigan, and M. E. 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Trivers, "The evolution of reciprocal altruism," Quarterly Review of Biology 46, no. 1 (1971): 35–57, 49. 14. M. Wilson and M. Daly, "The age-crime relationship and the false dichotomy of biological versus sociological explanations," paper presented at a meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Los Angeles, 1990. CHAPTER TWELVE: Three Adaptations 1. K. E. Reed, "Early hominid evolution and ecological change through the African Plio-Pleistocene," Journal of Human Evolution 32 (1997): 289–322. S. Begley, "Beyond stones and bones," Newsweek, March 19, 2007, 52–58. 2. B. Heinrich, Racing the antelope: What animals can teach us about running and life (New York: Ecco, 2001). 3. I. Parker, "Swingers," New Yorker, July 30, 2007, 48–61. 4. M. A. Nowak, "Five rules for the evolution of cooperation," Science 314(2006): 1560–63. 5. J. Silk, "Who are the more helpful, humans or chimpanzees?" Science 311(2006): 1248–49. 6. Ibid. 7. E. 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Loneliness, Stress and Well-Being A Helpers Guide (G. A. Kupshik P. M. Murphy) (Z-Library).epub	Loneliness, Stress and Well-Being: A Helper's Guide Document Outline viii x 3 12 26 37 44 48 62 70 78 86 96 106 114 11 23 40 41 42 47 51 56 65 28 31 100 102 Book Cover Half-Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Part I: Theoretical Perspectives Part II: Practical Approaches Loneliness, Stress and Well-Being: A Helper's Guide Is interested in the environment; Likes simply being together without necessarily having to chat. Step 2 Choose items from the list that are mutually rewarding Step 3 Follow through Actively make time to engage in the above while together. Each of the above steps can be viewed as a goal to be attained, broken down into important subgoals, and then implemented within relevant relationships. Central to the process of deepening relationships is a gradual learning about the other, and allowing them slowly to learn about us. As we saw in Chapter 2, this process can be likened to penetrating slowly through the layers of an onion. First we learn about superficial aspects, then slightly deeper issues and so on. The depth of penetration or closeness depends on a range of factors. We prefer to keep some relationships superficial and so limit how deep we enter into each other’s lives. More importantly the level of penetration that we allow a person to achieve depends on how much we like them, how much they allow us to learn about them, and how much we trust them with our hopes, dreams, uncertainties, and anxieties. We feel wary about those who disclose too much about themselves or clumsily try to barge in on our personal lives. The key factor here is tentative caution both in striving to learn about others and in permitting them to learn about us. Loneliness, stress and well-being 80 It is difficult for a counsellor to know how healthy a client’s relationships are, or how well they are progressing, without resorting to ‘gut feelings’. This is because people vary so much in what they require from relationships. The following list can be a useful guide and can provide people with a more objective indicator of the strength and adequacy of their close relationships. Closeness is often a reflection of the extent to which: Praise and criticism can be expressed between members; each member’s wants and needs are recognised and met; pastimes and activities are enjoyed together; hopes and goals are linked together; support and nurturance is given without resentful feelings of obligation; friends, family, and acquaintances are known and shared. MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS In previous sections we have focused on the indicators and goals that clients need to aim for in building relationships. There comes a point where both parties become satisfied with the state of the relationship, where the level of ‘closeness’ is acceptable to both parties, and where the relationship begins to run on automatic pilot. We all have ideas about what we see as an ideal relationship, with the ideal person being highly supportive, friendly, nurturing, and stimulating. Most people do not really expect to meet such ideal companions, but some people make themselves lonely by believing that they cannot be happy without finding this ideal person. It is important for the counsellor to help the client to understand that difficulties, arguments, and conflicts, are a normal part of relationship development In fact, such conflicts should (to a degree) be viewed as opportunities to build and develop the relationship. Conflicts tend only to become damaging to the relationship when they are used to reciprocate hurt rather than to communicate effectively and to work through difficulties. Maintaining relationships involves knowing how to deal with difficulties as they arise. This involves recognising them early, understanding the phases of possible relationship breakdown, and having options to explore and remedy the difficulties together through effective communication and joint problem solving. A useful framework for exploring these issues was presented by Duck (1982). Recognising difficulties The first phase of a possible relationship breakdown involves a realisation by one member that the relationship is in difficulty. Often, the problem is not communicated to the partner at this stage, but may be shared with relatively anonymous others. Although useful, this can lead to a feeling that ‘everyone understands except my partner’, which can serve to maintain and exacerbate the client’s problem. The earlier both partners realise that there is a problem, and the sooner a decision is made to confront the difficulty, the more likely it is to be resolved. There is no chance of resolution if the problem is not communicated. Maintaining and deepening relationships 81 Often relationships can end before any open acknowledgement (between partners) that a problem exists. This can be because they feel that talking could be too painful, or that the problem is simply too difficult to resolve. Interventions at this phase rely on one partner making the difficulty overt. This is not simply the job of the partner who has identified the difficulty; both partners need to be able to recognise the early warning signs of trouble. These are many and varied and are best recognised through bouts of uncharacteristic behaviour which may include: undue tiredness; angry outbursts; reduced eye contact; prolonged silences. Confronting difficulties Having recognised that there are problems, it is important for members in the relationship to make a decision to do something about it. Success here requires that members learn the skills of recognising hurtful and inefficient communication, and learn how to communicate effectively, and solve problems as they arise. There are three factors to consider here. Increasing specificity in communication One of the main reasons why difficulties aren’t resolved is because they are often discussed in rather vague, global terms like: ‘You don’t care about me the way you used to.’ ‘You’ve changed.’ ‘I can’t seem to do anything right.’ ‘We fight all the time.’ ‘You don’t love me.’ These terms have an entirely subjective frame of reference. They label the problem in terms of feelings. This is often a necessary first step towards change, but to begin the process of change and improvement of the relationship, discussions about difficulties need to become behaviourally specific. This involves teaching the client to go through the following process. 1 Pinpoint what was felt at the time you are about to describe. 2 Specify how your partner’s behaviour was related to this feeling. 3 Specify the situations where the above occurs. Gottman et al. (1976) describe this process as the XYZ formula (I feel X when you do Y in situation Z, e.g. I feel upset (X), when you make fun of me (Y) in front of our friends Loneliness, stress and well-being 82 (Z)). This communicates the difficulty clearly, thus providing specific information about the problem to be worked on. Achieving accurate information exchange In addition to improving specificity, we need to make sure that clients receive and work on accurate information. This is best accomplished through teaching them paraphrasing skills, so that they can rephrase what has been said (with their partner) in a tentative fashion to check the accuracy. For instance, ‘It sounds like you’re saying…, have I got that right?’; similarly, ‘When you said …, was that what you meant?’. Identifying faulty aspects of communication As part of the process of learning to increase accuracy of communication, the client must learn to identify faulty aspects of communication. The following list highlights the type of conversation errors that lead to the feeling that ‘talking makes things worse’. The errors can be split into two distinct types. The first type of error involves verbal attacking. The impetus here is to ventilate ones own thoughts and feelings with little concern for resolving the situation. It occurs in several ways. 1 Self-summarising. Here, each member’s goal is to get their point across without attending to the concerns of the other. 2 Sidetracking. This involves continually defocusing from the issue at hand and bringing in other concerns without really trying to work on the issue at hand. This leads to a move away from the issue as well as adding more fire to the problem. Person A : Why are you so late? Person B : I’m sorry, I had so much work to do. Person A : Typical! Your father was just the same, never at home. Person B : That’s not fair, he never… Person A : Your life is just as chaotic as his was. Person B : How can you say that, when I have to organise everything for you? Person A : So what if you organise things for me occasionally, what else do you do around the house? The point here is that the original problem about arriving home late has become ‘sidetracked’ to issues about family, organisation, and domestic affairs. 3 Kitchen sinking : This error involves throwing in almost every difficulty that has ever evolved in the relationship in an attempt to win an argument. The underlying issue here seems to be ‘you’re at fault here just as you were at fault in situations a, b, c, etc.’ Person A : Are you going to be working again this weekend? Person B : Maybe, only Saturday. Person A : I don’t know what is wrong with you. I hardly get to see you. The week after we were married you started opting out. I’ve had to bring up the kids. You hardly know they exist. You couldn’t even make the school open evening last year. Maintaining and deepening relationships 83 Person B : The open day! Person A : The same reason you never have time for me either. Mother always said I was too good for you. She could see straight through you from the first day she met you…. Both partners feel unable to get their point across and feel hurt and not listened to. The difficulty becomes so vague that there is no starting point for dealing with it. Conversations end without resolutions, and issues that were only partly resolved are brought up again and used as further ammunition. The second type of error involves thoughts, beliefs, and actions, that can trigger verbal fencing. 1 Mind reading : People often believe that they know friends’ or partner’s thoughts or feelings about particular events, and that they can anticipate their behaviour in certain situations. This can lead to anticipating and reacting to issues before one has sufficient information, or to reacting to an imagined event that may never happen. When we behave like this, we are seldom dealing with the facts. 2 Third party involvement : There is often a need to bring in others to backup individual’s points of view. This needs to be strongly resisted as it simply adds to the problem. 3 Hidden agendas : Sometimes certain behaviours which are often quite innocent in themselves serve as a trigger for emotion and argument between partners. The behaviour often takes on an entirely different meaning for one of the people in the relationship. For example: Partner A (Stephen) does something to upset or annoy Partner B (Freda). Freda asks Stephen to stop the annoying behaviour. At this point, we have simply described the overt interaction (i.e. the behavioural situation). However, the difficulty with hidden agendas is that they revolve around or are linked to feelings which are often unknown to the first party, such as: Freda feels that if Stephen loved her, he would stop the annoying behaviour. If Stephen does not stop the ‘annoying’ behaviour Freda’s resulting distress could be out of proportion to the minor annoyance caused by his behaviour. In addition, Stephen is unlikely to understand why a simple behaviour is causing so much upset. What we are left with here is a behaviour which has taken on new meaning and importance for one member, but is still seen as a relatively meaningless behaviour by the other member of the dyad. Clearly, it is essential to ensure that the hidden agendas do not go unnoticed in counselling simply by attending to the problem behaviour. The counsellor must attend both to the explicit behaviour, and to any hidden agendas. Joint problem solving Mutual problem solving follows a negotiation framework and is a useful adjunct to developing communication skills. The techniques below are based on the strategies discussed in the previous chapters, but they have been adapted so as to be specific to dyads. Loneliness, stress and well-being 84 Step 1: Identifying and working towards a mutual understanding of the problem This requires the skills of active listening and specifying one problem at a time. The first negotiation involves identifying a mutually acceptable time. Attempting to discuss important issues while the partner is watching a favourite TV programme, or when they are about to leave for work, is unlikely to be fruitful. Partners need to find a setting that facilitates frank discussion of the issues at hand. Step 2: Working towards a compromised solution To become successful problem solvers clients need to learn to treat their partner’s feelings as if they were facts. These feelings may be surprising and highly incongruent with the way they themselves feel about the relationship. Nevertheless, they should not confront these feelings as false or silly. To do so will often lead to fruitless time arguing about whether or not the other’s feelings are correct. These may generate feelings that talking is pointless. Instead, it should be recommended to clients that they treat their partner’s feelings as if they were correct and move toward discussing the actions that lead to the feelings. Step 3: Cost benefit analyses of solutions The final step involves brainstorming for a wide range of potential solutions. Couples should not judge any of the solutions at this stage but simply focus on listing several possibilities. Solutions to any problem between two people will involve negotiation and can be categorised in terms of their outcomes. 1 Win-Lose. This outcome results in one person taking home all the prizes. They dominate the other person and focus only on winning. 2 Lose-Lose. This results from one person not being able to stand the thought of the other winning so they make sure that the other person loses even if this means sabotaging their own successful outcome. 3 Win-Win. This requires the willingness of both parties to compromise in order that each can win something. They cannot get to ‘win-win’ without striving to understand each others wants/needs, clarifying and verbalising their own, and acknowledging the need to compromise. If the goal of any argument is winning unconditionally, the relationship loses. Participants need to work together to estimate how much effort needs to be expended in implementing the various solutions and which solution will have the largest impact on the relationship. It will also require an input of effort that both parties see as being reasonable. It is often useful as a first step to try to work on a solution that has the most chance of being successful with minimal effort. This will provide motivation both to continue with the approach, and to employ it for forthcoming problems. Any solution will need effort, testing, refinement, and possibly renegotiation. The solution will need to be given a fair chance, and both client and counsellor need to be aware that solutions may require several attempts before working correctly. Maintaining and deepening relationships 85 SUMMARY 1 Starting social relationships involves being aware of, and then communicating those behaviours which let others see us in a positive light. This will involve teaching clients strategies to gather information and focus conversations on issues of mutual interest. 2 Deepening relationships involves slowly learning about others and disclosing in turn aspects about ourselves, beginning with rather superficial aspects and progressing tentatively to deeper, more personal issues. 3 Maintaining relationships involve recognising difficulties early and dealing with problems as they arise. 4 Clients should be taught the skill of behavioural specificity (remember the XYZ formula) and learn to watch for: hidden agendas; mind reading; kitchen sinking; sidetracking; summarising self. 5 Difficulties in a relationship should be viewed simply as a cue to solve inter-personal problems. Solving problems involves working towards a compromise solution. If either party tries to win unconditionally, the relationship loses. Chapter 10 Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness Often the way clients think about events can promote loneliness. This chapter examines these thoughts in two parts. The first part focuses on thinking styles that can serve to trigger and maintain loneliness; the second on the thoughts that prevent clients from confronting their loneliness. 1 MANAGING THE THOUGHTS THAT CAUSE/MAINTAIN LONELINESS Let us review briefly how people come to label themselves as lonely. The essence of this judgement seems to involve observing others, making assumptions about their social environment, and from this, setting up a standard or social norm which we then use to compare their social environments with our own. On the basis of these norms we make judgements about whether or not we are lonely. This is partly the reason why more people report feeling lonely over Christmas and New Year. If, for instance, they assume that most other people are out enjoying themselves with friends whilst they’re in watching television, this comparison (based only on assumptions and assumed social norms) leads them to feel lonely. Social and group norms of this type are extremely complex, and leave ample room for inaccuracies. It is crucial, therefore, in dealing with clients where loneliness is adding to their difficulties, to help them understand, work through, and later challenge the thinking errors and distortions that contribute to feelings of loneliness. The majority of people believe that their own perception of the world is accurate, and therefore would be shared by others. Rather than considering that their loneliness could be a consequence of misinterpretation, they are convinced that the cause is external. For instance, I feel lonely because: the people I do meet are odd; the people I’d like to meet aren’t interested in me; it’s because of where I live. Alternatively, they see the problem as resulting from basic inadequacies in themselves: I’m just odd; I don’t know what to say to people any more. The counsellor, therefore, needs to convey to the client that there is no single way of correctly perceiving the world. Each person’s perception of reality is merely a sample, Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness 87 restricted by the way their sensory systems access and interpret information. It follows, therefore, that the client’s view of what is causing their difficulties may be inaccurate. Consequently, the challenge of helping the client begins with leading them to accept that there may be alternative ways of looking at their world. There are several methods available to the counsellor which, by encouraging the client to examine their thoughts, can reduce feelings of loneliness. Below are some of the more basic methods. Catching thoughts Clients are usually acutely aware of their feelings and emotions but pay little attention to the thoughts that prompted them. They can learn to gain awareness of their thoughts through a technique called ‘thought catching’ (Beck 1979). With this method, the counsellor invites the client to disclose a few thoughts on issues/events that are currently a concern for them. These are then noted down on a board or large piece of paper and used as visual triggers to probe for less obvious thoughts, and for the behaviours/ feelings these thoughts lead to. For example: Client discloses thoughts: ‘I felt lonely at work today.’ Counsellor probes for thoughts: ‘What were you thinking about when you felt lonely?’ Client answers either: (a) by verbalising a series of thoughts; or (b) by saying ‘I don’t know’. If the client is unable to identify upsetting thoughts about situations that were difficult for them, the following guidelines may help: 1 Note down the EVENT : Felt lonely at work. 2 Achieve greater specificity : Felt lonely after hearing colleagues planning to go to the pub. 3 Identify REACTION : Client felt sad. 4 Identify the THOUGHT that caused the REACTION : ‘They won’t ask me to join them…they don’t like me.’ 5 Identify related actions : Client pretends to be busy to avoid letting others know that he wants to join them. Reviewing the event and the client’s reaction to the event can help the client gain more insight into their thoughts. The client may be faced with thoughts that are indeed accurate, however they can never be certain because they avoided finding out. The counsellor, therefore, must help the client to discover whether or not they have got themselves into the habit of making incorrect judgements based on faulty assumptions with minimal evidence. To achieve this, the counsellor must encourage the client systematically to analyse his thoughts. The following section provides brief guidelines on promoting accurate thought analysis. Thought analysis We usually view ourselves as entirely rational beings, which can unfortunately stop us from acknowledging that at times we all think about things in a way that isn’t entirely rational. We are most at risk of thinking in maladaptive ways when we feel unsure about Loneliness, stress and well-being 88 ourselves. At such times we can develop rigid thought patterns which we assume are correct, and therefore do not attempt to alter. Analysing thoughts involves recognising the distinction between irrefutable facts, and thoughts that have yet to be validated. This is not an easy matter; self-critical, demeaning, and maladaptive thoughts responsible for the client’s distress can only be identified through careful exploratory discussion. Having achieved this, the maladaptive thoughts must be confronted and modified by using the following techniques. Confronting thoughts—a skills compendium Once maladaptive thoughts have been identified, the client must try to treat them simply as pieces of information which need to be validated before they can be accepted. In other words, each thought is merely a hypothesis to be tested and not a fact. A useful method for both identifying and confronting maladaptive thoughts is to use a thought diary. Encourage the client to establish a habit of writing their thoughts down regularly. Then, taking each thought in turn, work collaboratively to challenge them with the following questions. What evidence supports the thought? What evidence contradicts it? Do the facts of the situation support the thoughts? Is there sufficient information to support this thought? Where is the logic in the thought? Would most people come to a similar conclusion given the same facts? Urge clients to use this questioning whenever they recognise a possible maladaptive thought (as a rule of thumb, any thought that they find upsetting may be maladaptive). In addition it is useful to make them aware of the following common thinking errors so that they can confront the thoughts more efficiently. 1 Selective attention. Tendency to focus mostly on the negative or irrelevant aspects of situations. 2 Confusing probabilities. Tendency to worry about things that have little real chance of occurring. 3 Extreme thinking. Thinking in ‘black and white’ terms only, when in reality we deal also with shades of grey. 4 Over-generalising. Drawing broad conclusions from specific, often isolated events and minimal information. 5 Distorting the significance of events: Exaggerating or minimising the importance of events. 6 Personification. The belief we are the centre of all events, and hence, that other people must be looking at us and are acutely aware of our behaviour. 7 Predicting the future. Basing decisions on events which have yet to occur (and may never happen). 8 Mindreading. Responding to people in terms of what you think they are thinking. Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness 89 After thinking errors have been identified, the counsellor can help the client to consider alternative ways of looking at the situation. For some clients, however, disputing their thought errors is not sufficient to convince them that they are inaccurate. In these cases, it may be necessary to expose the client to experiences powerful enough to change their misconceptions. For example: Event : Forthcoming Xmas Party Client’s thoughts : ‘I will not enjoy it.’ ‘No one will talk to me.’ ‘I’ll feel stupid and leave early.’ Counsellor challenges these thoughts. If the client does not feel convinced the counsellor should encourage the client to expose themselves to a situation which could test these assumptions. Counsellor : OK, how could we test out these thoughts to see if you’re correct? Client and counsellor negotiate a homework assignment as a behavioural experiment. For example: Chosen situation : Going to another party and ‘chatting’ to at least one person there. Preparation : Use relaxation techniques before going to the party. Prepare openings for conversation. Expectations : As above, that he would not enjoy it, that no one would talk to him, and that he would feel stupid. Evaluation : Didn’t really enjoy it, BUT people did talk to me so the first thought I had was correct, but I did talk to people and did not feel stupid. In designing such experiments, it is important to bear the following points in mind: the goal of the experiment must be observable and specific; it should be achievable (though not necessarily easy); before beginning the ‘test’ the client must say what they expect to occur; the test must be evaluated after completion in terms of initial predictions and an accuracy chart kept to give an indication of how accurate the initial expectations were. Loneliness, stress and well-being 90 Dilemmas, snags, and traps Often counsellors become aware of consistent themes which seem to ‘get in the way’ of the client’s progress. Ryle (1979) has listed several such factors and called them dilemmas, snags, and traps. Dilemmas: can be expressed in two forms. The first is false dichotomies (the either/or scenario). An example of this is the common attitude that ‘with friends I feel either too close, or too distant and lonely’. In such cases, the client seems to feel that there are always only the two extremes with no middle ground. This dichotomy often occurs because the client oscillates between emotional closeness, which can provoke fears of loss (e.g. if I get close, they may leave me; then I’ll feel hurt), and emotional distance (which leaves them without the fear of loss, but also lonely). The second is in terms of false assumptions (the if/then scenario). An example of this is ‘if I’m intellectual then I have to be cold’. Here two constructs (cold and intellectual) are linked spuriously in the same way that ‘fat’ and ‘jolly’ are sometimes linked. Traps are belief patterns which result in a person acting in ways that serve to confirm the negative belief (e.g. through circular reasoning): Snags refer to obstacles which are based on the anticipated consequences of action. The anticipations cause the client to suppress their desire to act. For instance, ‘I let people push me around because nobody would like me if I stood up for myself’. These themes allow clients some justification for continuing to behave in maladaptive ways. The task of the counsellor here, is to be aware of these obstacles so that they can be worked through and challenged. Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness 91 2 MANAGING THE THOUGHTS THAT UNDERMINE CLIENTS’ ABILITIES TO OVERCOME LONELINESS In the first part of this chapter we discussed the thoughts that trigger feelings of loneliness and the themes that serve to maintain it. Confronting these thinking patterns can lead the client to a decision to attempt change. However, in some cases, the change may involve interacting in a fashion that they have been avoiding for some time; consequently, they feel frightened. If people feel worried in this way, inhibitory anxiety results which can block the skills required for competent social interaction. Helping the client manage inhibitory anxiety involves confronting their perception of vulnerability. The feelings, thoughts, and actions that occur as a result of inhibitory anxiety are often so frightening for the client that they serve to reinforce feelings that change is impossible. It is extremely important to provide the client with a framework for understanding what they are experiencing. Understanding inhibitory anxiety Clients usually come to their counselling sessions fully able to interact appropriately, and can discuss their difficulties without questioning their ability to interact. However, if we change the context to meeting someone with whom they would like to begin a friendship, they suddenly find themselves at risk of being rejected, or of ‘messing-up’. This causes them to enter what Beck and Emery (1985) have called vulnerability mode. This occurs when a person feels themselves subject to dangers over which they have minimal control. Positive information is ignored and the individual focuses on negative aspects of the situation and creates further obstacles by concentrating on their weaknesses and ignoring their strengths. This leads to excessive self-questioning and self-doubt, which in turn, generates further anxiety and even panic. Anxiety is part of a primitive survival mechanism. Imagine, for instance, our primitive ancestors suddenly being confronted by a dangerous animal. Whatever they were doing would be stopped, and all biological and psychological systems would be switched to defensive mode (i.e. alert, tense, and ready to run/fight). This self-protection mechanism still operates today whenever we are faced with fearful situations, and can generate faintness, dizziness, and weakness. Consider, for instance, walking in a straight line without deviating more than a foot either way; it doesn’t sound too difficult. However, consider the challenge of not diverging more than a foot either way on a flimsy bridge suspended at great height. The self-protection mechanisms discussed above would be activated (with all the accompanying bodily sensations, and self-doubts) and would make the task extremely difficult. Experienced construction workers, however, have learned to stop judging similar tasks as threatening or beyond their competence and are therefore not troubled by anxiety in these situations. These same responses are also prominent in difficult social situations when the client is anticipating a problem. Anticipating problems activate a defence response just as if the feared problem was actually occurring. Helping the client to cope with this anticipatory anxiety first involves explaining to them how the above outline applies in their situation. Loneliness, stress and well-being 92 Following this, the anxiety and arousal needs to be managed. We will discuss how to do this in the following sections. Judging the reality of the threat The key issue here is that to overcome loneliness, clients will probably need to confront social situations that they judge as both threatening, and beyond their competence. These judgements are usually replete with thinking errors that exacerbate feelings of vulnerability and disrupt inter-personal skills further. We therefore need to offer clients skills which will allow them to make more accurate judgements of threat. Judging whether a situation will have negative consequences for self-esteem seems to be guided and corrupted by the nature of the client’s thoughts and feelings about that situation. Typically these include: expectations of being disapproved of and criticised by others; feeling less able than others would in similar situations; feelings of being watched and judged by others; expecting the worst; feeling unable to adapt behaviour to changing circumstances; excessive thinking about bodily sensations related to embarrassment or anxiety. Each of these issues can be reduced to a core thought which can be worked on further. For instance: Thought : ‘I want to leave the coffee room, but cannot because I have only just come in’. In this form, the thought is too vague to be tested for validity. The counsellor must help the client break it down into the core thoughts of which it is comprised: Core thoughts : People in the coffee room may think that I’m odd. They may think that I am leaving because I do not like them. They may have critical or bad thoughts about me. These thoughts can then be challenged using the framework provided in part 1 of this chapter. Enhancing coping capability The client must be helped to cope with the symptoms of anxiety. A major feature of anxiety in social situations relates to the anticipation of being nervous prior to actually entering the situation. In addition the client may feel at risk of being overwhelmed by the anxiety, which is beyond their control. The expectation of a negative outcome tends to Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness 93 make the person more defensive, nervous and inhibited upon entering the situation. Relaxation techniques offer a useful starting point here, and are often a first taste of mastery over symptoms. Clients should be urged to set aside a regular slot each day to practise relaxation. They should find a quiet, comfortable place where they won’t be interrupted, loosen any tight clothing and use the following procedures. Controlled breathing Close your eyes, place your hands at your sides and try to completely surrender your body to the chair/floor/bed. Let your shoulders fall, your jaw drop open slightly, and focus on your breathing. Just watch yourself breathe. After a minute or so, allow your breathing to slow down. Focus on your abdomen, not your chest. To practise this, place a hand on top of your stomach and FEEL IT MOVE UP AS YOU BREATHE IN SLOWLY AND DOWN AS YOU BREATHE OUT. After a bit of practice you will be able to breathe in this fashion without watching your hand. Regulate your breathing. Slowly breathe in to the count of four. Then breathe out slowly to the count of four. After you have the timing right say R-E-L-A-X to yourself each time you slowly breathe out. Practice this process for about five minutes. It’s all right to check your watch, but do not set an alarm. Relaxing the body Next try relaxing your whole body by contracting and relaxing various muscle groups starting at your head and working down in the following way. Tense up a muscle group as you breathe in and focus on this tension for three to five seconds. Then relax the muscle group as you breathe out. Notice the difference between the tension and relaxation, and focus on the feelings of relaxation you’ve created for about ten seconds. Use this routine to work through the muscle groups listed below (one at a time). Tense each muscle group to about three-quarters tight. If you feel any discomfort omit that muscle group. Try to imagine tension draining away with each breathe out. Face—Clench your jaw, frown and screw up your eyes tightly. Neck—Tense your neck muscles. Shoulders—Hunch your shoulders so that they almost touch your ears. Arms—Make a muscle and clench both fists. Stomach—Pull your stomach in so that you look as thin as possible. Thigh—Straighten your knees and make your legs stiff. Feet—Turn your toes up and try to point them towards your face. The above procedures should be practised by the client daily and should take about twenty minutes each time to complete. Once mastered (usually within two weeks), it will allow them to achieve deep relaxation quickly and easily. Loneliness, stress and well-being 94 The client also needs to learn that they have the necessary skills to cope with difficult social situations. A knowledge of the skills and the norms of social relationships (Chapter 8) coupled with extensive practice can balance self-doubts and lead the client to a more realistic self-appraisal and greater self-confidence. Ideally, the skills repertoire should be as extensive as possible so that the client can choose the skill that they feel will work best for them in particular situations. Think of it as a ‘tool box’ of skills from which the client has a choice of ‘tools’. As a rule of thumb, skills training should be approached in a graded fashion, beginning with easy problems, and working up to the more difficult ones. This enables the client to build up confidence in their coping skills before tackling difficult social situations. Skill compendium Below are outlined several skills which can be used by clients to increase their feelings of mastery of social situations. Thought switching and distraction If worrying thoughts begin to intrude during a social interaction, it is often too difficult to challenge them adequately at the time. What the client needs here, therefore, is a set of skills that they can use to block unwanted thoughts. The following techniques are based on the fact that people can only focus attention on one thing at a time. Suggest to the client that they try each of the techniques listed below and select the technique/s that they find most effective. Count backwards from one hundred in threes (100, 97, 94,…). Describe in detail an object in the room (what it’s made of, how it was made, what it would cost). Name every item you can see in the room. Think of your favourite dish—describe how to make it from basic ingredients. Decide on a scene which is relaxing and well known to you. Concentrate on it for as long as you can, trying to get in touch with the sights, smells, and feelings, as well as the image. Visual imagery People who find social situations difficult often carry around a distorted and inappropriate image of what the forthcoming interaction will be like. These images can trigger maladaptive thoughts. Induced imagery can have a positive effect on future skilled performance. For instance, we all have an image of how we would like to behave ideally. The client could benefit from developing an image of how they would like to behave in each difficult situation. This helps develop a sequence of images based on their knowledge of appropriate social behaviour. They can then practice scenarios within their imaginations before attempting the real events. Managing the thoughts that promote loneliness 95 Self talk Clients need to learn to replace habitual and maladaptive self-statements with coping statements. Conceptually these should have a message of mastery (e.g. self-statements like ‘I’m doing OK’, or ‘I can handle this’ instead of ‘I don’t believe this is happening to me’). In addition, unrealistic messages that contain imperatives like ‘I should be perfect’ or ‘I should be coping better than this’, increase the feeling of failure by setting unreasonable standards. Clients should be taught to monitor their self-talk (i.e. what they say to themselves in their thoughts), and avoid statements like: I must … instead use … would like. Everyone … instead use … some people. Everything … instead use … some things. Nothing … instead use … not much. Never … instead use … rarely. SUMMARY 1 Thoughts can either trigger feelings of loneliness or prevent clients from confronting appropriately the social situations that could serve to ease loneliness. 2 People use assumptions about social norms to make judgements about their social environments. These judgements are fundamental to subsequent appraisals of whether or not they feel lonely. 3 Clients need to accept that there may be alternative ways of viewing the world. Consequently, their interpretation of their difficulties may not be entirely accurate. 4 The counsellor needs to help clients become aware of maladaptive thoughts, and teach techniques to confront and challenge these thoughts, and concomitant thinking errors. 5 The counsellor also needs to help clients enhance their coping capabilities by teaching a compendium of skills that they can later use in difficult interpersonal situations. Appendix 1 Developing the MSW loneliness scale The following pages detail the development of a loneliness test which has been constructed specifically to suit the social requirements of British subjects. In order to generate items for inclusion in the test, it was first necessary to determine which social resources are relevant to the British culture. Documented below are details of two studies by which this was achieved. THE MAJOR SOCIAL RESOURCES USED BY THE BRITISH PUBLIC Every type of relationship (friend, spouse, employer, colleague) is likely to provide a unique source for some social resources. However, it would clearly be impracticable to give due consideration to them all. Therefore, the studies considered the following fives relationships as being the major sources of important interaction: friends; intimate partners (sexual relationships, spouse, etc.); children; parents; and siblings. It was decided to restrict the age of the sample to between eighteen years and sixty-five years (inclusive). This was done to give some consideration to observations that the preferred interactions of adolescent, adult, and elderly people were likely to differ. For example, adult norms have been found to emphasise the development of the family and career (Dickets and Perlman 1981), whereas teenagers were more concerned with developing their own abilities (Kon 1981). Such differences would clearly affect the social resources each of these would desire; they should therefore be distinguished. The present classification of resources, therefore, is only relevant to British people between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five years. In order to avoid assumptions about which interactions would be negative, respondents were simply asked to provide a list of interactions which were important to their satisfaction with their relationships (i.e. they may be important because they are undesirable and unwanted, or because they were desirable). The study identified over 2200 such interactions (Murphy et al. 1989), which were subsequently compiled into 406 distinct types of interaction. However, this was too large a number to include in a loneliness test (406 questions would pose a daunting task to any respondent). Therefore, in order to include only items which were important to most people (i.e. excluding items whose value was peculiar to only a few of the people studied), the 406 items were re-submitted to a new sample who were asked to place them in order of important (Murphy et al. 1989). On the basis of this, those items which were consistently important were selected and have been given in Table 1 in Chapter 3. These items represent only a limited view of the preferred social resources of the British public because items about which there were inter-personal differences were Appendices 97 removed during the second of the two studies. Nevertheless, as was discussed earlier, this limitation is necessary if the subsequent loneliness test is to be flexible enough to be used across different people within the culture. There were no major sex differences among these items, neither was there a difference in the items considered important by psychiatric patients and non-patients. Nevertheless, in the first study, non-patients seemed to generate considerably more items than patients (45 per cent of all items generated were produced solely by non-patients, compared to a mere 4 per cent solely by patients). This difference was lost once patients were presented with all of the items (in the second of the two studies), which clearly suggests that although the resources they need do not differ (Study 2), patients find it difficult to list on command the resources they find helpful (Study 1). Presumably, this is either a result of their personal problems interfering with their thinking, or simply that they have too much on their mind already. Nevertheless, it is clear that attempting to produce a list of major social resources by simply asking such patients (as Henderson and his colleagues (1981) tended to do) is likely to produce an impoverished list. It is essential, therefore, that the general public is included at this stage. By way of a brief note on the nature of some of the items identified here, it is interesting to observe that some of them were not interactions themselves, but concerned the health, honesty, and overall moral attitude of relationship members (for example, items 5, 6, 8, 18, 25 and 40). This indicates that as well as having needs for specific social resources, respondents also had more general needs concerning the styles of behaviour with which social resources are characterised. The items identified by the above studies also provided material for continuing the discussion in Chapter 2 on the issue of the respective importance, when measuring loneliness, of close and casual relationships, and more generally close and casual interaction. Some investigators had tried to deal with the former question, of whether close relationships were more important than casual relationships, by embracing them both equally in their tests. For example, Russell et al. (1978) made general statements, in his UCLA loneliness scale, which avoided the issue by not specifying any particular type of relationship at all (see Table 2). Other investigators had addressed more directly the latter question of close and casual interaction, assuming that within all relationships it was close, intimate interactions which were of major importance (Henderson et al. 1981). In view of the information available to them, these represent fair attempts to accommodate the close/ casual debate. However, the results of our two studies above suggested that their strategies had not been successful. For instance, considering first the relative importance of the various types of relationship. Table 1 shows that of the five relationship categories considered, interactions with intimate partner and child (generally relationships from the family unit) occurred most frequently (over 75) in the list, with friendship being mentioned considerably less often. Clearly, therefore, respondents’ main concerns were with relatively close types of relationship. In view of this, general questions such as Russell et al. ’s ‘I feel shut out and excluded by others’ (Table 2; Chapter 3) may generate misleading responses. For instance, a person might not feel excluded by most people at all, and would therefore answer the question with ‘no’, or ‘rarely’. However, they may well feel excluded and rejected by a specific person with whom they have held a close relationship (perhaps a spouse has left them). Consequently, Appendices 98 although having to answer Russell’s general question with ‘no/rarely’, they might actually be feeling very shut out and lonely indeed. Let us consider now, the relative frequency of close and casual interactions people require within their relationships (as pointed out above, Henderson excluded casual components of interaction as being unimportant). A problem in investigating this issue is that it is not easy to define what is exclusively a close (or casual) interaction. Of course, some interactions are by their nature intimate, such as sexual intercourse, but the list given in Table 1 includes very few items of this type. However, there are many interactions which are not necessarily intimate in themselves, but facilitate intimacy (such as when one provides help to another person). Categorising close interactions of the former type is not problematic because social convention usually dictates quite clearly what is and is not intimate. For example, the appropriate physical distance to maintain from people with whom one is not intimate is strongly regulated by social norms, and standing too close would often be seen as an intimate advance (Hall 1966). However, determining which interactions should be placed in the latter category is extremely problematic. To a large extent, this is because specific interactions do not consistently facilitate closeness. For example, Walster and Walster (1978) have shown that goal frustration by others promotes closeness, but Lott and Lott (1965) also found that facilitation of goal achievement is necessary for closeness to develop. The problem of classification is compounded further by the fact that most interactions could be construed as promoting closeness, because all interactions constitute social contact and (not surprisingly) this variable has also been shown to promote closeness (Berkowitz 1980, p. 244). However, some of the items listed in Table 1 can have relatively little to do with establishing closeness because they occur with similar frequency in all interactions and are not easily open to change from one relationship to another. For example, items 5, 6, 18, and 25 concern basic honesty and morality. These characteristics are a function of a person’s personality (Piaget 1948; Freud 1961; Kohlberg 1963) and as such are expressed relatively consistently across a person’s interaction with all people. Consequently, it is difficult to construe these as anything but casual components of interaction. Contrary, therefore, to Henderson et al.’ s (1981) suggestions, some casual aspects of interaction seem to be highly important in providing adequate social resources, and it is only problems of definition which limit further examples to support this. It can be concluded, therefore, that although	325,842
Lost and stranded expert advice on how to survive being alone in the wilderness (Sprinkle, Timothy) (Z-Library).epub	Lost and Stranded Introduction K NOW THIS FIRST: T HIS PLACE is beautiful. We’re in a stand of 300-year-old hemlock, some of the oldest trees on the eastern seaboard, and the light mist that’s gathered around us deflects the light, softening it, as if we’re in a cloud forest. The woods in this part of Virginia are heavy, thick in ways that you don’t often see in the mid-Atlantic. Hemlock trees are tall, evergreens that can reach up to 200 feet, and here they’re nearly that tall. High overhead, it looks as if the branches are leaning in on us. On the ground, pine needles are everywhere. It smells like Christmas. But I don’t care. I’m focused entirely on the one fallen hemlock tree that I’m straddling, crawling spread-eagle across what can only be described as a torrent of whitewater at least twenty feet below me. A light rain falls, has been falling all night, giving everything I touch—particularly the moss that covers this log—a damp, slippery feeling that prevents my fleece gloves from getting any sort of grip. I pull off the gloves and stuff them in a pocket, hoping that my bare hands will fare better. No luck. I’m able to make slow progress by scooting with my legs, pushing my body forward across the smooth parts of the log as my legs dangle on either side, my arms wrapped around it in a desperate bear hug. In spots where branches once grew and broken shards remain, I have to shift my weight and lift myself to crawl over them. It is terrifying. The rain picks up slightly as I dismount from the log and scramble on all fours up the other bank, sticky Virginia mud on my knees and hands. Never before have I felt so tested in the outdoors or relied so much on my gear. And we’re far from done. High water in the canyon has left the trail littered with debris and fallen trees, forcing us to crisscross the water repeatedly, often on slippery, moss-covered logs such as the hemlock above, and often over dangerously high water. Where fallen trees are not available, we cross by jumping from rock to rock in the creek itself, taking care not to slip into the water on a sprained ankle or worse. We’re backtracking, making up for a misjudgment earlier in the day that took us off course on our fifteen-mile out-and-back hike that was to take us up Ramsey’s Draft creek and over its 4,000-foot peak, Big Bald Knob. We had camped the previous night some ten miles up the creek itself, on a ridge overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west of the Shenandoah Valley, with plans to follow the ridge back down to the south to complete the circuit. Ramsey’s Draft—and a rapidly approaching thunderstorm rolling in from the west—had other plans. * * * Ramsey’s Draft is a wilderness area in central Virginia’s Augusta County, near the border with West Virginia, that’s part of both the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. It is rugged, wooded open space, about as wild as you’re going to get within three hours of Washington, DC. It’s also well-known as a challenging—and sometimes dangerous—place to hike. Writing in Backpacker magazine in 1997, Mary Burnham said of Ramsey’s Draft that “few hikes I’ve taken were tougher,” going on to explain why—the unmarked trail, slippery stones, steep climbs, and the ever-present risk of water along the trail. “There’s either too much or not enough,” she wrote, describing the main trail as soggy due to the endless creek crossings and mentioning that the most-used campsites in the area are prone to flash flooding. On the flipside, once you leave the creek bed area, there is no water available at all along the trail until you reach the mountain pond at the White Oak Trail junction, more than six miles from the trailhead. All of her points are true. The trails in this area really aren’t marked, and there are miles of poison ivy and stinging nettles along the creek, along with hundreds of downed trees like the one I ended up crawling across, up along the ridge. The climbs are steep, the miles are long, and the vistas are few and far between (but more than worth it when they appear). When weather rolls in, which happens a lot here in the mountains, flash flooding and lightning strikes are both significant threats. Ramsey’s Draft is rugged, challenging, and scenic. In the South, a “draft” is another word for a creek, and Ramsey’s Draft is no exception. The waterway here, also named Ramsey’s Draft, is a tributary of the Calfpasture River, which leads to the James River through Central Virginia on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a fast stream, typical for the area, barreling down from deep within the mountains above, creating a wet, muddy approach to the hike that lasts for miles. Our hike has taken us directly up the creek into a drainage that’s bordered on both sides with steep ridges that top out above 3,000 feet. From the trailhead, at U.S. 250, it looks like a deep, V-shaped valley that starts out wide and comes together in a point a few miles in. From there, the trail turns up, tracing along the hillside as the ridge leads further and further into the wilderness. The climb is steep at times, though no worse than similar trails in this part of Virginia, and the forest is a welcome break from the water’s edge earlier in the hike, where heavy foliage and tall stinging plants make for a tiresome few hours of work. It is certainly worth the effort. The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, encompassing more than 230,000 acres between them, are home to the last few remaining old growth forest stands in Virginia and some of the last in the East. This part of the country has been logged heavily dating back to the colonial days, so finding any sort of old growth—which is defined loosely as a forest that lacks any sort of human development (such as roads), has trees that are 150 years old or older, lots of decaying wood from fallen trees, and a mixed-aged canopy—locally is a treat, usually the result of either steep slopes, early protection, or a lack of commercial viability. Ramsey’s Draft has the first one covered: steep slopes. Given the limited access—and if our hike had proven anything, it was that access to this area was and is very limited—it would be nearly impossible for loggers to get to the old-growth forest to cut it down or truck the trees out for processing once they had been felled. That often prevents it from being commercially viable as well, because timber that you can’t get out, even if you can get in to cut it down, is no good to the market. The timber industry lives and dies by forest roads, access lines to remote parts of the deep woods that allow for the speedy removal of timber that’s been felled by loggers, taking it out to processing plants and, eventually, the open market for sale. Steep-sloped forests are also usually dry, because they drain off quickly and can’t hold much water, limiting tree growth in the first place and further limiting economic viability. Limited access like that around Ramsey’s Draft not only prevents timber activity in the first place but means the stands in the area are not going to be commercially viable either. “When the Eastern national forests were purchased around 1913, those responsible for acquiring them where looking for some of the most valuable, and therefore, least logged tracts of land,” wrote journalist and trail runner Will Harlan about this Eastern old growth in 2005. “William Willard Ashe, one of the people most responsible for the surveying and acquiring of Blue Ridge National Forests, stated that ‘the larger portion of the lands which have been acquired have had the timber cut off, or at least some of the best timber has been cut, but a number of fine stands have been secured within which there has never been the sound of the lumberman’s axe.’ But over the years, the knowledge that the national forests of the Southern Blue Ridge contain significant old-growth forests was shouted down by the myth that ‘It’s all been logged.’ Because these forests have been essentially forgotten, the sum of old-growth present before 1940 has been reduced by Forest Service timber sales. Hopefully, as the American people become more aware of this great treasure on their public lands, the remainder can be protected in perpetuity.” Whatever the reason, the result was a well-protected piece of forest in the middle of the crowded, developed mid-Atlantic corridor. As a bonus, the rugged terrain also keeps the crowds at bay, making for a quiet, peaceful hike. Over the course of our weekend there, we only saw two other groups on the trail. In retrospect, it maybe would have been nice to have more company out there. * * * But, that day, we weren’t focused on the trees. We had a bigger problem. In fact, our problem was twofold: we had left the trail (poorly marked as it was) and were rushing to get off the mountain before a storm rolled in. The Virginia high country is home to plenty of weather year-round, but we were up there in early fall, prime season for unsettled weather, including multiday rainstorms. In truth, we had committed one of the cardinal sins of backcountry travel, camping too far away from our destination in what we already knew were deteriorating conditions. As mentioned, the hike up from the car follows more or less along the creek until you’re about halfway up the trail. From there, it climbs up the ridge and loops around several of the higher peaks in the area. As a result, good camping spots are few and far between, mostly located at the far end of the trail before it loops back around to the top of the exit ridge. Before that point, you’re facing steep terrain and little open ground. You have to go all-in. The storm rolled in late, well after the group had all gone to bed, and by the time we started to get up after dawn, the rain was falling steadily. We packed up camp in the middle of a mild downpour, ate whatever we could find in our packs for breakfast, and set out as early as possible in order to get out of the wet. But there was a problem. Hikes in the East are different from those in the Rocky Mountain West and elsewhere. In Virginia, climbs may not be long or high (the state’s tallest peak tops out at 5,728 feet—compare that to the 14,000-plus peaks in Colorado, not to mention the 20,310-foot Mount Denali in Alaska, the tallest peak in North America), but they make up for it with their angle of attack. They’re steep. The Wintergreen Ascent, an annual bicycle race that starts at Beech Grove near Skyline Drive and climbs up to Wintergreen Resort, delivers an average grade of roughly eight percent, more than twice what you’ll find out West. And the hikes are no different, with stairs, roots, rocks, and other features often coming into play in order to make the hills passable. In good weather, these make for challenging obstacles. In the rain, those steeps go from thigh-burningly unpleasant to outright dangerous. Soon we’re on all fours, picking our way down the same climbs we charged up the previous afternoon. Mud cakes my boots, staining my knees and cuffs a deep, reddish-brown that’s typical of the area. The same slopes that helped to protect those old growth hemlock trees was suddenly working against us, keeping us from a safe, on-time return trip. Were we going the right way? The trail itself had disappeared, leaving us with little more than landmarks to work with. Were we walking into a dead end? By crossing the stream over and over again, we didn’t know where our next water crossing would be, or if there would be a safe way across when it did. Would the weather get worse? Steady, drenching rain is unpleasant enough, but the endless threat of lightning and, worse, flash flood is enough to force poor decision-making in the backcountry. Were we lost? Would we make it out of this alive? * * * There is a moment in every outdoor adventure, every trip into the backcountry, when the fear of what could go wrong enters your thoughts. It doesn’t usually happen right away. And it doesn’t necessarily hit you all at once. But it’s always there, lurking beneath the surface. It never starts out that way, of course. You’re focused on the trip ahead, the goal that you’re working toward, whether it’s a waterfall, an overlook, or something similar. You’re happy and optimistic. You’re looking forward with excitement and anticipation to what’s coming next. But then something happens. It doesn’t have to be anything particularly big or terrible, just enough to make you notice your surroundings and think about what’s going on. Maybe you step awkwardly off a loose rock and nearly turn your ankle. Maybe you hear the rustling of a bear in the nearby woods. Or maybe you notice some dark storm clouds forming off in the distance. Whatever it is, you start to notice the risks you’re taking, the potential dangers you’re facing just by walking through the woods. And you get worried. You start to think about what might go wrong. What if you stepped off that rock differently and sprained your ankle? How would you get out if you couldn’t walk? Or what if you encountered that bear on the trail, instead of off in the distance? Would you know what to do to protect yourself from a potential attack? Worse, what if her cubs had been with her? What then? And what about weather? Are you prepared to manage the risk of an electrical storm in the wilderness? Do you know how to get out if you do? It’s fear. But this is productive fear, not the bad kind. In fact, this kind of fear is a very good, healthy thing to experience in the outdoors. It’s what keeps us safe, what keeps us healthy, and what keeps us alive. By recognizing the risks we face, and acknowledging them, we’re far more able to take steps to minimize those risks, stepping carefully around loose rocks when we see them, remaining alert to the potential of wildlife encounters near the trail, and formulating a plan in advance to deal with any severe weather that might crop up. Smart adventurers take care to be smart and travel safely in the backcountry, never overlooking the little things that could get them into trouble. This kind of fear can be a powerful motivator, a force that keeps risk at bay and keeps us safe—it is situational awareness. By thinking about the perils we are facing, we’re better able to prepare for them and address them in the moment. Panic is the opposite of this. When we panic, we take greater risks. Rather than dealing with the problem at hand (the loose rock, for instance) we focus all of our attention instead on whatever it is that’s making us anxious, making us panic. We behave rashly; we rush to judgments rather than being careful, trying everything we can to simply eliminate that fear that’s driving us. As a result, we often make dangerous mistakes in the process. This fits with the textbook definition of panic, after all: “A sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior, and that often spreads quickly through a group of persons or animals.” Hysterical or irrational behavior. Sudden overwhelming fear. Nothing about panic is productive or safe in the backcountry. It causes more problems than it solves. Psychology students will trace this back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the theory presented by Abraham Maslow in 1943 that all humans are driven by certain shared motivations, and that everything we do can be connected to one of these basic needs. His hierarchy consisted of five stages—psychological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization—each one reliant on the one below it. The model was based on the theory that a person had to progress from level to level in order to reach the pinnacle. In our case, however, the fact that psychology is the most basic of human motivations tells us a lot about the damage that panic can do in the outdoors. When we’re panicked about our situation, unsure about our safety, our lizard brain simply cannot focus on anything else. It cannot look to greater safety concerns like staying on course or losing track of a partner. Based on this simple fact of our biology, all we can do in that moment is address our panicked fear—fight or flight. And that’s when mistakes happen. What’s needed in the outdoors isn’t panic, it isn’t crippling fear, and it isn’t ongoing paranoia. It’s awareness. It’s an understanding of what risks you’re facing, what little things could get you into trouble, and what steps you can take to minimize that risk each and every minute that you’re out there. It’s about knowing what you’re getting into and knowing how to get out of it. Part of this, and the reason that this book exists, is the role that simple awareness has in preparing us for survival in the backcountry. Knowing not only what we’re going to face but what the potential consequences are—what those potential risks can do to you—can be very empowering. Now you aren’t going in blind; you’re prepared for what you might face. You don’t have to be afraid that a bear might maul you, for instance, if you know that bears in the area where you’re going aren’t aggressive. Or maybe they’re hibernating and won’t be bothering you. That’s one less thing to worry about, simply by knowing more about the situation you’re facing. Or let’s say you’re hiking through an area—like Ramsey’s Draft—that is prone to flash floods. An uninformed hiker would simply bomb up the middle of the canyon, oblivious to the risk they were facing. But by knowing the flood history of the area, including when and where floodwaters usually strike, you can enjoy the area, safe in the knowledge that if weather and potential flooding does become an issue, you know where to go and how to handle the situation. * * * No surprise, we made it out just fine. The weather we were worried about did eventually roll in, and we ended up walking in the rain for the better part of three hours. But there was no flash flood. No lightning strikes (at least not any near us). No one in our party got lost. Our concerns, as they were, were overblown. But the experience was instructive. In fact, that’s why I’m writing about it today, more than twenty years after the fact. I am by nature a very careful, cautious person in the outdoors. I plan out my route in advance, inventory and test my gear before I leave the house, and rarely go anywhere without at least notifying someone else of my plans in case of a delay. I’m careful. And it has served me well. Over the course of forty years exploring various backcountry locations, I have never found myself in significant danger. Never been seriously injured, never been what I would consider lost, and never had to call on others for help getting out of a tight spot. Ramsey’s Draft was a little different simply because I did not personally plan that trip. I was not in charge of our route that day, nor was I aware of the risks inherent to that hike before we left for the weekend. Granted, I should have been more careful, and I clearly violated some of my own rules on that trip. What could we have done better or differently? Naturally, we were never in much serious danger. Yes, weather can complicate things in the mountains, and rushed decision-making often results in less-than-clear thinking. So, we should have been more aware of our surroundings. We should have gone in with a clearer understanding not only of how challenging the hike would be but what specific and unique risks we might face out there. We were well prepared in terms of supplies and a mapped-out route, but we could have done better. But that’s the point. That’s the value in making mistakes in the backcountry. They’re learning experiences. Going through a scare in the woods—whether it involves getting lost, facing severe weather, dealing with an animal encounter, experiencing a health emergency, or one of the dozens of other risks that we might face—all but ensures you won’t go through a similar scare again. Think about it. The first time you come across a bear when hiking in bear country, whether there’s a negative encounter or not, you will not forget the experience or make the same decisions again. Maybe you were careless in your route planning, going straight through a known feeding area. Or maybe you chose the wrong time of year, coming across a mother bear and cubs shortly before winter hibernation. Whatever the reason for the encounter, you likely made a mistake by being there in the first place. That’s an instructive, real-world lesson. Now you know how a bear might react when it sees you. You know the signs to look for in advance of another encounter. And you know that you can come across a bear in the backcountry and, handled properly, live to tell the tale. Most importantly, by understanding what got you into the situation in the first place, you can gain a better understanding of what not to do when visiting bear country. And that can be just as powerful, or even more so, than knowing the right way to handle every situation. Lost and Stranded CHAPTER 3 Small Animals / Insects Snakes It’s long been said, be careful what you love. Someday it will kill you. That sentiment came true for Tony Felder Jr., an avid “rattlesnake hunter” from Oklahoma when, in September 2016, one of the snakes he’d spent so much time tracking down and capturing, turned the tables and killed him with its venomous bite. It happened near the town of Okeene, where rattlesnake hunting is considered a sport, more popular than high school football. “I guess we all just think that won’t ever happen, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a passion that once you’ve got it, it don’t go away,” friend and fellow rattlesnake hunter, Dave Wilson, told the local NBC affiliate after the accident. For more than seventy-five years, the town of Okeene has hosted the Okeene Rattlesnake Roundup, one of the oldest snake hunts in the world, the first weekend in May. A three-day event that’s part rodeo, part competition, and part state fair, the Roundup features everything from live rattlesnake shows to food vendors and carnival rides. Registered hunters are taken to the “snake hunting grounds” as a group, and everything they catch is butchered for them back at the fair that weekend. Snakes are meat in this part of Oklahoma, and the hunt started as an annual effort by local farmers and ranchers to protect their livestock by shooting as many rattlesnakes as possible. Competition took over, and the hunt became a full-blown sport by the middle of the twentieth century. Felder and his family have been active participants in the hunt going back three generations, when his grandfather participated in the first one, bagging snakes with a tire iron. His son, Tony Felder Sr., went on to serve as the Roundup’s “pit boss” for twenty years before handing the reins to his son following a serious bite. In addition to his duties in the pit, in recent years, the junior Felder had also helped round up the wild snakes that are used to stock the hunting grounds for the Roundup. But rattlesnake hunting isn’t without its risks. In a 2006 story on his family’s history with the snake hunt, Felder said although he had been to the hospital three times over the years after suffering bites, he had no intention of giving up the sport as his father had done. “I like taking risks,” he said at the time. “I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane once, so why wouldn’t I play with rattlesnakes?” That all came to a sudden end when the younger Felder suffered a bite near his home in Okeene. And it wasn’t even a rattlesnake that he was hunting. Rather, he was out counting cattle when he came across the snake, a fairly large specimen by northwest Oklahoma standards, crawling across the road. Given that a true rattlesnake hunter never sleeps, he picked up the snake and put it into a bucket to take home and show his family, and maybe take a few photos. But once they got there, the snake had other ideas. When Felder reached into the bucket to pull it out—something he had done safely thousands of times over the years—the snake reared back and bit him squarely on the hand. The bite landed directly on a blood vessel, speeding the deadly venom throughout his body. He was airlifted to a hospital in Oklahoma City where he later died. Following the accident, Felder Sr. was reflective on the tragedy and on rattlesnake hunting in general. In Oklahoma, he said, the snakes are simply a part of life that everyone just has to understand and live with. Nothing that his son did that day was any riskier than anything else he had done in the past. “We’re all invincible, you know, when we’re doing stuff,” he said. “It don’t matter what it is.” Felder’s death made headlines because he was such a prominent member of Oklahoma’s rattlesnake hunting community, but he was not the only victim of a rattlesnake bite in 2016. Wayne Grooms, a seventy-one-year-old South Carolina resident, died after he suffered a bite on the lower leg while hiking in the Santee National Wildlife Refuge, a 15,000-acres wetlands area in the eastern part of the state. He collapsed and died within fifteen minutes of the attack, which was later credited to either a timber rattlesnake or an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, both of which are found in the refuge. * * * Snakebites are not a rare occurrence in the United States, with thousands of people suffering minor bites every year from a wide variety of snake species. If you spend any time in the outdoors—working in the yard, hiking, mountain biking, boating, or otherwise venturing out into snake territory, which is effectively everywhere, you’re going to eventually encounter a snake. Most of the time these experiences are completely benign and the snake simply slithers away when confronted. Sometimes, though, the snake will become agitated and strike, biting whoever is closest in an effort to defend itself. What is far rarer, however, is dying from a venomous snakebite. In fact, according to the University of Florida’s Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, your chances of dying from a venomous snakebite in the United States is “nearly zero” due to our easy access to high-quality medical care. In this country, when you are bitten by a snake, you go to the hospital, receive treatment, and then head home to recover. That is not always the case in other parts of the world, where death by snake is far more common. According to the UF research, some 7,000 to 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States each year, leading to only five or six fatalities. That puts the fatality rate at one in roughly 50 million, meaning you are nine times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die from a venomous snakebite. In comparison, car and motorcycle accidents kill about 37,000 Americans every year, while lung cancer claims another 162,000. The United States has about twenty species of venomous snakes, including sixteen species of rattlesnakes, two species of coral snakes, one species of cottonmouth (or water moccasin), and one species of copperhead. Those types are generally the big four of venomous snakes in the United States, and they are all largely regional, except for rattlesnakes, which can be found across the country. Copperheads are typically found in the Eastern states and their range spreads as far as Texas, while both the coral snake and the water moccasin are both typically found in the Southern United States. Of the 2,200 snake species worldwide, barely 20 percent of them are venomous and even fewer carry strong enough venom to kill an adult human. Only about 20 percent of the snake species in the world are deadly, and even then cases are rare. Snake venom is toxic when injected under the skin, by the snake, but is generally considered nontoxic when ingested in any other way. That said, venom is—like many other “dangerous” substances in this book—only harmful in very specific circumstances. For example, the CDC says that only people who are severely allergic to snake venom are at any real risk of dying from a snakebite. Even then, as long as they receive prompt medical care most people come out of the experience just fine. It’s no secret that many people have an illogical fear of snakes. This is something that goes back centuries, probably beginning as a survival instinct back when we didn’t yet know which types of snakes were dangerous. They are unique-looking animals, sliding silently into and out of our lives, and when you don’t know what kind of snake you’re looking at, or don’t yet realize that so few of them are actually harmful, they all look roughly the same. Not to mention the fact that the bite of even a nonvenomous snake hurts, it became good general policy to avoid snakes at all costs. Snakes are also silent and stealthy when in their habitat. They sneak up on their prey—usually small mammals—and use the element of surprise to their advantage to survive. No surprise, then, that this behavior is not popular with humans. The idea of a snake, creeping silently by, is enough to send some people into a full-blown panic attack. But the truth is, snakes rarely go on the offensive. They are defensive animals, preferring that element of surprise to attacking head on. Venomous snakes use their venom for one reason: to stun and capture their food. It is not an offensive “weapon.” Snakes, venomous and nonvenomous, will generally only attack a human when they feel threatened, smell food, or are simply afraid. People who own snakes as pets often report suffering bites after handling mice or other animals that their snake may construe as food, but most times it occurs when the snake is upset and feels cornered. In those cases, sometimes a snake will strike out not as a means to attack but rather as a warning sign to the human to stay back and give the snake some space. Yes, snakes have feelings too. This applies to venomous snakes in the wild as well. Get too close to a snake and it will feel threatened, feel afraid, and sometimes lash out to protect itself. The trouble in the backcountry is that, often, we can get too close to a venomous snake without even knowing it. Just heading down a trail, minding our own business, and an unseen snake hiding in the brush at the edge of the trail may sense a threat and lash out. In those cases, there’s little to be done to avoid the confrontation, but it is important to understand what to do to treat the wound. According to Mick Thow, Australia’s “reptile man,” snakes go through eight stages of agitation when getting upset. First, when you get too close they’ll start flicking their tail before flattening themselves out and puffing out their lungs, showing you—their foe—how big and scary they can be. If that doesn’t get you to move away, they’ll lift the first part of their body off the ground and present a few mock strikes. The final warning is when they put their head back down and stare at you with both eyes. Due to the way most snakes’ heads are shaped, they can see well to both sides but not very well straight ahead. By lowering their head, they are able to improve their depth of field and determine just how far away you are and where they need to strike. At this point, an attack is coming almost immediately. Still, even an agitated snake doesn’t always end in a venomous snakebite. “If you can get to stage six or seven and stop hassling the animal and leave it be, it will go back to stage one again,” Thow told Australia’s ABC Tasmania TV in 2010. Spiders It’s no accident that spiders get their own “phobia”—arachnophobia—unlike most other creatures out there. Why? Because spiders tick off a lot of creepy, crawly boxes for many people. They’re tiny and often hidden. They have a lot of legs. They sneak into deep, dark places and, when we’re least expecting it, they strike. And the fact that many different species of spiders carry dangerous venom isn’t helping their case. It’s believed that arachnophobia—which afflicts millions worldwide, whether they want to admit it or not—developed as an evolutionary survival technique, hard wiring people to avoid the kinds of areas where spiders typically hang out or where their webs are visible. These days, the condition often results in panic attacks—sweating, heavy breathing, uncontrollable shaking—that don’t dissipate until the sufferer is away from the spider-like area. A 2008 study showed that both adults and children can more quickly identify “dangerous” animals such as spiders and snakes when shown a series of photos than they can “safer” creatures such as frogs and caterpillars. It isn’t just us, either. Studies have also shown that crickets can be born with a fear of spiders based solely on their mother’s own negative experiences with the predators. So, the fear is real. But the reality is far from that bad. In truth, death by verifiable spider bite is exceedingly rare. Only a handful of people die each year worldwide from such bites, and in most cases the victims have other contributing risk factors, such as a compromised immune system or other condition that exacerbate the bite. The development of antivenoms more than fifty years ago has effectively eliminated the risk of death by spider bite in the Western world, saving countless people. Still, it happens. In 2011, Jeff Seale, a forty-year-old man in Erie, Colorado, died after he suffered what doctors found to be nineteen different bites from a black widow spider. A horseman, it is believed he encountered the spider at the stables and possibly brought it back home with him on his clothing or in his gear. “He was in really good health up until that point,” his sister told a reporter after his death. “He worked at a horse stable in the evenings, and he very well could have brought one of the spiders home in his things, or picked up some stuff from one of the horse sheds and brought one of the things home.” Despite their reputation, black widow bites are poisonous but rarely fatal. Even Seale’s case wasn’t open and shut. He died a full two weeks after suffering the bites, and doctors still weren’t sure what role the attack played in his untimely death. Still, nineteen bites will do some damage. Overseas, however, the problem is generally more severe. For example, the jungles of Brazil are home to the deadliest species of spider in the world, the Brazilian wandering spider. Related to the North American wolf spider, the wandering variety is bigger, more toxic, and packs what is considered to be the most neurologically active venom of all spiders. Its bite can kill a grown man in less than fifteen minutes and is known to bite when it feels threatened or cornered as a means of protection. Worst of all, the species likes to crawl into dark, cozy spaces to rest, including inside homes and other places where humans might encounter them. A woman in the UK even found a cocooned Brazilian wandering spider in a bunch of bananas that she bought at her local grocery store. (Why that story, and the fact that she took the bananas back to the store for a refund, made national news is a question for another day.) Australia saw its first spider-related fatality in more than sixty years in 2016, when a twenty-two-year-old man was bitten by a redback spider and later died after receiving treatment at a hospital. Similar in appearance to the black widow, redbacks are common spiders in Australia and bites are not uncommon. The last time someone died from such a spider, however, was in 1955, before the introduction of antivenom. Today, about 250 people are treated for redback bites with antivenom every year. (For the record, the redback isn’t even the most feared spider down under. That distinction goes to the Sydney funnel-web spider. Native to Australia, these terrors range from one to three inches long and can be very aggressive when provoked, often attacking offensively from their tube-shaped burrows. According to government records, they were responsible for thirteen confirmed deaths in Australia between 1927 and 1980.) Still, the fact is, the world is full of dangerous spiders. But the spider bites themselves aren’t often the greatest risk. And, in parts of the world where medical care is difficult to access or there is little available antivenom, this represents a real risk. That’s because, even short of death, a poisonous spider bite can do real damage to you when you’re alone in the woods. Think about walking through some low brush and getting bit on the ankle or lower leg by a venomous spider. Chances are you aren’t going to die, but you will still suffer. Spider bites hurt, and they swell up, and they can get infected. Maybe that bite on your ankle opens up and gets infected. Now you have a real problem that, without access to medical care, can turn into a life-threatening condition if not treated promptly. What if you can’t walk out under your own power. Or if you can’t tie your boots securely over your swollen ankle. Will you be able to make it down off a rocky trail? Or what if you’re allergic to a specific species of spider and it leaves you tired and disoriented? How will you be able to help yourself in that situation? As with many insect and smaller animal injuries, this is where the risk of a spider bite gets real. Even if you don’t die from the venom itself, you are opening yourself up to a long list of potential add-on issues as a result of the bite. And that’s what you need to be prepared for. * * * The black widow tends to get a bad rap. Yes, they can be scary looking, with strong, jet black legs and a deep red, hourglass-shaped marking on the body, but widow spiders such as the black widow are in fact considered nonaggressive. They usually stick close to their webs and rarely venture out for any significant amount of time, though they are fast runners when they do. Also, it’s the females of the species that we identify as black widows. The males are browner and smaller, and are considered too small to be dangerous at all. The trouble with widow spiders, and black widows in particular, is that they can be found all over the world and they tend to live near humans. They’ll set up shop in garages, cabins, along trails and other areas where they can find their preferred prey—ants, caterpillars, grasshoppers, flies, beetles, etc.—but those also tend to be areas where humans are more likely to run into them. That means we tend to encounter widow spiders a lot more than we do other species, particularly in North America and Australia. Overall, black widow spiders account for thousands of spider bite incidents worldwide every year, more than any other spider variety, as humans stumble into their webs while walking in the woods, find them in piles of firewood, and just generally put themselves in position for a bite in a variety of spider-friendly environments. For this reason, these are generally the type of spider encounters that most people have or hear about. And they’re no fun. The bite of a black widow spider hurts. A lot. The spider’s venom can cause painful muscle spasms near the injection site, “tetanus-like” contractions, nausea, vomiting, and severe pain throughout the body. Sometimes victims end up in the hospital to deal with the pain. Taken together, the symptoms are known as Latrodectus, or an illness that’s caused by the bite of certain types of spiders, including the black widow. It’s no wonder that humans have, for generations, considered the black widow a “dangerous” and sometimes deadly spider. But, as is often the case with spiders, reality doesn’t always keep up with the popular perceptions. Although Latrodectus makes for a very unpleasant experience for the victim, it is rarely fatal in humans. There hasn’t been a black widow–related fatality in the United States in decades, and less than 1 percent of all bites involve medical complications, according to data from the US Poison Control Centers. While it is true that as many as 10 percent of black widow cases were fatal as recently as a century ago, modern medicine has largely eliminated the risk of dying as a result of a widow spider bite. And it’s not just the black widow. Data regarding fatality rates for spider bites is maddeningly difficult to come by, even in this age of digital databases and searchable online records. Why? Because so few people die from verifiable spider bites that it barely qualifies as statistically significant. While there are several different spider species that can cause bites that are considered “medically important”—meaning they can hurt you—only two of these types are found worldwide, Latrodectur and Loxosceles, while the only other two types, Phoneutria and Atrax, are regionally distributed. Even then, the bites of these medically significant spiders can vary widely in their impact, ranging from mild irritation to more severe symptoms. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they rarely, if ever, kill humans. Consider the evidence. According to a National Institutes of Health study from 2011, there have been a grand total of three verifiable human deaths caused by widow spiders, two in Africa and one in Greece. Ever. Even the spiders that are considered the “world’s deadliest” don’t fare much better. The Australian funnel-web spider has not been responsible for a verifiable human death since 1981, according to the Medical Journal of Australia, and the South American wandering spider only has ten recorded kills in Brazilian recorded history. Dangerous, yes, but deadly, no. In fact, research has recently shown that being bitten by a spider, a black widow or otherwise, is actually far less likely than many people think. Chris Buddle, an arachnologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, says what we think of as “spider bites” are not actually “bites” in the traditional sense. More often than not, the irritation we feel when encountering a spider is more likely to in fact be a skin reaction to chemicals on the spider, an infection or a sting from a related arthropod such as a flea. “There are a lot of misconceptions about spiders,” Buddle wrote on his blog in 2012. “The most common is the idea that spiders frequently bite people—they do not. Most so-called spider bites are caused by something else. Spiders generally have no interest in biting us, and would rather feed upon invertebrates. I have been working with spiders for over 15 years, and I have handled many, many kinds of live spiders and I have never been attacked by a spider.” He explains that common misperceptions about spiders have made this problem worse, conditioning both victims and medical professionals to believe, when faced with what appears to be a bite injury from a small, unseen source, that a spider must have been the culprit. Misdiagnosis is a common problem, he says, and the excuse of “it must have been a spider” isn’t enough information to provide an accurate medical assessment without first considering the other possible explanations for symptoms, let alone have the spider itself available for verification. Plus, even when bites do happen—usually when a spider is scared or startled by a human—they don’t do much damage because their prey is primarily small invertebrates, not large humans, and their venom is designed to stun and subdue little more than insects. This venom might hurt us, and it can be more serious for very young and very old victims, but it is rare that it does any lasting damage, simply because most spiders do not have enough venom in their systems to hurt a 100-plus pound human. “They are far more afraid of us than we are of them,” according to Buddle. “They’re not offensive.” * * * “The risk from spiders really depends on where in the world you are,” explains Dr. Norman Platnick, Curator Emeritus of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “Because in the United States the answer becomes very simple: For spiders there is absolutely nothing to worry about. If you’re in the woods, half the spiders on the planet are so small that they couldn’t break your skin even if they tried to bite you. Your likelihood of being bitten by any spider anywhere is extremely small. You don’t look like prey. The reaction of a spider, anything as loud and obnoxious as a human being is to be as far away as quickly as possible.” In fact, he says, the only time you’re likely to get bitten by a spider in the United States is if it gets into your clothing, shoes, or bedding and you accidentally brush up against it and it can’t escape. In those cases, a spider will bite as a last resort. Even then, though, 99.99 percent of the time the animal’s venom will have no effect whatsoever because spider venom has evolved of the millennia to function on insects, which are the spider’s prey, and not large mammals like humans. In those cases where the spider does have an effect on us with its venom—as is the case with black widows—it’s something that Dr. Platnick calls “accidental chemistry,” not part of evolutionary biology. “We were never part of their prey in any way, shape, form or manner.” “In many cases your largest danger is going to a physician who misdiagnoses the symptoms as appendicitis and gives you an emergency appendectomy you don’t need,” he says. “That’s really about it. For a healthy adult, spider venom is certainly not deadly. Brown recluse venom has a nastier effect because it’s tissue destroying, but, again, the only time you’re going to find brown recluses in the wild is if you’re specifically hunting for them because they’re going to be under rocks, under logs. Again, you are not going to be bitten unless you go out of your way to. In fact, with a brown recluse it’s very hard because they just are not aggressive spiders at all.” None of this is to say that spiders are universally harmless worldwide. In Australia, for instance, funnel-web spiders do tend to be more aggressive and have been known to bite adults and children, and their venom can be very serious. They are so common in that country that antivenom is widely available, but they are no fun to tangle with. The same goes for the Phoneutria, the Brazilian wandering spider, which like the funnel-web goes out hunting in search of prey and mates. They are also quite venomous and, in Dr. Platnick’s view, they “sort of know it,” so they will be aggressive if encountered. Antivenom for these spiders is also available in the areas where they are found, but it’s important to get to a hospital to get the antivenom as soon as possible. In the United States, the only two spiders that have venom that affects humans are the black widow and the brown recluse, neither of which you’re likely to come across deep in the woods. In fact, the only time you would have any likelihood of being bitten by a black widow is if there’s a female in its web guarding an egg sac and you start bothering the female. She might bite you to protect her eggs, but of course you’d have to purposely do that. We aren’t just lucky, Dr. Platnick says, and the fact that North America is almost devoid of dangerous spiders is partly a reflection of the natural diversity patterns of species all over the planet. “The largest diversity of things is in the tropics and the southern semi-tropics,” he says, “and North America, Europe and Asia are basically depauperate of species compared to other parts of the world. By chance alone there’s going to be fewer here. On the other hand, it doesn’t explain why places like Australia have such an extremely high proportion of seriously venomous organisms compared to other places.” A spider bite is effectively just like a bee sting. You could have an allergic reaction to it, which might become serious just like bee stings do, but most of the time it will just ache and eventually go away. The real risk, Platnick says, is in the case that you get bitten by a spider that is large enough to actually break the skin, and that can sometimes lead to a bacterial infection. Most of the problems that occur after actual spider bites are bacterial infections, not venom-related. A spider’s venom can be powerful and its bite extremely painful, but they are only a real threat to those who are allergic to them. None of this will make any difference to arachnophobes, of course. The fear of spiders is very deep seated in humans, and the reasons behind this are not hard to identify. “I think partly they can be quite hairy and they can move very quickly over very short distances,” Dr. Platnick says. “They’re sprinters. They’re not long distance runners but they can run quickly, they can dart, so you can catch them out of the side of your eyes and be startled by them. They’re running away from you, of course, because you’re a source of vibrations they don’t want to be anywhere near. But it’s a cultural thing. They’re taught by their parents to fear spiders and it’s just totally ludicrous, especially in the northern hemisphere. Being afraid of spiders is absurd because the proportion of all the spiders around the world that could possibly harm you is so infinitesimally small. I’ve been handling spiders for 40 years and I’ve never been bitten, much less had an issue arising from it.” Mosquitoes / Ticks It hardly makes sense to even write this, but the mosquito—the same tiny, buzzing insect that we all know from summer barbeques and itchy bites—is in fact the deadliest animal known to man. It’s true. According to the World Health Organization, mosquitoes are responsible for more than one million human deaths worldwide every year. Granted, these aren’t dramatic, chase-you-down-and-devour-you kinds of deaths; most are from the spread of malaria, one of the deadliest diseases in the developing world. The disease is transmitted by a tiny parasite that	555,187
Love Freedom and Aloneness The Koan of Relationships (Osho) (Z-Library).epub	Love, Freedom, Aloneness Love, Freedom, Aloneness Love, Freedom, Aloneness ALSO BY OSHO The Book of Secrets Osho Zen Tarot Meditation: The First and Last Freedom Courage Creativity Maturity Osho Transformation Tarot Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic AUDIO Osho Book of Secrets Osho Meditations on Zen Osho Meditations on Tao Osho Meditations on Yoga Osho Meditations on Buddhism Osho Meditation on Sufism Osho Meditations on Tantra Love, Freedom, Aloneness Love, Freedom, Aloneness THE KOAN OF RELATIONSHIPS Osho St. Martin’s Griffin New York Love, Freedom, Aloneness Edited by Sarito Carol Neiman LOVE, FREEDOM, ALONENESS . Copyright © 2001 by Osho International Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com ISBN 0-312-26227-2 (hc) ISBN 0-312-29162-0 (pbk) 10 9 8 7 Love, Freedom, Aloneness Contents Preface PART ONE: LOVE Chapter One: Lovey-Dovey Chapter Two: Real and Unreal—The First Step Chapter Three: The Virtues of Selfishness Chapter Four: Attached to Nothing Q UESTIONS Will you please speak about the difference between a healthy love of oneself and egoistic pride? Why is love so painful? How is it that the inscription on the Greek temple of Delphi says “Know Thyself” and not “Love Thyself”? How can I love better? PART TWO: FROM RELATIONSHIP TO RELATING Chapter Five: The Honeymoon that Never Ends Chapter Six: From Lust to Love to Loving Chapter Seven: Let There Be Spaces . . . Chapter Eight: The Koan of Relationship Q UESTIONS How can I know that a woman has fallen in love in reality, and not playing games? If the jealousies, the possessiveness, the attachment, the needs and expectations and desires and illusions drop, will anything be left of my love? What is the difference between liking and loving, to like and to love? And also, what is the difference between ordinary love and spiritual love? There are many people I love but I don’t feel committed to. How can I predict if I will love them tomorrow? Even if sometimes lovelike feelings arise in my heart, immediately I start feeling this is not love, it is my hidden cravings for sex and all that. In the East, it has been stressed that one should stay with a person, one person, in a love relationship. In the West, now people float from one relationship to another. Which are you in favor of? Lately, I have begun to realize how even my lover is a stranger to me. Still, there is an intense longing to overcome the separation between us. PART THREE: FREEDOM Chapter Nine: Tabula Rasa Chapter Ten: The Fundamental Slavery Chapter Eleven: Beware of the Popes Chapter Twelve: Is There Life After Sex? Chapter Thirteen: It Takes a Village . . . Q UESTIONS You said that love can make you free. But ordinarily we see that love becomes attachment, and instead of freeing us it makes us more bound. So tell us something about attachment and freedom. My boyfriend feels less and less like making love, and this makes me upset and frustrated, even to the point where I act aggressive toward him. What can I do? My sex life has become very quiet lately — not that I don’t want sex or that I am not courageous enough to approach women, but it just doesn’t happen. What am I doing wrong? How can I know if detachment or indifference is growing within? In your vision of a model society, would there be one large commune or a series of communes? What would be their relationship to one another? PART FOUR: ALONENESS Chapter Fourteen: Aloneness Is Your Nature Chapter Fifteen: Strangers to Ourselves Chapter Sixteen: Solitary and Elect Chapter Seventeen: The Lion and the Sheep Q UESTIONS Never belonged, never been on the “inside,” never felt “at one” with another. Why such a loner all my life? Why does my sadness feel more real than my happiness? I want so much to be real and authentic, not to wear any masks, but this seems to mean so much rejection by others. Is it possible to be so alone? As I move deeper into meditation and looking into who I really am, I am having trouble maintaining any relationship. Is this something to be expected, or have I gone wrong somewhere? Caveat: Two Women and a Monk Epilogue: Embracing the Paradox Love, Freedom, Aloneness Preface In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates says: A man who practices the mysteries of love will be in contact not with a reflection, but with truth itself. To know this blessing of human nature, one can find no better helper than love. I have been commenting my whole life on love, in thousands of different ways, but the message is the same. Just one fundamental thing has to be remembered: It is not the love that you think is love. Neither is Socrates speaking about that love nor am I speaking about it. The love you know is nothing but a biological urge; it depends on your chemistry and your hormones. It can be changed very easily—a small change in your chemistry and the love that you thought was the “ultimate truth” will simply disappear. You have been calling lust “love.” This distinction should be remembered. Socrates says, “A man who practices the mysteries of love . . .” Lust has no mysteries. It is a simple biological game; every animal, every bird, every tree knows about it. Certainly the love that has mysteries is going to be totally different from the love with which you are ordinarily acquainted. A man who practices the mysteries of love will be in contact not with the reflection, but with truth itself. This love that can become a contact with truth itself arises only out of your consciousness—not out of your body, but out of your innermost being. Lust arises out of your body, love arises out of your consciousness. But people don’t know their consciousness, and the misunderstanding goes on and on—their bodily lust is taken for love. Very few people in the world have known love. Those are the people who have become so silent, so peaceful . . . and out of that silence and peace they come in contact with their innermost being, their soul. Once you are in contact with your soul, your love becomes not a relationship but simply a shadow to you. Wherever you move, with whomsoever you move, you are loving. Right now, what you call love is addressed to someone, confined to someone. And love is not a phenomenon that can be confined. You can have it in your open hands, but you cannot have it in your fist. The moment your hands are closed, they are empty. The moment they are open, the whole of existence is available to you. Socrates is right: One who knows love also knows truth, because they are only two names of one experience. And if you have not known the truth, remember that you have not known love, either. To know this blessing of human nature, one can find no better helper than love. Love, Freedom, Aloneness PART ONE Love Y ou will be surprised to know that the English word love comes from a Sanskrit word lobha; lobha means greed. It may have been just a coincidence that the English word love grew out of a Sanskrit word that means greed, but my feeling is that it cannot be just coincidence. There must be something more mysterious behind it, there must be some alchemical reason behind it. In fact, greed digested becomes love. It is greed, lobha, digested well, which becomes love. Love is sharing; greed is hoarding. Greed only wants and never gives, and love knows only giving and never asks for anything in return; it is unconditional sharing. There may be some alchemical reason that lobha has become love in the English language. Lobha becomes love as far as inner alchemy is concerned. Love, Freedom, Aloneness CHAPTER ONE Lovey-Dovey Love is not what is ordinarily understood by the word. The ordinary love is just a masquerade; something else is hiding behind it. The real love is a totally different phenomenon. The ordinary love is a demand, the real love is a sharing. It knows nothing of demand; it knows the joy of giving. The ordinary love pretends too much. The real love is nonpretentious; it simply is. The ordinary love becomes almost sickening, syrupy, drippy, what you call “lovey-dovey.” It is sickening, it is nauseating. The real love is a nourishment, it strengthens your soul. The ordinary love only feeds your ego—not the real you but the unreal you. The unreal always feeds the unreal, remember; and the real feeds the real. Become a servant of real love—and that means becoming a servant of love in its ultimate purity. Give, share whatsoever you have, share and enjoy sharing. Don’t do it as if it is a duty—then the whole joy is gone. And don’t feel that you are obliging the other, never, not even for a single moment. Love never obliges. On the contrary, when somebody receives your love, you feel obliged. Love is thankful that it has been received. Love never waits to be rewarded, even to be thanked. If the thankfulness comes from the other side, love is always surprised—it is a pleasant surprise, because there was no expectation. You cannot frustrate real love, because there is no expectation in the first place. And you cannot fulfill unreal love because it is so rooted in expectation that whatsoever is done always falls short. Its expectation is too great, nobody can fulfill it. So the unreal love always brings frustration, and the real love always brings fulfillment. And when I say, “Become a servant of love,” I am not saying to become a servant of somebody whom you love, no, not at all. I am not saying to become a servant of a lover. I am saying become a servant of love. The pure idea of love should be worshipped. Your lover is only one of the forms of that pure idea, and the whole existence contains nothing but millions of forms of that pure idea. The flower is one idea, one form, the moon another, your lover still another . . . your child, your mother, your father, they are all forms, all waves in the ocean of love. But never become a servant of a lover. Remember always that your lover is only one tiny expression. Serve love through the lover, so that you never become attached to the lover. And when one is not attached to the lover, love reaches its highest peaks. The moment one is attached, one starts falling low. Attachment is a kind of gravitation—unattachment is grace. Unreal love is another name for attachment; real love is very detached. Unreal love shows so much concern—it is always concerned. Real love is considerate but has no concern. If you really love a man you will be considerate of his true need but you will not show unnecessary concern for his foolish, stupid fantasies. You will take every care of his needs, but you are not there to fulfill his fictitious desires. You will not fulfill anything that is really going to harm him. For example, you will not fulfill his ego, although his ego will be demanding. The person who is too concerned, attached, will fulfill the ego demands—that means you are poisoning your beloved. Consideration means you will see that this is not a real need but an ego need; you will not fulfill it. Love knows compassion but no concern. Sometimes it is hard, because sometimes it is needed to be hard. Sometimes it is very aloof. If it helps to be aloof, it is aloof. Sometimes it is very cold; if it is needed to be cold then it is cold. Whatever the need, love is considerate—but not concerned. It will not fulfill any unreal need; it will not fulfill any poisonous idea in the other. Search into, meditate on love, experiment. Love is the greatest experiment in life, and those who live without experimenting with love energy will never know what life is. They will only remain on the surface without going into the depth of it. My teaching is love-oriented. I can drop the word God very easily—there is no problem—but I cannot drop the word love. If I have to choose between the words love and God, I will choose love; I will forget all about God, because those who know love are bound to know God. But it is not vice versa: Those who think about God and philosophize about God may never know about love—and will never know about God, either. Love, Freedom, Aloneness CHAPTER TWO Real and Unreal—The First Step Love yourself and watch — today, tomorrow, always. We begin with one of the most profound teachings of Gautama the Buddha: Love yourself. Just the opposite has been taught to you by all the traditions of the world—all the civilizations, all the cultures, all the churches. They say: Love others, don’t love yourself And there is a certain cunning strategy behind their teaching. Love is the nourishment for the soul. Just as food is to the body, so love is to the soul. Without food the body is weak, without love the soul is weak. And no state, no church, no vested interest has ever wanted people to have strong souls, because a person with spiritual energy is bound to be rebellious. Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings to soar high. Love gives you insight into things, so that nobody can deceive you, exploit you, oppress you. And the priests and the politicians survive only on your blood; they survive only on exploitation. All the priests and politicians are parasites. To make you spiritually weak they have found a sure method, one hundred percent guaranteed, and that is to teach you not to love yourself. Because if a man cannot love himself he cannot love anybody else, either. The teaching is very tricky—they say, “Love others” . . . because they know that if you cannot love yourself you cannot love at all. But they go on saying, “Love others, love humanity, love God. Love nature, love your wife, your husband, your children, your parents.” But don’t love yourself—because to love oneself is selfish according to them. They condemn self-love as they condemn nothing else. And they have made their teaching look very logical. They say, “If you love yourself you will become an egoist; if you love yourself you will become narcissistic.” It is not true. A man who loves himself finds that there is no ego in him. It is by loving others without loving yourself, trying to love others, that the ego arises. The missionaries, the social reformers, the social servants have the greatest egos in the world—naturally, because they think themselves to be superior human beings. They are not ordinary—ordinary people love themselves. They love others, they love great ideals, they love God. And all their love is false, because all their love is without any roots. A man who loves himself takes the first step toward real love. It is like throwing a pebble into a silent lake: The first, circular ripples will arise around the pebble, very close to the pebble—naturally, where else can they arise? And then they will go on spreading; they will reach the farthest shore. If you stop those ripples arising close to the pebble, there will be no other ripples at all. Then you cannot hope to create ripples reaching to the farthest shores; it is impossible. And the priests and the politicians became aware of the phenomenon: Stop people loving themselves and you have destroyed their capacity to love. Now whatsoever they think is love will be only pseudo. It may be duty, but not love—and duty is a four-letter dirty word. Parents are fulfilling their duties toward their children and then in return, children will fulfill their duties toward their parents. The wife is dutiful toward her husband and the husband is dutiful toward his wife. Where is love? Love knows nothing of duty. Duty is a burden, a formality. Love is a joy, a sharing; love is informal. The lover never feels that he has done enough; the lover always feels that more was possible. The lover never feels, “I have obliged the other.” On the contrary, he feels, “Because my love has been received, I am obliged. The other has obliged me by receiving my gift, by not rejecting it.” The man of duty thinks, “I am higher, spiritual, extraordinary. Look how I serve people!” These servants of the people are the most pseudo people in the world, and the most mischievous, too. If we can get rid of the public servants, humanity will be unburdened, will feel very light, will be able to dance again, sing again. But for centuries your roots have been cut, poisoned. You have been made afraid of ever being in love with yourself—which is the first step of love, and the first experience. A man who loves himself respects himself. And a man who loves and respects himself respects others, too, because he knows: “Just as I am, so are others. Just as I enjoy love, respect, dignity, so do others.” He becomes aware that we are not different as far as the fundamentals are concerned; we are one. We are under the same law. Buddha says we live under the same eternal law— aes dhammo sanantano. In the details we may be a little bit different from each other—that brings variety, that is beautiful—but in the foundations we are part of one nature. The man who loves himself enjoys the love so much, becomes so blissful, that the love starts overflowing, it starts reaching others. It has to reach! If you live love, you have to share it. You cannot go on loving yourself forever, because one thing will become absolutely clear to you: that if loving one person, yourself, is so tremendously ecstatic and beautiful, how much more ecstasy is waiting for you if you start sharing your love with many, many people! Slowly the ripples start reaching farther and farther. You love other people, then you start loving animals, birds, trees, rocks. You can fill the whole universe with your love. A single person is enough to fill the whole universe with love, just as a single pebble can fill the whole lake with ripples—a small pebble. Only a Buddha can say Love yourself . No priest, no politician can agree with it, because this is destroying their whole edifice, their whole structure of exploitation. If a man is not allowed to love himself, his spirit, his soul, becomes weaker and weaker every day. His body may grow but he has no inner growth because he has no inner nourishment. He remains a body almost without a soul or with only a potentiality, a possibility, of a soul. The soul remains a seed—and it will remain a seed if you cannot find the right soil of love for it. And you will not find it if you follow the stupid idea, “Don’t love yourself.” I also teach you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it at all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn your light toward yourself first, become a light unto yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force. And once your soul is powerful, you know you are not going to die, you are immortal, you are eternal. Love gives you the first insight into eternity. Love is the only experience that transcends time—that’s why lovers are not afraid of death. Love knows no death. A single moment of love is more than a whole eternity. But love has to begin from the very beginning. Love has to start with this first step: Love Yourself Don’t condemn yourself. You have been condemned so much, and you have accepted all that condemnation. Now you go on doing harm to yourself. Nobody thinks himself worthy enough, nobody thinks himself a beautiful creation of God; nobody thinks that he is needed at all. These are poisonous ideas, but you have been poisoned. You have been poisoned with your mother’s milk—and this has been your whole past. Humanity has lived under a dark, dark cloud of self-condemnation. If you condemn yourself, how can you grow? How can you ever become mature? And if you condemn yourself, how can you worship existence? If you cannot worship existence within you, you will become incapable of worshipping existence in others; it will be impossible. You can become part of the whole only if you have great respect for the God that resides within you. You are a host, God is your guest. By loving yourself you will know this: that God has chosen you to be a vehicle. In choosing you to be a vehicle he has already respected you, loved you. In creating you he has shown his love for you. He has not made you accidentally; he has made you with a certain destiny, with a certain potential, with a certain glory that you have to attain. Yes, God has created man in his own image. Man has to become a God. Unless man becomes a God there is going to be no fulfillment, no contentment. But how can you become a God? Your priests say that you are a sinner. Your priests say that you are doomed, that you are bound to go to hell. And they make you very much afraid of loving yourself. This is their trick, to cut the very root of love. And they are very cunning people. The most cunning profession in the world is that of the priest. Then he says, “Love others.” Now it is going to be plastic, synthetic, a pretension, a performance. They say, “Love humanity, your mother country, your motherland, life, existence, God.” Big words, but utterly meaningless. Have you ever come across humanity? You always come across human beings—and you have condemned the first human being that you came across, that is you. You have not respected yourself, not loved yourself. Now your whole life will be wasted in condemning others. That’s why people are such great fault–finders. They find fault with themselves—how can they avoid finding the same faults in others? In fact, they will find them and they will magnify them, they will make them as big as possible. That seems to be the only way out; somehow, to save face, you have to do it. That’s why there is so much criticism and such a lack of love. I say this is one of the most profound sutras of Buddha, and only an awakened person can give you such an insight. He says, Love yourself . . . This can become the foundation of a radical transformation. Don’t be afraid of loving yourself. Love totally, and you will be surprised: The day you can get rid of all self-condemnation, self-disrespect—the day you can get rid of the idea of original sin, the day you can think of yourself as worthy and loved by existence—will be a day of great blessing. From that day onward you will start seeing people in their true light, and you will have compassion. And it will not be a cultivated compassion; it will be a natural, spontaneous flow. And a person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means being with yourself If you hate yourself—as you do, as you have been told to do, and you have been following it religiously—if you hate yourself, how can you be with yourself? And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that’s what meditation is all about. Meditation is not a relationship; the other is not needed at all, one is enough unto oneself. One is bathed in one’s own glory, bathed in one’s own light. One is simply joyous because one is alive, because one is . The greatest miracle in the world is that you are, that I am. To be is the greatest miracle—and meditation opens the doors of this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate; otherwise you are always escaping from yourself, avoiding yourself. Who wants to look at an ugly face, and who wants to penetrate into an ugly being? Who wants to go deep into one’s own mud, into one’s own darkness? Who wants to enter into the hell that you think you are? You want to keep this whole thing covered up with beautiful flowers and you want always to escape from yourself. Hence people are continuously seeking company. They can’t be with themselves; they want to be with others. People are seeking any type of company; if they can avoid the company of themselves, anything will do. They will sit in a movie house for three hours watching something utterly stupid. They will read a detective novel for hours, wasting their time. They will read the same newspaper again and again just to keep themselves engaged. They will play cards and chess just to kill time—as if they have too much time! We don’t have too much time. We don’t have time enough to grow, to be, to rejoice. But this is one of the basic problems created by a wrong upbringing: you avoid yourself. People are sitting in front of their TVs glued to their chairs, for four, five, even six hours. The average American is watching TV five hours per day, and this disease is going to spread all over the world. And what are you seeing? And what are you getting? Burning your eyes . . . But this has always been so; even if the TV was not there, there are other things. The problem is the same: how to avoid oneself because one feels so ugly. And who has made you so ugly?—your so-called religious people, your popes, your shankaracharyas. They are responsible for distorting your faces—and they have succeeded; they have made everybody ugly. Each child is born beautiful and then we start distorting his beauty, crippling him in many ways, paralyzing him in many ways, distorting his proportion, making him unbalanced. Sooner or later he becomes so disgusted with himself that he is ready to be with anybody. He may go to a prostitute just to avoid himself. Love yourself, says Buddha. And this can transform the whole world. It can destroy the whole ugly past. It can herald a new age, it can be the beginning of a new humanity. Hence my insistence on love—but love begins with you yourself, then it can go on spreading. It goes on spreading of its own accord; you need not do anything to spread it. Love yourself, says Buddha, and then immediately he adds, and watch. That is meditation—that is Buddha’s name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don’t love yourself, and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide! Many Buddhists feel like committing suicide because they don’t pay attention to the first part of the sutra. They immediately jump to the second: “Watch yourself.” In fact, I have never come across a single commentary on The Dhammapada, on these sutras of the Buddha, which has paid any attention to the first part: Love yourself . Socrates says, “Know thyself.” Buddha says, “Love thyself” and Buddha is far more true, because unless you love yourself you will never know yourself—knowing comes only later on. Love prepares the ground. Love is the possibility of knowing oneself; love is the right way to know oneself. I was staying once with a Buddhist monk, Jagdish Kashyap; he is now dead. He was a good man. We were talking about The Dhammapada and we came across this sutra, and he started talking about watching, as if he had not read the first part at all. No traditional Buddhist ever pays any attention to the first part; he simply bypasses it. I said to Bhikshu Jagdish Kashyap, “Wait! You are overlooking something very essential. Watching is the second step and you are making it the first step. It cannot be the first step.” Then he read the sutra again and he said, with mystified eyes, “I have been reading The Dhammapada my whole life and I must have read this sutra millions of times. It is my everyday morning prayer to go through The Dhammapada, I can repeat it simply from memory, but I have never thought that ‘Love yourself’ is the first part of meditation, and watching is the second part.” And this is the case with millions of Buddhists all over the world—and this is the case with neo-Buddhists, also, because in the West Buddhism is now spreading. The time for Buddha has come in the West—now the West is ready to understand Buddha, and the same mistake is being made there, too. Nobody thinks that loving yourself has to be the foundation of knowing yourself, of watching yourself . . . because unless you love yourself you cannot face yourself. You will avoid. Your watching may itself be a way of avoiding yourself. First: Love yourself and watch — today, tomorrow, always. Create loving energy around yourself. Love your body, love your mind. Love your whole mechanism, your whole organism. By “love” is meant, accept it as it is. Don’t try to repress. We repress only when we hate something, we repress only when we are against something. Don’t repress, because if you repress, how are you going to watch? And we cannot look eye to eye at the enemy; we can look only in the eyes of our beloved. If you are not a lover of yourself you will not be able to look into your own eyes, into your own face, into your own reality. Watching is meditation, Buddha’s name for meditation. Watch is Buddha’s watchword. He says: Be aware, be alert, don’t be unconscious. Don’t behave in a sleepy way. Don’t go on functioning like a machine, like a robot. That’s how people are functioning. Mike had just moved into his apartment and decided he should get acquainted with his across-the-hall neighbor. When the door was opened he was delightfully surprised to see a beautiful young blonde bulging out of a skimpy see-through negligee. Mike looked her squarely in the eye and ad-libbed, “Hi! I am your new sugar across the hall—can I borrow a cup of neighbor?” People are living unconsciously. They are not aware of what they are saying, what they are doing—they are not watchful. People go on guessing, not seeing; they don’t have any insight, they can’t have. Insight arises only through great watchfulness; then you can see even with closed eyes. Right now you can’t see even with open eyes. You guess, you infer, you impose, you project. Grace lay on the psychiatrist’s couch. “Close your eyes and relax,” said the shrink, “and I will try an experiment.” He took a leather key case from his pocket, flipped it open and shook the keys. “What did that sound remind you of?” he asked. “Sex,” she whispered. Then he closed his key case and touched it to the girl’s upturned palm. Her body stiffened. “And that?” asked the psychiatrist. “Sex,” Grace murmured nervously. “Now open your eyes,” instructed the doctor, “and tell me why what I did was sexually evocative to you.” Hesitantly, her eyelids flickered open. Grace saw the key case in the psychiatrist’s hand and blushed scarlet. “Well—er—to begin with,” she stammered, “I thought that first sound was your zipper opening . . .” Your mind is constantly projecting—projecting itself. Your mind is constantly interfering with reality, giving it a color, shape, and form that are not its own. Your mind never allows you to see that which is; it allows you to see only that which it wants to see. Scientists used to think that our eyes, ears, nose, and our other senses, and the mind, were nothing but openings to reality, bridges to reality. But now the whole understanding has changed. Now they say our senses and the mind are not really openings to reality but guards against it. Only two percent of reality ever gets through these guards into you; ninety-eight percent of reality is kept outside. And the two percent that reaches you and your being is no longer the same. It has to pass through so many barriers, it has to conform to so many mind things, that by the time it reaches you it is no longer itself. Meditation means putting the mind aside so that it no longer interferes with reality and you can see things as they are. Why does the mind interfere at all? Because the mind is created by society. It is society’s agent within you; it is not in your service, remember! It is your mind, but it is not in your service; it is in a conspiracy against you. It has been conditioned by society; society has implanted many things in it. It is your mind but it no longer functions as a servant to you, it functions as a servant to society. If you are a Christian then it functions as an agent of the Christian church, if you are a Hindu then your mind is Hindu, if you are a Buddhist your mind is Buddhist. And reality is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist; reality is simply as it is. You have to put these minds aside: the communist mind, the fascist mind, the Catholic mind, the Protestant mind . . . There are three thousand religions on the earth—big religions and small religions and very small sects and sects within sects—three thousand in all. So there exist three thousand minds, types of mind—and reality is one, and existence is one, and truth is one! Meditation means: Put the mind aside and watch. The first step— love yourself —will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning. And the second step is, watch —just watch. Buddha does not say what has to be watched—everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine—watch everything, today, tomorrow, always. A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: Your body is awake but you are asleep. Then, you will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest, but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness is consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature. The body tires because the body lives under the law of gravitation. It is gravitation that makes you tired—that’s why running fast, you will be tired soon, going upstairs, you will be tired soon, because the gravitation pulls you downward. In fact, to stand is tiring, to sit is tiring—when you lie down flat, horizontal, only then is there a little rest for the body because now you are in tune with the law of gravitation. When you are standing, vertical, you are going against the law; the blood is going toward the head, against the law; the heart has to pump hard. But consciousness does not function under the law of gravitation; hence it never gets tired. Gravitation has no power over consciousness; it is not a rock, it has no weight. It functions under a totally different law: the law of grace, or, as it is known in the East, the law of levitation. Gravitation means pulling downward, levitation means pulling upward. The body is continuously being pulled downward—that’s why finally it will have to lie down in the grave. That will be the real rest for it, dust unto dust. The body has returned back to its source, the turmoil has ceased, now there is no conflict. The atoms of your body will have real rest only in the grave. The soul soars higher and higher. As you become more watchful you start having wings—then the whole sky is yours. Man is a meeting of the earth and the sky, of body and soul. Love, Freedom, Aloneness CHAPTER THREE The Virtues of Selfishness If you are not selfish you will not be altruistic, remember. If you are not selfish you will not be unselfish, remember. Only a very deeply selfish person can be unselfish. But this has to be understood because it looks like a paradox. What is the meaning of being selfish? The first basic thing is to be self-centered. The second basic thing is always to look for one’s blissfulness. If you are self-centered, you will be selfish whatsoever you do. You may go and serve people but you will do it only because you enjoy it, because you love doing it, you feel happy and blissful doing it—you feel yourself doing it. You are not doing any duty; you are not serving humanity. You are not a great martyr; you are not sacrificing. These are all nonsensical terms. You are simply being happy in your own way—it feels good to you. You go to the hospital and serve the ill people there, or you go to the poor and serve them, but you love it. It is how you grow. Deep down you feel blissful and silent, happy about yourself. A self-centered person is always seeking his happiness. And this is the beauty of it, that the more you seek your happiness the more you will help others to be happy Because that is the only way to be happy in the world. If everybody else around you is unhappy, you cannot be happy, because man is not an island. He is part of the vast continent. If you want to be happy, you will have to help others who surround you to be happy. Then—and only then—can you be happy. You have to create the atmosphere of happiness around you. If everybody is miserable, how can you be happy? You will be affected. You are not a stone, you are a very delicate being, very sensitive. If everybody is miserable around you, their misery will affect you. Misery is as infectious as any disease. Blissfulness is also infectious as any disease. If you help others to be happy, in the end you help yourself to be happy. A person who is deeply interested in his happiness is always interested in others’ happiness also—but not for them. Deep down he is interested in himself, that’s why he helps. If in the world everybody is taught to be selfish, the whole world will be happy. There will be no possibility for misery. Teach everybody to be selfish—unselfishness grows out of it. Unselfishness is, ultimately, selfishness—it may look unselfish in the beginning, but finally it fulfills you. And then happiness can be multiplied: As many as are the people around you that are happy, that much happiness goes on falling on you. You can become superbly happy. And a happy person is so happy, he wants to be left alone to be happy. He wants his own privacy to be preserved. He wants to live with the flowers and the poetry and the music. Why should he bother to go to wars, be killed and kill others? Why should he be murderous and suicidal? Only unselfish people can do that, because they have never known the bliss that is possible to them. They have never had any experience of what it is to be, what it is to celebrate. They have never danced, they have never breathed life. They have not known any divine glimpse; all those glimpses come from deep happiness, from deep satiety, contentment. An unselfish person is uprooted, uncentered. He is in deep neurosis. He is against nature; he cannot be healthy and whole. He is fighting against the current of life, being, existence—he is trying to be unselfish. He cannot be unselfish—because only a selfish person can be unselfish. When you have happiness you can share it; when you don’t have it, how can you share it? To share, in the first place one must have it. An unselfish person is always serious, deep down ill, in anguish. He has missed his own life. And remember, whenever you miss your life you become murderous, suicidal. Whenever a person lives in misery, he would like to destroy. Misery is destructive; happiness is creative. There is only one creativity and that is of blissfulness, cheerfulness, delight. When you are delighted you want to create something—maybe a toy for children, maybe a poem, maybe a painting, something. Whenever you are too delighted in life, how to express it? You create something—something or other. But when you are miserable you want to crush and destroy something. You would like to become a politician, you would like to become a soldier—you would like to create some situation in which you can be destructive. That’s why every now and then war erupts somewhere on the earth. It is a great disease. And all politicians go on talking about peace—they prepare for war and they talk for peace. In fact they say, “We are preparing for war to preserve peace.” Most irrational! If you are preparing for war, how can you preserve peace? To preserve peace one should prepare for peace. That’s why the new generation all over the world is a great danger to the establishment. They are interested only in being happy. They are interested in love, they are interested in meditation, they are interested in music, dance . . . Politicians have become very alert all over the world. The new generation is not interested in politics—rightist or leftist. No, they are not interested at all. They are not communists; they don’t belong to any -ism. A happy person belongs to himself. Why should he belong to any organization? That is the way of an unhappy person: to belong to some organization, to belong to some crowd. Because he has no roots within himself, he does not belong—and that gives him a very, very deep anxiety: He should belong. He creates a substitute belonging. He goes and becomes part of a political party, of a revolutionary party, or anything—a religion. Now he feels he belongs: A crowd is there in which he is rooted. One should be rooted in oneself because the way from oneself moves deep down into existence. If you belong to a crowd you belong to an impasse; from there no further growth is possible. There comes the end, a cul-de-sac. So I don’t teach you to be unselfish because I know if you are selfish you will be unselfish automatically, spontaneously. If you are not selfish you have missed yourself; now you cannot be in contact with anybody else—the basic contact is missing. The first step has been missed. Forget about the world and the society and the Utopias and Karl Marx. Forget about all this. You are just here for a few years to be. Enjoy, delight, be happy, dance, and love; and out of your love and dancing, out of your deep selfishness will start an overflowing of energy. You will be able to share with others. Love, I say, is one of the most selfish things. Love, Freedom, Aloneness CHAPTER FOUR Attached to Nothing Love is the only freedom from attachment. When you love everything you are attached to nothing. . . . Man made prisoner by the love of a woman and woman made prisoner by the love of a man are equally unfit for freedom’s precious crown. But man and woman made as one by love, inseparable, indistinguishable, are verily entitled to the prize. —from The Book of Mirdad, Mikhail Naimy The Book of Mirdad is my most loved book. Mirdad is a fictitious figure, but each statement and act of Mirdad is tremendously important. It should not be read as a novel, it should be read as a holy scripture—perhaps the only holy scripture. And you can see in this statement just a glimpse of Mirdad’s insight, awareness, understanding. He is saying, Love is the only freedom from attachment . . . and you have always heard that love is the only attachment! All the religions agree on that point, that love is the only attachment. I agree with Mirdad: Love is the only freedom from attachment. When you love everything you are attached to nothing. In fact, one has to understand the very phenomenon of attachment. Why do you cling to something? Because you are afraid you will lose it. Perhaps somebody may steal it. Your fear is that what is available to you today may not be available to you tomorrow. Who knows about what is going to happen tomorrow? The woman you love or the man you love—either movement is possible: You may come closer, you may become distant. You may become again strangers or you may become so one with each other that even to say that you are two will not be right; of course there are two bodies, but the heart is one, and the song of the heart is one, and the ecstasy surrounds you both like a cloud. You disappear in that ecstasy: You are not you, I am not I. Love becomes so total, love is so great and overwhelming, that you cannot remain yourself; you have to drown yourself and disappear. In that disappearance who is going to be attached, and to whom? Everything is. When love blossoms in its totality, everything simply is. The fear of tomorrow does not arise; hence there is no question of attachment, clinging, marriage, of any kind of contract, bondage. What are your marriages except business contracts? “We commit to each other before a magistrate”—you are insulting love! You are following law, which is the lowest thing in existence, and the ugliest. When you bring love to the court you are committing a crime that cannot be forgiven. You make a commitment before a magistrate in a court that “We want to be married and we will remain married. It is our promise, given to the law: We will not separate and we will not deceive each other.” Do you think this is not a great insult to love? Are not you putting law above love? Law is for those who do not know how to love. Law is for the blind, not for those who have eyes. Law is for those who have forgotten the language of the heart and only know the language of the mind. Mirdad’s statement is of such great value that it should be deeply understood—not only intellectually, not only emotionally, but in your totality. Your whole being should drink it: Love is the only freedom from attachment . . . because when you love you cannot even think of anything else. When you love everything you are attached to nothing. Each moment comes with new splendor, new glory, new songs; each moment brings new dances to dance. Perhaps partners may change, but love remains. Attachment is the desire that the partner should never change. For that you have to commit to the court, to the society—all stupid formalities. And if you go against those formalities you will lose all respect and honor in the eyes of the people amongst whom you have to live. Love knows nothing of attachment because love knows no possibility of falling from dignity. Love is the very honor itself, the very respectability itself; you cannot do anything against it. I am not saying that partners cannot change, but that it does not matter. If partners change but love remains like a river, flowing, then in fact the world will have much more love than it has today. Today it is just like a tap—drip, drip, drip. It is not able to quench anybody’s thirst. Love needs to be oceanic, not the drip, drip of a public tap. And all marriages are public. Love is universal. Love does not invite only a few people to celebrate, love invites the stars and the sun and the flowers and the birds; the whole existence is welcome to celebrate. Love does not need anything else—a night full of stars, what more can you ask for? Just a few friends . . . and the whole universe is friendly. I have never come across a tree who was against me. I have been to many mountains, but I have never found any mountain antagonistic. The whole existence is very friendly. Once your own understanding of love blossoms there is no question of attachment at all. You can go on changing your partners, that does not mean you are deserting anybody. You may come back again to the same partner, there is no question of any prejudice. Man should understand himself to be just like a child playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells, colored stones, and immensely enjoying, as if he has found a great treasure. If a person can enjoy small things of life, can live in freedom and can allow others to live in freedom, this whole world can become a totally different kind of world. Then it will have a quality of beauty, grace; it will have great luminosity, every heart on fire. And once you know the fire, the flames go on growing. Flames of love grow just like trees grow; flames of love bring flowers and fruits, just as trees do. But what you think is love is not love. That’s why such strange experiences happen. Somebody says to you, “How beautiful you look! I love you so much, there is no woman like you in the whole universe.” And you never object, “You have no right to say such things, because you don’t know all the women of the whole universe.” When such beautiful things are said, one forgets completely the irrationality of them. These things people learn from films, from novels—all these dialogues and they don’t mean anything. They simply mean, “Just come to bed!” But because we are civilized people, without making some introductory remarks, a little preface, you cannot say directly to someone, “Let’s go to the bed.” The woman will run to the police station to report, “This man is saying something very ugly to me!” But if you go in a civilized way, offer some ice cream first—that cools the heart—bring some roses, talk some sweet nothings . . . Then both understand that finally it has to end up in a morning hangover, a headache, a migraine, and in the morning both will look awkwardly at each other: What were they doing in the bed? One will hide behind the newspaper, as if he is really reading it, and the other will start preparing the tea or coffee, just somehow to forget what happened. And later on Mirdad says: Man made prisoner by the love of a woman and woman made prisoner by the love of a man are equally unfit for freedom’s precious crown. The moment love becomes attachment, love becomes a relationship. The moment love becomes demanding, it is a prison. It has destroyed your freedom; you cannot fly in the sky, you are encaged. And one wonders . . . particularly I wonder myself. People wonder about me, what I go on doing alone in my room. And I wonder about them—what do these two people go on doing together? Alone I am at least at ease. If somebody else is there, there is trouble; something is going to happen. If the other is there, the silence cannot remain. The other is going to ask something, say something, do something, or force you to do something. Moreover, if the same person goes on continuously, day after day . . . The man who invented the double bed was one of the greatest enemies of humanity. Even in the bed, no freedom! You cannot move; the other is by the side. And mostly the other takes most of the space. If you can manage a small space you are fortunate—and remember, the other g	475,161
On Love and Loneliness (Jiddu Krishnamurti) (Z-Library).epub	On Love and Loneliness On Love and Loneliness On Love and Loneliness On Love and Loneliness J. Krishnamurti On Love and Loneliness Contents Foreword Madras, 16 December 1972 Brockwood Park, 11 September 1971 With Students at Rajghat School, 19 December 1952 Bombay, 12 February 1950 Ojai, 28 August 1949 Bombay, 12 March 1950 New York, 18 June 1950 Seattle, 6 August 1950 Madras, 3 February 1952 Loneliness: From Commentaries on Living First Series Discussion with Professor Maurice Wilkins, Brockwood Park, 12 February 1982 New York, 24 April 1971: From The Awakening of Intelligence Brockwood Park, 30 August 1977 Saanen, 18 July 1978 Bombay, 31 January 1982 With Young People in India: From Life Ahead Saanen, 18 July 1968: From Talks and Dialogues in Saanen 1968 Saanen, 5 August 1962 Bombay, 21 February 1965 London, 7 April 1953 Saanen, 26 July 1973 Saanen, 23 July 1974 Madras, 5 February 1950 Sources and Acknowledgments About the Author Other books by J. Krishnamurti Copyright About the Publisher On Love and Loneliness If you have no love—do what you will, go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, enter politics, write books, write poems—you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk, there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. Bombay, 21 February 1965 On Love and Loneliness Foreword J IDDU K RISHNAMURTI WAS born in India in 1895 and, at the age of thirteen, was taken up by the Theosophical Society, which considered him to be the vehicle for the “world teacher” whose advent it had been proclaiming. Krishnamurti was soon to emerge as a powerful, uncompromising, and unclassifiable teacher, whose talks and writings were not linked to any specific religion and were of neither the East nor the West but for the whole world. Firmly repudiating the messianic image, in 1929 he dramatically dissolved the large and monied organization that had been built around him and declared truth to be “a pathless land,” which could not be approached by any formalized religion, philosophy, or sect. For the rest of his life Krishnamurti insistently rejected the guru status that others tried to foist upon him. He continued to attract large audiences throughout the world but claimed no authority, wanted no disciples, and spoke always as one individual to another. At the core of his teaching was the realization that fundamental changes in society can be brought about only by a transformation of individual consciousness. The need for self-knowledge and understanding of the restrictive, separative influences of religious and nationalistic conditionings was constantly stressed. Krishnamurti pointed always to the urgent need for openness, for that “vast space in the brain in which there is unimaginable energy.” This seems to have been the wellspring of his own creativity and the key to his catalytic impact on such a wide variety of people. Krishnamurti continued to speak all over the world until he died in 1986 at the age of ninety. His talks and dialogues, journals and letters, have been preserved in over sixty books and hundreds of recordings. From that vast body of teachings this series of theme books has been compiled. Each book focuses on an issue that has particular relevance to and urgency in our daily lives. On Love and Loneliness Madras, 16 December 1972 I N TALKING OVER together these questions, which are our daily problems of life, I think we have to bear in mind that we are investigating together; together we are taking a journey into rather complex issues of life, and to investigate together there must be a quality of intensity, a quality of mind that is not tethered to any particular belief or conclusion, but is willing to go very far, not in distance of time, but in depth. W E ARE GOING to inquire together about whether we can bring about order in our daily life of relationship. Because relationship is society. The relationship between you and me, between me and another, is the structure of society. That is, relationship is the structure and the nature of society. I am putting it very, very simply. And when there is no order in that relationship, as there is at present no order, then every kind of action must be not only contradictory, but must also produce a great deal of sorrow, mischief, confusion, and conflict. Please, don’t just let me talk, but share it together, because we are taking a journey together, perhaps hand in hand, with affection, with consideration. If you merely sit down and are talked at, or lectured to, then I am afraid you and I cannot take the journey together hand in hand. So please do observe your own mind, your own relationship—it doesn’t matter with whom it is, your wife, your children, with your neighbour, or with your government—and see if there is order in that relationship; because order is necessary, precision is necessary. Order is virtue, order is so mathematical, so pure, complete, and we are going to find out if there is such order. No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation. Your mind may think it exists in isolation, or bring about a state of isolation, but even in that isolation you are related. Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related. I do not think we have paid a great deal of attention to this question of relationship. Your books don’t talk about relationship; they talk about God, practice, methods, how to breathe, about not doing this or that, but I have been told that relationship is never mentioned. Relationship implies responsibility, as freedom does. To be related is to live; that is life; that is existence. And if there is disorder in that relationship, our whole society, culture goes to pieces, which is what is happening now. So what is order, what is freedom, and what is relationship? What is disorder? Because when the mind really deeply, inwardly understands what brings about disorder, then out of that insight, out of that awareness, out of that observation, order naturally comes. It is not a blueprint of what order should be; that is what we have been brought up with—a pattern that has been laid down by religions, by cultures, as to what order should be, or what order is. The mind has tried to conform to that order, whether it is cultural order, social order, legalistic order, or religious order; it has tried to conform to the pattern established by social activity, by certain leaders, teachers. To me that is not order because in that is implied conformity, and where there is conformity, there is disorder. Where there is the acceptance of authority, there is disorder. Where there is comparative existence—that is, measuring yourself against somebody, comparing yourself with somebody—there is disorder. I will show you why. Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you. Why are we always conforming? Where there is conformity there cannot be freedom, obviously. Yet the mind is always seeking freedom—the more intelligent, the more alert, the more aware it is, the greater the demand. The mind conforms, imitates, because there is more security in conformity, in following a pattern. That’s an obvious fact. You do all kinds of things socially because it is better to conform. You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please. What happens to your mind when you conform? First of all, there is a total denial of freedom, total denial of perception, total denial of independent inquiry. When you conform there is fear. Right? From childhood the mind has been trained to imitate, conform to the pattern which society has established—pass examinations, get a degree, if you are lucky get a job, and get married, finished. You accept that pattern, and you are frightened not to follow that pattern. So inwardly you deny freedom, inwardly you are frightened, inwardly you have a sense of not being free to find out, inquire, search, ask. So that produces disorder in our relationship. You and I are trying to go into this really deeply, to have real insight, see the truth of it; and it is the perception of the truth that frees the mind, not some practice, or the activity of inquiry, but the actual perception of ‘what is’. We bring about disorder in relationship, both inwardly and outwardly, through fear, through conformity, through measurement, which is comparison. Our relationship is in disorder, not only with each other, however intimate it may be, but also outwardly. If we see that disorder clearly, not out there but in here, deeply in ourselves, see all the implications of it, then out of that perception comes order. Then we don’t have to live according to an imposed order. Order has no pattern, is not a blueprint; it comes out of the comprehension of what disorder is. The more you understand disorder in relationship, the greater the order. So we have to find out what is our relationship with each other. What is your relationship with another? Have you any relationship at all; or is your relationship with the past? The past, with its images, experience, knowledge, brings about what you call relationship. But knowledge in relationship causes disorder. I am related to you. I am your son, your father, your wife, your husband. We have lived together; you have hurt me and I have hurt you. You have nagged me, you have bullied me, you have beaten me, you have said hard things behind my back and to my face. So I have lived with you for ten years or two days, and these memories remain, the hurts, the irritations, the sexual pleasures, the annoyances, the brutal words, and so on. Those are recorded in the brain cells which hold memory. So my relationship with you is based on the past. The past is my life. If you have observed, you will see how the mind, your life, your activity, is rooted in the past. Relationship rooted in the past must create disorder. That is, knowledge in relationship brings disorder. If you have hurt me, I remember that; you hurt me yesterday, or a week ago, that remains in my mind, that’s the knowledge I have about you. That knowledge prevents relationship; that knowledge in relationship breeds disorder. So the question is: When you hurt me, flatter me, when you scandalize me, can the mind wipe it away at the very moment without recording it? Have you ever tried this? How lovely that moon is, isn’t it, looking through the leaves, and the cry of those crows, and the evening light! That extraordinary moon through the leaves is a wondrous thing. Look at it, enjoy it. 1 Say, yesterday somebody said rather harsh things to me, which are not true. What he said is recorded, and the mind identifies the person with that record and acts according to that record. Where the mind is acting in relationship with the knowledge of that insult, the harsh words, that untrue thing, then that knowledge in relationship brings disorder. Right? Now, how is the mind not to record at the moment of insult, or at the moment of flattery? Because to me the most important thing in life is relationship. Without relationship there must be disorder. A mind that lives in order, total order, which is the highest form of mathematical order, cannot for a single minute allow the shadow of disorder to come upon it. And that disorder comes into being when the mind acts on the basis of past knowledge in relationship. So how is the mind not to record the insult, but know the insult has been given, as well as flattery? Can it know it has been given, but yet not record it, so the mind is always clean, healthy, whole in relationship? Are you interested in this? You know, if you are really interested in it, it is the greatest problem in life: how to live a life in relationship, in which the mind has never been hurt, never been distorted. Now, is this possible? We have put an impossible question. It is an impossible question, and we must find the impossible answer. Because what is possible is mediocre, is already finished, done; but if you ask the impossible question, the mind has to find the answer. Can the mind do that? This is love. The mind that records no insult, no flattery, knows what love is. Can the mind never record, never, absolutely never record the insult or the flattery? Is that possible? If the mind can find the answer to that, one has solved the problem of relationship. We live in relationship. Relationship is not an abstraction, it is a daily, everyday fact. Whether you go to the office, come back and sleep with your wife, or quarrel, you are always in relationship. And if there is no order in that relationship between you and another, or between you and many or one, you will create a culture that will ultimately produce disorder, as is being done now. So order is absolutely essential. To find that out, can the mind, though it has been insulted, hurt, knocked about, had brutal things said to it, never for a second hold it? The moment you hold it, it is already recorded, it has left a mark in the brain cells. See the difficulty of this question. Can the mind do this so that the mind remains totally innocent? A mind that is innocent means a mind that is incapable of being hurt. Because it is incapable of being hurt, it will not hurt another. Now, is this possible? Every form of influence, every form of incident, every form of mischief, distrust, is thrown upon the mind. Can the mind never record and therefore remain very innocent, very clear? We are going to find out together. We will come to it by asking what love is. Is love the product of thought? Is love in the field of time? Is love pleasure? Is love something that can be cultivated, practised, put together by thought? In inquiring into this, one has to go into the question: Is love pleasure—sexual or any other kind of pleasure? Our mind is pursuing pleasure all the time: yesterday I had a good meal, the pleasure of that meal is recorded and I want more, a better meal or the same kind of meal tomorrow. I have taken great delight in the sunset, or looking at the moon through the leaves, or seeing a wave far out at sea. That beauty gives great delight, and that is great pleasure. The mind records it and wants it repeated. Thought thinks about sex, thinks, chews over it, wants it repeated; and that you call love. Right? Don’t be shy when we talk about sex, that’s part of your life. You have made it hideous because you have denied every kind of freedom except that one freedom. So is love pleasure? Is love put together by thought, as pleasure is put together by thought? Is love envy? Can anyone love who is envious, who is greedy, ambitious, violent, conforming, obeying, totally in disorder? So what is love? It is not any of these things, obviously. It is not pleasure. Please understand the importance of pleasure. Pleasure is sustained by thought; therefore thought is not love. Thought cannot cultivate love. It can and does cultivate the pursuit of pleasure, as it does fear, but thought cannot create love, or put it together. See the truth. See it and you will put away your ambition, your greed, altogether. So through negation you come to the most extraordinary thing called love, which is the most positive. Disorder in relationship means there is no love, and that disorder exists when there is conformity. So a mind that conforms to a pattern of pleasure, or what it thinks is love, can never know what love is. A mind that has understood the whole ripening of disorder comes to an order which is virtue, therefore which is love. It’s your life, it’s not my life. If you don’t live this way, you will be most unhappy, caught in social disorder, and be dragged forever in that stream. It is only the man who steps out of that stream who knows what love is, what order is. On Love and Loneliness Brockwood Park, 11 September 1971 T O FIND OUT anything humanly, mustn’t we begin with a certain quality of freedom? If we are to investigate such a complex problem as love, we must come to that investigation with a freedom from all our particular prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and tendencies, our wishes of what love should be—either Victorian or modern. We should put all that aside, if we can, in order to investigate; otherwise we’ll be distracted, we’ll waste our energy in affirming or contradicting according to our particular conditioning. In talking over this question of what love is, can we see the importance of finding out the full significance and the meaning and the depth of what that word conveys or doesn’t convey? Shouldn’t we first see if we can free the mind from the various conclusions that it has about that word? Is it possible to liberate the mind, to free the mind, from the deep-rooted prejudices, biases, conclusions? Because to talk over together this question of what love is, it seems to me that we have to have a mind that is very perceptive; and one cannot have such a good, clear mind if one has opinions, judgments, saying this is what love should be or should not be. To examine the mind, our whole inquiry must begin with the sense of freedom—not freedom from something, but the quality of freedom that is capable of looking, observing, seeing what truth is. You can go back to your prejudices, your particular vanities and conclusions later, but could we put aside all that for the moment and sustain this freedom in inquiry? There are several things involved: sex, jealousy, loneliness, the sense of attachment, companionship, a great deal of pleasure, and thereby also fear. Isn’t all that involved in that one word? Could we begin with this question of pleasure, because that plays an important part in love? Most religions have denied sex because they say a man who is caught in sensory pleasures cannot possibly understand what truth is, what God is, what love is, what the supreme, immeasurable thing is. This is a prevalent religious conditioning in Christianity, in India, and also in Buddhism. When we are going to look into the question of what love is, we have to be aware of our traditional, inherited conditioning which brings about various forms of suppression—Victorian and modern—or permissive enjoyment of sex. Pleasure plays an extraordinary part in our life. If you have talked to any of the so-called highly disciplined, intellectual, religious people—I wouldn’t call them religious, but they are called religious—you know that chastity is one of their immense problems. You may think all this is totally irrelevant, that chastity has no place in the modern world, and brush it aside. I think that would be a pity because knowing what chastity is, is one of the problems. To go into this question of what love is, one has to have a wide, deep mind to find out, not just make verbal assertions. Why does pleasure play such an important part in our lives? I’m not saying it is right or wrong, we are inquiring; there is no assertion that there should or should not be sex or pleasure. Why does pleasure play such an immense role in every activity of our life? It is one of our primary urges, but why has it assumed such fantastic magnitude, not only in the Western world, where it is so blatant, so vulgar, but also in the East? It is one of our major problems. Why? Religions—so-called religions—the priests, have decried it. If you would seek God, they say, you must take a vow of celibacy. I know a monk in India, a very, very serious man, scholarly, intellectual. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, he gave up the world and took a vow of celibacy. As he grew older—I met him when he was about forty—he gave up those vows and married. He had a hell of a time because Indian culture says it is appalling for a man who has taken a vow to go back. He was ostracized; he went through a very bad time. And that is most people’s mentality. Why has sex assumed such fantastic importance? There is the whole problem of pornography, allowing complete freedom to read, to print, show anything you like, to give freedom from suppression. You know all that goes on in the world. What has love to do with that? What does all this mean—love, sex, pleasure, and chastity? Please don’t forget that word or the meaning of that word to which man has given such great importance—to lead a life of chastity. Let’s find out why man throughout the ages has given sex such a prominent place in life, and why there is such resistance against it. I don’t know how we are going to answer it. Is not one of the factors that in sexual activity there is total freedom? Intellectually we are imitative, intellectually we are not creative, intellectually we are second-hand, or third-hand; we repeat—repeat what others have said, our little thoughts. There we are not active, creative, alive, free; and emotionally we have no passion, we have no deep interests. We may be enthusiastic, but that soon fades; there isn’t a sustained passion, and our life is more or less mechanical, a daily routine. Since it is a life of repetitive reactions which are mechanical, intellectually, technologically, and more or less emotionally, this one other activity naturally becomes extraordinarily important. If there were freedom intellectually and one had deep passion, fire, then sex would have its own place and become quite unimportant. We would not give such tremendous meaning to it, trying to find nirvana through sex, or thinking that through sex we are going to have complete unity with mankind. You know all the things that we hope to find through that! So can our minds find freedom? Can our minds be tremendously alive and clear, perceptive?—not the perception that we have gathered from others, from the philosophers, psychologists, and the so-called spiritual teachers, who are not spiritual at all. When there is a quality of deep, passionate freedom, then sex has its own place. Then what is chastity? Has chastity any place in our life at all? What is the meaning of that word chaste, not the dictionary meaning only, but the deep meaning of it? What does it mean to have a mind that is completely chaste? I think we ought to inquire into that. Perhaps that is much more important. If one is aware of the whole activity of the mind—without a division as the observer watching the mind and therefore bringing about a conflict between the observer and the observed—doesn’t one see the constant shaping of images, and remembrances of various pleasures, misfortunes, accidents, insults, and all the various impressions, influences, and pressures? These crowd our minds. Thought thinks about a sexual act, pictures it, imagines it, sustains evocative emotions, gets excited. Such a mind is not a chaste mind. It is a mind that has no picture at all, no image, that is a chaste mind. Then the mind is always innocent. The word innocency means a mind that does not receive hurts—or give hurt; it is incapable of hurting and also incapable of being hurt, but yet is totally vulnerable. Such a mind is a chaste mind. But those people who have taken vows of chastity are not chaste at all; they are battling with themselves everlastingly. I know various monks in the West and in the East, and what tortures they have gone through, all to find God. Their minds are twisted, tortured. All this is involved in pleasure. Where is pleasure in relation to love? What is the relationship between the pursuit of pleasure and love? Apparently, both go together. Our virtues are based on pleasure, our morality is based on pleasure. We say you may come to it through sacrifice—which gives you pleasure!—or resistance, which might give you the pleasure of achieving something. So where is the line, if there is such a thing, between pleasure and love? Can the two go together, be interwoven? Or are they always separate? Man has said, ‘Love God, and that love has nothing whatsoever to do with profane love’. You know this has been a problem not just for historical centuries, but right from the beginning of time. So where is the line that divides the two, or is there no line at all? One is not the other, and if we are pursuing pleasure, as most of us are—in the name of God, in the name of peace, in the name of social reform—then what place has love in this pursuit? So one has to go into the questions: What is pleasure and what is enjoyment and what is joy? Is bliss related to pleasure? Don’t say no or yes, let us find out. Look at a beautiful tree, a cloud, light on the water, a sunset, a vast expanse of sky, or the beautiful face of a man or a woman or a child. In the delight of seeing something really beautiful, there is great enjoyment, a real sense of appreciation of something extraordinary, noble, clear, lovely. And when you deny pleasure, you deny the whole perception of beauty. And religions have denied it. It is only quite recently, I’ve been told, that landscape painting came into religious paintings in the Western world, although in China and the East painting of the landscape and the tree was considered noble and religious. Why does the mind pursue pleasure? Not is it right or wrong, but what is the mechanism of this pleasure principle? If you say you agree or disagree, then we are lost, but if we actually together find out what is the principle, the mechanism of this whole movement of pleasure, then perhaps we shall understand what is real enjoyment. Then what is joy and bliss, in which is involved ecstasy? Is ecstasy related to pleasure? Can joy ever become pleasure? What is the mechanism of pleasure? Why does the mind pursue it so constantly? You cannot prevent perception—seeing a beautiful house, or a lovely green lawn and the sunshine on it, or the vast desert without a single blade of grass, and the expanse of the sky. You can’t prevent seeing it, and the very seeing is pleasure, is a delight, isn’t it? When you see a lovely face—not just a symmetrical face but one with depth in it, beauty, a quality behind it, intelligence, vitality—to see such a face is a marvel and in that perception there is a delight. Now, when does that delight become pleasure? You see a lovely statue by Michelangelo, and you look at it; it is the most extraordinary thing, not the subject, but the quality of it. In the perception of it, there is great pleasure, great delight. You go away and the mind thinks about it, thought begins. You say what a lovely thing that was. In seeing, there was great feeling, a quality of perception of something marvellous; then thought recollects it, remembers it, and remembers the pleasure that you had when you saw that statue. Thought then creates that pleasure; it gives vitality, continuity, to that event which took place when you saw that statue. So thought is responsible for the pursuing of pleasure. It is not my invention, you can watch it. You see a lovely sunset, and later you say, ‘I wish I could go back there and see it again’. At the moment of seeing that sunset, there was no pleasure. You saw something extraordinary, full of light and colour and depth. When you go away and go back to your life, your mind says, ‘What a marvellous thing that was, I wish that I could have it repeated again’. So thought perpetuates that thing as pleasure. Is that the mechanism? Then what takes place? You never again see the sunset— never! —because the remembrance of that original sunset remains, and you always compare with that. Therefore you never again see something totally new. So one asks: Can you see that sunset, or the beautiful face, or your sexual experience, or whatever it be, see it and finish it, not carry it over—whether that thing was great beauty or great sorrow or great physical or psychological pain? Can you see the beauty of it and be finished, completely finished, not take it over and store it up for the next day, next month, the future? If you do store it up, then thought plays with it. Thought is the storing up of that incident or that pain or that suffering or that thing that gave delight. So how is one not to prevent, but to be aware of this whole process and not let thought come into operation at all? I want to see the sunset, I want to look at the trees, full of the beauty of the earth. It is not my earth or your earth, it is ours; it is not the Englishman’s earth or the Russian’s or the Indian’s, it is our earth to live on, without all the frontiers, without all the ugly, beastly wars, and mischief of man. I want to look at all this. Have you ever seen palm trees on a solitary hill? What a marvellous thing it is! Or a single tree in a field? I want to look at it, I want to enjoy it, but I don’t want to reduce it to an ugly little pleasure. And thought will reduce it. How can thought function when necessary and not function at all in other directions? It is possible only when there is real awareness, awareness of the whole mechanism of thought, the structure and the nature of thought, where it must function—absolutely logically, healthily, not neurotically or personally—and where it has no place at all. So what are beauty and thought? Can the intellect ever perceive beauty? It may describe, it may imitate, it may copy, it may do many things, but the description is not the described. We could go on and on into this infinitely. So when one understands the nature of pleasure and the principle of pleasure, then what is love? Is love jealousy? Is love possessiveness? Is love domination, attachment? You know all the business that goes on in life—the woman dominates the man or the man dominates the woman. The man does something because he wants to pursue it; he is ambitious, greedy, envious; he wants a position, prestige. His wife says, ‘For God’s sake, stop all that tommy-rot and lead a different kind of life’. So there is a division between the two—even though they may sleep together. Can there be love when there is ambition, when each is pursuing his or her own particular private pleasures? Then what is love? Obviously, it can only happen when there are no longer all the things that are not love, like ambition, competition, wanting to become somebody. That is our life: We want to be somebody famous, to fulfil, know, become a writer, an artist, something bigger. All that is what we want. Can such a man or woman know what love is? That means, can there be love for a man who is working for himself, not only in a little way, but in identifying himself with the state, with God, with social activity, with the country, with a series of beliefs? Obviously not. And yet that is the trap in which we are caught. Can we be aware of that trap, really aware—not because somebody describes it—be aware of the trap in which we are caught and break the trap? That’s where the real revolution is, not the folly of revolutions of bombs and social changes. Though the social changes are necessary, the bombs are not. So one discovers or one comes upon unknowingly, without inviting it, this thing called love when the other things are not. It happens when we have really understood the nature of pleasure and how thought destroys the thing that was a great joy. Joy cannot possibly be made into pleasure. Joy comes naturally; it happens; like happiness it comes. But the moment you say, ‘Oh I am very happy’, you are no longer happy. Then what is love in human relationship? What is the place of love in human relationship? Has it any place at all? Yet we have to live together, we have to co-operate together, we have to have children together. Can the man who loves send his son to war? It is your problem. You have children, and your education is preparing the children for war, to kill. Find out! So what is that love, and what is its relationship to our human existence? I think that question can only be answered—truly, not verbally or intellectually—when the whole principle of pleasure, and thought, and this becoming, is understood. Then you will find a totally different kind of relationship. On Love and Loneliness With Students at Rajghat School, 19 December 1952 W E WERE DISCUSSING the complex problem of love. I do not think we shall understand it until we understand an equally complex problem, which we call the mind. Have you noticed, when we are very young, how inquisitive we are? We want to know, we see many more things than older people. We observe, if we are at all awake, things that older people do not notice. The mind, when we are young, is much more alert, much more curious and wanting to know. That is why, when we are young, we learn so easily mathematics, geography. As we grow older, our minds become more and more crystallized, more and more heavy, more and more bulky. Have you noticed in older people how prejudiced they are? Their minds are fixed, they are not open, they approach everything from a fixed point of view. You are young now; but if you are not very watchful, you will also become like that. Is it not then very important to understand the mind, and to see whether you cannot be supple, be capable of instant adjustments, of extraordinary capacities in every department of life, of deep research and understanding, instead of gradually becoming dull? Should you not know the ways of the mind, so as to understand the way of love? Because it is the mind that destroys love. Clever people, people who are cunning, do not know what love is because their minds are so sharp, because they are so clever, because they are so superficial—which means to be on the surface—and love is not a thing that exists on the surface. What is the mind? I am not talking about the brain, the physical construction of the brain about which any physiologist will tell you. The brain is something which reacts to various nervous responses. But you are going to find out what the mind is. The mind says, ‘I think; it is mine; it is yours; I am hurt; I am jealous; I love; I hate; I am an Indian; I am a Moslem; I believe in this; I do not believe in that; I know; you do not know; I respect; I despise; I want; I do not want’. What is this thing? Until you understand it—until you are familiar with the whole process of thinking, which is the mind—until you are aware of that, you will gradually, as you grow older, become hard, crystallized, dull, fixed in a certain pattern of thinking. What is this thing that you call the mind? It is the way of thinking, the way you think. I am talking of your mind—not somebody else’s mind and the way it would think—the way you feel, the way you look at trees, at a fish, at the fishermen, the way you consider the villager. That mind gradually becomes warped or fixed in a certain pattern. When you want something, when you desire, when you crave, when you want to be something, then you set a pattern; that is, your mind creates a pattern and gets caught. Your desire crystallizes your mind. Say, for example, I want to be a very rich man. The desire of wanting to be a wealthy man creates a pattern and my thinking then gets caught in it, and I can only think in those terms, and I cannot go beyond it. So the mind gets caught in it, gets crystallized in it, gets hard, dull. Or if I believe in something—in God, in a certain political system—the very belief begins to set the pattern, because that belief is the outcome of my desire and that desire strengthens the walls of the pattern. Gradually, my mind becomes dull, incapable of adjustment, of quickness, of sharpness, of clarity, because I am caught in the labyrinth of my own desires. So until I really investigate this process of my mind, the ways I think, the ways I regard love, until I am familiar with my own ways of thinking, I cannot possibly find what love is. There will be no love when my mind desires certain facts of love, certain actions of it, and when I then imagine what love should be. Then I give certain motives to love. So, gradually, I create the pattern of action with regard to love. But it is not love; it is merely my desire of what love should be. Say, for example, I possess you as a wife or as a husband. Do you understand possess? You possess your sari or your coat. If somebody took them away, you would be angry, you would be anxious, you would be irritated. Why? Because you regard your sari or your coat as yours, your property; you possess it; because through possession you feel enriched. Through having many saris, many coats, you feel rich, not only physically rich but inwardly rich. So when somebody takes your coat away, you feel irritated because inwardly you are being deprived of that feeling of being rich, that feeling of possession. Owning creates a barrier, does it not, with regard to love? If I own you, possess you, is that love? I possess you as I possess a car, a coat, a sari, because in possessing, I feel very rich; I depend on it; it is very important to me inwardly. This owning, this possessing, this depending, is what we call love. But if you examine it, you will see that, behind it, the mind feels satisfied in possession. After all, when you possess a sari or many saris or a car or a house, inwardly it gives you a certain satisfaction, the feeling that it is yours. So the mind desiring, wanting, creates a pattern, and in that pattern it gets caught, and so the mind grows weary, dull, stupid, thoughtless. The mind is the centre of that feeling of the ‘mine’, the feeling that I own something, that I am a big man, that I am a little man, that I am insulted, that I am flattered, that I am clever or that I am very beautiful or that I want to be ambitious or that I am the daughter of somebody or the son of somebody. That feeling of the ‘me’, the ‘I’, is the centre of the mind, is the mind itself. So the more the mind feels ‘This is mine’, and builds walls around the feeling that ‘I am somebody’, that ‘I must be great’, that ‘I am a very clever man’, or that ‘I am very stupid or a dull man’, the more it creates a pattern, the more and more it becomes enclosed, dull. Then it suffers; then there is pain in that enclosure. Then it says, ‘What am I to do?’ Then it struggles to find something else instead of removing the walls that are enclosing it—by thought, by careful awareness, by going into it, by understanding it. It wants to take something from outside and then to close itself again. So gradually, the mind becomes a barrier to love. So without the understanding of life, of what the mind is, of the way of thinking, of the way from which there is action, we cannot possibly find what love is. Is not the mind also an instrument of comparison? You say this is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, who is more clever. There is comparison when you say, ‘I remember that particular river that I saw a year ago, and it was still more beautiful’. You compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with an example, with the ultimate ideal. Comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not sharpen the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive, inclusive, because, when you are all the time comparing, what has happened? You see the sunset, and you immediately compare that sunset with the previous sunset. You see a mountain and you see how beautiful it is. Then you say, ‘I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago’. When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else. So comparison prevents you from looking fully. I look at you, you are nice, but I say, ‘I know a much nicer person, a much better person, a more noble person, a more stupid person’. When I do this, I am not looking at you. Because my mind is occupied with something else, I am not looking at you at all. In the same way, I am not looking at the sunset at all. To really look at the sunset, there must be no comparison; to really look at you, I must not compare you with someone else. It is only when I look at you without comparative judgment that I can understand you. But when I compare you with somebody else, then I judge you and I say, ‘Oh, he is a very stupid man’. So stupidity arises when there is comparison. I compare you with somebody else, and that very comparison brings about a lack of human dignity. When I look at you without comparing, I am only concerned with you, not with someone else. The very concern about you, not comparatively, brings about human dignity. So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find out where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love. When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love. You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else. As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh. And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love. Student: Is there not an end of love? Is love based on attraction? Krishnamurti: Suppose you are attracted by a beautiful river, by a beautiful woman, or by a man. What is wrong with that? We are trying to find out. You see, when I am attracted to a woman, to a man, or to a child or to truth, I want to be with it, I want to possess it, I want to call it my own; I say that it is mine and that it is not yours. I am attracted to that person, I must be near that person, my body must be near that person’s body. So what have I done? What generally happens? The fact is that I am attracted and I want to be near that person; that is a fact, not an ideal. And it is also a fact that when I am attracted and I want to possess, there is no love. My concern is with the fact and not with what I should be. When I possess a person, I do not want that person to look at anybody else. When I consider that person as mine, is there love? Obviously not. The moment my mind creates a hedge round that person, as ‘mine’, there is no love. The fact is, my mind is doing that all the time. That is what we are discussing, to see how the mind is working; and perhaps, being aware of it, the mind itself will be quiet. S: Why does one feel the necessity of love? K: You mean, why do we have to have love? Why should there be love? Can we do without it? What would happen if you did not have this so-called love? If your parents began to think out why they love you, you might not be here. They might throw you out. They think they love you; therefore they want to protect you, they want to see you educated, they feel that they must give you every opportunity to be something. This feeling of protection, this feeling of wanting you to be educated, this feeling that you belong to them, is what they generally call love. Without it, what would happen? What would happen if your parents did not love you? You would be neglected, you would be something inconvenient, you would be pushed out, they would hate you. So, fortunately, there is this feeling of love, perhaps clouded, perhaps besmirched and ugly, but there is still that feeling, fortunately for you and me; otherwise you and I would not have been educated, would not exist. On Love and Loneliness Bombay, 12 February 1950 Questioner: Our lives are empty of any real impulse of kindness, and we seek to fill this void with organized charity and compulsive justice. Sex is our life. Can you throw any light on this weary subject? Krishnamurti: To translate the question: Our problem is that our lives are empty, and we know no love; we know sensations, we know advertising, we know sexual demands, but there is no love. And how is this emptiness to be transformed, how is one to find that flame without smoke? Surely, that is the question, is it not? So let us find out the truth of the matter together. Why are our lives empty? Though we are very active, though we write books and go to cinemas, though we play, love, and go to the office, yet our lives are empty, boring, mere routine. Why are our relationships so tawdry, empty, and without much significance? We know our own lives sufficiently well to be aware that our existence has very little meaning; we quote phrases and ideas that we have learned—what so and so has said, what the mahatmas, the latest saints, or the ancient saints, have said. If it is not a religious, it is a political or intellectual leader that we follow, either Marx, or Adler, or Christ. We are just gramophone records repeating, and we call this repetition knowledge. We learn, we repeat, and our lives remain utterly tawdry, boring, and ugly. Why? Why is it like that? Why is it that we have given so much significance to the things of the mind? Why has the mind become so important in our lives?—mind being ideas, thought, the capacity to rationalize, to weigh, to balance, to calculate? Why have we given such extraordinary significance to the mind?—which does not mean that we must become emotional, sentimental, and gushy. We know this emptiness, we know this extraordinary sense of frustration. Why is there in our lives this vast shallowness, this sense of negation? Surely, we can understand it only when we approach it through awareness in relationship. What is actually taking place in our relationships? Are not our relationships a self-isolation? Is not every activity of the mind a process of safeguarding, of seeking security, isolation? Is not that very thinking, which we say is collective, a process of isolation? Is not every action of our life a self-enclosing process? You can see it in your daily life. The family has become a self-isolating process, and being isolated, it must exist in opposition. So all our actions are leading to self-isolation, which creates this sense of emptiness; and being empty, we proceed to fill the emptiness with radios, with noise, with chatter, with gossip, with reading, with the acquisition of knowledge, with respectability, money, social position, and so on and on. But these are all part of the isolating process, and therefore they merely give strength to isolation. So for most of us, life is a process of isolation, of denial, resistance, conformity to a pattern; and naturally in that process there is no life, and therefore there is a sense of emptiness, a sense of frustration. Surely, to love someone is to be in communion with that person, not on one particular level, but completely, integrally, profusely; but we do not know such love. We know love only as sensation—my children, my wife, my property, my knowledge, my achievement; and that again is an isolating process. Our life in all directions leads to exclusion; it is a self-enclosing momentum of thought and feeling, and occasionally we have communion with another. That is why there is this enormous problem. Now, that is the actual state of our lives—respectability, possession, and emptiness—and the question is how we are to go beyond it. How are we to go beyond this loneliness, this emptiness, this insufficiency, this inner poverty? I think most of us do not want to. Most of us are satisfied as we are; it is too tiresome to find out a new thing, so we prefer to remain as we are—and that is the real difficulty. We have so many securities; we have built walls around ourselves with which we are satisfied, and occasionally there is a whisper beyond the wall; occasionally there is an earthquake, a revolution, a disturbance which we soon smother. So most of us really do not want to go beyond the self-enclosing process; all we are seeking is a substitution, the same thing in a different form. Our dissatisfaction is so superficial; we want a new thing that will satisfy us, a new safety, a new way of protecting ourselves—which is again the process of isolation. We are actually seeking, not to go beyond isolation, but to strengthen isolation so that it will be permanent and undisturbed. It is only the very few who want to break through and see what is beyond this thing that we call emptiness, loneliness. Those who are seeking a substitution for the old will be satisfied by discovering something that offers a new security, but there are obviously some who will want to go beyond that, so let us proceed with them. Now, to go beyond loneliness, emptiness, one must understand the whole process of the mind. What is this thing we call loneliness, emptiness? How do we know it is empty, how do we know it is lonely? By what measure do you say it is this and not that? When you say it is lonely, it is empty, what is the measure? You can know it only according to the measurement of the old. You say it is empty, you give it a name, and you think you have understood it. Is not the very naming of the thing a hindrance to the understanding of it? Most of us know what this loneliness is, from which we are trying to escape. Most of us are aware of this inner poverty, this inner insufficiency. It is not an abortive reaction, it is a fact, and by calling it some name, we cannot dissolve it—it i	296,449
Solitude A Philosophical Encounter (Philip Koch) (Z-Library).epub	Solitude Solitude Solitude To order books from Open Court, call toll free 1-800-815-2280. This book has been reproduced in a print-on-demand format from the 1997 Open Court printing. Open Court Publishing Company is a division of Carus Publishing Company. © 1994 by Open Court Publishing Company First printing 1994 Second printing 1994 Third printing 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company, 315 Fifth Street, P.O. Box 300, Peru, Illinois 61354-0300. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Koch, Philip, 1942– Solitude: a philosophical encounter/Philip Koch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-81269-946-3 1. Solitude. I. Title BJ1499.S6K59 1994 128'.4—dc20 94-8836 CIP Solitude To my father and mother, Philip L. Koch and Gertrude E. Koch, who, each in their own way, equipped me well for fruitful solitude. Solitude CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PROLOGUE INTRODUCTION PART I: THE NATURE OF SOLITUDE 1 . Dimensions 2 . Near Relations: Loneliness, Isolation, Privacy, Alienation 3 . Disengagement 4 . Engaged Disengagement 5 . The Symmetry of Engagement and Disengagement 6 . Images of Solitude PART II: EVALUATING SOLITUDE 7 . The Virtues of Solitude 8 . The Completions of Encounter 9 . The Place of Solitude: The Arguments Apriori 10 . The Place of Solitude: Arguments from Experience 11 . Objections to Solitude: Some History 12 . Objections to Solitude: Responses 13 . Women and Solitude 14 . A Universal Value? EPILOGUE NOTES VERY SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY COMPREHENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX Solitude ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With Gratitude, How ironic, that a solitary man, writing a solitary book, owes so much to so many people. “Acknowledgement” is too astringently grudging to properly thank the grace, the kindness, the wisdom that has been given, asking nothing, glad to help the work prosper; and the extent of my indebtedness can certainly not be captured by a few brief words. Nevertheless, I can at least record my grateful realization of the gifts given by: Norman Malcolm and Robert Richman, philosophers in the oldest and truest sense, who taught me through their personal lives how to be a whole thinking person, cost what it may; Don and Anne Mazer, who gave me (along with everything else) my first journal many years ago, a journal which was briefly an enemy, then a companion, then a source for much that is written here; Professors Kenneth Butler, Ken Clatterbaugh, Charles Holmes, Graeme Hunter, Elizabeth Percival, Terry Pratt, John Smith and Peter Trnka, whose kind observations on earlier versions of the manuscript encouraged me to aim higher, yet speak always in my own voice; Christine Couturier and Huang Hua-liang, who arranged meetings with Chinese scholars in Beijing which deepened my understanding of ancient Taoism and modern human nature; Virginia Kopachevsky, whose mastery of the machinery of interlibrary loan made our small library seem limitless; Ann and Howard Schonberger, Mike and Lynn Foster, Steve and Pat Patten, Wayne Attoe, Buzz and Marge Holmgren, Tim and Marian Nelson, Brenda Young, Lucina Baryluk, Jean-Louis Herivault and Barry Bartmann, who contained my solitude in their friendly concern, enabling me to think and write rather than to shrink into myself; Kerri Mommer, my editor, whose confidence in the work and its author, together with a most gentle yet acute critical faculty, made the final stages of the project a time of completion rather than compromise; Peter Koch, my son, always wise beyond his years, who taught me lessons about the transparency and yet opacity of unconditional love, whose presence has given me much of the joy of human encounter these last 22 years, and whose absence has never been far from the heart in my solitude; Nadine Smith, who for five years has nurtured the writer of this manuscript and his ideas, giving better than she got in searching discussions, editing the manuscript with the greatest care while graciously minimizing her own contributions, teaching me the compatibility of solitude and relationship through countless daily acts of care and letting alone, helping me to remember, always, what love and solitude can give to each other. I most humbly thank you all. Solitude PROLOGUE What is solitude? What is its meaning, its value, its place in a human life? The reflections that fill the following pages have been accumulating since my thoughts began to turn upon themselves in childhood. At first the wondering was more inchoate than philosophical: a boy always on the run between family and friends began to notice empty places along the well-worn pathways. Strange, puzzling, a little scary; yet soon enough familiar, accepted, and not much later, sought (here I try to recall the difference between being eight and being eleven). Secure, alone, in the sheltered corner of the screened porch during thunderstorms, I knew nothing yet of the Sturm-und-Drangers who went before me, struggling to craggy heights and lashing themselves to towering trees in order to merge with the awesome thundering power of the storm. But, in a boy’s way, I felt that power and that ecstatic awe; and I watched expectantly for revelations in the lightning flashes. Time elapsed and there were lonely student years, times when solitude’s quiet wonders seemed but weak solace for the friendships and romantic transports I painfully lacked. True, there was the silence late at night when the dormitory slept; then ordinary things assumed a strange presence before the young chemical engineer who was discovering his disinterest in chemistry: the pen thrown upon the matted papers became, suddenly, WRITING, and the calculus book NUMBER, and the slide rule LAW. Later, when I read Derrida and Pythagoras and Plato, the partial understanding I gained would spring from the traces of those late night solitudes. But then, at the time, still innocent of the realities of adult relationship, I shook my head sadly at what seemed sad substitute gifts, so much second best to what I craved. And I felt a thousand years old. Loves did come, finally, and then marriage, a child and years of family life. They were wonderful, when they were not unbearable, but now solitude began to urgently reassert itself. How could that tender student have imagined that his business with solitude would now become a struggle to find it, and then to build stockades around the few small clearings? I stole solitude then as everyone so placed steals it: escaping into chores, driving alone to work, standing alone at the hockey rink appearing to watch my son’s team, listening to the house creak and the wind moan through the darkness of the hours of the wolf. Still the uncanny nature of the silence, still the power. And new thoughts began to grow in their own dark soil: maybe these silent spaces where ordinary things become numinous, where feelings become spruce boughs and scattered stars—maybe this, not relationship, is where I should find my place. Where any one should, if they had enough longing for the deepest reality and enough courage to pursue it. Those reflections produced results, though I would not now cite courage as the dominant motive as I did in those desperate days. There followed years as a single parent, Peter and I forming a paired solitude in the hilltop house that looked southwest across descending grainfields towards the sea. So much together there, I was yet struck by the varieties of absence we could practice in each other’s presence: were not the games during which one mind was elsewhere really solitudes of a peculiar sort? Perhaps protected solitudes: for later, though I was alone by the fire with a book, did not the dim awareness that all the while he slept in the back bedroom create a kind of containment for my solitude, rendering it less absolute? When he grew up and left for a school far away I was really alone with the house and the fire, the spruces and the wind. It was a different solitude than those that went before, open now in all directions. Sometimes it was lonely, sometimes it was so lonely that I gasped with fright, sucked and spinning into a terrible vortex of emptiness. But not very often. Mostly the need I had for others was satisfied by warm musings about Peter and my parents, about friends and lovers not far distant in time or place, remembered, elaborated and woven densely into a future. And there was something else, which every solitary knows well: the world we “half create and half perceive” (Wordsworth), where every natural thing rises up to assume a human form. Loading in wood in the late afternoon, I saw a pair of maple logs ignore each other; dumped together by brusque hands, however, they became solid neighbors. What a delight it was to pursue these imaginings as I wished! How amusing, these logs, each a character, each demanding a perfect personal fit in the stack. But suddenly I would think that I was becoming a crank. A severe inner voice would observe coldly: “This poor creature fills his bleak impoverished world with phantasms as a desperate substitute for the real relationships every human needs. A sick life, a tragic life! What he has here are illusory engagements with shadow-people, and yet he has somehow managed to deceive himself into thinking that this is the deepest reality in which a human might live! Solitude has gotten the best of him.” I did not like that voice at all; but, upon reflection, was not all it said true? Was there not something twisted, something distorted, something pathetic in preferring imagined company to real company? After all the living with people, after all the years of living alone and reflecting upon it, could I have failed finally to understand solitude? Yes, it could be. Think again, think harder, think to refute the cold voice. Think of Pop, perhaps, as you think of refutations. He cared for Mom twenty-two years while the Multiple Sclerosis slowly wore her away, stealing a few sinews of strength each day until It had them all. That closest being-with, being-for, surely could not endure the final parting. Yet it did. For seven more years he lived as heartily as his seventy-year-old organs allowed, alone. Of course we visited him, but he never pressed for more visits; invited, he came, but never stayed very long. What did he do, those long retired days and nights? And what if, my guilt and fear rose loudly crying, he should die alone? It was my question, not his. The solitude was simply there, factual. If death came, well then he supposed he would have to die it; thinking the whole matter out, that he’d leave to me. It arrived, as usually happens, unexpectedly. I flew in to be there. But how exactly was I there in his fading autumn world? True, I held the taut hand which shuddered in the puzzled dreams; yes, the fluttering eyes sometimes fixed upon me in the easy recognition come of forty-eight years of loving sight. Yet then he would smile, nod weakly and close his eyes again, and I had the strong sense that he had important business elsewhere, solitary business, as though he only needed to be reassured that I was all right before ambling off on his own. Then he left me, as he raised me, thinking. The thinking continues. These last few years have brought a complex mixture of solitudes and encounters, new loves and old friendships performing their elaborations before the great silent background of changing light and seasonal wind. And always the questions with so many threads: what is solitude? what is its meaning, its value, its place in my life? These pages record the substance of those reflections, organized now as a philosophical structure, hounded by a logician, connected by a historian to the centuries of solitaries who have gone before, brushed tenderly with the poetry I wish that I had written. I commit them to paper with a hope: that you and I might meet and pause here for a moment, joining in the celebrations yet critically alert before the arguments; meet long enough to feel a shy recognition before we wander off again into our own particular regions of the silence. Solitude INTRODUCTION What is solitude? What compound of space and self and silence and time is this that forms experiences so profound yet so humble, so reflectively rich yet so obliviously immersed in nature, so exhilarating yet so peaceful? Is it possible to say what solitude is? My thoughts run at once to famous solitaries. Take St. Antony, for example, “the father of monastics.” Around AD 269 this son of Egyptian peasant farmers wandered into a church where the Gospel was being read, “Go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor and come.” At that moment, the words heard so often before struck him as perfectly new and inexorably binding. Setting to work making himself poorer and more ascetic, at last he escaped alone into the desert. There, in a cave hastily vacated by the resident snakes, he secluded himself for twenty years, locked in solitary mortal combat with the legions of The Enemy. 1 Consider also the three young English nuns who, around 1250, undertook to have themselves walled into small cells attached to the outside of the local church. There, after a ceremony approximating a requiem mass, each of the Sisters was sealed in with brick and mortar, left with only one small window opening into the church and another out upon the village; there, dead to the world around her, each would pray and do penance in a solitude that would last for the rest of her natural life. Five hundred years later, Daniel Defoe produced his immortal tale of a hapless seaman named Crusoe, washed up on a deserted island off the coast of South America. Few can resist admiring this “shrewd middle class solidly matter-of-fact intelligence,” as Virginia Woolf called him, who contrived to survive and prosper utterly alone for ten long years. Then there was rambling, bumptious, paradoxical, profound Thoreau. His older friend and mentor, Emerson, owned forty acres of woodland around Walden Pond just outside Concord, Massachusetts, and there young Henry went in 1845 to build his own shelter and “live deliberately.” The experiment lasted two years, two years of observation and reflection, of hoeing beans and cultivating the journal whose first entry was entitled “Solitude.” Writing brings to mind Franz Kafka, waiting impatiently for his parents and sisters to go to bed so that he could have the dining room table for writing, writing that ran away into the night, every night for most of his adult life. Only in that solitary silence could he relax and breathe, only there could he write through and write beyond the ever-present anxiety. And for that writing, “one can never be alone enough . . . there can never be enough silence around one . . . even night is not night enough.” 2 Another explorer of another night, Admiral Richard Byrd, volunteered to operate Bolling Advance Weather Base alone during the Antarctic winter of 1934. Four hundred miles inland towards the pole from Little America, the risks were substantial: Whoever should elect to inhabit such a spot must reconcile themselves to enduring the bitterest temperatures in nature, a long night as black as that on the dark side of the moon, and an isolation which no power on earth could lift for at least six months. 3 There, in a small hut buried under feet of snow, month after month, with a failing radio in the deepening Antarctic night, he charted the weather and measured the sort of man he was. Now I am envisioning the massive cedar trees and lone totem poles of British Columbia painted by Emily Carr. They exude the solitude of the coastal forests where she worked alone for many of her later years, living with a menagerie of pets in an old caravan. At night she recorded the struggles of the days’ work: October 5th: Oh that mountain! I’m dead beat tonight with struggling. I repainted almost the whole show. It’s still a bad, horrid, awful, mean little tussock. No strength, nobility, solidarity. Sept. 8th: Did good work this morning. Did poor work this afternoon. I am looking for something indescribable, so light it can be crushed by a heavy thought, so tender even our enthusiasm can wilt it, as mysterious as a tear. 4 Where is such a thing to be found, let alone painted? In solitude, she thought. But for all of these examples, it is still not clear what solitude itself is. True, an essential element has appeared: all of these heroes of solitude were, in their solitude, alone. But that is not enough: for loneliness, isolation, alienation, and schizophrenia are also modalities of aloneness, yet none are equivalent to solitude. Is it possible to articulate exactly what it is that makes solitude different? One should not be overconfident. There is, at the beginning, Thoreau’s stern warning: “The silence cannot be done into English.” True, he did set out “to crow like a chanticleer” in a book about his solitary life, and crowed for more than two hundred pages. However crowing is not philosophical analysis, and even the Walden chapter on solitude is lacking in any attempt at definition. Nevertheless the crowing helps: when we have read “Solitude,” and the rest of Walden , and “Walking,” and “Wild Apples,” it is clearer what solitude is and what there can be in it. Crowing about solitude is one expressive path towards enlightenment, and the following pages collect many such poetic songs. Yet the songs do not yield a finished comprehension, for they raise their own questions. Thoreau exclaimed, “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” Companionable? But then is it a solitude, if the loons and the raindrops are companions? Nor is this merely an eccentric remark by a man who loved paradox; for you can find in Byron’s Childe Harold a very similar exclamation Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone; 5 and you can read the same sentiment in Petrarch, who objects that St. Ambrose stole it from Scipio. 6 What did they all mean, exactly? Then too, these crowings about solitude sometimes conflict with each other. Wordsworth wrote often of solitude in words like these: . . . we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul: while with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. (from “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”) Yet he also wrote the “Elegiac Stanza” of 1805: Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind. Sight or blindness, which is solitude? Indeed, the conflicts grow worse. Compare, for example, Proust’s famous drearity, Notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of friendship, politeness, deference and duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. 7 with D. H. Lawrence’s insistence that Everything, even individuality itself, depends on relationship . . . The light shines only when the circuit is completed. My individualism is really an illusion. I am part of the great whole, and I can never escape. 8 Once the possibility of general illusion is raised, even solid ground begins to feel shaky. Perhaps those famous solitudes just recalled were not really solitudes after all? True, St. Antony lived alone in a cave for twenty years; but they were twenty years of prayer, and if prayer is communion with God, and if God is conceived as a personage . . . where is the solitude? Or take the immured Sisters: if they could see into the church and follow the service at the altar, if they could look out upon daily village life outside the cell, if they were surrounded on all sides by people with whom they felt some connection . . . what then? Is it so absurd to call their solitude illusory, as Lawrence appears to wish to do? Or consider Kafka. Is writing, at some level, always writing-for-others, and so a kind of quasi-engagement? Is living in the characters as one creates them a kind of surrogate encounter? If so, would it follow that Kafka was not really alone in that silence all those nights? Proust might seem easier to dismiss, but his descriptions of the isolated detachment of what ought to be intimate personal encounters certainly make one cringe: I might, if I chose, take Albertine upon my knee, take her head in my hands; I might caress her, passing my hands slowly over her, but, just as if I had been handling a stone which encloses the salt of immemorial oceans or the light of a star, I felt that I was touching no more than the sealed envelope of a person who inwardly reached to infinity. 9 If this is how intimate encounters really are, stripped of illusions, is it not possible to call them solitudes? And if this is true of the most engaged of our engagements, what else is there than solitude? I feel certain that neither Proust nor Lawrence are right. But where do they go wrong? It will be necessary to burrow much more deeply into the natures of solitude and encounter if we are ever to understand the truth and the falsity in these disturbing claims. And understanding such things seems to be crucial for understanding the nature of a human life. A great deal of energy has been expended of late years in trying to say what relationship —especially intimate relationship—really is. Men and women want to know whether their own garbled versions are the real thing, to know how they measure up. Whether or not anything ought to be done, independent of all projects for action and change, they simply want to know. It is the philosopher in them. One of the reasons for burrowing into the nature of solitude is exactly parallel and equally compelling. But as we are knowers, so are we actors. The concern for understanding the nature of solitude is also motivated by our ongoing stumbling project to discover the best way to live. If Lawrence and Proust are wrong and there is the possibility of choice for or against solitude, which to choose? We need to assess the value of these quiet moments, to consider what gifts they offer that encounter cannot give so well. That was the question Byrd set out to answer: his self-isolation was propelled by one man’s desire to know that kind of experience to the full, to be by himself for a while and to taste peace and quiet and solitude long enough to find out how good they really are. 10 One good that solitude provides is indisputable: it gives respite and restoration, a time and a place to lick the wounds of social strife; “he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul.” That is a great good, but is it all there is to the value of solitude, which functions merely as a restful retreat between the interpersonal encounters which contain the real meaning of human existence? I cannot believe it. I think of Lao Tzu: At the age of 160 Lao Tzu grew disgusted with the decay of the Chou dynasty and resolved to pursue virtue in a more congenial atmosphere. Riding in a chariot drawn by a black ox, he left the Middle Kingdom through the Han-ku Pass which leads westward from Loyang. The Keeper of the Pass, Yin Hsi, who, from the state of the weather had expected a sage, addressed him as follows: “You are about to withdraw yourself from sight. I pray you to compose a book for me.” Lao Tzu thereupon wrote the 5000 characters which we call the Tao Teh Ching. After completing the book, he departed for the west. 11 From the solitary westering he never returned. Why, if solitude is but a restorative? I know this is only a legend: but why does the legend say it? 12 How indeed can solitude function as a restorative if it does not provide its own intrinsic values? What exactly are they? As I have read over twenty-five centuries of celebrations of solitude, through Lao Tzu, Hesiod, Plato, Jesus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Petrarch, St. Teresa of Avila, Montaigne, Rousseau, Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt, Hugo, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, Muir, Proust, Rilke, Byrd, Stevens, Eiseley, Carr, Tillich, Sarton, Camus, Storr, Kohák, and Koller, certain praises are repeated again and again. In part 2 of this volume I collect and organize them around five central ideas: Freedom, Attunement to Self, Attunement to Nature, Reflective Perspective, Creativity. Then I worry about them. Take Freedom, for example. Petrarch wrote in De Vita Solitaria (The Life of Solitude), For it is not the mere name of solitude but the good things which are proper to it that I praise. And it is not so much the solitary recesses and the silence that delight me as the leisure and freedom that dwell within them. 13 So true, a wonderful freedom does characterize solitude; but what is the distinctive nature of that freedom? How does it compare, for example, with political freedom, which seems to be devoid of value in solitude? Is one freedom broader or deeper, in any coherent sense, than the other? Such questions will take us to the very core of the values of solitude. But where there are virtues there are surely vices, and the Western tradition has not been lax in raising objections to solitude. Pericles remarked in the “Funeral Oration” that Athenians regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing. 14 Dr. Johnson took a stern view of the likes of Lao Tzu: There is a higher order of men . . . (who) ought to consider themselves as appointed the guardians of mankind: they are placed in an evil world to exhibit public examples of good life; and may be said, when they withdraw to solitude, to desert the station which Providence assigned them. 15 Indeed, especially when one turns from the evaluation of episodes of solitude to the assessment of the place of solitude in a whole life, one raises issues that Western culture has viewed with marked ambivalence. Opposing voices are already to be heard in our ancient sources, the Bible and Greek literature. Tillich noticed that Adam’s aloneness was the first thing that God found not good (Gen. 2:18), and Eccles. 4:10 moans “Woe to him that is alone! For if he falleth, there is none to raise him up.” On the other hand, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus found in solitude the great moral visions that became their lives. Furthermore, the New Testament identifies true prayer with inner prayer, the prayer of the heart said in solitude, and not the prayer of the Pharisees cried aloud in the market place. The Sermon on the Mount admonishes the faithful, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matt. 6:6) On the other hand, as the medieval clerics argued against the monastics, Saint John demanded, “he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (I John 4:20). Ah, said the monastics, but did not Christ say, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and furthermore that “The kingdom of God is within” (Luke 17:21)? And so it went. A similar ambivalence manifests itself when we turn to the Greeks. The myths and legends, it is true, do not appear to accord much value to solitude: the gods live together on Mt. Olympus, and their escapades are amorous or political, not solitary. As for mortals, both Achilles and Odysseus chafe at their solitudes, Narcissus is punished for his solitary disdain for maidens, and Atalanta’s plan to remain unmarried is thwarted by the gods. Indeed solitude seems to be part of the punishment in many of the tales: Io is compelled to wander forlornly over the earth by Hera, and the three great offenders whose punishments so powerfully impressed themselves on Western thought—Prometheus chained to the side of the mountain, Tantalus forever thirsty in the pool of cool clear water, and Sisyphus condemned to roll the great stone uphill forever—each of these punishments seems increased by the solitude of the victim. However, the ancient Greek view is not so clear-cut as might be deduced from these examples. Antigone, I recall, buried her brother alone. Joseph Campbell has remarked upon a hero-theme running through the myths which involves a solitary quest: a young hero must prove himself alone, and then receives some gift or power which enables him to aid his people (Theseus and Bellerophon come to mind). Along different lines, the stories of Hercules and Oedipus develop a theme of redemptive atonement in solitude, suggesting that only in isolation can guilt, remorse, and redemption run their full course. The same ambivalence regarding the value of solitude is present in the philosophers. In the Phaedrus , Plato gives us a Socrates that would rather discuss philosophy with men than ramble alone through nature: You must forgive me, dear friend; I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me anything, whereas men in town do. 16 Yet even he withdraws occasionally into a kind of trance-like meditation which, though unexplained in the dialogues, is mentioned too often to be devoid of importance. As for Plato himself, taking the middle and late dialogues as representing his own position, individual solitude is little mentioned and might not seem of any importance; yet the highest good of the highest life is consistently said to lie in the contemplation of the Forms, a clearly solitary activity. Aristotle reveals the same ambivalence. Some of his most famous remarks in the Nicomachean Ethics mitigate against solitude: “to live alone, a man must be either a beast or a god” (obviously real men are neither). Discussing the role friendship plays in happiness, he writes: Surely it is strange, too, to make the supremely happy man a solitary; for no one would choose the whole world on condition of being alone, since man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others. 17 Yet Aristotle could never align himself with Pericles and the man of the polis at the cost of turning his back on the older philosophers, and as the Nicomachean Ethics winds to a close he argues that the highest good for this zoon politicon is contemplation: If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us. . . . That this activity is contemplation we have already said. 18 But the contemplation intended was a solitary activity. Aristotle was of two minds about solitude. That was 2300 years ago, but the ambivalences have persevered. As the twentieth century draws to a close, we are still not sure what place solitude ought to have in our lives. We are becoming more communal, more political, more communicative, but we are also flying apart, fascinated with the varieties of the “return to nature” possible in activities such as gardening, wilderness camping, sunlight meditation. The divorce rate is rising but marriages are keeping pace. The true and balanced place of solitude in a human life is a philosophical question which has, for us, now, urgency. The reflections that fill the following pages focus upon these problems of essence and value. For those who like ponderosities, there will emerge a phenomenology and an axiology of solitude. I prefer to speak plainly, to ask: how much of the experience of solitude can be articulated? Which claims for its value can survive rational scrutiny? I ask these questions of solitude for personal reasons. All the while, through the arguments and the poetic evocations, I stalk the creatures of my own ambivalence: should I, as the days pile into years around me, move ever closer to other people, giving now out of the rich stores of past solitudes? Or should I quietly, unobtrusively, head out westward through the Han-ku pass? Solitude PART 1 THE NATURE OF SOLITUDE What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? — HENRY DAVID THOREAU Solitude CHAPTER 1 Dimensions I f I aim to say what solitude is, it seems best to begin by scrutinizing an example. I need an experience of solitude to interrogate, and which better than the one Thoreau describes in the opening lines of “Solitude” in Walden? This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s watchmen—links which connect the days of animated life. 1 Three features which I intuitively associate with solitude are apparent in this description: 1. Physical Isolation. Thoreau is alone by the pond in the simple physical sense: there are no human beings within possible sensing distance of his body. 2. Social Disengagement. Experientially, he is not engaged with other humans: he is not aware of anyone nearby, not searching for anyone or hiding from anyone, not longing for anyone or remembering anyone. His mind is filled with his surroundings, surroundings devoid of people. 3. Reflectiveness. Although most of the passage describes a state of absorption in the sights and sounds of the evening, the last line signals a reflective distancing from the directly perceptually given: reflection now provides a symbolic meaning for Thoreau—“Nature’s Watchmen” and “links in a chain.” When all three of these features characterize an extended experience, a “time,” it is certainly a solitude. But are all three necessary conditions for solitude, the sort of attributes which could yield at once a definition of the concept? Unfortunately, matters are not so simple, for there are varieties of solitude in which each of the features seems to be absent (or rather incidental). 1. Physical Isolation? Can there be solitude in the presence of other people? Thoreau thought so: “The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.” Or consider the meditative state attained by this ancient Taoist sage: Tzu-Ch’i of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he’d lost his companion. Yen Ch’eng Tzu-yu, who was standing by his side in attendance, said, What is this? Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind like dead ashes? The man leaning on the armrest now is not the one who leaned on it before! 2 No doubt the majority of solitudes involve physical isolation from others, no doubt it is very difficult to achieve solitude with a chattering disciple at your side; but the minority and the difficult should not be excluded by definition. 2. Social Disengagement? One is struck throughout Thoreau’s essays by his tendency to anthropomorphize natural things—indeed nature itself—and thus experience himself as engaged: Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; . . . the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object . . . 3 And there were other presences at the pond: he delighted in the “old settler” who told stories on winter evenings and the “elderly dame” who told mythic fables while he strolled in her garden—both presumably creations of his imagination, but powerful sources of delight nonetheless. Commonly, those who prefer solitude to society are able to people their silent worlds with a wealth of imagined encounters and silent conversations which satisfy completely the need for companionship. Is this not a kind of engagement with others, however? 3. Reflectiveness? Had Thoreau remained immersed in the perceptual experience, simply flowing empathically with the evening sights and sounds, would it not have been a solitude? An architecture student sits sketching for hours, unaware of the passing time as the facade of the building emerges on her sketchpad; a carpenter bends over the table leg he is carving, fully absorbed in the pressure and resistance of the chisel: surely these are solitudes, but where is the reflection? It is important not to overintellectualize solitude, as though only writers and philosophers belong there. No, our quarry is right there in the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Here is Richard Triumpho exulting in a farmer’s solitude; and although some of his solitudes are reflective, this one is not: All day I have been riding the droning tractor, planting sudan grass on the sloping 19 acres we call Rivenburg Hill, named after some long forgotten landowner. The sun is hot; the ground is dusty. My face, arms and clothes are covered with a thick layer of grime—a combination of sweat, good field dust and fertilizer powder. . . . But I am happy. Since sunup I have driven round and round this field with a one-track mind, like one possessed . . . round and round I go with one thought uppermost in my mind—putting in the seed. 4 Reflection upon these very different solitary experiences has convinced me, finally, that the most promising place to look for the core of solitude is in the realm of social disengagement, our second factor. To be sure, solitude is most usually and most easily achieved in physical isolation, but that appears to be because most of us are too little able to disengage consciousness from the powerful stimuli of present others. Again, although solitude does provoke and nourish kinds of reflection that are most intimately connected with the intrinsic values of the state, as we shall see later on, this need not necessarily occur. Solitude is, most ultimately, simply an experiential world in which other people are absent: that is enough for solitude, that is constant through all solitudes. Other people may be physically present, provided that our minds are disengaged from them; and the full range of disengaged activities, from reflective withdrawal to complete immersion in the tumbling rush of sensations, find their places along the spectrum of solitudes. As for the exact nature of this state of disengagement, as for the problems which imaginative modes of engagement seem to raise about solitude, much more will have to be said. The three features we have just been examining may be the first and clearest ideas called to mind by the mention of solitude, but they are not all that term suggests. Freedom seems implicated too: must not true solitude be freely chosen? and is it not also a state distinguished by a distinctive freedom of activity? “I come and go with a strange liberty in Nature,” wrote Thoreau, and Francis Bacon remarked that “the most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty.” Then there is the suggestion of quiet, of stillness, of silence: a recent author remarks that “genuine solitude is a ‘coming to terms with’ silence and aloneness in life.” 5 Again, the expression ‘the world of solitude’ comes so easily to the lips, suggesting that solitude is a peculiar sort of “place,” with its own distinctive experiences of time and space. These suggestions must be pursued. The idea that a time of disengagement from others should only be called a solitude if it is freely chosen has an initial attraction when we think of solitaries like Thoreau and Muir and Rilke, but must be modified when we recall some famous prisoners. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius ( AD 475–525) was born to a wealthy patrician family during the last years of the Roman Empire. Remarkable for scholarship as a youth, he entered public life around thirty years of age and soon became a consul, holding that position successfully for ten years until he returned to scholarly interests. The retirement was interrupted, however: Theodoric the Ostrogoth had just succeeded in conquering Italy, and sought to conciliate the Roman Senate by returning to office this honored public servant. For several years Boethius enjoyed Theodoric’s confidence, but in 523 things changed abruptly: Theodoric became convinced that Boethius was the force behind some treasonable actions of the Senate, and without warning threw the old man into prison. There Boethius languished for two long years while Theodoric skirmished with the Senate. Finally in 525, Theodoric had Boethius taken from prison, tortured, and bludgeoned to death. It was during those final two years of darkness and despair, however, that Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy , an enduring testament to his solitude. Dr. Viktor Frankl, deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis, survived for three terrible years in the degrading brutality of the camp. In Man’s Search for Meaning he describes how he managed, incredibly, to steal some brief moments of solitude: There were times, of course, when it was possible, and even necessary, to keep away from the crowd. . . . The prisoner craved to be alone with himself and his thoughts. He yearned for privacy and for solitude. After my transportation to a so-called “rest-camp” I had the rare fortune to find solitude for about five minutes at a time. Behind the earthen hut where I worked and in which were crowded about fifty delirious patients, there was a quiet spot in a corner of the double fence of barbed wire surrounding the camp. A tent had been improvised there with a few poles and branches of trees in order to shelter a half-dozen corpses (the daily death rate in the camp). There was also a shaft leading to the water pipes. I squatted on the wooden lid of this shaft whenever my services were not needed. I just sat and looked out at the green flowering slopes and the distant blue hills of the Bavarian landscape, framed by the meshes of barbed wire. I dreamed longingly, and my thoughts wandered north and northeast, in the direction of my home, but I could only see clouds. The corpses near me, crawling with lice, did not bother me. Only the steps of passing guards could rouse me from my dreams. 6 Robert Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz, was only nineteen when he shot the man who raped his girl friend. Convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison, he was incarcerated in the maximum security federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The first view of that prison, which would contain so much of his adult life, was calculated to fill hardened hearts with despair: Rising sheer from a slight elevation of the friendly prairie, enclosing sixteen acres, the wall sat like a flat square snake of brick and mortar, its face a front of granite centered with a nose-like dome and portico. Ranging from thirty to forty-two feet high, the wall had been erected by the prisoners themselves, working in the thousands in steady shifts since 1899. The wall’s history immediately became known to the inmates and it was an ever-present and awesome reality to convicts and guards alike. The wall contained the encysted sweat of prisoners forced to immure themselves under the rifles of guards. Periodically some guard would quit, saying, “The Wall got me” . . . 7 It got to Stroud too: four years later a brutal guard tried to club him into submission, and Stroud stabbed the guard to death. For this he was immediately removed to solitary confinement, and then sentenced to death. Moved by the tireless pleading of Stroud’s mother, however, President Woodrow Wilson finally commuted the sentence to life imprisonment—in solitary confinement. Thus began fifty years of confinement alone, first at Leavenworth and then on “The Rock” in San Francisco Bay. His cells in both places were similar in their isolation and their bleakness: Behind the enormous stone facade of Leavenworth, past the great cell blocks, the Isolation Building huddled alone. On the first floor, the rear half of the structure held eighteen segregation cells, nine on each side. It was a prison within a prison. Stroud’s cell was twelve feet long and six feet wide, and the thick plaster walls were painted gray. At the rear was a small barred window. The door was of heavy steel bars covered by wire netting. There was a second door of solid wood which could be swung upon the steel door, shutting out light and air. In the cell stood a lavatory, washbasin and a narrow bed. From the high ceiling dangled a twenty-five watt bulb. 8 One June day in 1920, out for his one hour of exercise alone in the prison yard, Stroud came upon a fallen bird’s nest containing four weak baby sparrows. Carrying them gently back to his cell, he fashioned a nest out of rags, and, with permission from a sympathetic warden, nursed them to maturity. Thus began the series of acute observations of the habits, breeding, and diseases of small birds that was to totally absorb him for the next twenty years. During that time he raised and studied thousands of canaries, publishing a number of articles in the Roller Canary Journal and producing two full-length books on canary diseases. When this world of fruitful solitary study was shattered by a sudden and vindictive transfer to Alcatraz in 1940, Stroud began to research and write a massive historical analysis of the United States penal system. This remarkable work, which captured the sympathy of many people outside the prison walls for dozens of years, was accomplished in solitude, in six-foot by twelve-foot cells. It would be absurd to deny the solitude of these three men on grounds that their isolation was not freely chosen. Yet in the second suggested meaning of freedom in solitude, a time of free activity, there seems some merit. Notice how each of the three prisoners deliberately constructed their solitudes: they took charge—to write, to sequester themselves, to study birds. Spheres of freedom remained available to them in their imprisonment, and they found the strength to exercise those freedoms. Take away all choice, all control, and the word ‘solitude’ sounds wrong. If one thinks of victims of torture, lying overwhelmed, aching, terrified, and exhausted in the darkness alone, it seems as semantically wrong as it does morally indecent to call their states “solitudes”; and the reason appears to be the suggestion the word has of freedom and control. 9 Quiet, stillness, silence—these do come invariably to mind when one thinks of solitude. “The most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness,” exults the solitary animal in Kafka’s eerie tale The Burrow . Indeed, profound stillness and silence can almost seem to make of themselves a solitude. Is this bedside vigil of Walt Whitman’s a solitude or not? I have been sitting late to-night by the bedside of a wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painful fracture of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large ward partially vacant. The lights were put out, all but a little candle, far from where I sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting silvery patches on the floor. All was still, my friend too was silent, but could not sleep; so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan, and occupied with the musings that arose out of the scene, the long shadowy ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight on the floor, the white beds, here and there an occupant with huddled form, the bed-clothes thrown off. 10 Yet surely solitude need not of necessity be quiet and silent; for who would not recognize a familiar solitude in Robert Louis Stevenson’s remembrance of falling asleep in a forest encampment? The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears. 11 Confusion enters our thinking about the necessity for stillness, quiet, and silence in solitude because of several ambiguities in the terms. In the first place, ‘quiet’ and ‘still’ can refer either to a state of noiselessness or to a state of passive calmness. These two states are distinguishable—Stevenson was himself quiet although the wind in the trees was not—but they have a striking facility for producing and interfusing each other. Oliver Morgan felt this quiet agency: I am sitting at my desk and looking out the bay windo	910,543
Solitude A Return to the Self (Storr Anthony) (Z-Library).epub	Solitude Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction 1 – The Significance of Human Relationships 2 – The Capacity to be Alone 3 – The Uses of Solitude 4 – Enforced Solitude 5 – The Hunger of Imagination 6 – The Significance of the Individual 7 – Solitude and Temperament 8 – Separation, Isolation, and the Growth of Imagination 9 – Bereavement, Depression and Repair 10 – The Search for Coherence 11 – The Third Period 12 – The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole References Epigraphs Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher Solitude 8 Separation, Isolation, and the Growth of Imagination ‘I think I could tum and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.’ Walt Whitman In Chapter 6 , it was suggested that an inner world of phantasy exists in every human being, and that interests in which imagination plays a part are, in many individuals, as important as interpersonal relationships in giving meaning to their lives. There is nothing pathological in the employment of imagination. We cannot dispense with phantasy: if we could, we should lose much of what makes us distinctively human. But, as one would expect, imaginative capacity tends to become particularly highly developed in gifted individuals who, for one reason or another, have passed rather solitary childhoods. We have already noted that the effects of solitude can be damaging or rewarding according to circumstances. Unless those circumstances are so inimically severe that they cause mental disintegration, absence of, or partial deprivation of, interpersonal relationships encourages imagination to flourish. Imagination is generally recognized to be particularly active in childhood, and is an especially evident resource in children who either spend a good deal of time alone because other children are not available, or who do so because they find it difficult to make relationships with their peers. The people who later devote their lives to pursuits in which imagination plays a major role have often started to do so in childhood to a greater extent than the average because circumstances of separation, loss, or enforced isolation have impelled them in that direction. Isolated children often invent imaginary companions. Others go further, and invent stories in which a variety of imaginary persons take part. Various types of deprivation in early life may make it difficult for those who suffer them to achieve intimate attachments. But the development of an imaginary world can sometimes serve as a retreat from unhappiness, a compensation for loss, and a basis for later creative achievement. Some bereaved or very isolated children abandon any hope of making lasting intimate attachments, and only risk embarking upon relationships which are not so close. The relationships made by some creatively gifted people may be limited, incomplete, or stormy. Creative artists are quite likely to choose relationships which will further their work, rather than relationships which are intrinsically rewarding, and their spouses may well find that marital relations take second place. But this sequence of events is not invariable. There are examples of people who, as children, led isolated lives, but who nevertheless were able to make close relationships when adult. It is also not unknown for creative people, once they have achieved an intimate relationship, to lose some of their imaginative drive. Anthony Trollope is one instance of a novelist who himself attributed the development of his creative imagination to early isolation. In his autobiography, Trollope describes the misery of his schooldays at Harrow and Winchester. As a result of his father’s poverty, his school bills were not paid, and his pocket-money was stopped. The facts became known to his schoolfellows. Large, awkward, ugly, he became what he describes as ‘a Pariah’, who had no friends and who was despised by his companions. He took refuge in phantasy. As a boy, even as a child, I was thrown much upon myself. I have explained, when speaking of my school-days, how it came to pass that other boys would not play with me. I was therefore alone, and had to form my plays within myself. Play of some kind was necessary to me then, as it has always been. Study was not my bent, and I could not please myself by being all idle. Thus it came to pass that I was always going about with some castle in the air firmly built within my mind. Trollope describes these compensatory romances as occupying six or seven years of his life before he left school and started work in the Post Office, and as continuing in his mind even after he had started work. There can, I imagine, hardly be a more dangerous mental practice; but I have often doubted whether, had it not been my practice, I should ever have written a novel. I learned in this way to maintain an interest in a fictitious story, to dwell on a work created by my own imagination, and to live in a world altogether outside the world of my own material life. 1 Trollope’s pejorative appraisal of his daydreams as ‘dangerous’ recalls Freud’s puritanical vision of phantasy as both childish and escapist. Yet Trollope’s phantasy life later turned out to be so closely connected with the external world that some critics have dismissed his novels as being earthbound, pedestrian, and lacking in imagination. However, C. P. Snow calls him ‘the finest natural psychologist of all nineteenth-century novelists’. 2 Snow is surely right in attributing Trollope’s capacity for empathy to his early unhappiness. Feeling rejected, as we shall see in other instances, often leads to watchfulness; to a wary appraisal of the feelings and behaviour of others who may inflict further pain if one does not learn to please them. In this way, the budding novelist learns to observe human beings and to gauge their motives. Beatrix Potter is an interesting example of a writer who had a predominandy isolated childhood which, though not actively unhappy, caused her to grow up exceedingly shy and tongue-tied in company. Margaret Lane’s biography of her, The Tale of Beatrix Potter , was first published in 1946. Humphrey Carpenter, in his chapter on Beatrix Potter in Secret Gardens , accuses Margaret Lane of exaggerating the writer’s early loneliness and difficulties in making human relationships. 3 Carpenter points out that, in 1946, Beatrix Potter’s secret journals, written in a code of her own invention, had not been deciphered; and claims that, if they had been available, Margaret Lane would have painted a different picture of her. However, a second edition of Margaret Lane’s biography appeared in 1968 in which she makes considerable use of the journals and gives full acknowledgement to Leslie Linder, who broke Beatrix Potter’s code and spent nine years transcribing what she had written. Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866, and remained an only child for her first five years. Attentive parents can sometimes compensate for the loneliness of an only child by sending the child to kindergarten, inviting other children to the house, and in other ways ensuring that opportunities for mixing with contemporaries are easily available. No such amenities were thought necessary for Beatrix Potter. She was provided with a Scottish nurse, given luncheon in the nursery, and taken for a walk in the afternoon. What more could a middle-class child, brought up in the well-to-do surroundings of Kensington, possibly want? She was never sent to school, did not share her parents’ life to any great extent, and was given no opportunity of mixing with other children, apart from occasional encounters with cousins. Her parents did not entertain guests at home; the atmosphere was stiflingly respectable; and no attempt was made to meet the needs of children. Beatrix Potter was nineteen before she saw the Horse Guards, the Admiralty and Whitehall, for the Potter carriage seldom left the immediate environs of South Kensington. It is not surprising that she grew up to be ill-at-ease in company. Her only escapes from this ‘Victorian mausoleum’, as a cousin called it, were visits to her paternal grandmother at a house near Hatfield, occasional visits to other relatives, and an annual family holiday in Scotland, where she began to take an interest in, and weave phantasies around, the lives of animals. She learned to read from the Waverley novels of Scott. Her first literary efforts seem to have been hymns and ‘sentimental descriptions of Scottish scenery’. 4 A younger brother, Bertram, made his appearance in due course but, as soon as he was old enough, was despatched to boarding school. A governess, Miss Hammond, became an encouraging presence who fostered Beatrix Potter’s interest in nature and in drawing, but she left in the girl’s early ’teens, saying that her pupil had already outstripped her. Although visiting governesses came to teach her German and French, most of Beatrix Potter’s hours were spent without human companionship. But she did manage to acquire pets: a rabbit, a couple of mice, some bats, and a family of snails. Margaret Lane writes: She had made friends with rabbits and hedgehogs, mice and minnows, as a prisoner in solitary confinement will befriend a mouse. 5 It is interesting that, when her coded journal was finally deciphered, no secrets which appeared to require concealment were revealed. Margaret Lane writes, very perceptively: No hidden self-communings, no secret fantasy, even singularly few complaints. She seems to have embarked on this labour of many years almost in spite of herself, driven by a restless urge to use her faculties, to stretch her mind, to let nothing of significance escape, to create something , 6 The journal was kept up until Beatrix Potter was thirty. Although its contents were unexciting, the fact that she wrote it assiduously for so many years argues that, for her, it was an important affirmation of her identity as an individual. In a household where little acknowledgement of a child’s separate individuality was offered, such affirmation of identity can seem to the child to be opposition to parents and therefore wrong. This may be the reason why the journal had to be encoded. Her other creative activity was drawing, at which, as her books show, she became delightfully accomplished. When she was seventeen, Beatrix Potter was taught German by Annie Carter, with whom she became very friendly. When Miss Carter married, Beatrix Potter continued to correspond with her, and to take an interest in her children. The eldest of these, a boy called Noel, developed a long illness when he was five years old. In order to entertain him, Beatrix Potter sent him a long, illustrated letter recounting the adventures of Peter Rabbit. This was privately printed as a book in 1901, and then brought out publicly in 1902, by Warne & Co. During the next ten years, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was followed by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, and by the tales of all the other charming creatures who became familiar to, and beloved by, subsequent generations of children. Beatrix Potter’s drawings of animals are so exquisite that, some years ago, there was a special exhibition of them in London. It is interesting to observe that her drawings of people never reached the same high standard. Why should they? People, at that stage in her life, had never meant as much to her as the tiny pets to whom she had given her heart, and whom she therefore observed more closely. It is also interesting that the creative period in which all her best books were written lasted a mere ten years. In 1913, in spite of bitter opposition from her parents, Beatrix Potter married a solicitor, and settled down to farming in the Lake District. In 1913 also, Beatrix Potter reached the age of forty-seven. It could be argued that, as age renders childhood increasingly remote, creativity based upon childhood phantasy is bound to decline. It could also be surmised that, when another human being became for the first time the emotional centre of Beatrix Potter’s life, the intensity of feeling with which she had invested the lives of animals diminished, and her motive for inventing stories about them disappeared. She is not the only example of a writer whose interest in imaginative invention seems to have declined in similar fashion; but other women writers, like Trollope’s mother, carried on writing in spite of marriage and maternity. At the beginning of his chapter on Beatrix Potter to which we have already referred, Humphrey Carpenter postulates a stereotype in many people’s minds of the typical children’s writer of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. He or she is supposed to have been a lonely, withdrawn, introverted individual, scarcely able to achieve normal human relationships, and only capable of communicating his or her deepest feelings by talking to children or writing books for them. 7 I share Carpenter’s dislike of stereotypes; but it is nevertheless quite often the case that adults who find it difficult to make relationships with their contemporaries are more at ease with children or animals, whether or not they happen to be writers. Let us briefly look at some examples of writers who showed these characteristics and whose emotional development and choice of career were partly determined by early separation from their parents. Edward Lear, whose nonsense rhymes and comic drawings have entertained both adults and children for over a hundred years, was the twentieth child of his parents. When his father ran into debt, the family split up. At the age of four, in order to ease the burden on his mother, Lear was entrusted to the care of his elder sister, Ann. From then on, his mother had nothing further to do with his upbringing. Vivien Noakes writes: He was a rather ugly, short-sighted, affectionate little boy, and he was bewildered and hurt by her unaccountable rejection of him. 8 Although his sister proved an affectionate guardian, and the family were later reunited, Lear seems never to have formed close ties with either parent, and, from the age of seven onward, was subject to recurrent attacks of depression which he called ‘the Morbids’. His psychological disturbance was further complicated by epilepsy and asthma. He grew up to become a lonely adult, predominantly homosexual, but probably never consummating his desires. His search was not for physical love, but for someone who would want him as a person in the way that his parents had not wanted him as a child. Through his sensibility and charm he was sought after as a friend, and he loved to be with children because they liked him and showed it. But what he was searching for, and never found, was real spiritual involvement with another person. 9 Vivien Noakes subtitles her biography ‘The Life of a Wanderer’, for Lear spent much of his life in travel, making his living as a painter. Perpetual travel, or frequent moves of house, are often engaged in by the maternally deprived or by those who, for other reasons, find it difficult to create a place which they can consider ‘home’. Lear, in spite of his charm and the lovable qualities which brought him many friends, never overcame his essential loneliness. Rudyard Kipling is a particularly striking example of a writer whose early deprivation and unhappiness had a profound effect upon his future. Kipling was born in Bombay on 30 December 1865. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was principal of a school of art in that city. On 15 April 1871, Kipling’s father and mother, together with his younger sister, who had been born on 11 June 1868, returned to England for a six-month leave of absence. In those days, it was customary for the children of English parents living in India to be sent home for their education. This was partly to avoid the risks of disease and premature death, which were certainly greater in the hot climate of India, and partly for snobbish reasons. Children brought up by Indian ‘ayahs’ were less likely to acquire the habits and manners of the English middle-class. Kipling, just before his sixth birthday, was left with his sister in the care of a retired naval captain and his wife, Captain and Mrs Holloway. The parents did not inform their children that they were returning to India without them. Kipling was not to see his mother again until April 1877. The five years which he spent in what he later called ‘The House of Desolation’ marked him for life. He was bullied by the Holloways’ son, a boy some six years older, and ruthlessly punished, both by beatings and by enforced isolation, at the hands of the hateful Mrs Holloway. He was also bullied at the local day-school to which he was sent, and at which he performed badly. Every night he was cross-examined as to how he had spent his day. Each contradiction which the frightened, sleepy child produced was treated as a deliberate lie, and further proof of punishable wickedness. One of Kipling’s biographers, Charles Carrington, remarks that his long years of suffering at the hands of Mrs Holloway taught him the stoic lessons that the mind must make its own happiness, that any troubles can be endured if the sufferer has resources of his own to sustain him.’ 10 In his story ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’, Kipling gives an autobiographical account of this dreadfully unhappy part of his life. Angus Wilson writes: The writing of it was extremely painful to him as we know from his friend, Mrs Hill, in whose house in Allahabad he was living when he wrote it. 11 Kipling referred to his treatment by Mrs Holloway as ‘calculated torture’; but he also said that its effect was to make him pay careful attention to the lies which he had to tell, and concluded that this was the foundation of his literary effort. The art of fiction may in part spring from the capacity to make lies convincing, but this is not its only source, and Kipling is being unnecessarily self-deprecating in suggesting it. What he also records is his delight in discovering that, if only adults left him alone, he could, through reading, escape into a world of his own. As an adult, Kipling remained elusive and shunned publicity. He resented enquiry into his private life, wishing to be judged on his writings alone. His marriage was of a kind characteristic of creative people whose principal wish is not close intimacy, but the freedom to pursue their imaginative work without interruption. Carrie Balestier, whom Kipling married in 1892, was a capable woman who protected him from visitors, took over the running of the household, and managed his business affairs and correspondence. Although he enjoyed his fame and had widespread social contacts, Kipling remained reserved, and was apt to retreat into reverie on social occasions. Carrington thinks that the marriage was more satisfactory on his side than it was on his wife’s. Kipling’s inner tension revealed itself in insomnia and duodenal ulcer. Like Edward Lear, he was at his best and most relaxed with children. He also exhibited an extraordinary capacity for inspiring confidence in others, who found themselves telling him their troubles in the assurance that he would not betray them. 12 This particular trait seems to depend upon an unusual capacity to put oneself in other people’s shoes, to identify oneself with others. It often originates in the kind of premature concern with the feelings of others which Kipling describes himself as having had to develop as a child; a concern which we also observed in Trollope. Kipling became watchful and wary; alert to the changing moods of adults which might presage anger. This prescient awareness of what others were feeling and of how they displayed their emotions probably stood him in good stead when he came to write. Fear of punishment is not the only reason for this kind of watchful anxiety. Children with depressed mothers, or with mothers whose physical health is a matter for concern, develop the same kind of over-anxious awareness. Such children keep their own feelings to themselves, whilst at the same time taking special note of the feelings of the other person. They are less able than most children to turn to the mother or other care-taker as a resource. In adult life, the watchful, over-anxious child becomes a listener to whom others turn, but who does not make reciprocal relationships on equal terms of mutual self-revelation. The same temperament is not infrequently found in psycho-analysts and doctors, who invite confidences but who are not called upon to reveal themselves. Kipling knew his confidants better than they were allowed to know him. As often happens with writers, Kipling’s revelation of himself was mostly indirect and confined to his fiction. ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ is exceptional, in that it appears to be autobiography undiluted. H. H. Munro, the author ‘Saki’, is a striking example of a writer whose imagination owed much to bereavement, loss of parental love, and emotional isolation. Saki was born almost exactly five years later than Kipling, on 18 December 1870. Like Kipling, he was born abroad; not in India, but in Burma, where his father was an officer in the British military police. Whilst on furlough in England, in the winter of 1872, his pregnant mother was charged by a runaway cow. She both miscarried and died as a result of this untoward accident. Saki and his elder brother and sister were left behind when their father returned to Burma, to be brought up by their widowed paternal grandmother and her two fearsome daughters, Aunt Charlotte, known as ‘Tom’, and Aunt Augusta. These two formidable women were in constant, bickering competition with each other. Both were rigid disciplinarians. Augusta, particularly, was irrationally punitive, adding the threat of divine wrath to her own. Ethel, the eldest of the three Munro children, described her as: A woman of ungovernable temper, of fierce likes and dislikes, imperious, a moral coward, possessing no brains worth speaking of, and a primitive disposition. Naturally, the last person who should have been in charge of children. 13 Saki repeatedly revenged himself on his aunts in his stories, of which the most vindictive is ‘Sredni Vashtar’, in which the guardian of ten-year-old Conradin, who is clearly modelled on Aunt Augusta, is killed by Conradin’s pet, a polecat-ferret. Saki grew up to be a dandy and a homosexual. Like Noël Coward, he concealed his feelings beneath a protective mask of cynicism; and, although beloved by many, was intimate with few. In his perceptive introduction to The Bodley Head Saki, J. W. Lambert writes: Even the tributes of his friends (except perhaps those in the Army) seem to suggest the charming courtesy which is rooted in indifference. Society was for him a breeding-ground of inanity. When he turns from the attack he becomes a celebrant of loneliness. There is no close human relationship in any of his work, except the twisted skein which binds and cripples Francesca Bassington and her son [see The Unbearable Bassington ]. 14 Saki shared with Kipling and with Lear a preference for the company of children rather than that of adults. All three were animal-lovers and introduced animals into their stories. Saki and Kipling also shared a certain interest in physical cruelty which sometimes manifests itself distastefully, as in the ‘Stalky’ stories of Kipling, and in Saki’s description of Comus caning a boy at school in The Unbearable Bassington. Both men carried with them into adult life a sadistic streak which, as such things often are, was probably derived from a wish for revenge on those who had tormented them in childhood. Fiction provides an acceptable outlet for the discharge of violent feelings. How one wishes that those who act out such emotions by attacking the innocent and helpless were gifted enough to express their feelings in the form of fiction! A third example is a writer of a very different kind, P. G. Wodehouse. He was born on 5 October 1881. Although he was born in England, he passed most of his first two years in Hong Kong, where his father was a magistrate. At the age of two, Wodehouse and his two brothers, aged six and four, were taken to England by their mother and put in charge of a stranger, a Miss Roper, who was engaged to look after them. After three years of her regime, the boys were moved to a school in Croydon, run by two sisters, and then to a school in Guernsey. Wodehouse himself wrote that he was just passed from hand to hand, and that it was an odd life with no home to go to. He was not desperately unhappy. In an interview toward the end of his life, he actually claimed to have had a very happy childhood, and contrasted his own fate favourably with that of Kipling. But the lack of any close, abiding affectionate ties in his earliest years inevitably had its effect. His biographer, Frances Donaldson, remarks: He simply detached himself from the cold and unrewarding world and retreated into phantasy. From the earliest age he was happiest alone with his own company, and in the absence of any family life or stimulus to the emotions, he cultivated his imagination in solitude. He said he could remember no time when he did not intend to be a writer and he started to make up stories even before he could write. 15 In an interview which he gave for the Paris Review when he was ninety-one, Wodehouse was reported as saying: ‘I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.’ 16 After yet another change of school, P. G. Wodehouse was sent to Dulwich College. Here, Frances Donaldson tells us, ‘he acquired, for the first time, a degree of permanence and stability’. 17 For Wodehouse, Dulwich College became the focus for emotions which, in children who have experienced a normal background, usually become attached to ‘home’. Forty years after he had left the school, Wodehouse was still following the school’s football matches with undiminished emotional intensity. He himself described his years at Dulwich as being like heaven. He was good at games, above average intellectually, and, in the atmosphere of a public school, not required to make close relationships. As Frances Donaldson puts it, ‘he could participate without being drawn in’. 18 Wodehouse’s mother re-entered his life when he was fifteen, but he never formed any close relationship with her, and seems to have remained emotionally inhibited and dependent in his later relationships with women. As often happens with the maternally deprived, Wodehouse was drawn to women older than himself. When he married, in 1914, his wife Ethel took entire charge of his financial affairs, and made him a small allowance. She protected him against the world, and, although she sometimes pressed him into social engagements which he shunned, saw that he got the solitude he needed. In these respects, Wodehouse’s marriage closely resembled Kipling’s. P. G. Wodehouse continued to dread individual social contacts, hated being interviewed, loathed clubs (though he belonged to a number of them), and lavished on animals the affection which he could not give to his fellow-creatures. When his wife was looking for an apartment in New York he asked her to find one on the ground floor.‘“Why?” she asked, and he replied: “I never know what to say to the lift-boy.”’ 19 When he visited his daughter at school, he had to wait outside until she joined him because he was frightened of facing her headmistress without support. He was a sweet, kind, rather childlike character who used his work as a retreat from the world and who was hugely prolific as a result. It is reckoned that he published ninety-six books, as well as writing lyrics for musical comedies and much else besides. In the ordinary course of life, one usually admires people who make light of their troubles by turning them into jokes; but P. G. Wodehouse made use of humour as a defence to a point at which it distorted his appreciation of reality. His indifference to money, for example, other than the change which he carried for tobacco or a new typewriter ribbon, involved him in recurrent encounters with the tax authorities. Interned in France by the Germans during the Second World War, he did immense damage to his reputation by agreeing to make some light-hearted broadcasts from Germany about his experiences as an internee. Anyone with a normal appreciation of reality, let alone any sense of politics, would have realized that such an act would be looked upon as support for the Nazis, but Wodehouse blithely took it as a chance to keep in touch with his public and to thank his American friends for the parcels which they had sent him, without any suspicion that he would be labelled a traitor. Kipling, Saki and Wodehouse had in common the experience of being ‘farmed out’ at an early age, and of lacking the amenities, affection, and support of an ordinary home. As a result, all three suffered subsequently from difficulties in making close relationships and tended to show more affection toward animals or children than they were able to show toward adults. All three learned to use the imagination, both as a retreat from the world, and also as an indirect way of making a mark upon it. Kipling and Saki expressed in their fiction some of the resentment which they felt toward those who had abandoned them and left them to be mistreated at the hands of strangers. Wodehouse, who was not ill-treated, but merely passed from hand to hand, developed an imaginative world in which there is no violence, no hatred, no sex, and no deep feeling. Although some of Lear’s rhymes exhibit a humorous kind of violence, his imaginative world is also sexless and without profound emotion. It is legitimate to assume that, in these examples, the development of such highly complex imaginative worlds was the consequence of being cut off from the emotional fulfilment which children with more ordinary backgrounds experience in their relations with parents and other care-takers. These writers (and here I include Beatrix Potter and Edward Lear, who were emotionally, but not physically, removed from parental care) compensated for their isolation by their invention, and by, in four instances, partially substituting love of animals for love of people. However, not every isolated person, even if gifted, turns either to fiction or to the animal kingdom. Nor can difficulties in making relationships necessarily be attributed to adverse circumstances in childhood. As we saw in the previous chapter, people differ, not only in their family backgrounds, but also in inherited temperament. There are those who, however much affection they received as children, never succeed in making close relationships. There are those who compensate for comparative absence of interpersonal relationships by pursuing wealth, rather than by creating fiction. It would be naive to think that the creative activities of man can be subsumed under a single heading. Nevertheless, as these examples show, the gifts which enable a person to become a writer can be set in motion by loss and isolation. We can begin to understand why Simenon, in an interview for the Paris Review , said: ‘Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.’ 20 In the same interview Simenon reveals that, as a young boy, he became acutely aware that complete communication between two people was impossible. He says that this gave him such a sense of solitude, of loneliness, that he would almost scream. It was no doubt this sense of loneliness which fostered his remarkable capacity for inventing stories. It may also be held responsible for his compulsive pursuit of women. The writers whom we have discussed in this chapter, with the possible exception of P. G. Wodehouse, were unhappy in childhood and had good reason to be so. How far did they continue to be unhappy throughout their lives? Did their early experience prevent them from making the kind of relationships with others which bring happiness? If so, did the exercise of their imaginative gifts bring them happiness of another kind? These are not easy questions to answer. Edward Lear was prone to severe depression throughout his life, and, in spite of being beloved by many people, seems to have remained emotionally isolated. Trollope also remained vulnerable to depression, and worked compulsively to stave off melancholy. On the other hand, he made a marriage which he claimed was happy, and which seems to have been so. His middle-aged love for Kate Field in no way contradicts this. He was a sensitive man who strove to conceal his feelings behind a bluff persona, but he made many friends, and, as an adult, could certainly not be called isolated. The fame which his novels brought him compensated to a large extent for his early experience of feeling despised and rejected. Kipling’s relationships seem to have been somewhat less intimate than Trollope’s, although his passion for privacy makes it difficult to be sure. What is certain is that he had considerable charm, and that this brought him many enduring friendships which were important to him. His marriage gave him security; his fame supported his self-esteem. But, like Trollope, Kipling remained prone to depression, and, so Angus Wilson believes, was plagued by a fear of mental breakdown which made him shy away from introspection. What he attempted in his writing was an art based on external observation, owing as little as possible to self-examination. Angus Wilson concludes that it is this evasion of introspection which prevents Kipling from being amongst the first rank of writers, but which also accounts for his tackling themes which no other writer has undertaken. Of the writers discussed in this chapter, I think it probable that Saki remained the most isolated. His unhappy childhood had made it difficult for him to form intimate relationships, a difficulty which was compounded by his homosexuality, which was then a crime, and not widely acknowledged or regarded as acceptable in society. His writing brought him some recognition in his lifetime, but its limitations, its exclusion of love, its irony, and its cruelty, precluded Saki from enjoying the fame granted to writers with wider human sympathies. From his own letters, it appears that the happiest period of his life was during the First World War. At the beginning of the war, Saki was forty-three. His health had not been good, but, in spite of this, he managed to enlist as a private in King Edward’s Horse. His letters indicate that he regarded the war as a romantic adventure, enjoyed the male companionship which it afforded, and, perhaps because he did not much care whether or not he survived, relished the danger of nocturnal expeditions to lay mines. Saki was killed by a sniper’s bullet on 14 November 1916. Of the work of the writers discussed so far, that of Wodehouse comes closest to fitting Freud’s view of phantasy as primarily escapist. Wodehouse’s relationships with other human beings seem to have remained upon a relatively superficial level. The hub around which his life revolved was certainly not intímate attachments, but his work. However, his pleasure in creating his imaginary world, his ingenuity, his verbal skill, and his worldly success, seem to have brought him a kind of happiness which many might envy. Beatrix Potter, even before she married, succeeded in finding happiness. Provided that she could escape from her oppressive family, and live by herself in the farm which she had bought in the Lake District, country pursuits and her writing made her content. No doubt her marriage brought her even greater fulfilment; but there is no reason to doubt her biographer’s opinion that the eight years before her marriage were also a happy time. This was the period when she was able to enjoy the solitary possession of Hill Top Farm and also the period during which she was at her best as a writer. The idea that the development of imagination and invention in these writers began as compensation for the absence or severance of intimate attachments carries with it the implication that such development is second best; a poor substitute for the close, loving relationships which they should have enjoyed. In early childhood, this is probably the case. Nothing can entirely compensate for the absence of intimate attachments in the very young. However, what began as compensation for deprivation became a rewarding way of life. All these writers were successful, in spite of the emotional scars they bore. With the possible exceptions of Saki and Lear, all made relationships which, although varying in intensity and closeness, were at least as satisfying as many of those made by people who had not suffered similar childhood deprivations. What began as compensation ended as a way of life which is as valid as any other, and more interesting than most. Even if their intimate attachments were not the hub around which their lives revolved, there is no reason to suppose that these lives were unfulfilled. Solitude Epigraphs INTRODUCTION Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , edited by J. B. Bury, 7 volumes. (London, 1898), V, p. 337. CHAPTERS John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 8, line 364. Michel De Montaigne, Of Solitude, from The Essays of Montaigne, translated by E. J. Trechmann (New York, 1946), p. 205. Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de Guerre, Vol. III (Paris, 1959), p. 288. Francis Bacon, De Dignitote et Augmentis Scienliarum (ed. 1640, translated by Gilbert Watts), vii, 37. Samuel Johnson, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, 6 volumes. (Oxford, 1887), III, p. 341. Thomas De Quincey, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, edited by David Masson, 14 volumes. (Edinburgh, 1889–1890), p. 235. Carl G. Jung, The Psychology of the Unconscious, in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, 20 volumes. (London, 1953–79), VII, p. 58. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, stanza 32, lines 684–5, in Leaves of Grass, edited by Emory Holloway (London, 1947), p. 52. Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 211. Edward Thomas, quoted in Edward Thomas, by R. George Thomas (Oxford, 1985), p. 162. Quoted in Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Philosophers (Oxford, 1980), p. 89. [Refers to L. Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen (Oxford, 1978), p. 11 (1929).] Alex Aronson, Music and the Novel (New Jersey, 1980), p. xiii. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, from The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, introduced by John Morley (London, 1950), p. 239. Solitude Also by the Author The Integrity of the Personality Sexual Deviation Human Destructiveness The Dynamics of Creation The Art of Psychotherapy The Essential Jung (editor) Freud Churchill’s Black Dog Music and the Mind Feet of Clay Solitude 10 The Search for Coherence ‘It is good that I did not let myself be influenced.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein In the last two chapters, we were principally concerned with creative individuals whose work was partly derived from loss or separation. Spurred by depression, they strove to create imaginary worlds, to compensate for what was missing in their lives, to repair the damage they had suffered, to restore to themselves a sense of worth and competence. Because of their primary concern with interpersonal relationships, and their struggle to restore, through their work, something which was felt to be missing, many of these individuals could be described as predominantly extraverted, although often driven in upon themselves to a greater extent than extraverted individuals like to be. To use Howard Gardner’s terms, we supposed that such individuals were dramatists rather than patterners . When they retreated into solitude to pursue their creative quests, an element of wishing to restore some blissful union with another person, or with Nature as a surrogate person, was a frequent component of their work. The exceptions, or partial exceptions, to this generalization are Saki, who was discussed in Chapter 8 , and Kafka, some of whose characteristics were outlined at the end of Chapter 7 . Both were story-tellers, but their stories are hardly at all concerned with intimate human relationships, and neither man established any prolonged intimate relationship in reality. However, Saki’s diary suggests that, damaged though he might have been by his early bereavement and by his childhood experiences, he did engage in a good many sexual encounters with the young men or boys whom he preferred. Although Saki cannot possibly be regarded as predominandy extraverted, there was an extraverted side to his character, manifested in his social life in London, his liking for the fashionable society which he mocked, and his enjoyment of life in barracks before departing for the horrors of the Western Front. Although he was loved and respected by his friends, Kafka was pathologically introverted: schizoid, as most psychiatrists would label him. He had a few brief sexual encounters, but he contrived that his deepest emotional involvements were almost entirely confined to an exchange of letters. It was only during the last year of his life that he was able to tolerate actually living with a woman. In this chapter I want to examine some instances of creative individuals whose principal concern was not primarily with human relationships, but with the search for coherence and sense. Such individuals correspond with the people described as introverts by Jung; as convergers by Hudson; as patterners by Gardner; and, when obviously abnormal or disturbed, as schizoid by psychiatrists. As we have seen, nearly all kinds of creative people, in adult life, show some avoidance of others, some need of solitude. But the individuals I have in mind go further than this. They may, at a superficial level, appear to have better relationships with people than is true of some of the poets mentioned in Chapter 9 . But this is often because, unlike the extraverts, and also unlike the type of schizoid personality represented by Kafka, they have learned to relinquish a need for intimacy. They are not so disturbed when relationships go wrong because, for them, the meaning of life is less bound up with intimate relationships than it is in the case of most people. Let us for a moment assume that the individuals to whom I have just referred showed ‘avoidance behaviour’ as infants, and let us accept that avoidance behaviour is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships. Moreover, such a person would be likely to feel the need to protect the inner world in which this search for meaning and order was going on from interference by others because other people would be perceived as posing a threat. Ideas are sensitive plants which wilt if exposed to premature scrutiny. In an earlier book, I stressed the need for interpersonal relationships in the maturing of personality. A chapter entitled ‘The Relativity of Personality’ emphasized the fact that personality is a relative concept. If by personality we mean a man’s ‘distinctive personal character’ we are obliged to recognize that we can only conceive of such an entity in terms of contrasting it with other personal characters. 1 I went on to write: One cannot even begin to be conscious of oneself as a separate individual without another person with whom to compare oneself. A man in isolation is a collective man, a man without individuality. People often express the idea that they are most themselves when they are alone; and creative artists especially may believe that it is in the ivory tower of the solitary expression of their art that their innermost being finds its completion. They forget that art is communication, and that, implicitly or explicitly, the work which they produce in solitude is aimed at somebody. 2 I still believe this; but I want to add a rider to the effect that maturation and integration can take place within the isolated individual to a greater extent than I had allowed for. The great introverted creators are able to define identity and achieve self-realization by self-reference, that is, by interacting with their own past work rather than by interacting with other people. This is clearly impossible for a small child, who must interact both with people and with things in gradually defining its own identity. So far as we can understand it, awareness of being a separate person takes place gradually. We may picture the baby as coming up against objects in the external world; stubbing its toe against the end of the cot, for instance. As it gradually learns to use its limbs and exercise control over their movements, the baby will gain proprioceptive information about the position of its limbs in space, and hence of its own dimensions. It will be recalled that, in Chapter 4 , we noted that loss of proprioceptive information from movements of limbs, when imposed by medical immobilization or by interrogation procedures enforcing fixed postures, was a potent force in breaking down the boundaries of self-definition. The infant must also become aware of its separateness because of its need for care from someone else; for being fed, kept warm, cleaned, and so on. Unless its needs are instantly met, there must be an interval between the realization of a need and its fiilfilment, signified by a cry of distress which both summons help and also indicates to itself that there is something or someone ‘out there’ who provides what it cannot provide for itself. At the beginning of life, self-definition, the awareness of existing as a separate person and the development of a coherent identity must depend upon interaction between baby and mother or mother-substitute. In the ordinary course of events, interaction with others will continue to provide the majority of people with self-definition and coherence throughout life. Heinz Kohut, one of the most original psycho-analysts of recent years, has based his idea of neurosis and of the cure of neurosis on similar notions. He holds that the development of a healthy, secure, coherent structure of personality depends in the first instance upon the child’s repeated experience of being recognized and sustained by what Kohut calls ‘empathically resonant self-objects’. That is, the child needs to interact with parents or parent-figures who reinforce the sense of self because they recognize and mirror the child’s developing identity as it actually is; empathize with the child’s feelings; respond to the child’s needs with ‘nonhostile firmness and nonseductive affection’, neither repudiating the child’s demands with aggression, nor yielding to them with undiscriminating sentimentality. 3 Kohut pictures this need for reinforcement as persistent Self psychology [which is the name given to Kohut’s revision of psycho-analytic theory] holds that self-selfobject relationships form the essence of psychological life from birth to death, that a move from dependence (symbiosis) to independence (autonomy) in the psychological sphere is no more possible let alone desirable, than a corresponding move from a life dependent upon oxygen to a life independent of it in the biological sphere. The developments that characterize normal psychological life must, in our view, be seen in the changing nature of the relationship between the self and its selfobjects, but not in the self’s relinquishment of selfobjects. In particular, developmental advances cannot be understood in terms of the replacement of the selfobjects by love objects or as steps in the move from narcissism to object love. 4 Kohut believes that the deepest anxiety which a person can experience is what he calls ‘disintegration anxiety’. The individuals whom he considers liable to this are those who, because of the immaturity of their parents’ responses to them in childhood, or because of the absence of empathic parental understanding, have not built up a strong, coherent personality. One might compare Kohut’s conception with looking in a mirror. A clear, clean, polished mirror will repeatedly reflect the developing person as he actually is, and thus give him a firm and true sense of his own identity. A cracked, dirty, smeared mirror will reflect an incomplete, obscured image which provides the child with an inaccurate and distorted picture of himself. In Chapter 7 , reference was made to the threat of behavioural disorganization which makes infants avoid rejecting mothers. Kohut’s perception that certain deprived individuals are threatened by fears of disintegration is surely the same concept in different words. Disintegration anxiety can also be compared with the fears of destruction of the ‘inner self’ in schizoid subjects which R. D. Laing described so well in The Divided Self . 5 Kafka, referred to earlier, is an example of a schizoid individual who felt that his ability to preserve his inner self was threatened by intimacy. Kohut also believes that the therapeutic effectiveness of psycho-analysis depends upon whether the psycho-analyst can so understand and empathize with his patient that the latter can develop the inner coherence which he was unable to develop in childhood. This conception of cure is some way removed from that originally advanced by Freud. Freud’s model was essentially cognitive. It depended upon the recapture and understanding of the traumas of early childhood, and, more especially, upon undoing repression and making the uncons	481,874
Solitude Seeking Wisdom in Extremes A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness (Robert Kull) (Z-Library).epub	Solitude APRIL 2001 Every little thing gonna be all right. — BOB MARLEY APRIL 1, 2001 MORNING: Sun shines gold through floating kelp leaves and stirs them to leap from the water and remind me of swirling autumn leaves. Far out in the basin, the bodies of the grey back, creamy belly ducks blend with the sea, but their bright orange bills catch and throw sun rays in my direction. The mountains, half hidden in their misty negligee, fire my imagination. A new month, time to send word that I’m ok. I tighten up when I must deal with the communication system. It takes my mind far away to other places and people, when I want to stay here with myself. And I’m still not certain the process will actually work. If the message doesn’t go through, the navy might come to rescue me. That would be a major drag. Damn, it’s cold when the wind blows straight in like this! The sea’s not really rough and I’d like to look for fish, but it would be a hassle to launch the boat against the wind. Maybe I’ll wash clothes instead. I’ve been working and sleeping in the same two sets of thermal underwear, three shirts, two pairs of pants, sweater, sweatshirt, and vest for almost two months. AFTERNOON: The emails went out and replies are back. Patti sent medical advice for my shoulder. Nothing I didn’t already know, but it’s comforting to hear it from a trained nurse. I cleared a space for an outhouse and dug a hole that immediately filled with water. When it really rains, my turds might still escape to the sea. Instead of chopping down bushes and disrupting the soil, it might have been more ecologically friendly — but not nearly as comfy — to keep squatting in the rain on the low-tide beach. Physical activity does dissolve (or cover up) anxiety, but one of the things I’ve come here to learn, or remember, is how to feel comfortable without losing myself in constant doing. Actually, I believe our whole culture needs to consider this if we want to survive and enjoy living. It isn’t actually non-doing that generates anxiety, but rather fretting about doing or not doing. When I’m simply in the moment, without worrying about what I ought to be doing, my mind is at ease. It’s when I try to microplan everything that my imagination runs amok — because I can’t really know what will happen. Then after all the nutty speculation, things often fall into place naturally as the actual situation unfolds. But planning is useful, so the trick is to think about pending activity without becoming anxious. EVENING: I’m on the windy point. The sun is dropping behind Staines Peninsula and the wind is from the west. Too bad so little direct sun falls on my cabin, but if it did, a lot more wind would strike it, too. I like it out here. It feels far from home. I want to shift whom I’m writing to. For now, this journal is to someone else — Patti, perhaps. I need to write what I myself might like to read. APRIL 2, 2001 EXQUISITE MORNING: 34° F . The blue sky is clouding over, and the sea lies flat with the tide on the make. Some black flies are already awake, but I hope the frost has thinned their ranks. I’m on the point for sunrise and coffee. I want to check the direction of the morning and afternoon light to determine how I’ll angle the solar panels. As I wait for the sun to reach me, I’m reading Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk . What a charming writer. Witty, sharp, and a very light touch. I like the hybrid combination of spirit and naturalist. She doesn’t say anything new but says many valuable things in a new way. EVENING: The weather stayed calm and I worked all day. Using a small metal bit in the woodworking brace, I opened guy-wire holes in the twenty-foot pipe I’ll use as a wind-generator tower. Pipe steel is soft and the setup worked surprisingly well. Having to make do with the tools I have on hand is an interesting challenge. After pumping up the pontoon that’s leaking, I loaded the boat with solar panels, batteries, pipe, ladder, wire, wood and tools, and motored to the beach near the point. I carefully carried everything over the slippery rocks and fell only once. Not bad. Mounting the panels and hooking them to the batteries took much longer than expected, but I wanted everything to be super secure since the point is completely exposed to the wind. I finished before dusk and decided to go fishing. When I stopped to drop off the tools, change into warmer clothes, and fetch the fishing gear, I thought I’d be here for only a few minutes. I just dragged the boat up a little and didn’t tie it to a rock. I’ve never done that before — and never will again. It took me longer to get ready than I’d expected, and when I happened to look out, I saw the boat drifting off on the rising tide. Shit! I raced down the beach, plunged into the sea, and just snagged the boat in waist-deep water. Another thirty seconds, I’d have had to swim for it, and the water is way too cold for swimming. Another two minutes, I’d have had to pump up the kayak and paddle after it. Lucky there was only a light breeze. I’m grateful and properly chastened. By the time I put on dry clothes it was nearly dark, but I went fishing anyway. Stayed out for twenty minutes and caught eight that are so small I’m not sure how to prepare them. Cat, at least, will be happy. I heard an airplane today beyond the hills to the east. Sounded like a big prop plane, maybe a military transport. Neither the noise nor the fact of a plane passing nearby bothered me at the time, but then I started thinking: What if they fly by every day? What if boats start to arrive? Ah yes, the world of what if . What if it doesn’t rain soon? Madness! The outhouse hole has filled with clear water, so I can simply dig a shallow well anywhere if I need to. Or I can just take water from the outhouse hole — at least until I use it as an outhouse. This would, I believe, be considered multiple use of a resource. APRIL 3, 2001 Weird. Cat had some sort of seizure. I saw his box shaking and figured he was having a dream. But he crawled out, froze up, and then became totally frantic and started to yowl. I thought he might be dying — perhaps from finding and eating toxic mussels — but he finally came out of it. As an aftereffect, he’s started to wander into the cabin. I’ve taught him to stay on the porch even if the door is open, but just now he sauntered in like he has no idea he ’s not supposed to. Maybe some neural circuits got fried. Very odd. I wonder if cats suffer from epilepsy. Maybe I’ll hook up the stove today. I’m not sure why I haven’t yet, especially considering that I’ve been here for two months and how cold and achy I am. Could I sense that once it’s hooked up, I might want a fire all the time and need to collect firewood all the time, too? Better to not get in the habit. Or perhaps I realize that once the stove is working, I’ll really be settled in, and psychologically I’m not ready for that. Huh? How ready do I need to be? It makes no sense, but seems to be the way I feel. APRIL 4, 2001 Behind the low clouds and morning rain the mountains have departed for an unknown destination, and even Staines Peninsula barely clings to corporeal existence. My what if worrying about the now-full water containers was a waste of time and energy. My shoulder hurts, even though I’m doing the exercises I learned when I tore this same rotator cuff a few years ago. Amazing how quickly everything tightens up. I exercised for an hour before I went to sleep at 1 a.m., woke up stiff and sore at 3:30, got up and exercised, then went back to sleep. By 8 I was knotted up again. Ah, but this first cup of morning coffee. Yesterday, I shielded the plastic walls and ceiling behind and above the propane lamp with tinfoil to protect them from the heat. A fire would be a serious problem. The lamp works so well I hardly need a stove. It puts out plenty of warm yellow light and raises the temperature in the upper middle of the cabin 10 degrees above outside. Last night it stormed again, but a feeling of snug comfort softened the anxiety. I’m beginning to trust the cabin. I guess, at some deep level, I’m confident of my ability to cope with difficult situations, or I wouldn’t be here. And on the surface, I carry a patina of self-reliance, even arrogance. But just beneath the surface, anxiety and doubt roil. Perhaps the deep confidence is not in myself, but in something greater. It’s that Something I’ve come here to find, if I have the courage. Or perhaps that Something called me to communion and I responded. For months I’ve busied myself with activity, and now it’s hard to slow down. At times during the day I pause to just be, and these breaks, rather than formal sitting meditation, may be my natural spiritual practice. I suspect the scattered moments will stretch and join into a more continuous attitude of listening, watching, and waiting for wilderness solitude to have its way with me. DUSK: A while ago two nutrias appeared on a rock a hundred feet away. Powerful black paws, strong tail, small stubby ears. One tried, without much enthusiasm, to snatch something from the other, and then they returned to the water. They dove repeatedly, and finally one surfaced with a fish it had to bite and chew. My, what big teeth they have. The orange bill ducks were up on the rocks looking concerned, as they do when the nutrias are nearby. Earlier, the ducks were feeding in water too shallow for diving, but deep enough that they had to stretch to reach the bottom. They were flipping themselves completely upside down — sort of like stinkbugs — and thrashing fiercely with their orange feet to hold themselves in place. Tail feathers pointing straight up, creamy yellow belly and butt bobbing high above the surface. Still haven’t hooked up the stove. Been doing electricity/electronics all day. Charging the laptops presents a problem. Under load, only 11 volts reaches the cabin, and the inverter keeps kicking out. I think the voltage drop is caused by the long wire from the point. The batteries need to sit close to the wind generator to receive full charge, but be near the laptops to charge them. Grrrrr. APRIL 5, 2001 51° F . Raining and fairly calm. Moon nearly full, and the tide way out. Soup’s on, and I’ve got to get unchilled. Still no stove installed. The ceiling is wet over the door. I’ll go up and patch the tarp on a nice day. I still have two rolls of duct tape, one tube of caulk, and two tubes of Shoe Goo. I’ve long recognized the profound virtues of baling wire and duct tape, but I’ve only recently added Shoe Goo to my list of vital wilderness survival materials. I spent all day at the point. Cut down two dead trees that were casting shadow on the solar panels. I’ll use the wood to heat rocks for the sweat lodge I plan to build down there. I hooked the inverter right to the batteries so 110 volts rather than 12 volts was running through the wires to the cabin. Fewer amps, lower resistance, less drop in voltage, no problem charging laptops. But the only lights I have use 12 volts, so I can either use the laptop or have light. Dammit! It would have been so easy to bring a 110 volt to 12 volt converter. Just wasn’t thinking. I suppose I can walk back and forth to the point and switch between charging computers and having light, but that would be a major hassle on dark stormy high-tide nights. Feels like my whole life is hay wired. APRIL 6, 2001 MORNING: A moment ago the eastern channel was flat grey-green and I was sitting brain-dead. I knew it must be rough out there since surf is crashing on the windward rocks and a swell runs in the basin. Then sun flashed through the clouds, and the channel sparked with golden light and shining flecks of white. Now the sun is gone again and the sea again flat grey. Logic says the whitecaps are still out there and the golden vision still possible, in every moment. I sit — not even waiting — and watch the nearby grass tremble in the same wind that whips those far-off flecks to white. The distant light has gone, but so has the torpor from my eyes, and the grass comes shining through. NOON: It’s raining now. Sheeting across the sea; splattering rock pools into rippled turmoil; drumming on my roof and rattling against my ears to anchor me where I sit. Cobra-headed diving ducks (King Cormorant) drift in the basin. Intense black back, neck, and top of head; white throat, breast, and belly. The line between is razor sharp, which gives the bird its look. Like branches capped with snow, they somehow reassure and lend a sense of peace. In the dark, their hooting calls ease my fears and carry me to the coast of Mexico and the mountains of the Dominican Republic. One honks its hollow note, and nearby another answers. Then, if you tune your ear, from down the channel you can hear a faint reply. Like roosters in a thousand distant pockets of the rural night. But the black/white line of neck and head also looms from the low-slung body like the hooded threat of a cobra. It has that same visual — and, to small fish, possibly visceral — feel about it. In the boat the other day, I came upon a rock inhabited, temporarily, by fifteen or twenty of them. They swiveled at my approach, and then lifted off until I passed. They shoot like arrows through the air, all arc forgotten. Lean and linear, wings beating hard, bodies steady as airborne rocks. AFTERNOON: I recall, as from a place and time far away and half forgotten, my grandiose intention in coming here: to explore, through living, the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual effects of deep wilderness solitude. Now my world has shrunk to this small beach and stretch of water; to what I’ll eat for lunch; to hooking up the stove and rain barrel; to the pain in my shoulders, hands, and teeth. But still, my commitment to myself is to stay here for a year and experience whatever happens. If I have a stake — set expectations — I’m not truly open to discovery. I must trust not only the physical process, but the emotional and spiritual ones as well. Still reading Annie Dillard. She is an inspiring wordsmith, seeking to see, then say, the world just as she wants it to sound; finding exactly the right one of a thousand words to do the job. Yet at times she irritates. A bit too consciously articulate. Too metaphoric and artistic. Too much made of each thing. I, on the other hand, have no words for what I’m feeling. I could use a Buddhist term and call it emptiness, or emotional language and call it lonely longing sorrow. Perhaps it’s purely physical — only wind and rain. No, not only — in either sense — but rather Wind and Rain in their full catalytic power to evoke. Cat is acting like an asshole today. Moaning for no apparent reason and trying to climb on me. He seems to be this way when I am filled with loneliness and longing. Does he pick it up from me, or does some external influence affect us both? Is there some other hidden cause, or no cause at all? Maybe he ’s always like this, but it grates more sharply when I am feeling glum. I was thinking — as I munched lard-fried potatoes — about not having many taste treats until I leave here. About the goodies waiting for me in town. How different if I was going to stay forever; if this was all there would ever be. Years ago, I used to think about leaving where I lived in the rural mountains of the Dominican Republic. My shack was as poor as any: tin roof, dirt floor, and wood-slat windows. Yet I could return to Canada at any time. I was free to leave, my neighbors were not. But I’m learning the illusion of that belief. There is no way out. Ever. In each right now, I’m always right here. Sure, I can return to the land of ice cream and hot showers, but while eating my double scoop, I’ll be right there. The only escape is unconsciousness, which seems too high a price to pay. EVENING: The stove is in and looks good sitting there. I built a frame beneath to hold two inches of gravel for fire protection. Bits of kelp came mixed with the gravel, bringing in the smells of the sea. The outhouse base is also built. Next I need a seat and roof. The surrounding trees will protect me from the wind and rain, so it won’t need walls. I’m glad. Shitting in a small stinky enclosure is an uncivilized thing to do. Full moon tomorrow and I could have a fire to celebrate. That’s my carrot to finish the outhouse. Finally a fire. Will that change my world? Will I become a new man? One of my teeth is bothering me and I’m rinsing it with warm saltwater. I considered having it pulled before coming here, but I wasn’t ready to live with a big gap in front or go through the hassle of getting a bridge. I thought the tooth would be ok, but infection seems to be setting in. Hope it doesn’t go really off; I’ve had enough pain for a while. MIDNIGHT: Time for dinner. A while ago, an almost full moon shining through the trees caught my eye. I took the binoculars and walked to the point for a clearer view. The mountains and craters are visually interesting, but most wonderful are the small scattered bright spots connected by curved shining lines to a larger bright spot on the upper right. It’s like a gob of brilliance smacked the moon and splattered, leaving streamers of light behind. APRIL 7, 2001 46° F . Calm and clear with clouds. Sunrise over the mountains was orange gold and glorious. The tide was so low I could have walked across the mussel beds to the small island beyond, and kelp lay strewn across the mud flats like orange fright wigs the morning after a juicy debauch. A silhouetted bird with long curved beak stood lean and upright on nonwebbed feet. Everything seems to be resting, but I’m going to work on the wind generator. EVENING: A perfect day for the job: flat calm and no rain. The wind generator is up and looks good. The aluminum casing was poorly cast, and I had to file it down in spots before the rotor would spin freely without rubbing. This morning a hummingbird flew into the cabin and got stuck trying to leave through the Plexiglas window. I tried to herd him toward the door but, like a bee or a fly, he kept banging frantically against the pane. I finally cupped him in my hands and released him outside. What a tiny gem. I would have liked to hold him longer, but thought he might have a stroke. Tooth hurts and is worrisome. APRIL 8, 2001 Windy and wild, bright with moonlight and clouds, high tide, ocean up and snorting. Tooth feels better this evening. Saltwater rinse is magic. But other than that, I feel like I’ve been hit with a board. Shoulders, back, arms, and hands all ache. Seems like I’ve been working for days straight again in spite of my shoulder. I think I miss hot showers more than anything else. They always help to ease sore muscles. I have zero personal experience with wind generators, and from what people told me, I’d been expecting a sort of mellow whump, whump, whump as the rotor turns. But holy mother, what a racket! The wind is blowing about 35 mph on the point and gusting to maybe 50, not unusual for here, and the generator is out there howling like a banshee. The sound starts as a low moan, changes to a rough growl, and then, when a gust blasts through, winds up and shrieks like it’s left the Earth and joined the hounds of hell. Reminds me of an airplane climbing steeper and steeper until it stalls — which is exactly what the generator blades are designed to do when they twist in high wind to dump air and protect the rotor from overrevving. Ironic since this is the kind of noise I wanted to get away from. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and, as per the instruction manual, shorted the wires to slow the rotor. Of course now it’s not charging the batteries. Maybe I’ll email the guy I bought it from and ask for advice. Crap. I just threw out more onions than I’ve eaten, and others are going moldy, too. Not removing them from the plastic bags sooner was a mistake. Oh well, I’ll eat lots for the next few weeks and hope enough sound ones remain to flavor the beans for a while. The outhouse seat is built and I’ve hung a woven nylon sack on the front side to prevent me from peeing in my boots when sitting there. Although I don’t know what its original contents were, the sack is labeled “Product of Canada.” Bathroom humor is alive, if not particularly well, even here. I still need to cut a hole in the seat. How big should it be? A truly metaphysical question that will require deep consideration. I notice that I seldom pause to be fully conscious of living completely alone in the middle of nowhere. But when I do, I also sometimes think of the other people living in solitude around the world. I sense them to be my tribe even though we will never meet — unless we leave the circumstance that binds us. It feels good to know they are there, somewhere, as I am here, somewhere. APRIL 9, 2001 The wind has been stomping and snorting on and off all day, cabin vibrating like it’s sitting on Jell-O. I had my first genteel defecatory episode today, sitting comfortably out of the rain. Quite pleasant. I also hooked up the forty-gallon plastic rain barrel. Cut a hole in its side three inches from the top and cemented in a plastic pipe with just enough slope so water will run in. The pipe reaches out through the back porch wall and catches rainwater falling from the roof gutter. The far end of the pipe is open, and when the water level in the barrel comes up enough, rain will stop flowing in and run out onto the ground instead. An automatic shutoff valve with no moving parts will prevent the barrel from overflowing and flooding the porch. Cool. I split a round of firewood to see how my shoulder would do. Three weeks ago, when I tried to use the ax, the shoulder was very weak and painful. Today was better, but I wouldn’t want to split too many quite yet. Have I been here only two months? Seems like forever. Maybe I’ll take tomorrow off if I can stand it. I suspect I’m keeping some strong feelings at bay by staying busy. APRIL 10, 2001 Didn’t make it to bed as early as intended last night. Sitting comfortably in the outhouse, I looked up through the trees and was bushwhacked by the moon. What an enchanting time this full moon has been. I remember thinking, a few weeks ago, that I might never see the moon here. The weather has been great for the last while, but I bet serious rains are on the way. I’m slowly feeling more relaxed, like pressure is lifting. I can at least look down the hours of the day without feeling I’ve got to get busy. Still plenty of small tasks to do, but the big jobs are done. I took it easy this morning. Sent emails asking for technical support with wind generator — which is, I suppose, breaking solitude, but it feels ok. This afternoon I organized the cabin and put stuff away. I finally feel moved in and settled. The rain catchment system works perfectly. The barrel fills to within three inches of top and then stops automatically. I’m good at solving these kinds of simple mechanical problems and might have been happier if I’d lived a hundred years ago. How civilized. A fire in the stove, a small slice of cheese, two dried figs, and a drink of single malt Scotch in hand. The stove is working well, even though the wood is semiwet and needs coaxing to stay alight. It’s evening and 40° F outside, but a toasty 65 in here. I’ve stripped down to thermal underwear, T-shirt, flannel shirt, wool vest, and Holofil vest and pants. I feel almost naked. I’m writing by the light of a candle I just found in the package Patti gave me to celebrate last Christmas. At the time, I was leaving Santiago for Punta Arenas and forgot to open it. This seems like a fine occasion. Patti is smart to understand how much treats like this can mean when you’re alone, and she has a huge heart to prepare them. She sent gifts for last and next Christmas, one for my birthday in July, and a party package for next New Year’s. A while ago I smudged the cabin and myself with the sage I brought and with some needles from the small cypress tree growing out front. As I was smudging, I gave thanks for what I’ve been given and for all the people who helped make this journey possible. I gave thanks for my skills, too. Amazing to be here after so long. It’s been twenty-five years since I first thought I’d like to spend a year in solitude. So far, my connection with nature has not deepened as it has in the past, but it will happen as it happens. I can only ask for the courage and patience to open myself and wait. APRIL 11, 2001 Yum. First cup of real coffee since last December, and I can already feel the buzz. A fine morning it is for it, too. 41° F . Rainy, windy, and cold. I’m on the porch and not sure when I’ll build a fire. I still think firewood — like food, booze, and painkillers — needs to be rationed. There ’s plenty out there, but gathering it is hard work. Then, too, when I light a fire, I go inside, close the door, and shut out the world — which is just what I want to stop doing. Maybe I’ll save fires for when it’s dark. I want to take the boat and go exploring, especially to visit a glacier that comes right down to the sea. But a long trip seems unappealing at the moment. I can’t count on the ocean to remain calm, and if I have to wait for storms to pass it will be difficult to find protected places to camp or to tie up and sleep in the boat. My favorite little bird with the spiky topknot just came by. Dark brown back and a light grey breast that drifts to golden rusty brown on the sides of the belly. There are two bands of the same color over the head and spots of it along the back and wings. The tail looks like it has thorns sticking out from the sides of it. Maybe three inches tall and very quick. Insect feeder, I think. It roots around on the ground some, but often forages along the bark of trees. A new diving duck (White-tufted Grebe) is working the water edge of my front yard. Much smaller than the other divers I’ve seen; only seven or so inches tall. Grey-brown back darkens to charcoal on the top of the head. Small topknot. Cheeks are very distinctive: dirty white with a tracery of darker lines that look almost like tree branches. I stepped on Cat a while ago, the third time in as many days. When he yowled, I didn’t feel compassion for his pain or upset with myself for causing it, but rather annoyance with him for getting underfoot. He used to walk in front of me when I peed off the porch, and if I didn’t notice and picked him up for some loving afterward, I got to pet a pissed-on cat. Most unpleasant. He’s learned to not do that, and I imagine he’ll also figure out to not get underfoot. Now that I’m settled into the cabin, I wonder what will happen during these long stretches of dark grey time with no work to fill the hours. This is what I came for. All the preparation has been, in one sense, just that. Of course, from another point of view, it has not been preparation for anything at all, but just part of the total process of this retreat and of my life. NOON: I got tired of being cold and lit a fire. So much for rationing firewood. Truly, this is sensual pleasure. I’m warm and drinking my second cup of real coffee, which tastes even better than the first. I’m also eating my first piece of fry bread with the last of the butter I brought. I’ve noticed before that after some time in the wilderness what I crave most is bread and butter. Speaking of sensual pleasure. During my first long wilderness retreat twenty-five years ago, sexual desire, and even thoughts of sex, vanished so completely I didn’t realize they had gone until I emerged, saw a woman, and was hit again by wanting. The absence of desire is not so absolute this time, but close. I’ve thought about masturbating a few times in the past two months, but decided to not go there, and the desire quickly passed. Maybe now, in a warm cabin, wearing fewer layers of clothing, more aware of my skin, and less tired from work, desire will arise. 4 PM : Another storm is raging, and the waterfalls on the Staines cliffs rush down in full flood. Wind-driven sea from the northeast swirls across the basin. I’m feeling fearful and lonely. What if the cabin starts to leak? What if I run out of firewood and can’t find more? What if I feel like this forever? I wish Patti or Susan was here. 5:15 PM : Has it been only an hour? High tide surges up toward the boat, the woodpile, and me. Wind and rain batter my shelter. It seems like it has stormed and will storm forever. No matter what I tell myself about projection, anxiety and loneliness are viscerally linked to the weather. I know I will find the peace I long for only through surrender to death and to the immediate present. Easier said than done. Ah, for some companionship now. 5:50 PM : This anxiety is insidious. Since Vancouver, I’ve been worrying about one thing after another: my visa wouldn’t arrive on time; the crates of gear I shipped from Canada to Chile would be lost or stolen; I wouldn’t find transportation into the wilderness. The first night here I worried I would be washed away, then after I built a temporary shelter above high tide, that I would be blown away. I worried that the food we left a mile away would be soaked and ruined; after the boat flipped, that the motors wouldn’t work; once I hurt my shoulder, that I wouldn’t be able to finish the cabin; when it didn’t rain for five days, that I would run out of water. All through those times, I held onto the expectation that once I had all my gear here, firewood in, water tank hooked up, stove working, then I would feel safe and secure. But here I am, warm, dry, and well-fed, still feeling anxiety and dread. This is nuts! I’m creating needless suffering for myself and destroying my joy in living. But even though I can see it intellectually and have been through this before, the fear persists: tightly clenched shoulders and nausea; squinted eyes; a vague electric current pulsing through my body. There are only three things to do: I can take medication (which I have if I need it); run from or fight the feelings; learn to treat the anxiety as an old friend or at least a familiar acquaintance. I’m going out into the storm to give my imagination a rest. 7 PM : The tide peaked and is receding. The wind, at least for now, has dropped and is out of the northwest. Rain is still pouring down. Across the slate green western channel, the massive rock of Staines Peninsula is a paradox. It undulates north to south in alternating domes and hollows, from which waterfalls crash to the sea. More immediately solid than the much larger Andes farther away to the east, Staines is massive, concrete, and unambiguous. Yet — half hidden in the raining mists that fill the hollows and drift across the cliffs — mysterious and phantasmal, too; only partially real. Beyond, through, or within its physical presence, the rock evokes in me a world of experience that cannot be grasped, defined, or named. Swirling mists of feeling also veil half-hidden physiological states. Medical science is comforting: certain of the world, much as orthodox religion is certain. To see the source of these dark feelings as chemical imbalance is less nebulous than to attribute them to unconscious personal neuroses or mysterious collective archetypes. Medicine has a point. The chemicals in my body are as real as the rock of Staines Peninsula. But there is more: ambiguous, paradoxical, lived experience. If I lose this, my life becomes flat and lifeless. Yet if I reject the solid foundation of the physical world, I wander rudderless and lost in solipsistic maunderings. 11:15 PM : But when the wind drops, the rain stops, and the tide ebbs away, then, with no effort at all, my belly loosens, my heart eases, and my spirit soars with love into the quiet night. APRIL 12, 2001 Yesterday was the first day without painkillers since I’ve been here. I guess the warmth, lighter workload, and frequent stretching exercises are helping. Today I hung cheese and bacon on the porch out of Cat’s reach. Each month I’ll rewipe the cheese with vinegar. I’m amazed at how much I don’t know. I’ve just read in a book that vinegar prevents mold. I had tried oil, thinking to cut off air, but that was the wrong direction. The requirement is acid, not base. I should have figured it out sooner because when I taught scuba diving in the Caribbean, I put vinegar in my ears to control the fungus. All things tie together if you let your mind range widely enough. In Desert Solitaire , Edward Abbey claims that joy has evolutionary value. “Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all the other virtues are useless.” Where is my joy? I’m exactly where I’ve chosen to be. I have enough food and supplies to last the year. I’m cold by choice and can light a fire anytime. I’m free to call and leave here when I choose. I’m loved, supported, and respected. Where is my joy, and where my “felt” courage? In the past I’ve thought that courage comes as a result of facing fear. But perhaps courage is somehow hidden beneath or within the fear itself and found by staying with it. I can feel winter coming. Of course, I could feel it two and a half months ago in midsummer, too. Both my long wilderness retreats in Canada ended when winter closed in. But this time, if my courage and health hold, I’ll be staying. APRIL 13, 2001 Son of a bitch! I am so goddamned tired of falling down. Give me a break, world! I just slipped and fell again and I hurt everywhere. I think I’ve torn the rotator cuff in my left shoulder, too. I’m trying to be very careful, but one slightly off-balance step and down I go. The moss, mud, rock, and grass are all incredibly slippery under my prosthetic leg and rubber-soled boots. I can’t remember a time in my life without pain, but now it’s getting worse and is more constant. In pain management they teach you to relax into the pain, visualize a place of peace and beauty, and go there in your mind. But here in this place of peace and beauty, where do I go now that I am filled with pain? I think I’m starting to lose it. It doesn’t feel safe to take a step or even stand anywhere, and I’m beginning to see the rock out front as actively malevolent — watching and waiting for the chance to harm me. So far I haven’t cracked my head, but everything else just fucking aches and aches. I’m so tired of pain. APRIL 14, 2001 Abbey’s desert world is vast, his vision and explorations painted large and in detail. My world feels constricted and shallow: cabin, tiny beach, wind, rain, moods, pain. I’m too concerned with self, comfort, and survival, and sense I’m closing myself off from the world. This has happened before. On the other side — if I make it — there is joy and wonder. But why, over and over, must the passage be so hard and painful? Will the drama end once I’m truly tired of it and let it go? AFTER NOON: The day is still overcast and not quite 50° F . The sea still grey-green and restless. A light wind rustles the trees. Nothing has changed; all is still in endless motion. Yet, I’m feeling peaceful. I will never be free of pain. It’s part of the experience of living. What I can do, though, is loosen the grip of the self-pitying complaint “Why me ?” and accept pain as part of the world — like the sun, rain, and endless movement of the sea. NIGHT: The anxiety came back. Why? How? From where? I was building a ventilation hole in the cabin and noticed that the tranquil sound of the sea had become vaguely threatening. At random, I opened the book of Rumi poems that Susan gave me and read: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. 1 Easy to agree with, hard to live by. But just what I needed to hear. I miss Susan badly now. I don’t miss Patti in the same way; perhaps because she is so much with me here, or maybe this particular ache is yearning for sexual intimacy. APRIL 15, 2001 52° F . Some wind, sea restless, high overcast, mountains shining sharp and clear all the way to the peaks. A while ago some animals swam by moving fast. Might have been nutrias, but they looked bigger. I prepared for this retreat for so long; looking forward to immersion in the timeless wonder of Nature. And now I feel cut off, lonely, and frightened. Edging through the days and wondering if I’ll make it. I need to commit myself to stop being unhappy and to stop sounding like a broken record. Life will be what it is. APRIL 16, 2001 Wind and sea are moving, but not ferociously. Through broken clouds, sunshine touches the face of Staines. It was a tough night. I was up until 2 AM exercising my shoulders. My homemade chili pepper oil didn’t work, and I had to use some of the commercial arthritis cream. What will I do when it’s gone? Something else to worry about. I finally fell asleep but woke stiff and sore at 4. Up to exercise and apply the cold water bottle. Back to sleep until 7. Up to exercise, back to sleep till 9. This seems to be a pattern: exercise, sleep for a couple of hours, wake up cramped and sore, exercise again, sleep for two more hours. I dream of sleeping through a whole night. I think I’ve had only one such night in the past two and a half months. Maybe these aches and injuries are my body’s reaction to finally coming out of high-stress mode. I often catch a cold or the flu as a comedown reaction, but out here there ’s no one to infect me. A load of laundry is hanging on the line, a second load soaking, and water for a bath heating. First time I’ve washed clothes, and everything was filthy. It took all morning to do just a few light things. Now comes the heavy stuff: pants, shirts, vests, sweatshirt, and blankets. I remember the women in the Dominican Republic washing clothes together in the river. Doing it in community seemed to make their task lighter. I cut my hair today, which, due to the weak power supply, was a slow and nasty process. It felt like the electric clippers cut halfway through each hair and then yanked on it until it broke off. Most unpleasant. I also shaved for the first time. I’m glad to be trimmed, although it was also ok before. I’m skinny and the skin under my chin and on my upper arms is loose. I’m no longer a boy. When did this happen? I’ve stopped wearing my watch, the ring that was Dad’s, and the amulet I’ve worn for five years. Don’t like the stuff on me. It’s time to let go of the macho “I can tough it out” attitude and start taking care of my body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In a sense I have been taking care of myself — but because I must to survive, not because I deserve the attention and care. I wonder — in the context of spiritual quest — why living has to be so hard. I wonder if everyone experiences life as hard. Yesterday was Easter Sunday. Christ has risen. Spirit lives! The day passed unnoticed, and I feel sorry not to have celebrated. For me, the promise of the resurrection is that spirit can transform physical suffering. It’s not about actual death, but that the physical body need not dominate consciousness. Cat sits by the door quietly muttering and moaning. My first reaction is to tell him to shut up! But I do my complaining in these pages, and he has only his voice. So I bite my tongue, scratch his neck, and let him mumble. APRIL 17, 2001 MORNING: 41° F . No wind. The sea shines silver-white to the east and dark green-brown where it reflects the southern island. Pale yellow clouds, with patches and bands of blue and grey, float high over the mountains; further south the wind has streaked them into curves. The sounds are soothing. An occasional goose’s honk, and ripples from surfacing dolphins expanding out to caress the shore. I haven’t missed reading the news these past two months. It’s a relief to know nothing about the outside world. If I were up to it, this would be a perfect morning to collect firewood or go wandering, but it also feels good to stay quietly here. There needs to be relationship. Without that, life is dead. My commitment here is to relationship with self, nature, and spirit. If I spend my time longing for relationship with Susan and fantasizing how it will be after this year, I’m wasting this precious opportunity. Then when I come out, I won’t have done the necessary work that will allow me to be in real relationship with her. I don’t feel this concern with Patti. Our lives are so deeply linked. EVENING: This has been a gift of a day. (As I write these lines, I realize that for the past week I’ve been sunk in doubt and anxiety. How easily and unconsciously I lose faith.) For the first time, I took the kayak for a paddle. I discovered a small beach on the west side of the small island out front, took photos, drifted in the sun, collected some limpets for Cat, and did some fishing. Caught only four tiny ones. There must be bigger fish here since dolphins and nutrias spend time in the basin, but I don’t know where they are or how to catch them. This is what I envisioned: inflatable boat for longer trips, kayak for nearby. Probably won’t paddle far since the wind comes up so unexpectedly and I can make no headway against it. From now on when I use the boat I’ll take the kayak, too. With the 4 hp outboard not working, the kayak is my only backup in case the 15 hp dies. Come winter, I’ll also be glad to paddle out to the sun. Now that it’s moving into the northern sky behind the trees, my cabin is already mostly in shadow. I’d hoped the dolphins would join me to get acquainted and play, but they came over, scoped out the kayak, and were gone. At one point I heard a sort of coughing scream from the east channel and saw a nutria (I think) leaping out in the deep water. I bet it was either in heat or rut or had just gotten laid. APRIL 18, 2001 35° F . This could be lake country, far from the sea. A low mist covers the channel to the south, and the blue sky above is veiled and accentuated here and there with puffs and streaks of light, the sunrise clouds changing from rose to pale yellow. The sea is a mosaic of silver glass, clearly reflecting the mountains, and opaque velvet, made so by a delicate wind riffle. The stillness eases my heart. What would my experience be if I was spending this year in a warmer, drier place? The weather also brings restlessness. It’s a day to be with a lover or on the move. Maybe I’ll drag the boat to the water and go fishing to Staines. Last night, a strange and ominous sound came from over there. A loud, almost motorlike vibration. It sent chills up my back, and I brought the chain saw and ax onto the porch. A nutria just came by, fishing. Hard to believe this is the same species as the creature I saw leaping out in the channel yesterday. That beast seemed at least three times as large as this one. Perhaps this is a youngster and that an old granddad. APRIL 19, 2001 From what I’ve seen, this has been a sort of typical decent day. 51° F . Medium-high cloud layer, mountains semi visible except for the peaks, moderate wind, sea moving with whitecaps. I’m just back from fishing the basin in the cold dark rain. When I came in, Cat was on the porch, warm, dry, and eating fish. I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture?” I caught a dozen barely big enough to eat. Getting a system worked out: I stayed dry, took headlamp for when I need to see to tie on a hook, used pieces of fish from yesterday for bait, and prepared kindling before I went so the fire started easily. But I didn’t take time to kill each fish as I caught it, and so they died slowly. I don’t like doing that and will pause to kill them from now on. Strange how my schedule has shifted to staying up so late. I often don’t go to sleep until 2 or 3 AM . I’m also spending three to four hours a day just working on my body. Happily, I’m not so susceptible to the cold anymore, either because I’m warm for five or six hours in the evening or because I’m slowly adapting. Getting used to water and cat noises, too. Cat was sitting in the open doorway a while ago, sniveling quietly as usual, and I said, “Ssshhh.” He looked up quite startled, eyes opened wide as if to say, “Oh, was I moaning again? I hadn’t realized.” APRIL 20, 2001 And this would be a sort of typical bad day. 42° F . Not raging, but nasty; sky closed down in a low blanket of cloud, mountains and hills somewhere gone. The surface of the sea is streaked with wind-froth skirling away to the southeast, and sheets of rain drive horizontally across the water. Without sunlight to lift it up to dance and shine, the kelp floats sullen and soggy. A break in the cloud layer drifts over and faint blue glows, but soon it, too, follows a path to the southeast; grey slams shut again and blue is just a fading memory. My world grows small: porch, Cat in his box, stack of firewood, thoughts of warmth. I can see only the mid tide beach of rock and sea grass, moss climbing the stunted trees on the bluff to my left, and, in the far distance, the island lying heavy in its sodden bed two hundred yards away. I search the west and finally make out the faint silhouette of Staines Peninsula looming through the wet. Wind starts to move through the trees behind me, not roaring yet, and far from the demented howl of a full storm, but waking up again. The lid begins to lift and light filters down less murkily. Southeast, the hills — as if by magic — slide back into being. Another patch of blue floats by. A ray of sun shines into a translucent silver drop that hangs from a twig in front of the cabin. A separate beam reveals the whitecaps previously hidden in the channel. Three large boulders on the island across the basin leap up and shout, “We are here!” I’ve looked that way a thousand times while they have lain dormant and almost invisible, but now the slanting sun has stroked them into full tumescent existence. All around is opaque grey, but the three boulders, suddenly shaped and filled with color, bellow, “We are here!” Southeast, the receding lines of hills are gone again. Just as well since I have no words for what I see when the mist thins. What are these lacks of color? Grey, black, and silver are not enough. A rich monochrome spectrum reaches out from that deep distance: close hills are dark and solid, and each line behind lighter in mass and tone. Scratching through the mud and grass, a resident bird (Dark-bellied Cinclodes) hunts — apparently untroubled by the wind and rain. Wait. She has paused to plunge into a hollow in the rock and flutters there having a bath! Now the storm moves in again with a crash, and wind slams my cabin walls. Even here in the lee of hill and forest, trees lean and sway in the gusts. Even here the sea churns through the narrow gap into the protected basin. Hooyah! Yet this is still mild compared to the February storms. As suddenly as the front rolled in, it’s gone. Breaks in the cloud show blue. One leg of a rainbow arcs over the Staines rock and the sea laps softly on my tiny beach. Until the cycle repeats again. EVENING: This would have been a good day to build a fire and hunker down inside. Instead I stayed out, opened my senses as wide as I could, and watched the weather moving through. I often had to choose between describing in words what I was seeing or photographing it. The changes came so fast it was impossible to do both. APRIL 21, 2001 At Buddhist meditation retreats students are urged to sleep as little as possible to develop more continuous awareness. We often tend to escape from consciousness into sleep or into activity and substances. Here, I’m becoming clearer that there is no “away” where I can go. I would like to escape, but sleep isn’t working and I don’t have enough painkillers or booze to go that route. I begin to see more clearly the squirrel-race circles of my thoughts and to feel the results of that endless empty chatter. It’s not that thinking is bad, but it becomes addictive and will not end my suffering as I expect it to. I feel grief for Mom. Not because she’s gone and I can no longer be with her, but for our time together when she was alive. Grief for all we couldn’t share because so much stood in between. I guess we did the best we could, and maybe the union I longed for is always frustrated between mother and son. But there ’s a deep hurt in me that I was and am a loner — cut off from sharing love with anyone. Two hummingbirds just flew into the cabin. One made it back out through the open door, but the other tried the Plexiglas shortcut. I rescued and held him for a while to caress his shimmering gold, rusty green, and iridescent magenta head, before I let him go. APRIL 22, 2001 Physical weather is coming from the west-southwest; emotional weather from the north. Is what I feel loneliness for body warmth and smiling eyes, or longing for God, Spirit, my soul? I don’t even know what these are. For the past few days I’ve cut back to two painkillers a day. I want to feel what there is to feel; to not hide from the pain, but find other ways to ease it. A while ago I went to the point to sense the wind, water, sun, and clouds with eyes, ears, skin and bones. Back here I was greeted by the rich smell of split firewood. Some smells vaguely like cat piss, but other pieces are as fragrant as a sun-drenched orchard in spring. Today is Sunday, a day of rest. I may build a fire early and have a bath. I want to figure out how to keep the fire	870,911
The Anatomy of Loneliness How to Find Your Way Back to Connection (Teal Swan) (Z-Library).epub	The Anatomy of Loneliness Cover Title Contents Dedication Introduction The Three Pillars of Loneliness Part I The Pillar of Separation Part II The Pillar of Shame Part III The Pillar of Fear Part IV Creating Connection Part V Keeping Connection Conclusion Be Brave Enough to Love Copyright The Anatomy of Loneliness Part III The Pillar of Fear The voice of a child says It’s better that our hearts grow light. It’s better to embrace instead of exile suffering. Mothers weep until their tears run dry. Their sons on distant streets decay, kissed by the meritless fever of war, Stripped of life. And all souls die along with them; Just as all souls live when a newborn embraces the joy of its mother’s breast. Relieved of the heavy husk of childhood Let our voices rise to denounce all that kept us prisoner. Like the undisturbed stars my heart flickers without falter. I use its light to turn around to face my real enemies, but all there is is stillness and space... Row upon row of ramparts I have built for an enemy that doesn’t exist. All souls are set free as I tear down my walls brick by brick But not by hating them. I have taken the child’s advice. It’s better that our hearts grow light. It’s better to love than to fear. And the voice of a child says there is no better way to love than to love the fear itself. Fear by Teal Swan The Pillar of Fear The third pillar of loneliness is fear. So, what does fear have to do with loneliness and connection? The answer is that fear is inherently about separation. By its very nature, fear is to push something or someone away from you, and it is the number-one most isolating experience on the planet. The more fearful we are, the more alone we are. Fears about relationships or about other people simply serve to separate us from people and make us lonely when it comes to human contact. To help visualize this, imagine that you are standing in the middle of a circle with a bunch of people. Now see yourself feeling fear toward these people in the circle and pushing them away. When you do this, eventually everyone else ends up outside the circle and you are the only one inside the circle... alone . Now imagine that same scenario but this time your fear toward everyone causes you to want to avoid them and thus run away from them. If you do this, everyone else is still inside the circle and you are now outside the circle... alone . This is how fear creates loneliness and prevents connection. Earlier in this book, I explained that there is only one kind of pain in this universe, and that is the pain of separation. If we feel pain, it’s because in that moment, we are separated from something. And when we feel pain in a relationship, it’s always an indication that we have a fear present. We need to face that fear directly. People who are lonely are deeply fearful people. The fear they feel is the felt experience of pushing something away. Hell is not a state that exists external to us. Hell is fear . Fear and hell are one and the same. This is why there can be people who are in hell walking the Earth next to people who are in heaven. Heaven is love . Vibrationally speaking, love is the opposite of fear. It’s important that we come to recognize what all our fears are about, especially our core fear. Our core fear is the thing we try the hardest to avoid in life. As such, our core fear will always be a part of ourselves that we split off from and disowned. This means that you have yet another Inner Twin, a Fear Twin, inside you that came about because of your core fear. You may have any number of Fear Twins in fact. Facing our deepest inner fears Here is a recent experience I had of uncovering deep fears in my own life. When I moved to a foreign country for the first time, I committed to a period of shamanic journey work with plant medicines. On one of my inner journeys, I was forced to witness my deepest fears one by one, down to the very core fear that I have. That is the fear of being trapped in pain, alone with no escape and no way of ending it. This is my greatest fear because it’s already something I have experienced in my real life. The desperate fear I felt from that experience in my life made me cut off from the part of myself that was having that terrifying experience. It became an Inner Twin and it lay subconscious within me for many years. When I finally became aware of this long-lost part within me, this Fear Twin, in my mind’s eye, looked completely burnt from head to toe. Only her eyes were distinguishable. Her right shin bone was compound fractured. She couldn’t move or breathe because she was in so much pain. She looked like the kind of person who had been hurt so badly that she needed to be in the Intensive Care Unit. During that inner journey, I was told that the two greatest answers to overcoming fear were to love the self that is afraid and to love the self that you are the most afraid of . If to love means to take something as a part of yourself, to love it in this case meant that I had to re-own it and, as such, to take responsibility for its wellbeing. Therefore, I had to decide to make this part of myself, my Fear Self, my first priority. In other words, I had to figure out what she needed and begin to change my life to make space for those needs. Thus I entered a period of healing. I cancelled my upcoming tours. I invited my Fear Twin to come up within me to take over my body so I could really feel her needs. Following her needs, I would sleep-in in the morning. I took Epsom salt baths and I practised tenderness with myself. I made sure that everyone in my life who mattered to me was aware of this inner part of me and asked them to be in a relationship with her as well. I asked people to treat me gently. As this fragile Inner Twin began to heal, I grew less and less afraid of people. I began to feel ready for life again. Then I did the same with any other aspects of myself that were afraid and had splintered off over the years. This was the beginning of taking responsibility for my fears. Instead of seeing my fears as things that were trying to destroy my life and pull me down, I saw that they were like terrified children crying out desperately for my help. And when I answered that call, I felt less afraid and I felt less alone. The inheritance of fear Even if we grow up in a loving environment, we inherit fear and the belief that we are not able to deal with certain things. Hardly any mother on Earth can avoid saying, “Be careful or you’ll get hurt.” When a child hits the toddler phase, mothers often say this many times a day. Inherent in her voice is the message, “The world is dangerous and you won’t be able to handle it if something bad happens.” This message is a distortion because it really isn’t about the child not being able to handle it, it’s about the mother not being able to handle it. When she tells her child to be careful, what she is really saying is, “If something bad happens to you, I won’t be able to handle it.” When we were children we took on our mothers’ fear, whether we were aware of it or not. The same is true of our fathers and any other significant people in our early environment. We adopted their feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy without questioning it, and we adopted the inevitable fear that came as a result of it. And as we will explore more in this section, the primary ways that we usually cover up our fears are through avoidance and control . Remember, there are only two movements that we usually take: the movement toward and the movement away . When you experience fear, you naturally push something away from yourself, which is to say that you dis-include it as part of yourself. This is the opposite of love, which is to pull something toward yourself so as to include it as part of yourself. Fear can be defined as a response to a perceived threat. When we perceive something to be a danger to us, meaning that we perceive the possibility of suffering, harm, or injury on a physical, mental or emotional level, then of course we naturally want to get away from it. Usually we want to either push it away, which would be fighting it, or we want to run away from it, but there is a third choice. We could choose to reform it so it’s no longer a threat. We can reform it by changing it into something that no longer threatens us. Interestingly, it doesn’t matter whether the threat is really a threat to us or not. What matters is if we perceive it to be a threat. Fear is something that is primal, in the same way as shame. Each of these are a reaction that happens instinctively without us having to think about making it happen. Our reaction is a visceral and organic biological affective reaction. It begins as a reaction and then thoughts come in on top of that reaction. If we feel fear, we think we are unsafe. We don’t feel secure from danger, harm, injury or risk. Unless we feel safe in a given situation or with a given person, we will naturally push that situation or that person away from us. This behaviour is a mirror of what we do to the part of ourselves internally that caused us to feel afraid in the past – we push it away. For example, if part of us is angry and we have learned that anger causes us to be rejected by others then we won’t feel safe to include anger as part of ourselves or even acknowledge that it is within us. Other people might say, “There’s nothing wrong with anger,” but if your past experience has taught you that there is something wrong with anger and it comes with big consequences, you’ll perceive anger as a threat and you will therefore continue to fear it. The fears we hide inside primarily arose because we lacked safety in our childhood or lost our personal security too early. As adults, we still long for someone to protect and provide for us, unaware that we have other options to feel safe. We carry the remembered imprint of the small child within us, who was surrounded by indifferent, un-attuned or hostile giants, otherwise known as the adults in our lives, and that child inside us decided that safety was impossible. If we experience a lot of fear relative to relationships, chances are that this early experience was our reality. We just don’t believe that it’s possible to feel safe in the context of connection with other people, which torments us because connection is also something that we so desperately crave. The four primary fears in relationships People have four primary fears when it comes to relationships. They are: 1. Abandonment 2. Rejection or disapproval 3. Being trapped in pain 4. Loss of self, also called enmeshment Abandonment is an exiting violation and leads to isolation. When we are abandoned or perceive abandonment, we feel we have lost connection with someone because they went away. When we feel rejected or disapproved of, we perceive ourselves to be pushed away by someone. This causes acute pain within us. Sometimes we feel that because of certain circumstances or even perhaps due to our own needs, we won’t be able to get away from someone who is hurting us mentally, emotionally or physically. When this is the case, we are trapped in pain. This is the essence of torture. Loss of self or enmeshment is when we feel completely consumed by our partner rather than the kind of connection and unity we crave, which is to become part of each other. Enmeshment is definitely not mutually positive, which is why we are so scared of it. It’s when one person becomes part of the other but not the other way around, so it actually feels more like being eaten. There are two sides to the fundamental core of fear. The first is that you feel powerless to prevent what is unwanted and the second is that you feel powerless to bring about what is wanted . If you dissect any fear you have, you will always find these two sides within it. You’ll notice also that desire is always present if fear is present. Most of us don’t recognize that. If you feel powerless to bring about what you desire in your reality, it means that despite having a strong desire, it is your thoughts, words and actions that are pulling in the opposite direction of what you desire. In other words, there is a separation between you and what you desire. On a physical level, this rather energetic circumstance shows up in your embodiment as the feeling of fear. It feels like life is happening to you. That wouldn’t be a problem if you felt like you could handle what was happening to you. But the thing about fear is that if you are feeling fear, without exception it means that you feel like you can’t handle whatever life is bringing to you or whatever is happening to you at that moment. For example, if I feel fear about making a fool out of myself, I can’t handle the experience of being embarrassed and I don’t feel able to face the potential consequences of being seen as foolish or silly by others. It’s impossible to fear the unknown One of the biggest fears is “the unknown”. This is because, as humans, we have become addicted to knowledge. We just have to know everything about everything at all times. It’s part of why you picked up this book to read. There are several dynamics that make knowing things appealing and one is that when we grasp a new concept, our brain releases a dose of chemicals similar to opium. Knowledge addiction also gives the human being a strong evolutionary advantage. We are guaranteed to progress if we are hard-wired to learn. Without thinking about it, we tend to want to pick out experiences that are new because those experiences will cause us to learn more, thereby quenching our thirst. This desire for knowledge is not in and of itself negative, but it has a shadow side. The shadow side is that knowledge is often used by the human ego as a security blanket. Let me explain. The ego uses knowledge to avoid things it fears, things like insignificance, worthlessness and physical pain. The ego knows that we become significant to others when we know more than them and we gain status and respect from others. And knowledge is often used by the ego to keep itself away from the rocky seas of uncertainty. Cognitive closure provides more certainty to us and makes us feel safe. And if the ego’s goal is survival, knowledge is more essential than even food or water is. After all, knowledge is what allows us to find food and water in the first place. However, this commonly accepted idea that we fear the unknown is actually completely and totally false. We don’t fear the unknown. If we truly feared the unknown, babies would fear everything and they don’t. What we fear is what we project into the unknown based on our previous experiences. When we face something unknown, our mind goes to work projecting the fears that it has already acquired in an effort to predict what terrors lie in the unknown and then the ego goes to work trying to figure out how to avoid those fears. So you can see, it’s actually those projections that we are afraid of. For example, if we quit our job that we have been working at for ten years to do something radically new and different, we are venturing into the unknown. But we don’t fear that unknown in and of itself. We fear the potential failure and fall from grace that we could experience socially by venturing into the unknown. This fear arises because we have experienced the feeling of failure or fall from grace before and wish to avoid that again at all costs. If we learned to not project our fears into the unknown, the unknown would no longer be scary. Most of us fear not knowing because we fear that, as a result of not knowing, we will end up going through a “bad” experience, that we will experience whatever it is that we fear. However, your worry will greatly be reduced when you train your focus to see that value is contained in every single experience. Begin to shift your thinking so that you can accept that you cannot know everything about everything. Expecting yourself to know everything about everything is cruelty, and usually the result of being in a state of fear relative to the world and life itself. Instead adopt the philosophy that life is based upon exploration, expansion, adventure and the progression of discovery and learning. There is a Zen master who once said, “The barn is burnt down. Now I can see the moon.” Inherent in that statement is the idea that even the things that we would identify as a tragedy contain value. If we make it a habit to see value in all experiences in our lives, we don’t spend so much time and effort trying to avoid certain experiences. That in and of itself is liberation . The greatest avoidance strategies of all Most self-help experts, psychologists and spiritual teachers approach the issue of fear by telling you why you should not be afraid and how to avoid fear itself. There are several movements with lots of advice about how to control your reality, such as “your mind creates your reality” and the “law of attraction”. Since fear is about feeling powerless to avoid something unwanted, it’s obvious that if you control your reality, you’ll have nothing to fear. Regardless of whether or not these philosophies are correct about how the universe operates (and some of them are), this is the wrong way to deal with fear. It’s comforting to accept that if we have control over our mind, we can have control over what is happening to us. It’s comforting to believe that we control our realities. But the problem is that when we use these philosophies, what we are doing is coping by avoiding and pushing away our fear. The truth is that coping through avoidance never gets you anywhere. It means we are just resisting the thing we are avoiding. We are pushing it away. In a universe like the one that we live in, which functions like a mirror, anything you resist, you get more of. Another popular belief system is positive focus . It encourages you to stay positive at all times and that will solve all your problems. But it doesn’t work. The vast majority of fears are about past trauma that we have experienced. When we experience something traumatic on an emotional level, it works the same way as it does with physical trauma. There is an enormous difference between focusing on something positive for the sake of positive focus and focusing on something positive with the hope of trying to escape from, ignore or get away from something negative. My advice is to stop trying to stop fear and instead become better at knowing how to care-take fear . Here’s an example to help you understand the danger of using positive focus to escape from fear. If you are in a bad car accident and experience a compound fracture to your leg, no amount of positive focus is going to heal you. If you don’t go to the hospital or a doctor, and instead attempt to distract yourself from the fracture by thinking positive thoughts, you are only avoiding the reality that you have a serious medical issue that needs conscious medical intervention. What is the result if you try to escape from, ignore or get away from a broken bone like this? It festers. You become incapacitated if you survive the infection at all. In short, when we try to avoid something, the thing we are trying to avoid gets worse. And this includes fear. This is the exact scenario we face on an emotional level. If we suffered an emotional trauma and we ignore, suppress or deny it in favour of positive focus, we are using positivity to get away from negativity . The emotional wound does not get better; it just festers. In short, positive focus is an amazing technique but there is one enormous exception. Positive focus works on everything except for the things you’re trying to use positive focus to avoid . Positive focus cannot and should not be used as a tool to enable our resistance. A better strategy to deal with fear When it comes to fears and the feeling that we are powerless to what happens in our reality, the discussion doesn’t need to be about how we create our reality, how to control our reality or how to stop feeling fear. The focus needs to be on developing trust in your ability to handle whatever happens. If we believed that we could handle anything that came our way, fear would not occur within our being except when the basic fight-or-flight instinct kicks in if our life is threatened. If we believe we can handle what comes our way, we would no longer be scared about day-to-day activities or relationships, and fear would no longer limit us or close us down to enjoying life. If we experienced many situations as children where we couldn’t handle what life threw at us, we ended up with a learned helplessness that led to constant anxiety. It’s as if that feeling of being a child who was powerless to take care of itself imprints on our being. We develop learned powerlessness that doesn’t change even when we become adults who are capable of handling those situations. One of the most popular metaphors used in the world to demonstrate learned powerlessness is that of elephants. If you tie an elephant to a tree as a baby, when he is too small to move the tree, he will grow up believing that he cannot escape the tree and won’t even try when he’s an adult animal and he could easily uproot the tree entirely. This is how it works with the ingrained feeling that we cannot handle what life brings us. It’s at this point that we can clearly see a powerful way that fear braids itself in with shame. If we feel that we are powerless to deal with something, we feel ashamed that we can’t deal with that thing. In that moment, we are not feeling good about ourselves because we are seeing ourselves as incapable. This is especially true if it seems to us like other people can deal with that same thing. We decide that not being able to handle something means that something is innately wrong with us or bad about us. For this reason, when you feel fear, consider that what it means is that right here and now, you are feeling bad about yourself . As we did with shame, it’s important that we go back to the original experiences that caused us to believe we couldn’t handle what life brings us and caused us fear in the first place, and then find a way to resolve those original experiences. Again, if this is an issue for you, I encourage you to read my book entitled The Completion Process because in it, I offer a process to do this. I cannot stress to you enough the power and potential of experiencing yourself positively handling situations that you could not handle in the past. Since fear is about a situation where you don’t trust that you can handle it, it’s then obvious that your focus needs to switch from, “I can’t handle that situation” to “How can I handle that situation?” Then imagine it happening just that way. Sometimes, this is all it takes to diminish the fear you have about something and reduce your feelings of learned powerlessness. Choice If we feel powerless, the implication is that we have no opportunity to make a personal choice. But choice immediately gets you out of a place of helplessness. Instead, you feel empowerment. The idea of power terrifies most people. It’s frightening because people associate power with tyranny and manipulation, both things that cause suffering for others and thus both things that give power a bad rep in human society. The thing is, genuine empowerment makes you less manipulative and less controlling of others. Genuine empowerment makes you free. It makes you open to the world instead of closed to it. Personal power therefore is a necessary part of love. To begin the practice of increasing your personal power, adjust your focus in any situation that you face toward exploring what choices you have in that situation. In most cases, there will be a multitude of choices. For example, say you were asked to give a public speech and you were petrified. You might even tell the person, “Oh no, I can’t do that,” when you really mean you won’t do that. You can physically do it, so saying that you can’t is not the truth. It’s more accurate to say, “I don’t choose to get up on stage and give a talk.” You may have an array of very valid reasons why you made that choice, but the empowerment comes from realizing that the truth is you choose not to do it rather than believing that you can’t. Often, fear puts limits on us that don’t inherently exist and we overuse the word “can’t”. We believe we can’t do something that we want to do, when in fact we can. That being said it is important to know that all people have certain limits. For example, a paraplegic cannot walk up the stairs. So in a situation where someone literally can’t do something, the empowerment is in the choice to embrace their limits and ask themselves, “What choices do I have now, having accepted this limit of mine?” Having limits is not wrong. We still have access to a vast array of choices even if we accept a limitation. What it comes down to is, when we have to make a choice about our options or our actions, we need to be asking ourselves, “Is this option bringing me more power or less?” Recognizing choice brings your power back to you instead of leaving it in the hands of other people. THE BIG QUESTION Begin your process of transcending fear by accepting this statement: fear will never go away . You will never live a life without fear. There is no such thing as fearlessness. Even though we experience various degrees of fearfulness, as long as you are on this planet and you are growing and expanding as a person by taking new risks and following your desires, there will be fear. We may try to hide it from each other but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Now ask yourself this big question: “How would my life be different and what might I do differently with my time and energy if I just accepted that I am in a lifelong relationship with fear?” How thoughts become fears Fear is the feeling that arises from any thought that takes you away from what you desire, therefore thoughts play a leading role when it comes to fear. Here is an example of a thought pulling you in the opposite direction of what you desire. If you want a relationship that is committed and secure, you will want to be careful about thoughts like these examples. “No man can ever truly be committed, it goes against his biology.” “No woman could ever commit to me because she loves me, because all women care about is what I can do for them.” “There is a less than 50 per cent chance that any marriage will last, so it’s a total crap shoot.” These kinds of thoughts will pull you away from what you want and induce fear. Thoughts don’t only come in the form of words in your head but also as images. For example in the previous scenario, I may not hear the words, “No man can ever truly be committed, it goes against his biology”, but I may simply see an image of a man walking out the door or cheating on me with another woman. Regardless of the form of the thought, when it’s about fear it can be anything that goes against our desire. What am I really afraid of? The first step in overcoming fear is to become fully aware of the fear. Most of us become used to the discomfort of anxiety or fear without ever really putting in the effort to figure out what exactly we are afraid of. Our fears are a bit like ghosts that haunt us, but that we cannot clearly see. But a phantom only has complete control of you if you can’t see it. Seeing it in fact instantly reduces its magnitude. We have to ask ourselves the question, “What am I really afraid of in this situation?” To figure out what you’re really afraid of, you must dive into the feeling of the fear instead of doing things to get away from it. This is easier said than done, but it will get easier with more and more practise. Here is an example. The moment I feel fear, I can try to get rid of the fear, which would most often be to push it away. For example, if I get onto a plane and I start to feel fear, I can distract myself with video games. I can tell myself all the things that make the plane safe. I can tell myself that the fear is ridiculous and suppress it with my refusal to see my own fear as valid. But these tactics don’t really work. This is the better approach. The moment I start to feel fear, I can try to integrate the fear by inviting it to come closer. For example, I could close my eyes and focus all of my attention on the sensations of the fear itself as they occur in my body. I could watch the images popping up in my mind. I could listen to what the various inner voices are saying or showing me. Then I could begin to dive deeper by compassionately questioning with a genuine desire to understand. I could ask myself: “What about this is so frightening?” When I get the answer, I might then ask, “Why is that so frightening? What does that remind me of that I have experienced before?” By inviting my fear closer to me in this way, I am not only exposing the fear so I can face it but, by doing so, I care-take it directly and become more conscious. Whenever we have faced an actual fear, we have the power to use our minds and hearts to resolve the past traumatic experience that caused the fear. We can also make choices and strategize direct ways to make the situation safer for us. Why exposure strategy doesn’t work for fear Once people are aware of what they are afraid of, a common strategy people often use to overcome the fear is exposure therapy . For example, a person who is deathly afraid of snakes is taken to a place where they have to hold snakes so that their anxiety eventually goes away by seeing that there is no real threat. In my opinion, if this form of therapy is done too prematurely it only serves to reinforce an internal atmosphere of fear and unsafety. Imagine that someone is considering exposure therapy but they have Inner Twins that don’t agree. One Inner Twin wants to rush toward the fearful element to get over the fear, while at the same time the other Inner Twin wants to run away from it and be kept safe from it. What happens then is an internal tug of war erupts inside ourselves between those two aspects of us. To expose ourselves to what we fear in this situation is to bulldoze a vulnerable part of ourselves, our Inner Twin that is not ready. That scared Inner Twin component of ourselves will only learn to distrust the other part because its best interests, free will and desires are not being considered. This creates an internal emotional atmosphere of distrust. The result is that we won’t trust ourselves and we won’t even know why that is. We won’t realize it’s because one of our Inner Twins played a zero-sum game (I win and you lose) with another Inner Twin. A zero-sum game is a situation where the end is always that in order for one person to win, the other has to be the loser. The better, alternative approach to exposure therapy is that once we have discovered a fear, we can use our minds and hearts to resolve the fear. You can imagine this as the process of taking your attention off of the fear itself and turning your loving, attentive presence and focus toward your Inner Twin who wants to get as far away from whatever it’s afraid of as possible. Using this inner technique, we approach this aspect of our self as if it were a terrified, crying child. Instead of forcing it to do what scares it, we try to understand its fear and express that we see that fear as valid, and that the fear must be there for an important reason. We then sit with its fear and see how we can best offer the Inner Twin the reassurance and safety that it needs. Often what happens when we do this is that we become very clear on a boundary. Either we become clear that what is right for us and what is needed in order to feel safe is to say a clear “no” to engaging with the thing that scares us. Or we may become clear that the side that is scared also wants to engage with the thing that scares it. There is a big difference between hearing the Inner Twin say, “I am scared and I don’t want to engage with this thing,” as compared to them saying, “I am scared but I also want to engage with this thing.” The only point at which exposure therapy is a good idea is the point at which the frightened Inner Twin says they are willing to engage with the thing they fear. If this is the case, our two Inner Twins are aligned, which creates an internal atmosphere of trust. The fear can then be met and it can be faced by the two Twins approaching it hand-in-hand, which will then remove the fear and reinstate inner harmony and trust. However, just to be clear: if the fearful Inner Twin is not ready to face the fear and sets up a firm boundary and they say “no” to the exposure therapy, then that must be respected and held firm to, in order for there to be an internal atmosphere of trust. Emotional wake-up call Body, mind and soul: this triad has long been considered the pillars of a complete life. But what if I told you that we got it wrong? When we think of soul , we think of an etheric or intangible energy. But then we also have the ethereal, intangible nature of feelings and emotions (which we don’t understand), and we very often relate them to our concept of soul . This is why advice about how to feed and heal your soul is designed to help you to emotionally feel better. In truth, our soul aspect is innately healthy. It cannot be in an unhealthy state. Soul , which is pre-manifested energy, creates three important things: feelings, mind and body. Thus all three levels of a person are in fact comprised of soul . Our body is our soul projecting itself physically . Our mind is our soul projecting itself mentally . Feeling is our soul consciously perceiving . Due to this reality, we can look at it one of two ways. The first is that the three pillars of health are body, mind and emotion. The second way is that emotion is the language of the soul. If you choose to see it these ways, then the key to what people are calling soul health is actually your emotional health . And an important aspect of emotional health is the conscious acknowledgement of our non-corporal consciousness, the non-physical side of our being, which we could call spirit or soul . When we use the word soul, we are referring to the core aspect of a person’s being. In the English language, soul and heart are interchangeable concepts. This is why when someone is speaking from the core of their being, they may say, “I know it in my heart that this or that is true.” What this means is that deep down, we know that the very heart of our experience in life is not mental or physical, it’s feeling and emotion. When we first come into this life, we experience the world entirely through felt perception . We feel the world before we see the world. Feeling and emotion are not only the heart of your life here on Earth, but these two crucial elements are also at the heart of your relationships. And because feeling and emotion are the heart of relationships, it’s also where the most damage is done. It’s clear that the way we relate to feeling and emotion, and what we know about them, is grounded in our upbringing and socialization. We can say now, looking back over the last centuries of human existence, that our ideas about good and bad ways to raise a child have changed dramatically. For example, in medieval times childhood did not really exist. As soon as a child could physically manage it, they were put to work, often in roles that would be seen as slavery today. Children were not seen as pure but rather as evil and extraordinary corporal punishment was considered normal and commonplace. In that era, even in the most aristocratic households, instead of valuing and adoring their children, some parents took to despising their offspring and deliberately belittling and abusing them, misguidedly thinking it was for the children’s own good. In the late 1600s in the Western world, history saw the birth of the punishment-and-reward style of parenting. Instead of pure corporal punishment, philosopher John Locke suggested that the better way of training a child would be to withdraw approval and affection by “disgracing” the child when they were bad and “esteeming” them when they were good by rewarding the child with approval and affection. In the early 20th century, not much had changed. Childrearing experts still formally denounced all romantic ideas about childhood and advocated formation of proper habits to discipline children. In fact, a 1914 US Children’s Bureau pamphlet, Infant Care, urged a strict schedule and urged parents not to play with their babies. John B. Watson’s Behaviorism argued that parents could train children by rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour, and by following precise schedules for food, sleep and other bodily functions. Corporal punishment began to fall out of favour in the Western world in the late 20th century. Many parents became conscious enough to see corporal punishment for what it is – abuse. And so, today, while sadly there are still pockets of unconscious parents that still abuse their children in the name of discipline, the majority use parenting practices like timeouts as tools for discipline. Creating a healthy emotional climate It’s easy to look back over time and say that we were living in the dark ages in terms of parenting. But I will tell you that in the years to come, that is exactly what history will say about today’s style of parenting. History will see many of our common practices as barbaric and cruel. We now know how to create a healthy physical climate for our children and for each other. But I am here to tell you that we have no idea how to create a healthy emotional climate for our children or for each other. While there are some rare exceptions to this rule, over the course of human history, even up to today, the emotional climate of a household has not even factored into the idea of good parenting. But I believe we are starting to awaken to the realization that it is possible to be a good parent to a child on a physical level and a terrible parent to a child on an emotional level. This has vast implications when we acknowledge that emotion is the core of our life and the heart of our relationships. In today’s world, we fear emotions, such as fear itself. Most parenting advice ignores the world of emotion entirely. It focuses on how to correct misbehaviour while disregarding the feelings that underlie and cause the misbehaviour. Regardless of how far we have progressed, the goal of parenting is still to have a compliant and obedient child, not to raise a healthy adult. In other words, the goal is to raise a child who is “good”. Good parenting involves emotion. Good relationships involve emotion. Creating a healthier emotional climate in this world starts with how we treat our children and then these same standards need to extend to how we treat ourselves and how we relate to our friends and our loved ones. Primarily, parents need to correct three crucial mistakes. And we as adults have to do so with each other as well. We don’t need to blame parents or chastise anyone, because hardly anyone in today’s world was raised with emotional security themselves, so hardly anyone knows what they could be doing better. But here in a nutshell are the three golden rules, the new rules for parenting and for us in our relationships, which will bring about a much healthier emotional climate in this world: 1. Parents need to stop disapproving of their children’s emotions. And we need to stop disapproving of our own emotions and the emotions of those around us. 2. Parents need to stop dismissing their children’s emotions. And we need to stop dismissing our own emotions and the emotions of those around us. 3. Parents need to offer guidance to a child with regard to their emotions. And we all need to understand how emotions impact every aspect of our lives so we can learn to cope better with emotions. So here’s how this looks within parenting. The parent who disapproves of their child’s emotions is critical of their child’s displays of negative emotion and reprimands or punishes the child for expressing their emotions. The parent who dismisses their child’s emotions disregards them as important, and they ignore their child’s emotions or, worse yet, trivialize the child’s emotions. And the parent, who offers no guidance, may empathize with their child’s emotions, but does not set limits on behaviour or assist the child in understanding and coping with their emotions. The devastating implications To give you an example of how this plays out in practical terms: imagine that William doesn’t want to go to school and begins to cry when his parents take him there. The parent who is disapproving might scold William for his refusal to cooperate and resort to calling him “a brat” or punishing him in some way with time alone or with a spanking. The dismissive parent may brush off William’s emotions by saying, “That’s silly. There’s no reason to be sad about going to school. Now turn that frown upside down.” The dismissive parent may even resort to distracting William from his emotions by giving him a cookie or pointing out a cow in a field on their way to school. The parent who offers no guidance may behave in an empathetic way toward William by telling him that it’s OK to feel sad or scared but then continue to help William decide what to do with his uncomfortable feelings. Instead the parent would leave him in a space where he feels as if his emotions are an all-consuming force that he is powerless to deal with. Let’s consider the deep implications of parents not providing a healthy emotional climate. Children who are raised this way are not able to self-soothe and also tend to develop health problems. The child fails to emotionally connect with their family and often feel as if they don’t belong. And very importantly, they fail to develop intimacy with their families and as a result, they feel isolated and alone. This isolation and loneliness of course carries on into adulthood. They grow into adults who are incapable of managing their emotions and struggle to make relationships work. They suffer with an extreme fear of intimacy. They feel powerless and often develop co-dependent relationships. Creating better adult relationships Our parents did not teach us how to treat emotions in a healthy way, and so this is how we treat our own and others’ feelings as adults. Our friendships and romantic relationships are painful because we don’t know how to emotionally relate with one another. We fail to develop true intimacy. We continue to dismiss and disapprove of our own and each other’s feelings and so tell other people how they should and shouldn’t feel and have no patience for the emotional needs of others around us. Most of us see emotions and feelings as weaknesses and we call people who display emotions overly sensitive . And as a result our adult relationships are emotionally unhealthy. Here are just three examples of adult relationships that are emotionally dysfunctional but I’m sure you can come up with many more. Regardless of whether it’s a friendship or a romantic relationship, emotions and feelings are the heart of every healthy and meaningful relationship. Without a healthy emotional life, a relationship is not a relationship, it’s merely a social arrangement. You simply cannot create an intimate connection with someone if you are not in touch with your emotions and feelings. 1. A woman goes to lunch with her friend. The woman is disappointed because she didn’t get promoted at work, the way she thought she would. Her friend tells her she is just being negative and needs to look on the bright side. Her friend insists that all she is doing is creating more disappointment in her reality because she is so negatively focused. 2. A husband gets home late from work and his wife starts crying the minute he walks through the door. The husband sees her crying and immediately says, “You always overreact. I was only a half an hour late. Maybe you are just menopausal. You need professional help.” He completely dismisses her and then withdraws to his office to watch television. 3. A man is facing divorce. He tells his friends about what is going on and they convince him to join them at the bar. When he shows up, none of them acknowledge that he is going through a difficult time emotionally. Instead they encourage him not to think about it, have a drink, watch the sports game and look at pretty girls at the bar. Please be reminded here that intimacy is not about sex. Sex may be a by-product of intimacy, but it’s not intimacy in and of itself. Intimacy is knowing and being known for who we really are in all aspects of our lives. It’s the bringing forth of the truth of who you are to the centre of the relationship and being received for who you are; and the other person doing the same. It’s a meeting at the heart where empathy and understanding can then occur. Intimacy can be broken down into three little, very important syllables: “into me see”. Intimacy is to see into one another so as to deeply connect with one another and to know one another for who you truly are. And if the core of who you are is your feelings then the language of the soul is also feelings, thus creating the most important part of intimacy, which is emotional connection and understanding each other’s feelings. Emotions matter The bottom line is: emotions matter . In order to have healthy, lasting relationships, we must see the importance of and the value in each other’s feelings and show respect for each other’s emotions. We must listen for the feelings behind the words. We must open ourselves up to being understood and open ourselves to understanding others. You should always acknowledge that you understand someone’s feelings and emotions before you proceed to give them advice. If instead you tell someone how they should or shouldn’t feel, you are teaching them to distrust themselves. You are teaching them that there is something wrong with them. We struggle the most with negative emotions so, the way we deal with negative emotions is a good indicator of the emotional health of our relationships. When we are dealing with negative emotions, there are steps we can take to address those emotions and develop an emotional connection with another person and so enhance our intimacy. This goes for our children as well as the adults in our lives. The following rules are solid gold in a relationship when you are facing conflict. Once you learn and apply them, you will see your whole world improve. Here’s what to do: 1. Become aware of the other person’s emotional state. 2. Express care about the other person’s emotion by acknowledging that it is valid and important. 3. Listen empathetically to the other person’s emotion in an attempt to understand the way they feel. This allows them to feel safe being vulnerable without fear of judgement. Seek to understand, instead of just agreeing. 4. Acknowledge and validate their feelings. This may include helping them find words to label their emotion. Notice that in this step we don’t need to validate that the thoughts they have about their emotions are correct. Instead we need to let them know that it’s a valid thing to feel the way that they feel. For example, if our friend says, “I feel useless,” we don’t validate them by saying, “You’re right. You are useless.” We could validate them by saying, “I can totally see how that would make you feel useless and I would feel the same way if I were you.” 5. Allow the person to feel how they feel and to experience their emotion fully before moving toward any kind of improvement in the way they feel. In this step we need to give them the permission to dictate when they are ready to move up the vibrational scale and into a different emotion. We cannot impose on them our idea of when they should be ready or be able to feel differently. This is the step where we practise unconditional presence and love for someone. We are there as a support without trying to “fix” them. Do not be offended if they don’t accept your support at this time. There is a benevolent power inherent in offering, which is love in and of itself, regardless of what someone does or does not do with it. 6. Only after their feelings have been validated, acknowledged and fully felt, help the other person to strategize ways to manage the reactions they might be having to their emotion. This is the step where you can assert a new way of looking at the situation that may improve the way the other person is feeling. This is where advice can be offered. Apply the same relationship rules to yourself If you wish to be emotionally healthy, you have to realize and accept that you are in a relationship with yourself, which is to say your own emotions must matter to you. This means you must acknowledge and validate your own emotions and not dismiss or disapprove of them. Therefore, the six steps I have outlined just above, you must apply to yourself. If you do this, you will learn to trust yourself. Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn’t be feeling them if there wasn’t a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don’t let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn’t feel. Know that you deserve a relationship where your feelings matter. And the fastest way to get to that kind of relationship is to decide that your emotions matter to you . If you stop abandoning yourself when you are experiencing negative	430,224
The Loneliness Solution Finding Meaningful Connection in a Disconnected World (Jack Eason) (Z-Library).epub	The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20 Cover The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-8 Part One: The Problem of Loneliness The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-24 CHAPTER FIFTEEN What Will It Take? In life, you have three choices: give up, give in, or give it your all. Unknown I ’m getting to that age. It’s known as old. It was time for another eye exam. I kept telling my wife I was seeing water buffalo in the roads at night. She would laugh at me and say, “You need to get some new glasses.” She was right. I had put it off as long as I could. When you can’t see clearly, glasses or contacts are lifesavers, bringing objects back into focus—and allowing you to avoid the buffalo in the middle of the road. Unity serves as the corrective lens we need to do community and life together. Unity brings focus. We read in Acts 4:32 that “all the believers were united in heart and mind” (NLT, emphasis added). They were united around a common “thing.” They shared something similar. For them it was their relationship with Jesus and their desire to follow His teachings as disciples. That pursuit connected them in community. That goal helped them stay focused. That common relationship with Jesus was the driving force for everything they did. And guess what? This is our answer to real community as well. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of one who lived a life not characterized by self-centeredness but by selflessness. He emptied Himself so we could be filled. He knew all along that none of us would be truly self-sufficient, so He became the sufficient sacrifice on our behalf when He died on the cross. He did this so we wouldn’t have to. The Christian life is not one of independence and autonomy but rather dependence upon the God of the universe. It is my hope and prayer that we can each give our all to this idea of being better together. Being better together can be a powerful solution for loneliness. Although He existed in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. (Phil. 2:6–7 NASB) How can we begin to move toward the kind of community to which God is calling us? What are some simple steps to help us? Recreate “Old School” Friendships When I was seven years old, I lived on Sunline Place. What a great name for a street! My friend lived next door, and we used to spend every moment we could together. We rode our Big Wheels up and down the street, swam at the neighbor’s pool, and helped direct the neighborhood talent shows. It was hard to get us to come inside before dark because we wanted to take advantage of every moment of daylight to play, make memories, and have a good time. Today we play online games with people we can’t see. I used to have to go next door and ask, “Can Tommy come out and play?” But now, our “friendships” are virtual. We don’t even have to see the “friend” with whom we are playing. Scary . . . and dangerous too. My challenge to you (and myself) is to recreate some “old school” friendships. I’m not suggesting you pull out your old high school or college yearbook and reach out to long-lost people you haven’t talked to in ten, twenty, or thirty years. I’m suggesting you create the kinds of friendships you had back then with the people who are in your life at this moment. When you have conversations in person, things happen that just can’t happen in a virtual setting. It’s too easy to be passive in virtual conversations. It’s also very easy to multitask. Even while I’m writing this book, my instant messenger is “dinging” behind the manuscript, causing me to stop every few minutes and reply to someone. They have no idea what I am doing while I am carrying on a conversation with them. So, pick up the phone and call a friend. Go see them. Do something together that requires more than sitting and watching a screen (we can do this alone). Eat a meal with them. Have a conversation. Let’s go back to that “old school” type of friendship. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Maybe you have seen the Nissan commercial where a guy receives a text from a friend. Instead of answering the text, he jumps in his new Nissan and drives to his friend’s house. When his friend opens the door, he says, “Not much, how about you?” His friend smiles and says, “Are you answering my text in person?” 1 That’s the kind of “old school” type of friendship recreating I am talking about. However, to do that, we may also have to change our thinking. Recalibrating Our Thinking Incredible things can be accomplished when we do life together. But for some of us, we may need a new way of thinking. Perhaps that’s the greatest challenge—changing our mindset. We change what we do by changing what we think. What we believe controls how we behave. You’ve read stories here of believers doing fantastic work that required rethinking how to do life, how to impact people. Change didn’t come easy. At First Baptist, Leesburg, people had to be willing to meet the social ills facing the community around them. In the Dominican Republic, remarkable things have happened and are still happening in Mike’s work as a result of changed thinking. The fruit of each of these groups came from realizing that we are better together. According to Merriam-Webster’ s Dictionary , to calibrate means “to standardize . . . by determining the deviation from a standard so as to ascertain the proper correction.” 2 Recalibrating our thinking is a big step toward doing life together. God has a plan for our lives that includes being together in person. When we calibrate our minds to His plan, we can evaluate how closely our lives match His plan. Sometimes we have to allow God to adjust our thinking: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:1–2) Megan Paraiso, a young wife and mom, explained it this way on the Wave Church blog: Relationships at one point meant only hanging out when it was convenient for me or if I had nothing better to do. I could occupy myself just fine or hang out with my family and I was content. I would get a phone call almost every weekend from my grade school bestie wanting to get together, and 90% of the time, I’d turn her down. I honestly don’t know how I kept her around all these years; but thank God she stuck it out! I was an introverted homebody. I placed little value on relationships. I did not want to be self-centered—I was just oblivious to the fact that I was self-centered. 3 Megan’s honesty reveals the attitude of a lot of us. She confesses that most of the time, she was thinking only of herself. And while it’s fine to think of ourselves from time to time, for the most part, we need to shift our focus outward. To start thinking we instead of me, we may need some recalibration. Re-Member, Not Dismember A few weeks ago, my wife and I were going through the mail. Bill, bill, newsletter, bill, advertisement, bill, bill. One bill was our automobile insurance. I wasn’t too excited about opening that one since our two children are both still under twenty-five, but I did. Have you ever read the small print on your auto insurance? Especially on the coverage areas? This is from our insurance: AD&D insurance covers exactly what its name states: accidental death and dismemberment. What does this mean? In the event of a fatal accident or an accident that results in you losing your eyesight, speech, hearing, or a limb, AD&D will pay you or your beneficiaries a specified amount. However, there are restrictions and exclusions. To receive benefits related to an accident, your injuries or death usually must occur within a few months of the accident date. Also, you will only collect benefits if your death or injuries are proven, direct results of the accident. Now, there’s a happy thought. Losing your eye or a limb. It made me queasy, and I wanted to think about something else. Losing a limb—being dismembered —is a gruesome thought. However, Pastor Greg Boyd suggests this is a great image to help us understand the importance of the body of Christ. 4 Think about how important every part, every member of the body of Christ, is to the health of the community. Then think about what it means for the body to be dismembered. Paul puts it this way: For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. (1 Cor. 12:12–16 ESV) Our bodies constantly work to function as the healthiest versions of ourselves. The slightest disruption, sickness, or injury can cause health issues that move our bodies into “repair mode.” The good news is God, our Father, is also our Great Physician. It’s interesting to consider that God often refers to His people as “the body of Christ” and has given us some great instruction through His Word on how to properly care for the body—His people, His prized possession. Because He created us, He knows exactly what it takes to keep His body healthy and in proper balance. Just like the human body, the body of Christ is meant to function as a whole—not independently from its other parts. It’s necessary and beneficial to our spiritual health and well-being that His body functions together in unity. I often hear people say, “I can worship by myself” or “I don’t need the group at the church; I can get to know God on my own.” Even if this were true—and it’s really not—it misses the value of the body of Christ that is crucial to living as a believer. You may be a part of the body the rest of us need. And without you, the body will be incomplete. You have something to contribute to the body that will help it function as God intended. We belong to one another. We function best when we work together. We don’t have to follow Christ solo—nor should we. Interdependence, not independence, is God’s plan for His children. When we fail to connect and do life with each other, we are failing to connect with Jesus. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Rom. 12:4–5 ESV) There are those, even in Christian circles, who would try to dissuade me from believing this type of togetherness is possible. And yet, Paul talks about Jesus dying for this kind of community. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 5:1–2 ESV) Would He give His life for something we couldn’t do in the twenty-first century? I don’t think so. The New Testament tells story after story about communities that experienced so much togetherness it would be hard to imagine believers dealing with loneliness. Christ has called us to love and serve one another. We may just have to be willing to think outside the box and do something different. Our culture has programmed us to do life in a way that directly contradicts how the Bible instructs believers to live. We can change that. Our lives once centered around family. I remember hearing stories of multiple generations living under one roof or in close proximity to one another. Now we value individualism and rely on ourselves. We brag about being independent, and many of us live far away from where we were raised. If we have time for connections at all, they’re work connections that are usually shallow and short-lived. As believers, we have the great freedom and privilege to enjoy living in community and being better together with our spiritual families. We don’t have to do life alone. We can experience the joy of having close relationships. We don’t have to settle for being part of a community because there’s nothing better. We have the privilege of relying on the body when we are struggling or in need. There is nothing better than that. It is, indeed, countercultural. Individualism and doing life on our own seem to be the norm. But this way of living is far from God’s best plan for us. God’s plan is community. The evidence is there from the beginning. After creating the world, God gave Adam a helpmate (Gen. 2:18) because He did not want man to be alone. But it didn’t stop there. God chose the Israelites to be His people: “And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Lev. 26:12 ESV). They lived and worshiped Him together in community. Following His death and resurrection, Christ ordained and instituted the next level of community: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27 ESV). We call it the church. Paul Tripp says in his book Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy , We weren’t created to be independent, autonomous, or self-sufficient. We were made to live in a humble, worshipful, and loving dependency upon God and in a loving and humble interdependency with others. Our lives were designed to be community projects. Yet, the foolishness of sin tells us that we have all that we need within ourselves. So, we settle for relationships that never go beneath the casual. We defend ourselves when the people around us point out a weakness or a wrong. We hold our struggles within, not taking advantage of the resources God has given us. 5 I so appreciate the caution Tripp gives: “not taking advantage of the resources God has given us.” God knew life would be difficult in this world, so He providentially created the concept of community to be a way to strengthen us. Unfortunately, we often fail to take advantage of it. Even though superficiality is a disease of our time, we don’t have to live this way. Shallow friendships and fragile relationships mark our society, but they don’t have to mark us. Because believers of Jesus follow a different path than the rest of the world, the way we live and the way we connect with one another should be drastically different. It’s a journey meant to be traveled together. Coming together in Christ can show the world that Jesus is Lord. We are living in a time when the world needs to see this more than ever. People will be more persuaded by the lives our faith produces than by the belief system we champion. Sometimes we want people to just accept our beliefs and make them their own. They will never be interested in making them their own until they see those beliefs create a change in us. Truly, changed lives will persuade others. The early church’s consistent daily lifestyle and visible transformation silenced those who wanted to belittle and degrade it. The truth of Christ is both validated and vindicated when we are the members of the body living life together. How exciting that we get to be the people to model this to the world! What a great benefit of doing life with others! My prayer is that discovering the benefits of genuine “old school” friendship and community will give you the boldness and courage to seek these kinds of relationships more often. Friendships like this have enabled me to steadily plod through the life to which God has called me. God has given us this gift of friendship and community for a reason. And though these genuine friendships are not always easy to find, I’ve realized that the challenge of finding them has made me appreciate them even more. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER 1. How do you feel you are living your life? Are you living more solo Christianity or Christianity in community? 2. What challenges do you see for us as believers when it comes to trying to live in real community? 3. What negative effects have you seen in the lives of people who are living life alone, spiritually speaking? 4. What does God need to recalibrate in your mind to help you see doing life with others the way He sees it? 5. Does it bother you to think about how the body of Christ is sometimes dismembered? Or are you connected and aware that you are part of the body of Christ? How can you tell? 6. What do you need to do to experience the kind of community God has for you? Are you willing to do it? PUT IT INTO PRACTICE If you want to read more about community and real friendships, the next two chapters are for those who passionately and desperately desire for the body of Christ to accurately reflect what Christ intended and connect with more people in an ever-disconnected, or overconnected, world. The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-7 Acknowledgments T here are many people who inspired me to put these thoughts into print. I want to thank Lynette Eason for her nonstop encouragement to write, as well as the support of Will and Lauryn and my entire family. Thanks especially to Tamela Hancock Murray and the Steve Laube Agency for believing in me and the ideas for this book. A special appreciation for Vicki Crumpton and the entire team at Revell for helping me address a much-needed topic that people around the world are dealing with. I also give appreciation to the many people who have been patient with my schedule to get this book accomplished and have helped in some way with time or talent: Tammy Markheim, Abby Scull, and the Crossover CUPS Team, as well as my Cross Roads church family. Huge kudos go to Andrew Jackson, James Way, and Jeremy Powers for the technology helps in this book. For many of the stories you will find in the book, you will find a podcast available of the full interview at JackEason.org. Much applause goes to people who are great at encouraging relationships and connectivity: Mike Williams, Brian Smith, Bill Sammons. Many thanks to the ministries I get to serve each year who trust me to encourage their partners with the message of this book—that we are all important and need to be connected with each other. We are better together. The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-28 Notes Chapter 1 Living Life Alone 1 . Anna Fifield, “Cleaning Up After the Dead,” Washington Post , January 24, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feature/so-many-japanese-people-die-alone-theres-a-whole-industry-devoted-to-cleaning-up-after-them/. 2 . Fifield, “Cleaning Up After the Dead.” 3 . Jim Sliwa, “So Lonely I Could Die,” American Psychological Association, August 5, 2017, https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/08/lonely-die. 4 . Ellie Polack, “Cigna’s US Loneliness Index Provides Actionable Insights for Improving Body and Mind Health,” Cigna, June 17, 2019, https://www.cigna.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/cignas-us-loneliness-index-provides-actionable-insights-for-improving-body-and-mind-health. See also: https://www.cigna.com/assets/docs/newsroom/loneliness-survey-2018-updated-fact-sheet.pdf. 5 . Jena McGregor, “This Former Surgeon General Says There’s a ‘Loneliness Epidemic’ and Work Is Partly to Blame,” Washington Post , October 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/10/04/this-former-surgeon-general-says-theres-a-loneliness-epidemic-and-work-is-partly-to-blame/. 6 . Alastair Jamieson, “Britain Appoints ‘Minister for Loneliness’ to Tackle Social Isolation,” NBC News, January 17, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-appoints-minister-loneliness-tackle-social-isolation-n838291. 7 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem,” The Economist , September 1, 2018, https://www.economist.com/international/2018/09/01/loneliness-is-a-serious-public-health-problem; Amy Novotney, “Social Isolation: It Could Kill You,” Monitor on Psychology 50, no. 5 (May 2019): 32, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation. 8 . Bianca DiJulio, Liz Hamel, Cailey Muñana, and Mollyann Brodie, “Loneliness and Social Isolation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan: An International Survey,” Kaiser Family Foundation, August 30, 2018, https://www.kff.org/other/report/loneliness-and-social-isolation-in-the-united-states-the-united-kingdom-and-japan-an-international-survey/. 9 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 10 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 11 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 12 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 13 . María José Carmona, “All the (44 Million) Lonely People,” Equal Times , August 2, 2018, https://www.equaltimes.org/all-the-44-million-lonely-people#.XmeOwyMpBPY. 14 . Carmona, “All the (44 Million) Lonely People.” 15 . National Institutes of Health, “World’s Older Population Grows Dramatically,” news release, March 18, 2016, https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/worlds-older-population-grows-dramatically. 16 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 17 . Varun Soni, “Op-Ed: There’s a Loneliness Crisis on College Campuses,” Los Angeles Times , July 14, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-soni-campus-student-loneliness-20190714-story.html, emphasis added. 18 . Joanna Clay, “USC Tackles ‘Loneliness Epidemic’ in a World of Social Media,” USC News , December 13, 2018, https://news.usc.edu/152830/loneliness-in-college/. 19 . Clay, “USC Tackles ‘Loneliness Epidemic.’” 20 . Barbara Saddick, “The Loneliness Effect,” US News and World Report , September 6, 2018, https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-09-06/loneliness-the-next-great-public-health-hazard. 21 . Quentin Fottrell, “Nearly Half of Americans Report Feeling Alone,” MarketWatch, October 10, 2018, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-a-big-loneliness-problem-2018-05-02. 22 . Fottrell, “Nearly Half of Americans Report Feeling Alone.” 23 . Fottrell, “Nearly Half of Americans Report Feeling Alone.” Chapter 2 It’s Hard to Find Someone to Talk To 1 . Dan Doriani, The New Man: Becoming a Man After God’s Heart (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 120. 2 . “2020 Airbnb Update,” Airbnb, January 21, 2020, https://news.airbnb.com/2020-update/. 3 . Heather Somerville, “Airbnb’s ‘Experiences’ Business On Track for 1 Million Bookings, Profitability,” Reuters, February 13, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-growth/airbnbs-experiences-business-on-track-for-1-million-bookings-profitability-idUSKCN1FX2ZR. Chapter 3 The Fight against Loneliness 1 . Laura Entis, “Scientists Are Working on a Pill for Loneliness,” The Guardian , January 26, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/26/pill-for-loneliness-psychology-science-medicine. 2 . Kristine Solomon, “Police Create ‘Chat Benches’ to Combat Loneliness, Help Make Life a Little Better,” Yahoo, June 20, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/police-create-chat-benches-to-combat-loneliness-help-make-life-a-little-better-210135136.html. 3 . Solomon, “Police Create ‘Chat Benches’ to Combat Loneliness.” 4 . Solomon, “Police Create ‘Chat Benches’ to Combat Loneliness.” 5 . Christopher Dawson, “A Suburbia for the Homeless Exists and They Can Live There Forever,” CNN, March 28, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/26/us/iyw-town-for-the-homeless-trnd/index.html, emphasis added. 6 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 7 . Eden David, “Rising Suicide Rates at College Campuses Prompt Concerns over Mental Health Care,” ABC News, October 9, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rising-suicide-rates-college-campuses-prompt-concerns-mental/story?id=66126446. 8 . Clay, “USC Tackles ‘Loneliness Epidemic.’” 9 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 10 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 11 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 12 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” 13 . “Loneliness Is a Serious Public-Health Problem.” Chapter 4 Breaking the Pull of Isolation and Insulation 1 . “US Adults Have Few Friends—and They’re Mostly Alike,” Barna, October 23, 2018, https://www.barna.com/research/friends-loneliness/. 2 . Mandy Oaklander, “How to Make Friends as an Adult—and Why It’s Important,” Time , February 15, 2018, https://time.com/5159867/adult-friendships-loneliness/. 3 . Kaya Burgess, “A Stranger Can Become Your Friend in 90 Hours,” The Times , April 24, 2018, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-stranger-can-become-your-friend-in-90-hours-sxtqqvzm0. 4 . Mark Leberfinger, “25th Anniversary: Hurricane Hugo Left Path of Destruction in US, Caribbean,” Cayman iNews, September 22, 2014, https://www.ieyenews.com/25th-anniversary-hurricane-hugo-left-path-of-destruction-in-us-caribbean/. 5 . Kasley Killam, “A Solution for Loneliness,” Scientific American , May 21, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solution-for-loneliness/. Chapter 5 Fitting In at Starbucks 1 . “How Many Starbucks in NYC,” Coffee Accessories, September 10, 2019, https://coffeemachinegrinder.com/2019/09/10/how-many-starbucks-in-nyc/. 2 . “Our Mission,” Starbucks, accessed April 6, 2020, https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-statement, emphasis added. 3 . Susan Haas, “Stop Trying to Fit In, Aim to Belong Instead,” Psychology Today , October 17, 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prescriptions-life/201310/stop-trying-fit-in-aim-belong-instead, emphasis changed. 4 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “unity,” accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unity. 5 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “integrity,” accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity. 6 . Scott Kaufman, “Why Inspiration Matters,” Harvard Business Review , November 8, 2011, https://scottbarrykaufman.com/why-inspiration-matters-harvard-business-review/. 7 . Kaufman, “Why Inspiration Matters.” 8 . Brody Sweeney, “How Starbucks Built a Fortune on the Loneliness of Consumers,” Irish Times , March 31, 2008, https://www.irishtimes.com/business/how-starbucks-built-a-fortune-on-the-loneliness-of-consumers-1.908511. Chapter 6 An Imperfect Group of People 1 . Ciara Sheppard, “Jennifer Aniston Cries as Young Girl Begs for Help at Christmas,” Tyla, February 21, 2020, https://www.tyla.com/entertaining/tv-and-film-jennifer-aniston-ellen-degeneres-show-family-gift-giveaway-kimballs-20191211. 2 . Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1954), 27. 3 . Casey McCall, “Why Can’t I Find Real Community in the Church?,” Prince on Preaching, December 5, 2014, http://www.davidprince.com/2014/12/05/cant-find-real-community-church/. 4 . Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2000), 298 . Chapter 7 The Power of WE 1 . Tim Walters, “Moon Landing Made Possible by 400,000 Workers,” USA Today , July 14, 2019, https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2019/07/14/moon-landing-made-possible-400-000-workers/1559511001/. 2 . Todd Davis, “Why Learning to Think ‘We’ Not ‘Me’ Can Help Lead You to Ultimate Success,” Thrive Global, January 3, 2018, https://thriveglobal.com/stories/why-learning-to-think-we-not-me-can-help-lead-you-to-ultimate-success/. 3 . Davis, “Learning to Think ‘We’ Not ‘Me.’” 4 . Davis, “Learning to Think ‘We’ Not ‘Me.’” 5 . Davis, “Learning to Think ‘We’ Not ‘Me.’” 6 . Ryan Messmore, “The Difference One Church Can Make,” The Heritage Foundation, April 1, 2008, https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/the-difference-one-church-can-make. 7 . Messmore, “The Difference One Church Can Make.” 8 . Messmore, “The Difference One Church Can Make.” 9 . Messmore, “The Difference One Church Can Make.” Chapter 8 We Are Family 1 . Drew Hunter, “10 Biblical Truths about Real Friendship,” Bible Study Tools, October 4, 2019, https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-does-the-bible-say-about-friendship.html. 2 . Hunter, “10 Biblical Truths.” 3 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “fellowship,” accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fellowship. 4 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “devote,” accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devote. Chapter 9 Overcoming Roadblocks to Friendship 1 . Jodi Easterling-Hood, Leadership Pros, Woes, and Foes: Companion Guide (Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com, 2019), 37. 2 . “Forgiveness,” Sermon Illustrations, accessed April 6, 2020, http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/f/forgiveness.htm. 3 . Lexico , s.v. “disunity,” accessed June 17, 2020, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/disunity. 4 . Matthew Alan Vander Wiele, “An Analysis of Students’ Perception of Biblical Community within the Environment of Digital Media: A Mixed Methods Study” (PhD diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014), 49. 5 . William Morris, A Dream of John Ball and A King’s Lesson (London; New York; Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), 33. Chapter 10 Learning to Trust 1 . Jayson D. Bradley, “What Christians Get Wrong about ‘Accountability,’” Relevant , October 9, 2017, https://relevantmagazine.com/article/what-christians-get-wrong-about-accountability/. 2 . Bradley, “What Christians Get Wrong.” 3 . Bradley, “What Christians Get Wrong.” 4 . Bradley, “What Christians Get Wrong.” Chapter 11 The Power of Praying Together 1 . Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Dutton, 2014), 23. Chapter 12 The Joy of Meeting Needs 1 . “What Is Stewardship?,” Crown, accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.crown.org/blog/what-is-stewardship/. 2 . Bible Hub, s.v. “ exagorazó ,” accessed April 6, 2020, https://biblehub.com/greek/1805.htm. 3 . Bible Hub, s.v. “ kairos ,” accessed April 6, 2020, https://biblehub.com/str/greek/2540.htm. Chapter 13 Rally around a Cause 1 . “Habitat’s History,” Habitat for Humanity, accessed April 6, 2020, https://www.habitat.org/about/history. 2 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “corporate,” accessed April 6, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corporate. 3 . William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (London: Macmillan, 1939), 68. Chapter 15 What Will It Take? 1 . 2020 Nissan Altima TV Commercial, “Text Answering,” iSpot.tv, https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ZfiP/2020-nissan-altima-text-answering-t1. 2 . Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , s.v. “calibrate,” accessed April 7, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calibrate. 3 . Megan Paraiso, “We Are Better Together,” Wave Church, accessed April 6, 2020, https://wavechurch.com/we-are-better-together/. 4 . Greg Boyd, “Dismembered: The Church and Individualism,” ReKnew, February 2, 2016, https://reknew.org/2016/02/dismembered-the-church-and-individualism/. 5 . Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 147. Chapter 16 You Gotta Have Faith 1 . Kelly Seely, “Working Together: How a Shared Gospel Vision Leads to Healthy Partnership in Missions,” IMB, August 1, 2017, .https://www.imb.org/2017/08/01/working-together-how-a-shared-gospel-vision-leads-to-healthy-partnership-in-missions/. 2 . Seely, “Working Together.” Chapter 17 Encouraging Leaders Who Are Lonely 1 . Sarah Zylstra, “Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide,” The Gospel Coalition, November 23, 2016, http://resources.thegospelcoalition.org/library/why-pastors-are-committing-suicide. 2 . Zylstra, “Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide.” 3 . Chris Railey, “The Lonely Pastor,” Influence , May 4, 2018, https://influencemagazine.com/Practice/The-Lonely-Pastor. 4 . Railey, “The Lonely Pastor.” 5 . Railey, “The Lonely Pastor.” 6 . Josh Reich, “The Weight and Joy of Being a Pastor: Loneliness,” ExPastors, http://www.expastors.com/the-weight-and-joy-of-being-a-pastor-loneliness/. 7 . Railey, “The Lonely Pastor.” 8 . Carey Nieuwhof, “Overcoming the New Leadership Epidemic—Isolation and Loneliness,” Carey Nieuwhof, June 11, 2018, https://careynieuwhof.com/overcoming-the-new-leadership-epidemic-isolation-and-loneliness/. Chapter 18 Final Words 1 . “Northfield UMC Reaches Community through Free Playtime for Young Children,” Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, March 30, 2016, https://www.minnesotaumc.org/itworkeddetail/northfield-umc-reaches-community-through-free-playtime-for-young-children-4267245. 2 . “Northfield UMC Reaches Community.” 3 . “Northfield UMC Reaches Community.” The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-16 CHAPTER SEVEN The Power of WE Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. Helen Keller A s the nation watched on TV, three heroic astronauts made an amazing journey toward the moon. Some people said it could never be done. Yet on July 16, 1969, three astronauts took off into space, and eventually, two stepped onto the moon’s surface, creating history. They became the first human beings to set foot onto another planetary body. People around the nation watched on TV and cheered at this phenomenal accomplishment. If you were alive during this event, you will never forget it as long as you live. While Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins are the well-known faces of this fantastic achievement, they wouldn’t have made it into the history books without the efforts of a huge supporting team—years of research and expertise allowed this mission to succeed. For over twenty-four months prior to the operation, mission planners studied the moon’s surface ad nauseam. They used photographs from satellites and other spacecraft to find the best place for Apollo 11 to land. The planners and scientists, along with engineers, needed to consider the geography of the surface of the moon, factoring in craters, boulders, and cliffs, as well as the timing for the spacecraft to land, keeping in mind the position of the sun. NASA has estimated that more than four hundred thousand people made the historic moon landing possible. 1 There were scientists, engineers, and technicians who had never worked in aerospace before. These people were given contracts to design a machine capable of transporting humans safely to outer space. Sounds like some scary responsibility to me. The technicians visited the laboratories to create a human connection with the space travelers so they would be unified as a team. It was important for the workers to meet the men whose lives would be in their hands. In the operations control room, during each flight, there were numerous technicians guiding and supporting those heading into space. Each step of the way, in every part of the process, honest communication with one another enabled the team behind NASA’s Apollo 11 to achieve a historic milestone. We are better together. The Apollo landing has impacted all of human history. Nature holds examples of being better together. Every winter flocks of geese work together to achieve their common goal— reaching their destination . Communicating by honking at one another, they encourage each other along the way in case one should lose momentum or get tired. Collectively, they push forward, focused on the mission of arriving safely at the next stop on the journey. By flying in a V-shape formation, the geese reduce the drag for those behind them. The lead goose points the way and keeps the destination in mind. These same principles could be implemented among groups today. By nurturing this team mentality, all members of the flock share a common goal and feel supported by one another because they are working together . These stories from technology and nature are only two of a plethora of examples where we see that we are better together. We don’t talk about this much in our society. Most of the time we work as competitors, and we’re trained that way from the beginning. Whether it’s in sports, education, or, most certainly, the workplace, the mindset is to be number one. If one wants to be considered successful, one must earn that title. Top dog versus underdog. First versus second. Winner versus loser. A common mindset is that if someone else gets more, we get less. It’s the “look out for number one” mentality that runs rampant in our culture. The fact that we could accomplish something or be better by joining forces with someone else is all too often a foreign concept. Todd Davis calls this the “win-lose” mindset. 2 He states this weakens the trust of others and ultimately decreases productivity in the work environment. I would add it weakens productivity in every environment. Could it be God gives us different strengths so we would have to work? Davis describes another attitude called the “lose-win” mindset. 3 This is the belief that if someone else wins, I have to give up, because there’s no worth in trying anymore. This creates bitterness and isolation. We sure see this in our political landscape, don’t we? Neither of these mindsets is healthy. I’ve come to believe that the best mindset is the “win-win” one. This requires “thinking we , not me .” Kind of hard to do, isn’t it? Davis says it requires two essential elements: courage and consideration. “Courage,” he says, “is the willingness . . . to speak your thoughts respectfully.” Consideration is the willingness to let others do the same. 4 I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing a whole lot of “courage” on social media, and not a lot of consideration. People want to express their thoughts and be heard respectfully, but when it’s time for the other person to do the same, the willingness goes out the window. That’s not a good formula for building relationships, let alone any kind of meaningful friendship. So, let’s think about this. How can we practically show courage and consideration in our relationships? How can we “think we, not me”? Davis makes a few suggestions: Wait to speak until several others have shared their ideas. Ask for input before sharing your thoughts. Turn off all devices and make eye contact when talking with people. Don’t interrupt. Try going with someone else’s decision (in a low-risk situation first) to see how it affects the relationship. 5 If we engaged people with this level of courage and consideration, can you imagine how our conversations and relationships might change? If this togetherness can make such a difference in nature and in humans in our earthly pursuits, can you imagine the impact we could have working together to accomplish the things God has called us to do? Have you thought about applying these same concepts to your faith? Have you thought about the spiritual benefits of what we could accomplish for God’s kingdom by doing things together? Maybe you’re wondering if that kind of consideration and courage can exist within a group of people. I assure you, it can. Let me share an example. “Not Me, but We” Works Most people live compartmentalized lives. We work over here, we put family over there, and our faith is in another box altogether. However, if we could see life through the lens of faith, all of our endeavors could be opportunities to express God’s goodness throughout the earth. What happens when a group of individuals not only believes this to be true but utilizes their combined faith to work together to demonstrate the love of Christ? There is always a ripple effect that changes innumerable lives. But it takes courage and consideration . In a small, quaint town in Florida, many people live in poverty. Drugs are easily accessible and much of the population lacks health insurance. Bob is an alcoholic who received help at the local men’s center. Sierra is a precious eleven-year-old girl, abused and abandoned by her parents, who is now at a nearby children’s shelter, safe from harm. An elderly man named Doug, who has been diagnosed with several ailments, was cared for at a clinic. Each of these people—Bob, Sierra, and Doug—received wonderful care and concern because of a group of people in Leesburg, Florida, who understand we are better together . In each of these circumstances, Leesburg people have succeeded in mending broken lives and serving the public good. Their success is no accident. This group is part of the faith community at First Baptist Church, Leesburg, and has made it their mission to accept a deep, personal responsibility and love for those in need. This responsibility is grounded in an abiding sense of belonging and friendship they have with their community (remember this sense of belonging, we will talk more about it later) and their faith that touches every area in the lives of people they have community with. This “better-togetherness ” enabled this group to open a rescue mission in 1982. Shortly thereafter, they created a separate facility for abused children. And in 1987, the believers realized many in their community were dealing with unplanned pregnancies, so they opened a center to serve those ladies. And two years later, they opened a home for displaced women and children, victims of domestic abuse. Taking notice of the needs in their community gave them a vision to operate a ministry village that now consists of seven facilities on four acres of land operated by over five hundred volunteers from the church’s ministry. 6 The strong relational bond they have among the people they serve comes from spending time with them as they have discovered the needs of families and children alike. These volunteers “are motivated by the sense of belonging that they experience as a part of the church” family. 7 What a great motivation! Isn’t it also interesting what can be accomplished when you’re not concerned about who gets the credit? (Or in this case, they wanted God to get the credit.) Their pastor emeritus, Charles Roesel, who retired in 2006 after serving the church for thirty years, explains this sense of belonging with the Greek term koinonia : “ Koinonia is a deep sense of belonging to one another,” which sustains people in the challenging and difficult work of serving the neediest. “If God’s people are to witness and minister to a lost and hurting world,” states Roesel, “ koinonia must be the sustaining context in which they find their strength and will to do so.” 8 Was it easy for the group of believers to get to this place? Not really. In the early 1980s, when someone spoke up about starting this ministry to the citizens of Leesburg, the members of the church originally refused the idea: Roesel says his congregation struggled with the same concerns that likely prevent other congregations from taking similar actions in their communities. Some FBC members were afraid that the new ministry would attract unfamiliar and indigent people into their midst [people who were not really like them]. Others were concerned about focusing too narrowly on social action, a concern propelled by the social gospel movement of the early 1900s. 9 This movement thought the church should take care of everybody’s needs and wasn’t concerned a lot with people coming to know Christ. The reality is, there needs to be a balanced approach, as First Baptist discovered. Eventually, the desire to meet needs in their community overpowered any discomfort or angst they felt about moving forward. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It might be cliché, but it’s true. FBC’s ministries succeeded in part because they refused to narrow the focus of their faith. They decided to take social action that is integrated with the core tenets of their members’ faith. They also decided that if they worked together, they could accomplish something no one person—no matter how talented or passionate—could do alone. And they discovered they were right. That is the difference one group can make when they decide to do something together . Together Is the Answer The Scriptures are full of the idea of togetherness. Scripture often uses the phrase “one another.” We read about loving one another, bearing one another’s burdens, praying for one another. “One another” is two words in English, but it’s only one word in Greek . It’s used one hundred times in ninety-four New Testament verses. Forty-seven of those verses give instructions to the church, and 60 percent of those instructions come from Paul. When you look at these verses, a few more common themes show up: Unity. One-third of the “one another” commands deal with the unity of the church. Be at peace with one another (Mark 9:50). Don’t grumble among one another (John 6:43). Be of the same mind with one another (Rom. 12:16; 15:5). Accept one another (Rom. 15:7). Wait for one another before beginning the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:33). Don’t bite, devour, and consume one another (Gal. 5:15). Don’t boastfully challenge or envy one another (Gal. 5:26). Gently, patiently tolerate one another (Eph. 4:2). Be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving to one another (Eph. 4:32). Bear with and forgive one another (Col. 3:13). Seek good for one another, and don’t repay evil for evil (1 Thess. 5:15). Don’t complain against one another (James 4:11; 5:9). Confess sins to one another (James 5:16). Love . One-third of them instruct Christians to love one another. Love one another (John 13:34; 15:12, 17; Rom. 13:8; 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; 1 Pet. 1:22; 1 John 3:11; 4:7, 11; 2 John 5). Through love, serve one another (Gal. 5:13). Tolerate one another in love (Eph. 4:2). Greet one another with a kiss of love (1 Pet. 5:14). Be devoted to one another in love (Rom. 12:10). Humility . About 15 percent stress an attitude of humility and deference among believers. Give preference to one another in honor (Rom. 12:10). Regard one another as more important than yourselves (Phil. 2:3). Serve one another (Gal. 5:13). Wash one another’s feet (John 13:14). Don’t be haughty: be of the same mind (Rom. 12:16). Be subject to one another (Eph. 5:21). Clothe yourselves in humility toward one another (1 Pet. 5:5). Here are some more: Do not judge one another, and don’t put a stumbling block in another’s way (Rom. 14:13). Greet one another with a kiss (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12). Husbands and wives: don’t deprive one another of physical intimacy (1 Cor. 7:5). Bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2). Speak truth to one another (Eph. 4:25). Don’t lie to one another (Col. 3:9). Comfort one another concerning the resurrection (1 Thess. 4:18). Encourage and build up one another (1 Thess. 5:11). Stimulate one another to love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24). Pray for one another (James 5:16). Be hospitable to one another (1 Pet. 4:9). Those are a lot of references that emphasize the fact that we are better together. This is God’s intention, His plan for us. And yet many of us are still looking for this kind of togetherness. Recently in our community group, one of our families was struggling. The husband had served in Afghanistan, and as a result of chemical warfare, he was physically disabled. He, his wife, and their four children were about to be evicted from their rental home. Our group decided we could not sit idly by and watch this happen. We took up a collection and paid their rent for the month. When two of us met with the husband the following week to give them the money, he looked at us, dumbfounded. Then tears filled his eyes. “Why would you all do this?” The man with me simply smiled. “That’s what family does.” Does that type of family exist today? I believe it can. Let’s talk about what it looks like next. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER 1. What places do you see the “not me, but we” idea? 2. What places do you see courage and consideration put on display in equal fashion? Describe what happens. 3. Describe the characteristics of a good family. PUT IT INTO PRACTICE Pick something you could do by yourself but would be better to do with someone else—and do it. Maybe you could go visit an assisted living center. Instead of going alone, take someone with you. Perhaps you could take someone and serve a meal at the local shelter. Make an impact with someone else. The_Loneliness_Solution_epubCS20-5 Dedication How could I not dedicate my first published book to my inspiration for writing? My wife and published author, Lynette, has encouraged me for many years to put my thoughts into book form. Thank you, sweetie. I dedicate this book to you. The Loneliness Solution Table of Contents Cover Endorsements Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Part One: The Problem of Loneliness 1. Living Life Alone 2. It’s Hard to Find Someone to Talk To 3. The Fight against Loneliness 4. Breaking the Pull of Isolation and Insulation 5. Fitting in at Starbucks 6. An Imperfect Group of People Part Two: The Loneliness Solution 7. The Power of WE 8. We Are Family 9. Overcoming Roadblocks to Friendship 10. Learning to Trust 11. The Power of Praying Together 12. The Joy of Meeting Needs 13. Rally around a Cause 14. Together, We Can 15. What Will It Take? 16. You Gotta Have Faith 17. Encouraging Leaders Who Are Lonely 18. Final Words Notes About the Author Back Ads Back Cover List of Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 11	278,106
The Music of Solitude (Krishna Sobti, Vasudha Dalmia (translation)) (Z-Library).epub	The Music of Solitude five T here could also come a day when we don’t find each other. Aranya knitted her brows. Must we hurl frustration at each other, even if in jest? Listen, Aranya, listen. Aranya had already left. Ishan was coming after many weeks. The bell rang. The door opened. Come in. How are you? And you? I am well, thank you. What’s up? The house seems very silent. The television’s not on, there’s no music either. Ishan seemed to be searching for the right words for the walls enclosed in curtains. Aranya said: We can hear the silence because we live alone. Do you feel lonely? No. Yet, when I come home from somewhere, I wash my hands and feet, change my clothes and make tea to welcome myself. Of course, I know that there are no other voices at home. And each sound which is not mine is made by others— who are outside. In that case, being friends with the TV is not so bad. Does it make you anxious? No, every experience, and what it demands of me, is something new. It keeps me occupied. I can say this with confidence that I never get bored. The phone rang. Some friend of Aranya’s. Cursory conversation about each other’s well being. I don’t know why we remain trapped in the banalities. It disturbs me every once in a while, but it also makes me laugh. You want distant intimacies so as to avoid having to hear family grievances. Wouldn’t it be good to air them sometimes? Familial attachment and emotions have become meaningless. Perhaps that’s why I tune out the tanpura of family tales. Family woes don’t appeal to me much; they don’t move me like the rhythms and melodies of music. Aranya laughed. This is an oppositional enterprise. Why forget all that you’ve learnt all your life about family and clan, and confine yourself to reiterating truisms! Can you really reduce the meaning of family and clan to a few truisms? Not everything beyond family life is blissful. Is it possible to do such a thing? I don’t know. It seems like differences have swallowed up that claim. The lack must bother you! If I say no, you’ll begin to dig into psychological knots. What’s true is that I have begun to appreciate the calm of staying away from the tensions that underlie the superficial harmony of family life. This seemed to make Ishan anxious. Family relationships should not be interpreted in individual contexts alone. Aranya laughed. This could take up a whole Purana. Having dominance in joint families has to do with the individual’s capacity to generate money. It’s also about brothers and nephews observing their relatives narrowly, lying in wait so that they can capitalize on shifting moods and feelings. Family bonds are deep, Aranya. There is much that is good and valuable, despite minor squabbles. This upset Aranya. The idea of the all-encompassing joint family has ceased to exist; it’s a myth in today’s day and age. You’re talking about a handful of wealthy people. The virtues of the joint family have become relevant again. Its roots have succoured our national culture. I haven’t known a joint family myself, Ishan. But what I have observed, from near and far, has not been pleasant. This I do know—it’s those with lean accounts who pay the price for its ordered existence and social weight. The collective wealth of the family is managed like a business enterprise. Its inner power has waned. It provides no protective shade; rather, its tattered rags flutter in the wind. This may not ring true to you, Ishan, but I’ve seen it myself. And as I investigate it, at my own cost, I find that the golden truths bandied about in the name of its pure culture are a pack of lies. Are you talking against it because you live alone? No, Ishan. The working class girls I am talking about, they speak up to me in thousands. And with them, the commonly acknowledged virtues and vices of the joint family surface to caution us. Believe me, this is not just oppositional, an attempt to be contradictory. It is an attempt to closely view what happens in society, what is happening in society. I understand what you’re saying up to a point, Aranya, but I still maintain that this needs more impartial investigation. Aranya replied with sarcasm: Hearing you talk, one would think we were both heads of large families. With sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. Their reference point for nurture. The graph of the business and professions of sons, the promotions of sons-in-law, their influence and achievement—that whole rigmarole happens to be absent in our case. You were talking about the house being silent, weren’t you? That may be the reason for this. I understand. Keeping your distance from the family must protect you from unhappiness. Yes, it would be more correct to say that I’m never unhappy in my own company. Ishan laughed sarcastically. A marvel. There’s nothing marvelous about it. It’s enough to understand, to know, that you’re simply outside it, an event of which you’re no part. But the family one lives with is an open book. Mutual care is its solid evidence. No outsider can take away the intimacy of that experience. There’s plenty of experience of being left out of this charmed circle of intimacy. How? A child gets bad marks in exams; you’re to blame, because you accosted the child as it was departing to take the exams. The son couldn’t get admission to the desired school; your wishes came in the way. And if a boy or a girl didn’t make the grade in some competition, the person who cast an evil eye on the child was surely the self-same Trishanku ; belonging neither here nor there, left dangling in the middle, who asked after someone’s job application, only to find out that it fell through. The fault lay once again with this person who belongs nowhere. Tell me how it’s possible to survive such dear relatives and confine your interests to their horizon of expectation? I have no near and dear ones, Aranya. That could be the reason why I find myself unable to agree with you. But I’m trying to see things from your perspective. Being committed to such a family structure has to do with wealth and prosperity. If you participate in that, there’ll be an abundance of affection and warmth. If not … Are you speaking only from the daughter’s point of view? No, Ishan. These tales don’t come from my own experience. I just know this that whether son or daughter, all members of a family have the right to alter their desires and disinclinations, sadness and joy, according to their wishes. You’re right about that, but don’t forget, the family is a nest of security, the dense shade of mutual support. Family life is never monotonous. Is there any point, Ishan, in glorifying the kind of protections which scrape away at your self-confidence? Human relationships need the harmony that comes from growing and prospering in the confines of a family. Aranya began to speak affectedly, as if she were play-acting: Yes, that’s also an interesting state of affairs. Just last year, we went to the States. To be with the eldest. And before that, we were with the second daughter-in-law. She was expecting her second child. We go to our daughter when she calls us. It’s important to keep alive the need we have for each other. It’s not a bad thing. Ishan looked disaffected. Does living alone give you the right to judge? No, I’ve never lost faith in love or goodwill. That’s why I’m not negative. But yes, I do have a critical perspective. Imagine for a moment: One child is making us happy. Another is hell bent on making us unhappy. And a third is striding towards a golden future. A child’s hair is being cropped for the first time, another is leaving to go abroad. But what if, as in our case, there is only one person to play all these parts, then apart from the noise of the television, what can we hope for. Can the silence behind its noise keep us entertained? They both laughed. We have no dearth of time. Should we now turn to the sons and daughters of families? Only the family can discipline the haste and frenzy of the human mind. Countless unseen threads bind humans to society. Men and women develop their inner strength only by staying within the family fold. Do men and women have different kinds of inner strength? I see the sharp edge of your sarcasm begin to glitter again. It’s interesting. Everything you say points outwards. And yours inwards, and from inside towards the atma. Am I right? You’re not wrong. My inner voice makes me relate to the flow of rivers. As soon as they leave their source, they gather speed. They don’t stay fixed to one spot like mountains and highlands, with their heads held high. Does the power of patriarchy make you nervous? Yes and no, both. These two core stances of Nature no longer stand in hierarchical order. They face each other, so that they can fall into step with one another. The one no longer merely follows the other, as a follower trails a leader, they go as equals, in partnership. Indian culture speaks of the atma , Aranya. Aranya broke into laughter. The atman of atma has become post-modern. Now it wants to buy pleasure and wealth along with Indian philosophy. In what direction, Aranya, are you now dragging this discussion about the passage of the atma ? In the direction that modernity is taking us. An unchanging depth lies beyond all the changes of life, Aranya. We humans will continue to exist on this Earth along with nature and science. Mountains, rivers, oceans will continue to coexist in consonance with each other. Ishan, will patriarchy continue to uphold itself, and matriarchy continue to flow away? Will women ever have a right to the knowledge of brahma ? Will she ever have the right to the knowledge of the atman ? It is said, subjects as deep as philosophy are not meant for women. No, the power to attain brahma comes from within—woman or man. Ishan knitted his brows. Aranya looked at him with interest and said softly: It’s almost time for your walk. How about we both have a glass of mausami juice? Why not? Four mausamis, a plate and knife were placed next to the juicer. Ishan began to cut the mausamis cruelly, intently. Aranya watched his hands for a while. Then in a playful tone, she began to tease him: If I were to write this for the press from the perspective of a Mrs or Miss from the reservations quota, I would say that in this act of cutting, you demonstrate once more the prudishness of some ancient memory of your race. What does that mean? Aranya began to laugh. Ishan watched her with disbelief. Just this—squeeze out the juice and throw away the peel. I speak not from my own perspective, but of those who ask for reservations quota. The Music of Solitude eight E very evening a flock of the elderly comes to this small garden, first to walk and then to chat. Thanks to the Delhi Development Authority. People are grateful for the carpet of green grass in this tiny garden, for the beds of flowers, and the creepers. But for this pleasant little patch, they would find themselves gazing at a concrete jungle. Here, at least, a fresh wind blows. Tiny flowers adorn the garden like embroidery. Their presence is delightful. There is pleasure because there is air, there’s sunshine, there’s water. There’s green on the earth and breath throbbing in this body. We’re old, no doubt, but we’re not devoid of zest. We step out of the house, we buy all kinds of vegetables and fruit and return to the lap of our families, which we reared with our toil. To have been relieved of work and toil and to enjoy domesticity … This is the pleasure of being alive. The pleasure of being with the family is great, in spite of occasional rudeness, disobedience and indifference glimpsed in the eyes of sons and daughters-in-law. There is peace in the heart because everyone is together. Whether the shares go up or fall. That worry has its own upside and downside. How refreshing, how valuable this span of time. Sitting on a bench and chatting, it doesn’t feel like the sum total of one’s labour and one’s earnings has slipped out of one’s grasp. That bundle is still attached to one’s person. Quite another matter, that within the family, our rights have shrunk, and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are now used with caution. In old age, freedom of choice becomes half or even a quarter of what it once was. One has to respect the wishes of sons and daughters-in-law. They should live the way they want to. Why should we go on issuing edicts? Ignoring what we’ve said, not meeting our eyes, reminding us of our faults and errors— all this is part of family life … But in our last years, how good it is to hear our grandchildren say Dadu, Dadda, Dadaji. The Music of Solitude twelve I n a flat nearby, in the last few days, the indecorous became decorous. Prabhu Dayal, a widower, was alienated in his own house by his three sons. His miserly, secretive persona began to irk his sons. They began to track his routine. At all times, there was a key dangling from a thread round his neck, and a lock on his room whenever he left it. The sons and daughters-in-law were upset. Who knows what all dear father is hiding from us. Rumours were doing the rounds that he was involved in a big project and had been often seen in Meerut. Prabhu Dayal was stunned one morning to see his sons waiting for him when he entered his room after his bath and recitation of Hanuman Chalisa. He cast a silent glance at them, and taking the clothes from his bed, dressed himself. Maintaining his fatherly demeanour, he asked: How come so early this morning? The eldest son stared into his father’s old eyes with his new business-minded ones and said smoothly: Babuji, you’ll need to withdraw money from your account. If we don’t pay up today, we’ll be locked out of both the factory and the shop. Why did you let it come to this? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? All this later, Babuji. We tried till late last night, but we couldn’t raise funds. The fury on Prabhu Dayal’s brow pierced right through his sons. The youngest, his favourite, avoided meeting his father’s gaze, which looked to him for assistance. The second son spoke: There is no time to dilly-dally. You’ll have to do the needful … Me, what do I need to do? The work is yours, so you’ll have to take care of this. The eldest barked at the second one: Take hold of his key. Before Prabhu Dayal could touch it, the second son had snapped the key dangling from the thread around his neck. What greater contempt could they have shown their father? Open! To save his dignity, Prabhu Dayal said: Here, give it to me. Why don’t you ask Raghuvar, your father-in-law? He’s also your in-law, Babuji. He’s the one who’s told us what you’re up to. How dare you talk like this? It’s the truth, Babuji. You’re tied to a house in Meerut. Who is that woman? Shut your mouth! That won’t work, Babuji. We’ll need to find marriage alliances for our own children soon. Prabhu Dayal screamed: Enough of this jabber now! The sons clambered down, having done with Babuji. Prabhu Dayal shut the safe. He slid the key underneath his pillow and was about to lie down when the youngest son entered the room again and said: I forgot my watch here … I’ve taken this out from Barey Bhaiya’s file. Just read it. I’ll put it back on his table afterwards. I’ll have it coming, otherwise. Prabhu Dayal lifted the bottle of Califos from his bedside, took a dose and began to read the document. He kept turning it around and looking at it. On the letterhead was the address of a detective agency. He caught his head in his hands. This ruse is Raghuvar Dayal’s. Prabhu Dayal began to feel weak. It felt as if they had sucked all the blood out of him. His daughter-in-law peeped in a couple of times. There was contempt in her eyes, as if she were saying: A home outside the home. At this age? Another woman! When Prabhu Dayal got up to go to the bathroom, he gazed at himself in the mirror. Do I look as old as the boys consider me to be? Good-for-nothing ungrateful wretches, engrossed in their own families and weekends. Don’t I know them? I’m their father, after all. A week later, Prabhu Dayal was sighted once more in Meerut. On high alert now, he looked around to see if he was being followed. He sauntered, as if out on some errand. He bought a sari and a box of sweets from Begum Bridge. When he ate the light phulkis Kalavati had made for him that evening, he felt happiness wash over him. Not for a moment did he feel that she was another woman. How jealous the boys feel that she is there for me. What could the boys have done if I had married her. He informed Lalaji that he would be leaving this rented house soon and get his own house by next month. A thunderbolt has struck this business family. Funerary white sheets have spread on red and black-bordered durries. Friends, relatives, acquaintances are all participating. Whispers rise from the white sheets. The world is full of enticements, and Lala Prabhu Dayal was ensnared in them. After the death of his wife, Kalavati, the daughter of his maternal uncle, enlivened his life like a flowering vine. Attached to her were her brothers and nephews. Gossipmongers said that the factory in Meerut was destined for them. Many secrets will come to light when the police unravel this conspiracy. Prabhu Dayal’s car was halted on his way back from Dehradun, Saharanpur and Meerut. Forty-eight hours later, a report was registered with the police. Prabhu Dayal’s car was found parked in the garage and the driver was on truck duty for the factory. In the last few months, Prabhu Dayal had become suspicious of his driver. He had begun to come and go by train or taxi. The postmortem disclosed that he had been strangled to death. His corpse was found beneath a tamarind tree, a few kilometres from Hindon. The family plunged into mourning when they got the news. What had to be came to be. Golden biscuits and another woman! With grief-stricken faces, the sons listened to Pandit-ji’s discourse: Lalaji was so enterprising. Active to his last day. He fulfilled all his family obligations like a good householder. For his three sons, he set up three factories, then became engrossed in his grandchildren after the passing of his wife. But who can erase what fate has destined for one? The family is making undisclosed donations in his hallowed memory. Pandit-ji’s discourse is on. Release by death is also a re-release. After all, it’s also important to sift and trim the vast universe the Supreme Being keeps in rotation. As a good karma yogi, Lalaji left for his heavenly abode only after he had brought his estate in order and seen to his family’s comfort and prosperity. It is with peaceful hearts that we offer him tribute, vowing to keep his good deeds alive in this world by continuing to uphold the dharma of mankind. As per the instructions from his family, Pandit-ji is winding up his discourse, avoiding all topics which can cast suspicion on anyone: Ladies and gentlemen, please to remember that every now and then, even the gods are filled with desire and hope as they pray—O Lord, in your supreme grace, make it possible for us, on whatever occasion you find appropriate, to be born in the world of mortals. The gods in their heavenly abode have become rather tedious for us now. You have caused all treasure to flow to the mortal world. Are you now relegating us to the category of the scheduled caste? Spare us that fate, Lord. Will we have to fast outside your parliament? Lord, you may well be trying to keep these truths and facts well hidden, but meanwhile, please send us instantly into the world of mortals. In this hour of need, we may well be able to contribute our bit to the welfare of mankind. The Music of Solitude twenty-two T he melody of time. Time is a raga. No, in time is bound up a medley of ragas. Many songs. In every song, its unique flow of notes. Resounding in the body. Soaking in and settling in the soul. Dissolved and absorbed into it, the intimacy and remoteness of each. A cumulus of light dawns within. The notes adorning rhythm and beat. A raga is at once attachment and detachment. Warmth, love, and affection. Time finds ruses to entice, and leave you sad. The bird trapped inside flutters to be set free. But not only sadness, tied with it, is a deep regard for all living beings. True we were born and we have lived. Listening with rapt attention to the prelude of the raga, without being able to tell apart the subtle notes of a tanpura . In the same way, even if unable to understand the music of the other, we look for its resonance within ourselves. We can’t tell whom we’ve listened to and whom we’ve pushed away, shoving them into anonymity, despite the deep and shallow experiences which enrapture the mind and body and make one sad or happy. A deep attachment binds all seven notes into the scale of the raga and its sthayi-antara . Udatta, anudatta, tvarit. High, deep and rapid. The many, many tone perceptions, note scales, and tonalities. And with each aalap , the flow of devotion and emotion, attachment-detachment, love-passion, hurt-pain, memory-erasure, gratification-immersion, pain-pleasure, sorrow-grief, joy-delight. The raga of a life cumulated. Aadim , shadaj and nishad . The first note, aadim —the note of birth. Shadaj —the note of youth. Nishad —the last note of the human tale. Childhood, youth, and the last note from the autumn of life— nishad . Let them remain strung together as long as possible. Only then do you get to the entire octave. The melody of time. This Earth Angelika, a German married to Ishan’s relative, worked with the Southeastern desk of Amnesty International. She stopped in Delhi on her way back from Kashmir to meet Ishan. Aranya also joined the dinner. Many inner voices echoed in the room. Angelika’s children, Vivek and Malavika, grew up in an Indian family. Ishan and Angelika, wife of his brother-in-law Suren Pathak, had a lot to say to each other. Sharing common family memories, they exchanged notes on the insights gained from them. Angelika watched Aranya attentively. Raising her eyebrows, she asked Ishan: You still haven’t been able to free yourself from destiny, have you? Can anyone really be free of that, Angelika? Aranya laughed: Perhaps I should leave. It’ll be difficult to salvage the evening if we start debating about destiny. Ishan said gravely: We can surely view life already spent like a story now. Angelika teased: Ishan has to pay the price of having been born in Jammu-Kashmir. My husband’s brother-in-law retired from the Postal Service. If his Maha-pandit, his Paramatma, had lent him support, he could have retired from the Indian Administrative Service. Aranya turned to Angelika: Please go on, Angelika. That’s news to me. Ishan never told me about this. There’s nothing much to it, Aranya. You get worked up so easily. You’re from Jammu-Kashmir, I’m from bordering Gujarat-Pakistan. Why wouldn’t I start at the prospect of those dizzying heights? But do elaborate on what Angelika was saying. Nothing in particular. When I sat for the Administrative Service exams, I was ranked eighteen in the IAS and highest in the IPS, at number one. The Home Ministry checked with Jammu-Kashmir about this. Sheikh Abdullah was the Chief Minister then. He informed the Indian Government that Jammu-Kashmir was not part of the Indian Services. So I was offered the Postal Service and I accepted it. That too with detachment. Ishan, you disappoint me. Did you do no running around? No. But when Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad became the Chief Minister, an IAS cadre for Jammu-Kashmir was formed. The Home Ministry made provision for me in that cadre and sent my papers to the Government of Jammu-Kashmir for approval. Once again, what was not to happen did not happen. We won’t go into the reasons. The discussion turned to the issues of terrorism and human rights in Jammu-Kashmir, and the brutal narrative of the violence pervading the region. Amnesty International kept a watch on the violation of human rights across the world. Is it truly so difficult to resolve the Kashmir problem? Wherever it may be, in whichever country or region, military presence is bound to make the citizenry fight and rebel. Drinking glasses were brought out. I’d like to eat something before I drink anything, Aranya. I’ve not had lunch today. Aranya took out brown bread and cheese. Does this make the difference between native and foreign seem less? Angelika’s family has lived in India, she is used to Indian food. There is no difference between her home and ours. No, no, how can you measure the difference between races by comparing food habits alone? Similarities and differences will continue to co-exist. And native and foreign responses specific to their locales, too, regardless of dissimilarities. Angelika was alert. The conversation turned to the United Nations Secretariat. Aranya offered everyone a second drink, and made herself one. It’s being said that the Great World Powers are going to set up habitation in outer space. If only our nation were also in the queue. Ishan turned to Angelika: Is this really going to happen? Much will change in the next century. The technologically advanced generations of wealthy nations will go settle there. And poor, backward nations will remain behind on Earth. Aranya said impulsively: This means that the developed peoples, all white, will live above, and here on this Earth—the black, flat ones. According to reports, the brotherhood of developed nations will achieve two things there. The construction of a building for the United Nations Organization and the residential quarters of God. Whenever the UNO will feel the need, it will consult Him. The poorer races will have to look after this Earth, its earthquakes and tremors, Tsunamis and storms, and relentless terrorism. In short, all these problems will become the headache of the poor alone. The diminishing population of this world will gradually lighten the load that oppresses the Earth. Our population. Our Earth. Who will watch over its vegetation and greenery? Who will protect it? Mankind. Mankind alone. Nuclear weapons, never. Never. The Music of Solitude seventeen A ranya felt as if Ishan had placed his hand on her head. A non-physical, noncomprehensible tremor. The deep sleep of exhaustion overcame her. When she opened her eyes, the room seemed to be suffused with dim light, as if she were in a dream. She glanced at the clock. Three o’clock. Sleeping on the sofa is not just a skill; it’s a whole science. One can neither constantly turn, nor pull at the slipping blanket. It’s like sleeping while not really sleeping It’s strange, this world of dreams. Fish-like memories swim to the surface. Barely have they come into consciousness that they disappear again. For a while, the room and its walls had disappeared. There appeared a landscape stretching for miles. The room and Aranya were like shapes within that sequence of locations, as if emerging from a camera roll that had been waiting to be developed into scenes woven into one another. Like links in a chain of fulfilled and unfulfilled relationships, appearing in a solitariness descending from above. Like tongues of flame that crash and splutter even in this fire that has begun to turn to ash. A while ago, she had seen a deep, dense darkness envelope her. The golden glow of this warm bundle had begun to die down under a darkening sky. Shining on the glowing embers were not the yellow flames of fire but ashen layers of blurred grey. And who knows who was sitting in the circle assembled around it? The faces also seemed woven into one another. The arms and hands of the people sitting around the fire were missing. What on earth were they doing there? Who were they? A form descended in her direction from the sky. With an unfamiliar gait, as if taking steps without using the feet, it came nearer and nearer—Who? Aranya recognized him. My father! The face and features were not distinguishable, but her eyes recognized him. How? Before Aranya could rise to meet her father, she saw him walk away, beyond the darkness. From one end of creation to another. Is this journey so short that in the blinking of an eye, my father can come from there to here, and then go back from here to there? The blanket covering her had slid off. Before Aranya could pull it up again, her father disappeared into outer space, beyond the world of dreams. Where there must also be whole settlements of subtle-bodied dead. And house agents and brokers. Aranya pulled up another cushion as, half propped up, she gazed out of the window. That’s the way by which the wind comes in. That’s the way by which my dreams must have blown in my ancient guests. In a state of half sleep, she heard the dense, tremulous sound of the violin, tiptoeing across the gallery and echoing through the house. Malkauns. This midnight raga—an invitation to the pleasures of music. Who was calling out to whom? Whose voice was this? There was something out there, turning narrative into counter narrative. The notes in their sovereignty were marking their proprietary right, knocking at the ancient body and soul, stretching across years. She looked at the clock. What? Four. No, three. Aranya rose. Throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she crossed the gallery, and knocked lightly at the door to signal her entry. She sat down in the corner chair. The cassette continued to play. The tremulous, heaving wave of sound played for a long time, intoning hidden spaces in the still room, caressing old souls in the intimacy of its reverberations. How hard to catch the melody, the beat and rhythm that span this interval in time, making both of them pulsate. The still solitariness of each seems to be undulating on the strings of the violin. Striking terror at the unwanted, untimely, unknown—this melody of time. The two ancients seemed like they were reliving old roles hidden in their bodies, minds, lives and souls. As if they were repeating the refrain of the base melody: There is happiness Because there is air There is sunshine There is water There is the unblemished sky There is breath pulsating in the body It is still enclosed in living When we get there outside it And are finally done In some portion or other In some form There will remain a memory. We’ll flow with the silences of this earth When we are no more— near memory hovering over mountain tops— In valleys, tanks, rivers, and waterfalls We’ll remain right here. Endless are births and deaths. We live to die and die to live. So that we can begin again, be born again. Rise, and live again. Be reborn, again and again! An ocean to be crossed, this universe. Rebirth. That which exists, wishes to be ever recognized. That which is conscious, wishes to know all there is to be known. It’s a bliss to remain forever fresh. Be content. Be. The Music of Solitude one T he window curtain flapped wildly in the wind. Was a dust storm on the way? A dust storm in winter? No. She tucked the curtain into the window grill and looked out. The wan afternoon light flickered in the strong wind. In the distance, the dome of Humayun’s tomb basked in its arc of sunlight. The warmth of the winter sun lightly brushed her clothes. The endless drama of existence, and on such a vast stage. This earth, the sky, the sun, the winds, and us. What remained to be enacted on this stage? Aranya’s breathing quickened. The dream she had last night replayed itself in her mind. What a scene! Somewhere in the sky a large door had become visible. A massive door set in a wooden frame, with Aranya’s nameplate fixed on it. A small door within the door opened, and a familiar face peeped out. Who? Why, it’s me! It’s me peeping out from behind that small door. No, no, that can’t be. I’m standing outside! Look carefully, Aranya. Isn’t that wrinkled face yours? It is indeed. So what? We grow older by the moment, don’t we? Yes. But you must know that these are not lines of torment. They’ve grown and ripened with time. The time we ourselves lived through. Such smugness. Then why this q and a! Are you examining the door? You created it, by the sheer act of living. Aranya locked her hands together. She unlocked them after a while and touched her hair, to connect with herself again. Are you anxious about something? No, I’m taking the air in. Pulling in the oxygen, all the way to my soul, glad that I’m alive; my companions, they all left, a long time ago. Those faces … No, forget them. Say goodbye to them and to the memories of those who are living but are no longer what they once were, those who died and were reborn—I’m content to be alive. Aranya looked around the room. The fruits lying on the table tugged at her with their colours and fragrance; she was mesmerized by them. She picked up a knife and a plate, and began to peel them in a leisurely manner. The bowl began to fill with sliced fruit. She squeezed some lemon and sprinkled salt and a little black pepper. Then she tasted a slice and added a spoonful of sugar. Forget the dream. Take joy in the freshness of these fruits. Everything is the same as yesterday. Resting on its axis. What if it moves? But there’s time … The last halt—that business can overtake one anytime. It will. It has to happen. It happens to everyone. Are you brooding over that? The string you’re looking for is wound around a pulley fixed to that door high above; why look for it here? Are you frightened? Yes and no, both. Try and relax as long as you can. Take pleasure in the seasons. This breeze doesn’t exist elsewhere. Not even on the moon. With a light heart, she picked up the receiver and called Ishan. The phone rang for a long time. She dialled the number again after an hour. It rang and was picked up. Hello! Hello, I was about to hang up. I thought you were resting. It was clean-the-toilet day today. Just finished. Would you like to go for a walk to the park this evening? Yes, I’d like to come. What time? Four-thirty sharp. We’ll meet at the gate. Aranya felt flustered. She must rest before going for the walk. I’m feeling quite tired. Forgot to take my vitamins this morning. She thought as she rested: who knows how we interpret the movement of the hands of a clock. Ishan lives in terror of the clock, his gaze always fixed on it, while I steal my eyes away from it. But why compare; each gait has its own pace. Aranya went downstairs at precisely twenty-five past four. She looked at her wrist. Dot on time! It’s not so easy to escape its claws. Particularly for this senior person whose keys go missing sometimes, or her purse, or her cardigan. Or she’s caught in the quandary of whether to wear light clothes or heavy; heavy will make walking more difficult, light may mean feeling cold. Ancient body! Walking on the street, she looked at herself again. Quick and alert. Clothes neither too warm nor too cool. It’s a pleasure to carry one’s own weight this way. The long row of keekar trees lining the street sway in the shimmering sunlight. Fields of ripening mustard below the concrete embankment. Small and middling plants engrossed in the business of drawing in sunlight and air. The traffic on the street whizzing past, oblivious of all this. Ishan parked the car. They walked to the park gate. The tall eucalyptus trees looked dejected, even at that lofty altitude. Perhaps because they were outside the park. On the pavement to their right were mounds of gravel and rubble. There was barbed wire along the hedge surrounding the park. Through this, a narrow lane entered the park. There’s a slope here, be careful. Will you be able to leap over it? Oh yes. Two pairs of shoes, put on the alert, entered the park cautiously. A long row of red sandstone, surrounded by the green of ashoka trees. Flowerbeds accompanying them, like string instruments. Tiny phlox, red, pink, purple, white. Ahead of them, a cluster of vines. Of bougainvillea, bright red and pink, and noble Brazilian palms. The ones behind, a lesser breed, stand apart. There are differences even in a park. Mandal’s caste politics is in play here as well! The grass is like a green spread; its dharma, the protection of its greenness. But it’s not averse to a sprinkling of colours. The circular flowerbeds are a riot of colours; without a trace of fragrance, but swaggering nonetheless. Dwarf morpankhi shrubs, interlinked and attached to their own species, and woven together with vivacious leaves. There should have been a marble platform in front of them—they would aquire a different charm and glory then. Senior citizens sit and chat in a grove on elevated ground. Their public debates take place outside the bounds of their homes and families. The cumulative solitude of years gone by. Ishan and Aranya pause at the bend in the path. From this point on, they’ll go different ways. We’ll come back and meet here exactly at six. Aranya strode off to the left. The branches of the weeping willow droop. Glistening amongst them is the red bottlebrush, and beyond, long rows of teak trees. The park looks like a series of paintings in the evening light. The breeze revolves slowly like a windmill. The yellow crowns of trees glitter on the waves of the wind. The trees beyond the mosque stay calm, laden with their own capricious branches. Who knows what the flocks of birds are saying to each other? No one needs to pay a price for this din. Can it compete with the blare of cars whose wheels move only if petrol is used and paid for? These channels vibrate without taxes. Could this be the way in which the mute trees express their resistance? Against whom would that be? Against the creepers that cling to them? No, these trees oppose us two-legged ones. Perhaps they are fed up with our whimsies. And what about the birds? There’s no one to curb the flock of feathered ones. They chirp and twitter endlessly, tormenting the wise old trees. Producing a mighty din, they sing whole arias, flaunting taans. The aging trees remain silent; they say nothing. Entirely spiritual, that’s what they are. No, no, they are secretive—always spying on the sly. Suddently, a neelkanth took flight. Waah, what wings, what a flight! Tiny blades of grass began to sway in the wind. Aranya broke into a hasty trot, almost running, and hit her foot against an upturned stone; a tile had broken loose. Take care! You’ll fall. You’re not all that young. There can be an accident, any time. She suddenly remembered the insurance papers. You have kept them carefully, no? She’ll have to look for them the moment she gets back. Some of the walkers looked at her with surprise as she broke into a trot. Such pace at this age! Involuntarily, she slowed down. She looked at her watch and spotting an empty bench in the distance, she reserved it with her eyes. She would rest when she got there. The lawn was being watered. She took off her shoes and socks and, cutting sideways across the lawn, reached her destination. The creepers, branches and twigs began to darken. What had looked like watercolours in the thin sunlight a while ago now looked like dark oil paint. The Almighty has boundless freedom. He has done countless experiments with his universe. Each thing has its own nature, quality and form. A tree is different from a creeper, flower from leaf, deer from cheetah, cheetah from rabbit, butterfly from peacock, peacock from crow, crow from sparrow, man from lion, lion from child, child from mother, mother from father. Strange and wonderful, this world of the Almighty—his and ours. Ishan is coming towards her. Aranya began to pull on her socks. Have your shoes been hurting you? No. The grass was wet and I needed to protect my shoes. So I carried them in my hands. Ishan laughed. Is there any sense in protecting your shoes and catching a cold? You may end up having to take antibiotics. Aranya laughed. Before that, I’ll have drunk a kaadha of black pepper, tulsi and liquorice. That’s a good habit. It’s not good to pop too much medication. The moral of the story is that it’s not good for a senior citizen like me to walk on wet grass. Yes, Aranya, senior citizens can end up paying a heavy price for such carelessness. You’re right. In the future then, only Action shoes for me. Add another phrase to that, otherwise you’ll end up sounding like a shoe brand commercial. No, an evening like this can’t end with a commercial. Let’s have a conversation about spirituality then. Aranya, does this word exist in your dictionary? Don’t think so. My lot is known for fighting for its rights, and yours for trying to achieve peace and clarity for all living beings by means of knowledge and wisdom. Yes, but you seem all set to engage in a verbal duel. Are you getting ready for a battle? Do I look very aggressive? Ah, yes, the activity of the subconscious mind shows in the tapping of feet. Discipline— Yes, I too have that. You own the arsenal of science and I, weapons. You’re the one who is making the distinction. The whole country is caught up in the commotion of caste history. I’m a Brahman, I’m non-Brahman. I’m Kshatriya, I’m a Rajput, I’m Jat-Gujar, I’m from a backward caste, I’m Dalit, I’m Scheduled Caste. Hang on, wherever did Indianness go? It went to the scales of the judiciary. Why don’t we change the subject? Let’s talk about happiness-beyond-belief. You go first. The list of what makes me happy is very short. In one line: a cluster of words and the expression of meaning. Nothing more. Now, your turn. The pleasure of reading a good book. Let’s hear a bit more about that. The pleasure of sighting the consciousness glistening behind words—crystalline consciousness, whose transparent gleam never fades. Are you saying this in your individual context? Yes, that is the most irreplaceable dimension of human life. A complete creation. To be conscious of oneself is re-creation. Am I right? Yes, I know what you mean. We are reborn each time we refashion ourselves, renew ourselves. Aranya silently asked herself: How many times might you have been born? Many times! Truly, this one life had in itself many launch pads for many births. To rescue them from the long silence that followed, Ishan said,You say something. It’s your turn now. A rebirth is underway these days as well. In the act of shredding paper. It foretells age. Have you been through this experience too? Yes. Sometimes old letters, sometimes old accounts, calendars, diaries. And if I’m to speak of myself, along with papers, memories as well. Perhaps that’s what people call nirvana. Why insist on so much plain speaking? Because I live in colloquial prose. They strolled in the rose garden. The language of poetry seems to grow in this little garden. I have come here before. Did you see the dusky rose-daughter in the red-orange flower patch? That’s a beautiful name, rose-daughter. There isn’t any feminist influence working on this identification, is there? That may well be. Sons form the majority in this park. We worry about the minorities. That’s why it’s so important to note the existence of daughters. Ishan laughed. This shouldn’t get us tangled in an argument. No, that won’t happen. Why would we trade our expansive vision for insularity? Regardless of quarrels, we seniors will ultimately attain peace. They laughed. But even there, the goddess of desires will block the passage of rights. I see what you’re getting at. We will all face her infinite power. Ishan laughed again. You could need a lawyer even there. There must be some arrangement. The prosecution will work, if we pay the fees. But the verdict may take time. It could take eons. Several centuries may go by while you wait. Aranya broke into a peal of laughter. It feels good to hear we’ll live that long. Let me tell you, I’m ready to wait patiently; I’m not willing to let go of my rights. Their voices began to fade as the sounds of the evening took over. The greenish light in the park turned blue. The last evening light just before it gets dark. What’s your favourite colour? Black. No, no, that’s not the colour of joy. Why not? That’s the colour I liked in the pink of my youth. Now I wear grey and white. These two colour my interior. They walked in silence. Suddenly Aranya laughed. Please don’t think I’ve reached my grey years. Although, human beings harbour many desires even beyond the grey. A flower patch snaked its way right up to the gate. Together they leapt over it. Time is wordless, but much throbs within. And age? It’s like a goat, grazing, slowly, slowly. Let it graze. Don’t look in its direction. Aranya asked herself softly: You haven’t become more shortsighted, have you? You must get eye-drops from the chemist. When is your next appointment with the eye-doctor? She heard Ishan say: Seems like I’ll need to change my distance-glasses. The golden face of the sun shines in the deep blue of the sky. The east end of the park departs to meet the sky as the face of the west lights the eyes. As if east and west are saying to one another: Today will surely resemble yesterday. But tomorrow won’t be like today. In the west, the sun, a red ball of fire, slides towards the Earth that is like a stage. Behind it, there is a vast curtain of darkness. A redness flickers for a split-second in our lashes and disappears into the Earth. The trees are quieter than before, dumbfounded by their own immeasurable height. Entranced by their own imperishability perhaps. And the two of us, aging perishables. The cobbled footpath has begun to look new. No old memories, no reproaches, no rivalry, no aggression, no civilities. Just walking together, the two of us. It’s good to walk. That’s what the doctor says as well. Aranya spoke sternly to herself. You keep coming back to that. Doctor. Look at the tree trunks, firmly anchored in their roots. Watch where you are going. Take firmer steps. This is a journey towards unexpected connections. Its pace is determined by one’s own being and living. By the sound of one’s own footsteps, not the shifting of the planets. The cool breeze blows only as long as we live. No enmeshment. No east wind, north wind, or south. Who knows when the winds flew off in their own directions? What remains will also fly off. Whatever is right for the season; there is a meaning to everything. The right thing has to be understood in the right way at the right time. Look ahead of yourself. The sun has sunk and amidst the trees, there’s the moon, hanging in its cage of desire. Being able to see that is an event, isn’t it. Aranya reached her floor. She opened the door to her flat, switched on the light and stood in the balcony. The wide banks of the Yamuna fringed with lights. The windows of flats near and far. Windows, it’s not windows that change. It’s the curtains, faces, and dates that change. She went inside and took off her shoes. She washed her feet, and as she wiped them with a towel, she saw a few blades of grass sticking to her soles. She gazed at them for a while. How tiny. She plucked them off carefully. How slender to touch. That sprint on the wet grass was wonderful. The accomplishment for the evening. She filled water in the kettle and switched it on. Looked into the tea-tin and found it empty. There would be teabags. There were some. That’s how organized we loners are. If there’s tea, there’s no sugar; if there’s sugar, there’s no milk. Lack of structure and order. No, let’s not complain today. Teabags have appeared, and so have milk and sugar. She placed the tea tray in front of herself, and then drank the tea, regarding herself as a guest. An actor, onlooker, audience, guest, host, all rolled into one. The phone rang. Hello. This is Ishan. Tell me. Just look outside your door. Aranya rose swiftly. Had a guest arrived? She turned the key and peeped outside. A paper bag was hanging from the doorknob. She took it down and shut the door. There were flowers in the bag, and tucked into them was a slip of paper: ‘For not getting your shoes wet in the park.’ Aranya was happy. These lovely little pieces of happiness … The new shoes were saved from getting wet. At the same time, she managed to impress someone and received a bunch of narcissus. She filled water in the vase, arranged the flowers, and played music. She sat there, listening for a while, and then danced to the tune, as if old times began tapping in her feet. Nothing is forgotten. Practise remembering. Will you be able to add another line to the script, at this juncture in your life? Yes, of course—just this much that I am my own script. Much later, she thought, I could have phoned and thanked him. No. Let this remain unsaid. I’m feeling special. I’ve just received the flowers of narcissus for a gift. These bloom on the mountains where silence swims in the air. The sky was overcast since morning. It began to rain by the time the afternoon was over. Perhaps it had snowed in the mountains. Aranya kept admiring the duet of shower and wind from her balcony. The tar on the street down below looked dark and smooth from this height. The canopy of leaves on the trees below appeared like green pavilions, bowing towards the earth and opening towards the sky. How ancient the sight and sound of the shower and how eternally new. Time is concealed in its melody. Time is, because we are. Time is outside but also ahead of us. That is what intimidates us. But why dither on this rainy day? Grasp this moment; it is yours. The evening, this moment, this rain—jump up and gather them in your hands. If you slip now, they may slip away forever. Aranya picked up her umbrella and raincoat and set out in the rain. New roads had been laid out in front of the flats. One can’t look for the past on them. Wh	254,801
The Solitudes (Crowley John) (Z-Library).epub	THE SOLITUDES EIGHT T he storm did not come then; neither did it pass. After the darkening wind and a few inconclusive drops it seemed to pause, leaving the evening sky clear; it lay still visible on the horizon, though, muttering lowly from time to time, probably raining (those at Spofford’s party said to one another) on someone else’s party, somewhere else. The dense hot air was charged with its nearness, and when the moon arose, to toasts and laughter, immense and as amber as whiskey, her light gilded the scalloped hem of its clouds. Pierce and Spofford drove down to the party from the cabin in Spofford’s aged truck. Pierce’s feet were amid the toolboxes and oily rags, and Spofford drove with one arm across the steering wheel, the other propped on the window sill, holding on the roof. Gravel roads, the old truck’s smell, night air on his face, had Pierce thinking of Kentucky, of long-ago summer Saturday nights, out sparkin’, of freedom and expectation: as though this road were an extension of one he had once been on, one that he had left years ago and had suddenly rejoined at this juncture, who would have thought it led here, who would have thought. They turned onto an unkempt paved road, jouncing mightily, and in not too long a time drew up at a shuttered roadside stand. By the headlights Pierce saw that it sold, or had once sold, a long list of summer foods. They parked there amid other vehicles, old trucks like Spofford’s and newer ones and ones fitted out to special uses, and a bright little red convertible and a vast station wagon. Spofford pulled off the brown Indian-patterned blanket that covered the truck’s seat, rolled it and put it under his arm; he hooked with his forefinger from the back a huge jug of red wine, slung it over his shoulder, and led Pierce to a path that ran behind the roadside stand and descended through a pine woods toward a triangle of gold and black water. There were others on the path, darkish shapes or moonstruck and white, carrying hampers, shepherding children. “Is that Spofford?” said a big woman in a tentlike dress, cigarette between her lips. “Hello, Val.” “Good night for it,” Val said. “The best.” “Moon’s in Scorpio,” Val said. “Is that so.” “Just be careful,” Val chuckled, and they debouched into a peopled clearing, firelight, greeting voices and dogs barking. It was Spofford’s party only in that the stretch of waterside where it went on was his, a little pleasure-ground his parents had used to operate in the summer, the stand, a few picnic tables and a scattering of stone fireplaces like a druid ring, a brief wooden pier and a pair of outhouses, Jacks and Jills. Spofford brought the jug of wine, but did no hosting, was only a little seigneurial as he and Pierce strolled down amid the people, saying hi and passing remarks. The tables were piled with meats and fruits, bottles and cheeses and bowls of this and that, enough for multitudes it seemed, each of them there his own host to all. Fires had been lit in some of the dolmens, and woodsmoke mingled with the night air; a thin piping could be heard, curling through the pines’ hushing. Hands in his pockets, nodding to left and right as Spofford did, Pierce walked with Spofford down to the water’s edge. The moon above the massy trees on the far shore seemed to be a hole cut out of a jet sky to let the light of a far cool heaven through. Out on the water as they stood there, one, two, three figures broke the surface suddenly, as though they had been sleeping on the river’s bottom and had just awakened; laughing and naked, they climbed the ladder onto the pier and stood in the moonlight drying themselves: three women, a dark, a light, a rosé; three graces. “Well, she’s here,” Spofford said quietly, turning away. “Oh?” said Pierce, not turning away. The dark one twined her thick hair in her hands to squeeze the water out; the blond steadied herself with a hand on the dark one’s shoulder, drying her feet. The third pointed to Pierce, and they all three looked up, and seemed to laugh; their voices carried to him over the water, but not their words. Pierce, hands still in his pockets, smiled and stood. Just then there was a heavy padding behind him, and a naked man ran past him and flung himself into the water, praying hands outstretched and long hair flying, as though drowning himself in tribute: it was he they had laughed at. He was followed by a blond child, rushing in to his knees with a shriek and then stopping in surprise; then an older child who raced on past him and went under. A large woman, their mother it might be, drawing off her smock, her great breasts rolling with her stride, followed them in, churning the gold-barred water into silver foam. Pierce turned away, a fullness in his breast and the grin still on his face. Adamites. How had they escaped the curse? “You couldn’t buy this, in the city,” he said to Spofford, who poured red wine for him black in the moonlight. “Couldn’t buy it. This amenity.” “Yeah, well,” Spofford said. “It’s not for sale.” He handed Pierce a thick crackling joint from which ropy smoke arose. “You want something to eat?” Roasted corn and tomatoes sweet as berries, the harvest was coming in; crumbling bread from someone’s oven, blackened weenies, nine kinds of slaw and salad, his paper plate sogged and bent beneath it. “What do you suppose this is?” he asked a woman filling her plate next to him, prodding a cake-like thing. “I dunno,” she said. “Beige food.” He carried his plate to a suitable rock for sitting, in view of all; on the rock next to him sat the piper, his thin uncertain music coming from a set of bound reed pipes, and himself looking Pan-like in a mild-mannered way, bow mouth pursed to blow and a boyish beard. A sleepy child sat with his head in the piper’s lap. “Syrinx,” said Pierce when the piper stopped to shake spit from his instrument. “What say?” “The pipes,” Pierce said. “Syrinx is their name. She was a girl, a nymph, that the god Pan loved. And chased.” He paused to swallow. “She was chaste, I mean she tried to get away, and just as he reached her some other god or goddess took pity on her and changed her into a bunch of reeds. At the last moment.” “You don’t say.” “Yup. And Pan made his pipes from the reeds. Syrinx. Same word as ‘syringe’ by the way—a hollow reed. And he blows her to this day.” “So who calls the tune?” the piper asked. He tried a note. “You can’t play much on it.” “You can play,” Pierce said, “the Music of the Spheres. In fact.” “Maybe after a few lessons.” The curl of his mouth and his light, husky voice made it seem he was about to laugh, as though he and Pierce shared a secret joke. “I was trying for ‘Three Blind Mice.’” Pierce laughed, thinking of octaves and ogdoads, Pythagoras and Orpheus’s lyre. He could go on. It was the smoke; he rarely smoked these days, it only made him paradoxical and cryptic, he had found, whatever clarity it seemed to create within him, which made him doubt the clarity. The piper looked at him as though trying to make him out, or remember who he was, still smiling that smile of pleasant complicity. “I’m a stranger here,” Pierce said. “Name’s Pierce Moffett. I came with Spofford.” “My name’s Beau.” He offered no hand, though his smile broadened. “I’m not supposed to be here,” Pierce said. “Oh yes?” Something about Pierce or his explanation tickled the piper more and more. “I was headed somewhere else entirely. I was buswrecked. So.” “So you’re a crasher. Just broke right on in.” “Right.” “Not hurt, though?” “Hm?” “Hi, Rosie,” Beau called into the darkness. “Come talk.” Pierce looked into the crowd of people passing. A dark girl walking away, beer in her hand, glanced back at him just then and caught his eye, and smiled as though she knew him, and went on. “Well,” said Beau, fingering the stops of his pipe, “if you’re here, I guess you put yourself in the way of it. Right? One way or another.” “Well, that’s so,” Pierce said. He set down his plate, and instantly there was a dog to investigate it, who found nothing of interest. “That’s so, I suppose, in a way.”. The child in Beau’s lap lifted his head, wanting more music. Beau played. Pierce rose and wandered away after the smile he had seen, which had disappeared amid the partygoers. Syrinx. Now what would an item like that go for around here, that was a real hot item, special this month. Only he would have to show his wares in order to sell them, and showing them gave them away. What would you pay to know where, why that pipe, what that pipe’s intervals can be made to picture or echo. … She sat on a log down by the shore, a little apart it seemed; when she twisted her long hair in her hands, he knew her. He heard someone passing say to her: “Hey, is Mike coming, do you know?” She shrugged, shook her head, Mike wasn’t coming; or no, she didn’t know; or she refused the question. Or all three. She seemed briefly embarrassed, and drank thirstily. “Hello, Rosie,” Pierce said, standing over her. “How’s Mike?” It was the smoke, the damned smoke and drink making him devilish. “Fine,” she said automatically, looking up and smiling again; her teeth were brightly white, large and uneven, long canines and one front one chipped. “I forget you,” she said. “Well hell,” he said, sitting beside her, “hell of a note.” “Are you in The Woods? I don’t know everybody there.” “In the woods?” “Well,” she said, looking helpless. “That was an imposition,” Pierce said. “A joke. You don’t know me from Adam.” And how will we know, when we get to Paradise, which man there is Adam, without being told? Special this week. She seemed to take no offense, only looked at him curiously, waiting for more. She had the long-nosed, plump-cheeked look of an Egyptian cat sculpture; the summer dress she had pulled on was pretty and childish. “No,” he said, “really. I’m a friend of Spofford’s. I came along with him.” “Oh.” “We knew each other in the city. I’m visiting. I’m sort of thinking of throwing in with him here, though. Getting into sheep.” He laughed, and she did too, it seemed like a punch line; at that moment Spofford himself appeared out on the little pier, with others, doffing his clothes. “So you know all these people?” she asked. “Not a bit,” he said. “I thought you would.” “It’s not exactly my crowd.” “But Spofford.” “Oh, well, yes.” Spofford was naked now, except for his broad straw hat; he was being challenged by the others; horseplay was threatened, but Spofford drew apart, holding them off. “Best-looking man here,” Pierce said. “ I think.” “ Do you.” “Far as I can tell.” “What about the guy I saw you talking to before?” “Cute,” Pierce said. “Not my type, though.” They watched Spofford whisk off his straw hat and skim it down the pier; then he poised himself, looking in fact (Pierce noticed) very striking, and dived. “Mm,” Pierce said. “I like that.” She giggled, watching him watch, holding her glass in both hands; she looked into it, and found it empty. Louder music was beginning, thud thud thud of a portable stereo, there were glad cries and encouragements for this. Pierce drew from his pocket a slim silver flask—a gift of his father’s, someone else’s initials were on it, it was worn plate but Axel had thought it just the thing for his son—and uncapped it. “I don’t usually drink hard stuff,” she said. “Oh?” he said, poised to pour. “It’s not good for me.” She moved her glass beneath the spout, and Pierce poured scotch, he had filled the flask and put it in his bag when he left the city, you never know, clever of him. “So how did you say I know you?” she asked, lifting her cup to stop him pouring, as priests had always done when he poured wine for them at Mass. “You don’t, yet.” He capped the flask, taking nothing. He suddenly wanted to be clear-headed. Among the Adamites there was no shame in nakedness; no sin for the saved. He felt goat-footed among them, uninvited but himself also, for other reasons, unashamed. “I never saw you before tonight.” He indicated the water. “Rising from the Deep.” “Oh yes?” she said, returning his look. The music chugged and rang, and her head moved to it, laughter in her eyes. “You liked that too?” They both laughed then, heads close together; her eyes—maybe it was the moon, which had come overhead and gone small and white but brighter than ever—her eyes glittered with moisture but didn’t seem soft; it was as though they were coated thinly and finely with ice or crystal. The music was both new and old, supplemented by a gang of instruments the people produced, rattles and bangers and cowbells and bongos. The dancing was eclectic too, with overtones of country clodhopping and Shaker ecstasies; everyone joined, or nearly everyone, Pierce sat it out mostly, in the city these days the dancing was done chiefly by semiprofessionals, wiry boys dashed with sweat and glitter you wouldn’t want to compete with—Pierce had no skill in it anyway, and for this happy corybanting he had no taste; even in the days of the great parade he had not been good at melding with the throng and going with the flow. A fogey. And it was of that parade that he was reminded here, by the bouncing folk and the homemade rhythms, as if a contingent or spur of it had split off back then and wound up here and kept on turning in happy ignorance of what elsewhere had become of their fellows; still piping, still corybanting, going naked but raising kids and vegetables and baking bread and breaking it with others in the old new hospitality. Couldn’t be so, not really; it was the smoke (the old taste of it was in his mouth, sweetish and burnt, he had never been able to describe it, artichokes and woodsmoke and buttered popcorn) and the sense he had of having stumbled in among them, city dirt in his pores and city vices in his heart. Flirting. Only flirting. He could see Spofford nowhere in the maze of dancers or on the now-still water. Rosie turned and shuffled with the rest, impossible to tell if she had a partner, or if anybody did. The advantage to a watcher of this sort of dancing was that, since there were no rules of movement, it revealed character; there was no way to be good at it except to have a natural sense of rhythm and the knack of displaying it. Rosie moved dreamily and privately, erect, long hair aswing. She seemed to be unassimilated to the rout, though part of it, as though she had gone native amid a primitive tribe who, less graceful than she, knew better than she why they were doing this dance. At a change of music she came over to him, a little flushed, her high evident only in the brightness of her eyes. “Don’t you wanna dance?” “I don’t dance much,” Pierce said. “But save me the waltz.” “You still have that teeny bottle?” He uncapped it; she had lost her glass, and drank from the flask; so did he, then she again. She looked around herself. “There’s one thing about your friends,” she said. “They can be a little cliquish. No offense.” “They seem very hospitable to me.” “Well, sure. To you.” “Honest,” said Pierce, rising, “I just got here.” And for her information: “I’ll probably be leaving tomorrow. Or the next day. Soon, anyway. For good.” He began to walk down toward the water; she followed. Where had Spofford vanished to? Out on the water a rowboat turned lazily, full of children being rowed around. Another rowboat was tied to the pier. “No,” she said. “You were throwing in with Spofford. Getting into sheep.” She handed him the flask. “How come you keep changing your story?” “I live in New York,” he said. “Have for years.” “You think so?” Brightly. “So listen,” he said. “If it’s not your crowd, and it’s cliquish, why did you come?” “Oh, to swim. And dance. Just look around.” “For somebody in particular?” “No,” she said, regarding him as frankly as her strange crystallized eyes allowed, “nobody in particular .” Pierce drank. “Would you,” he said courteously, “be interested in going for a row? In the moonlight?” “Can you row?” And then, like a kid: “I can. I’m good at it.” “Well, good,” Pierce said, taking her elbow. “We can spell each other.” Another punch line, the smoke could transform any remark into one, he laughed at that and at the rowboat he was untying (the pointy end he remembered went first with the operator facing backward) and, also, at a warm certainty just then hatching within him. He took off shoes and socks and left them on the pier, rolled his pants to his knees and pushed off, clambering in himself with not quite the grace he had hoped for. He maneuvered the old boat out into the moonlight, gradually putting back into his muscles skills he had learned long ago on the Little Sandy River and its cricks and branches; once again that old road seemed to lead here, knock of oarlocks and gulp of soft night water on the bows. “So,” he said. “The Blackberry River.” “Oh, this isn’t the river really,” she said. She was straddling her seat, moving her feet to keep them out of the seepage at the bottom. “Just a backwater. The real river’s over there.” She pointed, thought, drew her finger along the bank. “Over there .” He looked over her shoulder, but could see no exit. “Shall we go see?” “If I can find the channel. More port,” she said. “No, more port. That way.” Pierce pulled, catching a crab and nearly tumbling backward into the bows; she laughed and asked if he was sure he knew how to do this, reminding him of his claim to know in the same disbelieving tone she had taken toward his stories of who he was and where he had come from. He ignored it, and composed himself, looking over his shoulder at what seemed an impassable thicket of tangled trees. The current tugged gently at the boat, and more by its effects than by her directions they slid into a tunnel made of moonlight and willows. Pierce shipped one oar, it was too narrow here to row, and the current knew the way. He kept them from the tangled feet of trees and tall bullrushes with the other oar, stilled and feeling enormously privileged. How had he deserved this, this beauty, how did they; she, who lived always within having distance of it, of these willows drowning their long hair, these water-lilies floating in their sleep? How could it not make you both good and happy? She trailed one hand in the water. “Warmer than the air,” she said. “How can that be.” “A swim?” he said, his heart all in a moment in his throat. “Well lookee here,” she said, hand in the single patch pocket of her dress. “I have found a number here in my pocket.” She held it up to him, between a V of fingers like a Lucky in an old ad. “Do you have a match?” In its flare she looked at him, her face changed or revealed further by matchlight; questioning or for some reason uncertain, afraid even. The match went out. “There,” she said, pointing. They entered onto the river, a wide avenue black and bordered with immense trees; an avenue of humid sky matched it above. The current turned them idly toward the mystery of the bank; Pierce unshipped his oars and dipped them. As faint as though proceeding from the blurred and goldish constellations, the tinkle and murmur of the party’s music. “You’re going to get stuck,” Rosie said calmly. He pulled his right oar, but the boat struck something projecting from the bank, and swung around. It was a little wooden landing stage, and the boat lay up there now ready to be tied, like an old horse who has led a new rider back to its stable. Okay. All right. The little pier led to stairs, though nothing could be seen at the top of them. “Explore?” he said. “Go ashore and forage.” “Oooh.” But he had thrown the painter around a piling in two quick loops, that boating trick at least he remembered. He rose to help her out. “What if somebody lives here.” “Friendly natives.” “Maybe a dog.” Her hand was small and moist, and he felt, hand on her back to put her ashore, the cotton of her dress slide against the silk of her skin. Beside her, he offered the flask again. They listened to the silence. “Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” she said, taking his arm. Slowly, in care for their bare feet uncertain of the ground beneath, they went up the stairs—logs only, forced into the soft earth, and a big root commandeered—beneath pines that warned them away in awed whispers. “A house.” A cottage; a big screened porch and a chimney, a swayed rooftree outlined against a moonlit open distance. The pineneedle-strewn path led up to it. It was dark. “Who’s doing that in the dark,” she whispered. “What.” “The piano.” He could hear nothing. “The piano,” she said. “Wake up.” There was no piano. They walked around the house; it was a strange composite, its patent moonlit side was stucco and had two stubby pillars supporting an entablature over the door and two arched windows. The big screened porch in back was an afterthought. Beyond what seemed in the moonlight to be velvet lawns and topiary but may have been only meadow was a tall house, many-chimneyed, on a wooded rise. “Their cottage.” “Probably.” The big house was dark too. Why were they whispering? Their tour took them back to the dark side, the screened porch. It needed repair: here by the door a hole big enough for a hand. Pierce put a hand through, and as though he were practiced at this, a yegg, a spy, slid open the bolt. It was not, any of it, any choice of his, except the choice to do all that was offered. If he had been led by some shining psychopomp into a fabulous otherwhere, Elysium’s fountains and mountains, he could not have felt more removed from his daily self, less responsible. Drink this. Eat this. And she went ahead of him through the door, taking slow steps, wondering. The place had been long uninhabited. Two broken wicker chairs were all the porch held. Rosie tried the door into the house; it was locked. But the large window beside it, when Pierce pushed it up, gaped open, making a shocked noise like an indrawn breath. He stepped over the low sill. Odor of mothballs and mice, moldered wallpaper and dead summers past. When, where had he once before broken into a locked place that smelled so, a place where old summers had been left? There was a rolled rug like a cadaver in one corner, but nothing else. Moonlight lay in cool rhomboids on the floor. “What if it’s not safe.” Her voice was loud in the vacant indoors. She turned to face him, slashed with window light, and with a single step he was with her. She met him with no surprise but with what eagerness he couldn’t tell; he fed not greedily but wholly on her anyway, as though drinking water; when he was filled, momentarily, and drew away, she parted from him with a little drunken bob like a bee-visited blossom; and, her hand falling from his breast where she had pressed him but not pressed him away, she walked off. “This is the living room,” she said. There was another room after that, where a card table cocked a bad leg back as though favoring it, and a black stove had pulled its long arm half out of the hole in the wall. Kitchen. Bathroom. “Oh look,” she said. “Secret.” A door in the bathroom led to a further room. Another addition? There was no other way into it, it seemed, except through the bathroom. An iron bedstead stood askew there, stunned, caught out, a thin buttoned mattress sprawled across its springs. Pierce from the door watched Rosie approach it with slow steps. Then she looked back at him, sharply he thought, as though he had surprised her here, startled her—and then he had come up behind her and encircled her. She suffered him, hands idly, unseriously tugging at his hands, head fallen back against his shoulder. He gathered up her dress and their two left hands went together between her legs; the hair was short, thick, like the nap of a velvet. She turned to face him then, and he freed her for that, but when he did so she slid from him and walked away, saying something he didn’t understand. “What?” “… if the dancing’s all over, and I have to get up early tomorrow.” Her dress had curtained her again, though she hadn’t tidied it. “I’m always the last one dancing.” She looked at him idly, as though he were her guest here and the visit was growing protracted. He had a mad thought that she knew this room, had long known it; and, for it was in some way the same thought, that he could do anything at all to her here, anything, and would meet with no resistance but this strange inattention. It was not he she was wandering from. “I know I shouldn’t,” she said, pushing back her hair, “I know I shouldn’t, but if you still have that little bottle, I’d like another sip. If I may.” He was to ignore that. He knew it; he was to refuse in fact to listen further to anything she said; that was why she said it. The hair rose on the back of his neck, the hairs too along his arms. “Sure,” he said, unpocketing the flask. “Sure, here you go, only let’s go. Enough of the haunted house.” “Scared?” she said, and laughed, and came and took his arm; he gave her the bottle, and she tipped it up as they went back through the house. “I live in a house like this sometimes,” she said. He helped her through the window. “I mean on the river, a cottage, it’s nice, I like the water so much. There’s your bottle back. I think the little stopper on a chain is the cute part.” Arm in arm, gay companions again, they went back to the boat. Pierce, his heart and loins confused and turgid, didn’t know whether he had cheated himself, or failed her, or escaped harmless, only that he had come down from an upper floor he hadn’t known he was mounting to. It was the shock of finding himself heedlessly stepping up onto the topmost stair that had raised the hair on his nape, that had made him think to go back. She standing in the corner by the iron bed, stoned, dreaming, in two. Hands and head at odds, making jokes, he pulled clumsily out onto the water. The moon was going down, and the river was darker; against the current he fought the wretched boat back into the gurgling channel, and she was no help. She had got the giggles now, and found his exertions hilarious; she razzed him as he struggled, oars caught in grasping weed, sweat tickling in his eyebrows. “Come on now,” he said, growing afraid he might be lost, “let’s keep our heads, let’s keep our heads,” but that was a punch line too. She stopped giggling only when, at last, they entered onto the backwater and he pulled for the firelit shore. “Well!” she said cheerily, disembarking. “Thanks for the lil boatride.” She gave him a hand. “It was nice meeting you. You’re very interesting.” “Nice to meet you ,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.” “Sure,” he said. “At the county fair.” “I like the fair.” “Is that a fact.” Not all the drink and smoke had melted the strange ice behind which her eyes had grown vague. She stepped lightly away from him up the beach, the hem of her sundress swinging; Pierce put his hands back in his pockets and turned to the water, whose gold had faded. One fat man in an inner tube floated there, paddling softly. Now what on earth, Pierce thought. A sudden draft of hereness and nowness. Where was Spofford? He was coming toward him from the woods on the opposite side of the campground; in the light of a fireplace where trash was burned and, doubtless, the last marshmallows toasted, he waved to Pierce. The piper had gone, and most of the others. Pierce was struck suddenly by a thought: These people now all have to drive cars to get home. How do they manage? How will she? “Good party,” said Spofford. He was consuming a piece of cake, one hand held below it like a paten for the crumbs. “Fun,” said Pierce. “’Bout done?” Spofford asked. “I’m with you. Whenever you want.” Spofford seemed thoughtful, though he smiled. He tossed crumbs into the fire and dusted his hands. “Good party,” he said again, with satisfaction. He looked around his premises, assured himself that there were enough of those careful guests left whose pleasure it is to tidy up, and said, “Let’s go.” If she has an accident, it will be partly my fault, Pierce thought. He almost thought to reproach Spofford: You ought to watch out better for her. You don’t know what danger she puts herself in. Oh lord. Spofford threw the brown blanket into the truck. “Did you meet people?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to just throw you to the lions there.” “Oh, sure.” “I should have taken you around.” “I got on.” “Nice people. Mostly.” He grinned sidelong at Pierce, starting the truck. “And old Mike didn’t show up, it seems.” “No?” said Pierce, feeling foolish. What had he been up to, what? Putting his gross foot through the fabric of relationships he didn’t begin to understand, in a country, his friend’s country, that he had just come into, a guest. Where he didn’t really belong at all. The truck jounced out onto the darkling highway, Spofford whistling softly between his teeth. When they had gone a long time in silence, Pierce said, “I guess I ought to be getting back.” “Oh yeah?” “Duty. The Future.” “Whatever you say.” Night, wind, the sweep of the truck’s headlights. The moon was gone. Pierce hugged himself, weary, amazed. He seemed suddenly to have been gone from home for an age. “Hey,” Spofford said, and took his foot from the accelerator. In the roadway stood a deer, a doe, motionless on delicate stilts. The truck coasted to a halt, and the doe, as though deciding at length to take fright, remembering to be shy, dove away with neat assurance into the tangled wood. A big raindrop spattered on the windshield, and then another. “Here comes that storm,” Spofford said. When Pierce awoke in Spofford’s bed on the far side of the night the rain had ceased; at some point Spofford must have got up and opened the windows without waking him, for they were open now. The night was clear, or clearing; Pierce could see a single star in the window’s corner. It was a noise like the approach of a tiny high-speed drill that had awakened him. For a long moment he gathered the world around him, listening to Spofford snoring softly in his sleeping bag in the next room; waiting for the mosquito at his ear to settle and be slapped; living still in the long rich dream he had been dreaming, allegory of the lumps in Spofford’s bed and the insect orchestra outside. What had it been all about now. … Standing with an old man looking over a far country at dawn or at evening, a country so far it was made of time not space. Standing, yes, at a cave’s mouth with that old man who had a star on his forehead. Standing, being shown that country, why, how had they come there. Pierce struggled to keep the softly closing doors open, the doors into the further-back parts of the dream, years-long parts, the doors closing blindly, why must they, why. Oh yes. Oh I remember Years-long, his education at the hands of difficult masters … Or was it only the one master, the old man, in different disguises? The savage unwittingness bred out of him by tasks he could still sense, could taste but not remember, puzzles to solve and paradoxes to resolve, oh I see, I get it, but whatever had they been, duality, identity, metaphor and simile. Journeys, or illusions of journeys, for it seemed, had seemed, had kept on being proved or revealed to him that he had not ever left the confines of the deep-down place where this schooling had gone on, not till now; not till he was taken by the hand and led up, up a long earth-damp tunnel following the old man’s lantern, and out the cave’s mouth, to be shown the way into the far lands; clear air real at last, dawn winds ruffling his hair and the master’s robe as they stood together there to part forever. He knew his task; he knew his arms and his enemies. And he saw, by the old man’s clear sad eyes, that oh he would do his best, he would, but that he would forget it all, everything he had learned, his task, his education, who he was and where he had come from, everything; would remember, when he had traveled far, nothing but how far he had traveled; would remember only and vaguely that he was a stranger here in this sad country, in these sad streets, in this sad dark cell where he waited for the girl to bring him sandwiches and milk and Oh yes! Pierce came truly awake, remembering. A tray of sandwiches and milk brought him as usual by the smiling girl, the child who had been so kind, teasingly kind, as though she were not really sorry for him at all; the tray brought him as usual, as it had been for years, the only break in his work, what work, his years-long education down here, that cot, this lamp, those books—only today there was a letter propped against the glass, a letter. A letter! He didn’t have to open it, just the sight of it was enough, he remembered suddenly everything: who he was, how he had come there, oh yes! Yes! The whole earlier part of the dream, the aged master, the task, the words of power learned, the far country seen, that was all his sudden memory as he picked up the letter, a blank bond envelope glowing like milk glass; memory, washing him like clean water. Oh yes, oh God what a relief to remember and not lose it. Pierce lay still on Spofford’s bed feeling with deep gratitude his possession of his dream, a sensual pleasure like the scratching of an itch or being washed in clean water. Amazing, amazing. Why, what is it, how can flesh and blood come up with such stuff, how can flesh feel it. My lord life is strange. How is that Meaning comes to be? How? How does life cast it up, shape it, exude it; how does Meaning come to have physical, tangible effects, to be felt with a shock, to cause grief or longing, come to be sought for like food; pure Meaning having nothing to do with the clothes of persons or events in which it is dressed and yet not ever divorceable from some set of such clothes? A star on his forehead. A star. The mosquito with an enormous racket came close to his ear again, and settled, instantly ceasing its noise. Pierce waited with awful cunning for it to get comfy. After a long moment, when its delicate proboscis was inserted, itch-fluid flowing, Pierce could locate it exactly; and with a swift box to his ear he slew it. He grunted with relief, rolling his trophy into a pellet between his fingers, his ear ringing from the blow. A bug in his ear. There were stories of people driven mad by unextractable bugs lodged in the ear canal. He stretched across the bed’s terrain and tasted the cool air passing unhindered through the little house and as though through his body too. He had a sudden percipience, a pearl seemingly distilled from the clear waters of his dream, of how he could go about getting out of hock to Barnabas College and perhaps make a future for himself that was not a cell. Yes. Simple. Not easy, but simple. It would take nothing but cunning, and years of work; but some of those years of work had already been put in, under that lamp, among those books Dawn was coming. The window was a pale square of greenish light, a fretwork of dark leaves and a white moth fluttering for egress. Pierce threw off the sheet and rose, wide awake; he went to the window to free the moth that beat against the screen. The task had been to forget, of course; what he had seen in his master’s eyes was not reproach but pity; the task had been to forget, to become clothed in forgetfulness as in robes and armor, robes over armor, layer upon layer, so that he could come to pass disguised into this sad city. The very journey and the far country to cross had been forgetfulness. A hiatus in his work. A long hiatus. But he remembered now. He leaned his elbows on the windowsill, looking out, face in his hands like a gargoyle. In the street, dogs barked; wind chimes, camel bells, a tambourine idly shaken. The stifling caravanserai all awake. She had known all along, of course, who had been keeper or jailer or both; no wonder she had smiled, no wonder she had shown him solicitude but no pity. He could almost hear her laughter behind him. For now the world began to move beneath him once again, dawn winds rising as night turned pale. The tents were struck, the caravans stirred, the drivers cried out and wielded whips: camels, hooting and complaining, rose up, on two legs, on four legs, their tall packs swaying and jingling, exotic goods borne out of the colored centuries. Set out, set out: past the old gate that led to the East the striated sands went on levelly toward the horizon, toward the goldgreen sky whereon blazed a single star before sunrise. Steely-white ovoids with a high unworldly hum were ascending two four six from beyond the arid pinkish mountains, catching the light of the unrisen sun: starships, archons jealous and watchful. Beyond those mountains the fertile plains, the city and the sea. The task lay ahead, stretching so far as to be made of time not space, time’s body, and yet not uncrossably far; and a country he knew, after all, or had once known, a country he had crossed before. Pierce set out, walking backward into oblivion, deep asleep in the Faraways; and he didn’t wake again until Spofford began breaking up kindling for their breakfast fire, and the smell of burning applewood filled the cabin and the chilly morning. THE SOLITUDES NINE O ut of Turin the roads west and northward rose quickly into the mountains, climbing toward the passes of Little St. Bernard and Mont-Cenis; and an endless train of wagons, carts, mules, and men unwound from the Piazza del Castello and upward, carrying mail, news, jewels, and specie (well hidden in the pack trains or sewn in the linings of merchants’ coats, not mentioned at inns and borders) and luxury goods of the Levantine and Asian trade valuable enough to make the overland journey worth the cost—ostrich feathers, drugs, silks, plate. The outlaws, the fugitives and spies, the friars and common people, went over the Alps on foot; the great were carried in litters, surrounded by clanking men-at-arms. The road they followed went up into the high Savoy, through meadows lush and spangled with flowers, into a country of dark firs; beside rivers now rushing and dangerous; between beetling walls of gorges where snow still melted. Snow: Giordano pressed a handful to his lips. He heard someone say that it was from drinking snow-water continuously that the natives of these mountains—the strong squat men and long-armed women whose cottages hung on the points of crags, whose sheep danced from steep to steep—were so often hideously goitered. He supposed that these must be the mountains where witches lived as well, the witches who were prosecuted so relentlessly by his Dominican brothers; stories of the witch-hunters and their dangers and triumphs were the lore of Dominican houses. Down those deep passes perhaps; in those black cave mouths; in those low cottages, roofs piled comically thick with snow, a breath of dark smoke from their chimney-holes. He thought maybe he should go find them, and live with them. Raise winds, and fly. There was a wind rising even then, harsh and searching, and a few snowflakes blown in it like cinders. That night in the cold guest cell he was allotted in a Dominican hospice in the Val Susa he lay awake before dawn, between Matins and Prime, remembering Nola. Brother Teofilo had told him that the earth was not flat, like a dish, but round, like an orange; it seemed right that Teofilo would know this, round as he was himself. Giordano listened to him; he watched the friar draw with a burnt stick the circle of the world, and the outlines of lands on it, a mappamundi —and was content to believe it. Teofilo did not know that the round world Giordano had instantly conceived and assented to when Teofilo drew his picture was a hollow sphere, and contained the lands and peoples, the mountains and the rivers and the air, as an orange contains its meat; what the boy thought Teofilo had drawn a picture of was its outside surface, marked like a plover’s egg, the view God had. Inside was the earth we see. Along the bottom half lay the fields and vineyards; the mountains rose up the curved sides; the sky was the inside of the top, whereon the sun and stars were stuck. Bruno laughed, remembering, and laced his hands behind his head. When Teofilo at last realized what sort of world Giordano imagined, then the struggle began. Giordano’s world was just as round as Teofilo’s, and it made better sense; it was to him so obviously the case that it took him a long time even to grasp what Teofilo was laughing at, and then expostulating about. And when he did grasp it, the difficulties of it seemed overwhelming: What held the air and the light in? How could we live, sticking out into the nothingness? Why did the peoples in the Antipodes not fall off, and keep falling forever? It was absurd. And then on a golden day he sat eating an orange in the winter ruin of the garden, and he turned—it felt like cracked knuckles or crossed eyes all through his being—he turned the round world inside out, like the skin of the orange he was peeling; and all the mountains and rivers, the vineyards and farmsteads and churches, turned with it. The sun and stars flew out to fill the nothing where God lived. The world was outside itself. The world was round. Softly through the hospice of Susa the low bell sounded for Prime. That—that sense of the world turning inside-out like the peel of an orange—was what he had felt standing in the rain in Venice at the stall of the bookseller with the curious ring: that was what had made him laugh. If he put the center of the universe in motion, then what became of its circumference? If he turned the outer spheres inward, what became of spheres? In the center of the old universe had been the earth, in the center of the earth himself, in the center of himself the spheres of the heavens he had built within himself, in the center of them. … If he turned the small universe within him inside-out, then what would happen in the one outside him? He heard the sandals of the postulant whose duty it was to wake the monks for prayer. The sandals approached his door, the postulant struck his door and passed on, calling at each door: Oremus, fratres . Snow was still falling in the spring air as the caravan Giordano joined went up through Novalese to Mont-Cenis. The travelers coming down from the top rode on sledges, a strong marron in front with a strap around his chest pulling, and another up behind with an alpen-stock to steer; on the slick path the sledges shot by, the marrons stoical, the faces of the fur-wrapped foreigners wide-eyed with alarm. All day the snow swirled heavily down from the heights; stuck carts began to burden the trail, the tough little mules waded in snow to their knees. Giordano, terrified and elated, felt his senses swallowed up in it. His caravan called a halt at last at a carter’s village just short of the Col; the villagers expertly tucked all the travelers in among themselves, every cranny could contain a sleeper; the animals were penned and the carts covered. Giordano paid high for a bowl of milk and bread and a share of a mattress stuffed with crackling beech leaves, not far from where the fire glowed. It was still night when he awoke amid the snorers. The inn was a lightless cave. Giordano struggled out from the pile he was ensconced in, and pulled a fur robe with him; he wrapped it around his monk’s robe, and—stepping over and around and sometimes on sleeping dogs and children on the floor—he found a door to go out by. The air was shocking, as still as if all crystal, corrosive in his nose and throat. The storm had passed, and the sky was clear, more clear than he had known it could be: as though he were high up, away from the earth, and within the sphere of air itself. His warm breath hung before his face in a cloud. He gathered his robes and his fur around him and stepped into the yard; his rag-bound feet left black holes like pools behind him in the starlit snow. But was there a sphere of air above the earth, if Copernicus was right? The old earth of Aristotle, black thick and base, collected at the bottom of creation, within finer spheres of water, air, fire. Whatever was lighter—sparks, souls—rose up. But Copernicus said the earth itself rose up, lighter than air, and went sailing; and so which way was up? His heart was full. In the moonless sky the stars and planets stared down or stared away and burned. Burned. There was Cassiopeia’s great chair. Lyra. Draco. The Bear standing on his tail, looking at the North Nail on which the heavens turned. Only they didn’t. The eighth sphere of stars only seemed to turn because the earth turned around once a day, spinning on its toe like an arlecchino . Perhaps there was no eighth sphere. With a sound of not-being, a kind of tinkling indrawn breath, the eighth sphere went away. The stars, liberated, rushed away outward from the earth and from one another; the smaller ones (rushing away even faster) were perhaps not smaller, they were only farther off. Yes! And there might be—must be!—others, too far off to be seen at all. His heart might burst, filled with cold starlight. The Milky Way, a powder like snow, might be stars simply too far away to distinguish from one another, like the blue haze of a far-off vineyard, which is nothing but all the blooming grape-globes seen together. How far off? What could mark the limit? What reason could there be for them to end? Infinite, Lucretius said, who could think of no reason. Cusanus said: a circle, whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere. No. Cusanus had only spoken so of God. It was he, Giordano Bruno, who was saying it of God’s creation, the shadow of God that was the universe. If there was an end to the stars then God was not God. It was not only clear to him, neck bent staring upward, as clear as this air, it was self-evident; he seemed to have always known it, and had simply never said it aloud. Infinite. He felt its infinity tugging at his heart and eyes, and he felt an answering infinity within himself: for if it was infinite outside, then it must be infinite inside as well. Infinite. He stirred his cold feet in the snow, and turned back toward the hostel. The little ponies stamped in their pens, breathing whitely, their shaggy manes powdered with hoarfrost. In the windows of the hostel, candles flickered, and furry smoke filled with sparks rose from the chimney; someone laughed within. Wake up. It wasn’t far from the village to the top of the pass. The sky had only begun to pale, and the dimmest stars—or those farthest off—had disappeared, when the caravan began clambering up the path toward the summit. The great starless darknesses on either hand were not sky but mountains, coming suddenly clear as though they had just awakened and stood up. Between them in the azure there flamed the morning stars. Mercury. Venus. Wet to the knees with snow-melt, Giordano climbed toward them. Earth was a star as they were; and the bright beings who inhabited them, looking this way, saw not a cold stone but another like themselves, aflame in the sun’s light. He hailed them: Brother. Sister. A strange and soundless hum seemed to be filling up his ears and his being, as though the dawn itself were to make a sound in breaking, continuous and irreversible. The star he rode was turning pell-mell toward the sun with all of them aboard it, dwarfish stolid carters, chairs, animals, and men; Bruno laughed at his impulse to fall and clutch the hurtling ball with hands and knees. Infinite. You made yourself equal to the stars by knowing your mother Earth was a star as well; you rose up through the spheres not by leaving the earth but by sailing it: by knowing that it sailed. Sunlight struck the lifting white heads of the peaks, though the snow of the pass was still blue. Giordano had been taught that on the highest mountains the air is eternally still, but dawn winds pierced his robes here, and from the summits glittering streams of snow were slowly blown like banners. The peaks all had names, and the huffing carter who climbed beside Giordano named them, pointing. They sailed too. The caravan stumbled and slid through the cold roaring throat of the Col, out of sight of the dawn, passed by a multitude going the other way, all jostling as in a city alley. Then they came out onto a field of shattered flints and a steep path downward. They had crossed the ridge. The sky was huge and blue, but the far lands Bruno looked out over were still soft and asleep, mountains folded rank on rank, the rest of his life. The path that way—it brought his heart to his mouth to trace it—traversed the mountainsides switching back and forth like a whip; you could see, far far below, the turns you would have to take, and the travelers there who toiled upward. Along the fingernail of silver path that edged the precipice a shepherd walked his sheep along in a single file. Earth turned, coming about like a trireme, beating East; and thus the sun rose, gigantic spark, God visible. Bruno, stock still, hum in his ears and heart in his throat, felt its smile on his cheek. Hermes said: make yourself as God. And Bruno could feel his smile too, like the sun’s. Make yourself as God: Infinite. And Bruno had been infinite even as he had read the words and longed to understand them. Earth gave up its valleys to the sun. The burdened men, cheeks warmed, laughing with relief and apprehension, started downward. Day had come. * * * The next morning Bruno reached the Dominican monastery at Chambéry, in France: he was Brother Teofilo, witch-hunter of Naples. As he stood explaining himself to the puzzled prior in the sunstruck garden, the earth took a sudden northward tilt, and the flagstones rose up to meet his darkening sight. He woke in the infirmary, where he spent Holy Week, sticking-plaster over his eye, head and heart	824,079
The Unexpected Joy of Being Single Locating happily-single serenity (Catherine Gray) (Z-Library).epub	The Unexpected Joy of Being Single Praise for The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober ‘Truthful, modern and real’ Stylist ‘The first half of the book describes in graphic detail Gray’s misadventures as a borderline alcoholic…but the second half jauntily and convincingly argues that sobriety can be just as enjoyable as intoxication.’ Jake Kerridge, The Sunday Telegraph ‘She wants us to us question our reliance on drink and the way society pushes it on us. Mainly, though, without being remotely preachy, she wants to convince anyone who’ll listen that a booze-free life isn’t just worth living, it’s better.’ Hilary Rose, The Times ‘The appealing pitch of Gray’s book is that sober life is not just good for you, it’s actually better fun, too. Sobriety has had a bad rap, being equated since time immemorial with seriousness and dull, muted colours. In fact, sober life offers you the whole rainbow…She writes about her addiction with admirable honesty, and in a tone that is light, bubbly and remarkably rarely annoying.’ Alice O’Keefe, The Guardian ‘Brave, witty and brilliantly written. It’ll make you look at life through sharper eyes. What a revelation.’ Tracy Ramsden, features editor, Marie Claire ‘Haunting, admirable and enlightening’ The Pool ‘Gray’s fizzy writing succeeds in making this potentially boring-as-hell subject both engaging and highly seductive’ The Bookseller ‘Hard to put down! This book combines a riveting, raw yet humorous memoir with actionable and well researched advice for anyone looking for the joy of a sober lifestyle. Catherine Gray combines storytelling and science, creating a throughly readable and unexpectedly educational read. Her contribution to this genre is truly unique. Not only entertaining; it holds a universe of hope for the reader. I highly recommend this wonderful book.’ Annie Grace, author of This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol. Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life ‘Like listening to your best friend teach you to be sober. Lighthearted but serious, it’s packed with ideas, tools, tips and, most importantly, reasons for living a sober life. This book is excellent.’ Eric Zimmer, host of podcast The One You Feed ‘Catherine’s writing style and voice captivate me. She has a way of translating her story into an experience I don’t want to end. I want to drink every drop she produces.’ Holly Whitaker, founder of Hip Sobriety School and co-presenter of Home podcast ‘This book is great. A balanced, informative and entertaining mélange of memoir, sociology and psychology. I identified very strongly with huge sections of it.’ Jon Stewart, guitarist of Sleeper and Leaving AA, Staying Sober blogger ‘Sober is too often equated with “sombre” in our culture. Gray’s book turns that idea on its head. Her experience of sobriety is joyful and life-affirming. A must-read for anyone who has a nagging suspicion that alcohol may be taking away more than it’s giving.’ Hilda Burke, psychotherapist and couples counsellor ‘Catherine Gray really captures the FUN we can have in sobriety. This book challenges the status quo; sobriety sounds as liberating as taking a trip to the jungle. Fun and inspirational. What an important book for our time! A joy to read.’ Samantha Moyo, founder of Morning Gloryville ‘This book is a gamechanger. Everyone deserves to have Catherine hold their hand as they navigate the new world of not drinking – whether exploring alcohol-free periods or going for full on sobriety – and this book enables just that. Wise, funny and so relatable, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober adds colour to the “dull” presumption that often comes with not drinking. A book for the times as sobriety continues to be the “wellness trend to watch”. Keep it in your bag as you navigate the world of not drinking, and let Catherine lead the way for you as she re-defines sobriety in the 21st century.’ Laurie, Girl & Tonic blogger The Unexpected Joy of Being Single The Unexpected Joy of Being Single To my single buddies. There is nothing wrong – and everything right – with you. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single CONTENTS Preface Drunk on Love Introduction I: THE MAKING OF A LOVE ADDICT II: THE UNDOING OF A LOVE ADDICT III: LOCATING SINGLE SANITY IV: GROWING SINGLE JOY V: DEMOLISHING SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED SINGLE FEAR VI: I FORGET AND RE-LEARN LESSONS VII: THERAPY OPENS DOORS IN MY HEAD VIII: WHO ARE SINGLE PEOPLE, ANYWAY? IX: THE ‘HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER’ MARRIAGE MYTH X: COLOUR YOURSELF IN COMPLETELY XI: HOW TO DATE IN MODERATION XII: THE SINGLE HAPPY-EVER-AFTER Sources Acknowledgements The Unexpected Joy of Being Single HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK Select one of the chapters from the main contents list and you will be taken straight to that chapter. Look out for linked text (which is blue) throughout the ebook that you can select to help you navigate between related sections. You can double tap images and tables to increase their size. To return to the original view, just tap the cross in the top left-hand corner of the screen. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single PREFACE Society tends to view single people with a furrow of the brow, a pang of pity, and a ‘There, there, you’ll meet someone soon’ Pats hand. Articles about singles are often illustrated with a disgruntled woman downing a martini, or a lone man in a glittery hat with a birthday cake. [Insert sound effect of a mournful party streamer] We live in a culture that tends to celebrate and exalt couples, but pigeonholes singles as outliers, misfits, oddballs who can’t find someone to love them. Poor singles. Yet, if being single is so terrible, why are more than half of us choosing it over coupling? Simple. Because it’s not terrible. Being single for an extended period – or for life – can be incredibly empowering, fun and emancipating. Being single is a heckofalot better than panic-settling, that’s for sure. I didn’t know this in my twenties, that single is not a failure, that I wasn’t ‘broken’ somehow if I didn’t have a boyfriend. I bought into the idea of the ‘other half’ hook, line and heart-sinker, and felt horribly incomplete when I was solo. I roamed around desperately seeking my missing half, like a bisected panto pony. As a result, I was a totally batshit-crazy love addict. (Still am, sometimes.) Rather than love blooming over me like wisteria, it had me in a poison-ivy-esque chokehold, threatening my very wellbeing. This manifested in lovely behaviour such as internet stalking, fantasizing about marrying people I barely knew, clinging, raging arguments, cheating and snooping. Why am I telling you all of this? I’ve now learned that when you share the darkest parts of your life, and find that thousands of people say ‘Me too’, it transmutes those black memories into spun gold. Sharing is like alchemy. This book is not an attempt to tear down happy couples (I love happy couples), nor is it saying that marriage is claptrap, or claiming that being single is ‘better.’ Single isn’t better . But it’s definitely not less than either. It’s equally as nourishing and joyous an existence. Most books with ‘single’ in the title pivot on ‘How to cure your singleness by finding a partner’. This isn’t one of them. This book is about how to own being single, locate single joy and detach yourself from societal pressure to couple. Singles are often treated as Peter Pans, overgrown adolescents, grownups in training, but actually, they’re the ones who should be given Advanced Adulting awards, since solo life is often no cakewalk. Shooting for single/couple equality will benefit us all. The widespread resistance to being single, the sad-sack stigma attached to it, means that people settle for, and stay in, relationships they don’t truly want. As the acclaimed philosopher Alain de Botton says, ‘Only once singlehood has completely equal prestige with its alternative, can we be sure that people can be free in their choices’. In other words, campaigning for single equality is as much for the coupled-up, as it is for the single. Given it means the coupled will then have a newfound freedom chute; the option to be single without sorrow. Maybe this is you. Maybe you’re seeking an escape hatch from your socially endorsed, coupled-up form, that has begun to feel more like a cage, which is why you’ve picked up this book? Maybe you’re digging deep to see if you have the guts to go single. Read on and you’ll see, there’s nothing to be scared of. We’ll talk later about how ‘They lived happily ever after’ should read ‘They lived happily for a bit’, given that research shows that marrying only gives a brief bump in contentment. We’ll talk about how being attached only actually makes you one per cent happier. Our perceptions are that relationships are euphoria-givers, but the hard evidence, the reality, doesn’t bear up to that wildly romanticized expectation. Singledom is a choice. People aren’t single because nobody wants them. They’re single because they happen not to want the people who want them. Or maybe they’re not even looking. The question ‘Why are you single?’ is nonsensical. Because we just are. Sometimes you’re in a relationship, and sometimes you’re not, and there’s no reason for it. Single is a result of a tangle of happenstance, choices and chance. Sometimes a relationship ends in marriage, and sometimes it doesn’t, and that doesn’t mean the relationship was a bust. Similarly, a divorce is not a ‘failure’ of any kind. It’s actually warrior-level brave to walk away from a marriage that’s no longer working, given the way marriage is thrown up onto a pedestal in our society. Divorcees are rebels with a cause. Being single should be just as validated and respected by society as being in a couple. Now that we’re the majority, rather than the minority, maybe the stereotypes of ‘sad single’ and ‘smug married’ can be jettisoned once and for all, and we can see that both lifestyle choices come with their pros and cons. Singles are not half people, we are full people, and perfectly complete exactly the way we are. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single DRUNK ON LOVE FEBRUARY, 2002 I’ve been on three dates with a charismatic, smooth, handsome older man – Daniel. I’ve decided that Daniel is The Guy. Every day, at work, I keep half an eye on my Nokia just in case its screen illuminates green and that wondrous little envelope appears. Every night, after I finish work, I go home and dial-up the internet. Bing, bong, jjjjhhhhh, bong, bing, screeleebop, repeat. Several minutes later, I am online. Booyah! I sit in front of my cathmermaid@hotmail.com * homepage and click on my inbox. I am looking for a fix. My substance. Relief from this constant craving. I am seeking an email from Daniel, ideally arranging our next date. It’s not there. Fucksticks. I sit there, for the next two hours, constantly hitting ‘refresh’ on the computer. Refresh, refresh, refresh. I really do. When I get bored of my clicking, I read articles on vacuous websites with titles such as ‘How to get him hot for you’, or ‘21 signs he’s nuts about you’ or ‘Men on their 19 date-dealbreakers’. It’s imperative I learn this poppycock, in order to bag Daniel. It’s like I’m revising for a test. OK, so I need to: play with my hair, not respond straight away, be busy for the first two dates he suggests, reveal legs or cleavage but never both. Check, check, check. Refresh, refresh, refresh. I am totally oblivious to the fact that I’m obsessively clicking my inbox like a rat in a laboratory cage. A rat with a button that dispenses a drug. I think my behaviour is normal. My behaviour was not normal. I was a raging love addict. Have you seen Inside Out ? It’s one of the most mind-bendingly profound films of the past decade. (I know it’s meant for kids. #sorrynotsorry) Anyhow, the film sets up a metaphor whereby all of us have islands in our brains, islands that make up our personality. The little girl in it, Riley, has Hockey Island, Goofball Island, Friendship Island, Family Island… you get the picture. The islands are the most important things in her life. When Riley turns into a teen, Tragic Vampire Romance Island, Fashion Island and Boy Band Island emerge from the water. As I was watching Inside Out , I experienced an epiphany. If you had mapped my personality islands in my twenties, there would have been Booze Island, a Mordor-style isle filled with lost handbags, nightclubs like Be At One , slavering demons and bottomless abysses. But the island that would have been just as big, and just as malevolent, would have been Man Island. It was constantly illuminated, shaking and beset with thunderstorms, like a possessed amusement park. When I gave up drinking aged 33, I decided it was also about time that I tackled Man Island. I needed to shrink Man Island into more of a dinky Isle of Wight, rather than a sprawling Ireland-sized realm. I needed to make it less dramatic, less fearful and less all-important. More of an aside kinda island. A pleasant destination, rather than a whole country. So that’s what I set about doing. And when I did so, I discovered a new island, an alternative, that I unexpectedly fell in love with. Single Island. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single * Millennials: this was back in the days when we all chose ludicrous email addresses. Think hotrod1979@hotmail.com, lusciouslipslucy@yahoo.co.uk, beerpongbarry@outlook.com. Without ever thinking that these would have to go on our CVs. We soon learned. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single INTRODUCTION Monomania: Exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing. (Extracted from the Oxford Dictionary ) Oneomania: Exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm with finding The One. (Extracted from my head) I’m going to level with you. I am still a love addict. I can’t claim to be fixed. Nope. Sorry. That would be a bare-faced lie. Alas, I am still the woman who stares saucer-eyed at her text messages, watching her phone like a TV, breathlessly awaiting a reply when those tantalizing iPhone dots appear. I still have to gently slap myself around the face to stop the Yosemite Wedding fantasy (woodland-themed, if you must know, a little bit Narnian, with harpists and flutists, and I will wear...oh rats, there I go again gentle slap). I still crush like a paper bag whenever a man I’ve only had two dates with, and barely know, who I’ve spent a grand total of (drum roll) seven hours with, ghosts me. I’m still that person. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. However, I have managed to dial my oneomania down from urgent, hysterical, phone-stabbing, triple-messaging (‘Are you OK? Have you had an accident?!’). It helped enormously that I took a whole year off dating, during which I didn’t so much as hold a man’s hand. It helped that I read as much as I could about why love addiction happens, all of which I will impart to you. It helped that I stopped giving people the power to puff or deflate me. When I was chronically love-addicted, I was like an inflatable person; reliant on praise to pump me up and shrinking into a glum little heap when I felt rejected. A SPINSTER AGED 33 My first love rock bottom came a couple of months before my final alcohol rock bottom. My dad, now sadly departed, started calling me a ‘spinster’ aged 33. And no, he wasn’t yanking my chain. This was no ‘just rattling your cage!’ joke. He was being straight-down-the-line serious that I was a spinster, and what the devil was I gonna do about it. This ‘You’re a spinster’ conversation came about because of a visit we’d just had to my aunt and uncle. During which, the question ‘So, any danger of you getting married, Catherine?’ was asked. I explained that I’d just split up with a guy who hadn’t been treating me well, who I’d lived with for a year, and that I felt good about the decision. My uncle frowned and said ‘Well, you’re not getting any younger,’ which my dad guffawed at. When we left, I turned to my dad, laughed nervously, and said ‘They’ve started treating me like a spinster!’ He said, matter-of-fact, unflinchingly, as was his way: ‘Well, you are a spinster .’ We then had a huge argument in the car, during which I cried, said I wasn’t a spinster, and he shouted at me that I was a spinster. It was bizarre. I was utterly distraught. Later that day, I went for a long run along the River Lagan, sat on a leafy riverbank and full-body-sobbed. Once I’d cried myself out, I tried to figure out why this had wounded me so much. I knew full well, rationally, that this was ridiculous fifties Mad Men -esque misogyny, and yet it had cut me deep. I explored my wound and found a thorn buried deep inside. A thorn of Failure. That was it. Huh. This was what had scored my side so brutally. I felt like I’d failed as a woman, as a person, because I hadn’t found my life partner yet. I felt unchosen, unwanted, left on the shelf. While also knowing, intellectually, that this was nonsense. I knew that I had just finished a toxic relationship and was, at the age of 33, a mere youngster in the grand scheme. A friend once informed me that my photo albums resembled an ego-fluffing trophy room. The sort of room somebody despicable has hidden away, replete with stag antlers, rhino horns and stuffed leopards. I recently looked back over said photo album, with a discerning eye. She was right. It was basically a Rolodex of my exes, with the odd mate thrown in. It was a display cabinet. Of men who had found me to be worthwhile. Now that I look at this album, it’s highly creepy. My catalogue of kills. I really did define myself by the men I’d slept with. But, d’you know what? I completely understand why I was the way I was. I don’t judge my twentysomething self. I’d been taught that romantic relationships are the most important thing , over and over, through subliminal (or blatant) societal messaging. As have you. SETTLE DOWN, QUICK! Here’s the thing. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that a happy-ever-after always involves finding a partner. The person. Our lobster. Our other half. How is it that, in the 21st century, getting married is still seen as a woman’s greatest accomplishment? Is it my imagination, or is that undercurrent really there? (I think it’s really there.) And, it’s not just women who feel this intense pressure. Men feel it too. Yet, despite this proposal press-gang, millions of us are increasingly choosing to stay single. The single population is growing at ten times the rate of the population in general. A typical British millennial is expected to live alone, without a partner, for an average of 15 years. The most recent data, collated by Mintel in their Single Lifestyles 2017 report, found that 51 per cent of Brits aged 25–44 are now single (including divorcees). Back in 2016, the Office for National Statistics reported that the single/divorced slice of the population was 35 per cent. Could that seriously be a jump of 16 per cent in one little year? We’re leaving marriage later and later. The Office for National Statistics released a report in 2018 that said, ‘For marriages of opposite-sex couples, the average (mean) age for men marrying in 2015 was 37.5 years, while for women it was 35.1 years.’ In other words, the average bride was 35 years old, while the average groom was circa 38. This revelation triggered a slew of press headlines, such as ‘Rise of the Older Bride: average age for women to walk down the aisle is now over 35.’ Out of these 2015 marriages, 75 per cent of the men and 76 per cent of the women were marrying for the first time. * Six in ten brides were over 30. In 1970, average marriage ages were 27 for men and 25 for women. ** So, compared to 1970, men are getting married 11 years later, while women are getting married 10 years later. Astounding, huh? What’s more, 42 per cent of marriages end in divorce. Meaning that almost half of those who walk hopefully and beaming down the aisle, wind up suddenly single later in life. SINGLE IS NOW THE NORM Before I dug up this data showing that singles have now tipped over into becoming the majority, I wrote reams of cool stuff about norm-subverting, which then had to hit the cutting room floor, once I found out that we are now the norm . I didn’t know that. Did you? However, even though it is that way, it doesn’t feel that way. It still feels rebellious, like trend-bucking, to be single later in life. Why? Because we are still living in the shadow of the nuclear-shaped family and groaning under the weight of our parents’ expectations. We’ll talk more about this later, but during the raising and adulting of the Baby Boomer * generation, there was an almighty marriage spike, which is likely why our parents are so perplexed that we’re not married like they were by our age. (If you’re aged 25–50, you’re most likely the offspring of Baby Boomers.) Our parents and the media have taught us to fear being single. I know this fear, intimately. It’s why I was never single in my twenties, and instead swung from boyfriend to boyfriend. I thought any relationship, no matter how toxic, was better than none. When I wasn’t with someone I felt flat and dark, like a pitch-black room that waits for someone to come along, flick on the light, and animate it once more. And ironically, given the paramount importance I awarded the preservation of relationships, I was a human wrecking ball. I snooped, cheated, started arguments, all that fun stuff. I would break up with people to push a lever for more attention. In recent years, I’ve managed to stop all of that. I don’t stay in unhealthy relationships, I’m no longer frightened of being single, I can date without losing my marbles, and I’ve now learned to luxuriate in my singleness, rather than look longingly at couples thinking, ‘I want that. Why don’t I have that?’ As I say, I’m not cured of love addiction. It’s still running around inside me, growling for sustenance. But I’ve learned how to live with it. How to tame it, leash it, re-train it, even stroke it. And I’m now genuinely happy as a single. Working on my love addiction has led to me now feeling free of the need to be coupled. In my twenties I was single for a grand total of six months (which were basically spent interviewing potential new boyfriends) and in the past five years I’ve been single for three-and-a-half years . That’s a rise from 5 per cent singleness in my twenties, to 70 per cent in the past five years. LET THE REVERSE BRAINWASH BEGIN So, what are we going to do in this book? How do we proceed? We’re going to de-programme ourselves by talking to psychologists and neuroscientists about the love-hooked messages we get from society, and what goes on in our crazy-in-love brains. We’ll dig around in the messages we get from literature, films and TV, that condition us to be obsessed with romantic love (The Bridget Jones trilogy ended with, of course, a wedding). These messages get under our skin, they dig into our subconscious, they make us think that our happy-ever-after has to involve a couple silhouetted against a sunset. Y’know what? It doesn’t. If you do want to date, I’m going to tell you how I learned to do it moderately , without turning into a deranged Instagram stalker, and without thinking I was in love with some dude I’d known for two weeks. Most importantly, we’re going to locate and free a spring of single joy. And make sure it never goes away again. * The Unexpected Joy of Being Single * I couldn’t locate a reliable, nationwide source of data for the average ages of first marriage. ** The 1970 mean marriage-age figures have been rounded up/down. * Baby Boomers are those born roughly between 1946 and 1964, or those who are between 54 and 72 years old the year this book was published (2018). * Please note: wherever possible, I have been gender-neutral, while also remembering that around nine out of ten of my readers are female. Any heteronormative clangers are just that – accidental – and I apologize in advance for them. All of my ex-boyfriends names have been changed, to protect the innocent and let the guilty off the hook. Namaste bows. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single The Unexpected Joy of Being Single LOVE ADDICTION DEFINED The Priory, one of the most highly regarded addiction-treatment centres in Britain, defines love addiction as ‘characterized by feelings of strong obsessive behaviours of which the sufferer feels compelled to repeat regardless of the consequences’. My interpretation is this: any addiction is the insanity of doing the same thing over and over, despite the fall-out, and expecting different results. Dr Vik Watts and Mel Davis, from The Priory’s addiction team, pull out the classic behaviours of love addiction as: ‘1. Clinging to an idealized relationship, despite a different reality. 2. Returning time and time again to an abusive and damaging relationship. 3. Placing responsibility for emotional wellbeing on others. 4. Craving attention from many different relationships and seeking new sources of attention.’ I can absolutely say that I identify with every single one of those four. Yep, yup, tick, did all of that. BINGO. I win at love addiction! Let’s go through each and I’ll tell you what my symptoms looked like: 1. CLINGING TO AN IDEALIZED RELATIONSHIP, DESPITE A DIFFERENT REALITY I fantasized about movie-style relationships, tried to get my relationships to that level, and felt disappointed when I couldn’t. I was simultaneously an idealist and a critic. I would do anything to avoid being single, including putting up with substandard treatment and/or dating people I wasn’t that into. I put being in a couple above my own happiness. 2. RETURNING TIME AND TIME AGAIN TO AN ABUSIVE AND DAMAGING RELATIONSHIP As you’ll read later on, some of the behaviour I put up with – and exhibited myself – was extraordinarily screwed-up, because I was in denial as to what the reality was. If I sensed a relationship was beginning to falter, I reacted by snooping and creating dramas. Which, believe it or not, were attempts at survival strategies. ‘If I find out what’s wrong, maybe I can fix it.’ And: ‘If I threaten to leave, maybe he’ll beg me to stay and realize he can’t live without me!’ But these invasive/mercurial tactics actually just ransacked the relationship, rather than ‘saving us’. 3. PLACING RESPONSIBILITY FOR EMOTIONAL WELLBEING ON OTHERS I hadn’t the foggiest that my happiness was my own responsibility. Say what? If I was blue, it was my boyfriend’s fault. He needed to make me happy. He was failing at his job. Bad boyfriend. 4. CRAVING ATTENTION FROM MANY DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIPS AND SEEKING NEW SOURCES OF ATTENTION When I wasn’t in a relationship, I sought one with the same level of urgency as you seek a place to live. My mates called me a ‘love monkey’ for swinging from man to man, like a monkey swings from tree to tree. Even when I was coupled, I solicited attention from other men. I confused sex with intimacy. I had sex, when what I wanted was intimacy. And sex was more like a moving art installation, intended to elicit approval and applause, rather than a loving act. I am happy to report that I’ve now managed to cease all such behaviour. PHEW. But I still remain vigilant to any of this creeping back in. Always vigilant. If you think that you too might be a love addict, don’t feel disheartened by that label. ‘I don’t love the term ”love addict” since it seems to imply a lifelong problem,’ Dr Jenny Taitz, a certified psychologist and author of How to be Single and Happy , tells me. ‘At any moment, we can choose a new action, and create new patterns of behaviour that link to our hopes. Our past doesn’t need to dictate our future.’ I agree. I think of addiction more as experiential than defining of me. If I was going to be really pedantic, I would say that ‘I have experienced love addiction, and am still prone to exhibiting signs of it,’ but that’s a bloody mouthful, and I can’t be arsed to type that repeatedly, so just take ‘love addict’ as shorthand for that. I’m going to wear that label, but you certainly don’t have to. And most of all, if you feel like you might be hooked on love too, there’s hope. Change is entirely possible. People change all the blinking time. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO GET MARRIED When I am four, I am able to climb the towering oak tree at the end of our road, right to the top. None of the boys can do it. I’m the only one. I’m the king of the castle, while they’re the dirty rascals. But then I realize, aged five, that I am a girl and, ideally, girls don’t climb trees. Girls are meant to be queens , not kings. Instead, I start making ‘perfume’ out of smushed up rose petals and tiny drowning insects. I carefully place my creation, tongue out with the effort of not spilling, into the hot press to ‘bake.’ And then I slather myself – and my grimacing mum – with it. Already, I am very aware that a girl’s purpose is to attract. That my ultimate destiny is marriage. Aged seven, my friends and I sit on the kerb of our street in Carrickfergus, working out our percentage compatibility with the names of boys we like, who are currently playing footie and don’t give a flying monkeys about us. I swing like a confused compass between what I really want to do (tear around doing wheelies on my brother’s BMX) and what I’m told I should want to do (play with the doll I have that pees when I give it a drink. That’s literally all it does rolls eyes). If my purpose is to achieve male approval, then I am already failing at it. I feel rejected by both father figures in my life. As I grow into a gawky tween, my father appears to be consistently underwhelmed by me. My parents divorce and my mum remarries when I’m 10; I acquire a stepfather who openly loathes me. My new stepfather makes my brother and I knock if we want to come into the living room (we are banned from it after 7pm), types us letters with bullet points of what we are doing wrong (too much butter on knives in the dishwasher!), nicknames us ‘the lodgers’ and makes it crystal clear that we are moving out on our 18th birthdays, come hell or high water. If friends of mine spontaneously ring the doorbell, he sends them away with a roar and a slam of anger, for not having a prior appointment to visit. I don’t know what he expects; a scroll sent via a messenger boy on a horse? I escape my home life by reading. By 12, I have read a contraband copy of Forever by Judy Blume about seven times. I am drunk on the romance it describes. One day, I will love a man so much that I will let him put his ‘Ralph’ inside me. My stepfather reads my diaries. My best friend, Sam, and I creep out of the house the next night and cry dramatically as we lower the rest of my diaries, the undiscovered ones, into a pond in Dudley’s Priory Park, as if we’re burying a beloved pet. We walk home whispering frantically about running away to live in Birmingham, where we will shop at the rag market, pierce several parts of our bodies, date guitarists and go to Snob’s every Friday. Deeply unhappy, I ask my dad if I can come and live with him, on Islandmagee, in Ireland. My happiest days are summers spent there, skimming stones in the horseshoe bay, crunching cinnamon lozenges, playing Swingball, repeatedly watching the 4 Non Blondes video on MTV, and playing with his three Jack Russells. He says no. I am devastated. Throughout all of this turmoil, I am incredibly close to both my mother and my stepmother (my dad’s partner, Ruth). It’s either a coincidence or a fait accompli that later, as an adult, I find forging lifelong female friendships a doddle, while with men, I never manage to make anything stick, even a platonic friendship. APPROVAL-HUNTING At 14, I replace my devotion to horse riding, with nightclubbing. One of my closest friends at school drops me, writing me a letter saying that I have ‘become obsessed with boys’, whereas I used to be all about bands, good books and having a laugh. I am hurt, but I reason that she’s got it all wrong, not me. I swivel and point myself towards my other friends instead. One day in our French lesson, the teacher asks us to stand up whenever we hear a French adjective that fits us. The class goes up and down like yo-yos as he calls out ‘long hair’, ‘blonde’, ‘tall’ and then ‘pretty’, which only the popular, smug girls stand up for. Then he calls out ‘ugly.’ Balls. I have to stand up, don’t I? Everyone can see that I am. I stand up. Nobody else does. The teacher tells me to sit down, says it was just a joke, and clumsily starts to tell me that he thinks I’m actually...before realizing he can’t, and trailing off. Something magical happens. My dumpy teenage frame stretches as I grow tall, cheekbones emerge from my doughy face, straighteners land in Boots and that nice man John Frieda brings us hair serum so that I can tame my nuclear cloud of hair. I go to see my dad, and a visiting friend of his circles me as if I’m a horse, looks me up and down, and declares me a ‘Thoroughbred’. My dad turns to me, surprised, and something shifts behind his eyes. Later he says, ‘It stirred something in me that I’d never felt before. And then I realized what it was. Pride.’ My mum finally kicks my stepdad out when I’m 15, the trigger being him chasing me around the house threatening to lamp me because I’ve eaten something I wasn’t allowed. He writes me a letter saying that he hopes we can all work things out, starting the letter, inexplicably, by saying that I am becoming an ‘attractive young woman’. It’s the first nice thing he’s ever said to me, and I cling to it. Soon after, my mum meets my current stepfather, Stewart, who is a king among men. He builds an extra wall in his house with his bare hands, in order to create me a bedroom of my own. From the day I meet him onward, I never feel anything but accepted, cherished and loved. Stewart never admires – or derides – my appearance, other than to say amusing things like, ‘You look like a....physiotherapist’ when I ask him if he likes my new top. Who I am as a person, that’s what matters to him. He rewards honesty and kindness and humour, and doesn’t give a stuff what I look like in my Jane Norman dress. But by then, my blueprint of seeking male approval, my expectation of rejection, is bone-deep. And given that my newfound passable prettiness once wielded the power to turn disgust to acceptance , I award my looks supreme appearance in my adolescent brain. I AM A DOLL’S HOUSE And so henceforth, all of my self-esteem depends on how I look. I purchase/shoplift my self-worth from make-up counters. By 17, I spend an hour-and-a-half getting ready for sixth form. Leaving the house without a full face of make-up is as unthinkable as leaving the house stark-vagina-naked. If I’m having a bad hair day, I simply don’t go to college. Appearance first, learning second. If somebody doesn’t fancy me, I take that as the Most Mortal Wound. I need everyone to fancy me, because I think that if they fancy me, it means I’m worthwhile. I hop aboard a Rolodex of constant boyfriends. It’s very important to me that my boyfriend-of-the-time thinks I’m the most attractive girl. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever been out with,’ my boyfriend Tony offers. ‘But am I the most attractive girl you’ve ever seen? I mean, apart from on telly?’ He tries to change the subject. I am like a doll’s house that is for display only. An intricately painted façade, but with a dull cardboard interior, where you can see the staples and the scruffy seams. Wanting my boyfriends to find me more appealing than anyone else is an utterly unattainable chimera. But without that assurance, without them being complicit in that illusion, I feel adrift, lost, unanchored. I fail to realize that people don’t choose to go out with people based on their exteriors; they choose them based on the entire package. I don’t crave approval of my personality, because as far as I am concerned, my only worth is in my outer shell. Given the founding year of my acceptance by men was the year I started styling my hair, wearing make-up and pouring myself into tight clothes, it’s imperative that I keep these game-changers up. In the first few months of a relationship, I get up half an hour before him to apply foundation and mascara, and iron my hair, because I truly believe that if he wakes up next to the Actual Me, he’ll be appalled. I need him to believe in Maybelline Me. Because there’s no way in hell I was born with it. SKETCHING BOYFRIENDS A night out is ‘pointless’ if I don’t pull. And thankfully, Nineties Birmingham is awash with #everydaysexism to prop up my self-esteem. Lines like ‘If I say you have a beautiful body will you hold it against me?’ or ‘Love that dress. It would look even better on my bedroom floor’ or ‘Nice legs, what time do they open?’ are still acceptable. I can’t go out into the world without men shouting at me about my bum. Boyfriends are empty pages of my sketchbook. I draw in heroism and magnificence, when all I have is a rudimentary outline. But they don’t fall for the real me either. They may as well fall for Jessica Rabbit, given I’m just a collage of ‘What Men Find Sexy’ articles. I read A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams at university and feel a rubber-band twang of recognition when I read about Blanche DuBois. I style myself as a poker-playing, wisecracking, boozy broad. I seek out men who are a challenge. I love meeting a man who is indifferent to me, beating him at pool, and sparking all around him until I light a flicker of warmth in the cold coal of his eyes. Until the fireball-bright look of ‘yes’ passes between us. I am a sexual vigilante who brags about sleeping nude and derides my best friend’s soft PJs and cuddly toys. Bed is a stage, not a cocoon , forgodsake. I am more pop-up performance art, than person. I badger my university friends to play strip poker after nights out, so that the tone can turn from wholesome to wanton. I am like the pouty, nearly naked person who parades about on Instagram, except I don’t have social media to strut around, so I use Birmingham’s Broad Street instead. I stride around like an open-mouthed Pac-Man, feeding on the compliments I gather as I go. When I drink, I feel ten-feet tall; being sober shrinks me. At first glance, you look at me and see supreme confidence, a sway of the hips, exaggerated laughter, a game face. But if you’re observant you’ll see a person at war with themselves. An irritated tug at rebellious hair, feet shoved into too-small shoes, fingertips bitten to blood and superglued to fake nails. Beneath the swagger of this showpony, there’s civil unrest. I read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying , which constructs an erotic wonderland and gives me the term ‘zipless fuck’: shorthand for sex without strings, commitment or ulterior motives. That’s what I tell myself I’m doing, but the truth is, there’s nothing zipless about my motives. I want intimacy, affection, validation and I’m looking for it in all the wrong places, by letting my clothes cascade onto floors. I drink to feel close to people and wind up too close. I pour wine into myself to feel sexy, and end up being too sexy. I don’t know how to halt the intimacy acceleration halfway. I wake up the next morning and for a blissful second, I don’t know where I am, or who I’m with. Then I feel shame cover me. I don’t want to do this, so why do I keep doing it? Because I am addicted to them wanting me – the conquer, the overthrow. That underbelly snap of mutual attraction. Which sends lust swimming from my navel to my hip bone, where it pauses to tumble-turn, and then surges down the inside of my thigh. A night on the lash and the lust comes with consequences; both appear to hate me come the morning. Sunrise smashes the spell, like a collective morning comedown at a rave. Last night desire pulled me into its lap; at daybreak it boots a bewildered me back into reality. As Carl Jung said, ‘Shame is a soul-eating emotion,’ and that’s how it feels. Like tiny moths eating at my spirit, moths that are hidden in the sad eiderdown of those mornings. I try to sleep it away, drink it away and laugh it away by turning my trysts into anecdotes, but the shame moths have burrowed under my skin and are now chomping away at my soul. LOVE-ADDICT LULLABIES To get to sleep, to erase these episodes from my mind, I compose love-addict lullabies. Montages of things I’d seen in movies, like [insert man of the month] chasing a car to stop me leaving, or diving into foaming white-water rapids to save my favourite necklace. I lie there tingling with vorfreude , imagining my future wedding, just as an aspiring astronaut pictures being the first to set foot on Mars, or a showjumper envisages clearing a tricksy water obstacle. I listen to The Corrs ‘What Can I Do’, Extreme’s ‘More than Words’, Big Mountain’s ‘Baby I Love your Way’ and Aqualung’s ‘Brighter than Sunshine’, and fantasize about making men love me. And they do. I am a hit. But I can’t handle true intimacy; as soon as they come too close, look too close, I pull away and pivot towards my next conquest. My first bona fide person addiction is the Daniel we’ve already talked about, the one of the constant email refreshing. I date him when I’m 22 and write down every detail of our dozen or so dates. I read the date logs over and over and record every compliment he ever gives me diligently, like an accountant tallying profits. But when he tells me that he loves me, during sex, perhaps accidentally, I stare at him, horrified. The truth is, I don’t love him, I love the idea of him. My dad tells me I’m ‘getting bingo wings’ when I turn 24, so I panic and join a gym. (I spend the next five years thinking I have fat arms, when I definitely don’t.) If I have a spot, he will say, ‘What is THAT?’, angrily pointing at the offending item as if I’ve tattooed a spider on my face. He’s just trying to help me, I think. I’m failing him, by becoming unattractive. I believe that female beauty is like a flower that only blooms for a short while, then browns and droops, and slowly drains of colour. I am terrified of this wilt, even in my mid-twenties. If anyone criticizes my appearance, I take this as a terrifying sign that my wilt has begun. And now what will I become? My alcohol dependence and my love addiction prop each other up, like smashed people trying to walk home from a party. My drinking enables me to secure boyfriends, and when it all falls apart, my drinking is there to console me, or to catapult me on to the next conquest. When boyfriends break it off with me, I react by crying and drinking until catatonic, while listening to the Foo Fighters’ ‘Best of You’ or Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ on repeat. When I break it off with them, I bowl out, get blotto and find a new bloke. THE GIRL WHO CRIED THE ONE There are plenty of men to serve as an energy source for my self-worth. By now, I am working at Cosmopolitan magazine as a writer, and I go out-out four or five times a week, to drink my head off and flirt outrageously. My job gifts me with assignments like ‘Find 35 men and convince them to pose naked for charity’. Basically an excuse to chat up random men in the street, on work’s time and dime. I secure all 35 within a week and my colleagues give me a thunderous round of applause. I go on dates with several of them after the photo shoot. I bring boyfriend after boyfriend home, like a proud cat with a mouse, so much so that my family stops learning their names and settle on ‘Whatshisface’ or ‘Yer man’ or ‘Cath’s new boyfriend’. I laugh when people call me a ‘Maneater’ and shrug when they exclaim, ‘Another one, already?!’ They shake their heads in disbelief when I swear that this one is different. I have become the girl who cried The One. Time after time, my friends comment on how my relationships get ‘intense’ really quickly. And they do. We plan kids’ names after just a couple of months – weeks even. I think it’s because we’re in a romantic spin, but really, it’s a ‘just add people’ mix, the Instant Whip of relationships. Men are potential suitors first, people second. If they’re married, I simply stop talking to them. ‘Bah. Irrelevant.’ Birthday parties are not chances to celebrate my friend, they are a chance to meet heaps of potential new suitors. I look at who’s checking me out on the train, rather than at the golden fields streaming past. I am a deft catastrophizer, so much so that one boyfriend starts calling it ‘Cathastrophizing’. If my boyfriend isn’t answering the phone one evening, he’s definitely having a threesome. If he wants to ‘talk’, he’s definitely going to split up with me. I have a talent for doomscaping ice palaces out of the teeniest, tiniest snowflakes. I am convinced that every other woman in my boyfriend’s life poses a threat. I quiz them about their exes, convinced that if I can gather enough data about what went right/wrong, I can win the game. On high alert for love rivals, I scan any new environment for more attractive women. Whenever I do catch a boyfriend sneaking a glance at another girl, I feel it like a hot rod of pain. A WRECKING BALL When I’m 27, I meet Seb and fall deeply in love and, happily, he does the same. Finally, I’ve found a relationship in which we’re both equally keen. The preservation of the relationship is my ultimate goal. Yet, I fly it into a wall like a kamikaze pilot. Just as a teenage boy smashes a model airplane because it’s not ‘perfect’, I blow things up on a regular basis. I burn our bond to the ground, rebuild it, demolish it, reconstruct carefully, hack it to smithereens, piece it back together, and then wonder why it’s a lopsided, fragile-as-fuck eyesore. I do things like dump him in a rage, and then, when he asks for a few days for him to process our break-up-then-make up, I refuse to allow it. He screens my calls during his ‘headspace’ time, so I go to the payphone at the end of the street and repeatedly call him from that instead, tricking him by using a different number. I cannot stand not having access to him at all times . Because he is my everything . And that’s how it’s supposed to be, right? Our relationship buckles beneath my movie-standard expectations. I carefully orchestrate date-cute scenes, by organizing weekends looking for wild ponies in the New Forest, or cocktails overlooking Santorini’s caldera, and then feel disappointed when they’re not what I expected. I terrorize him with my demands, tantrums and bad drunken behaviour, until, finally, all of my Cathastrophizing comes true, and he dumps me three years in, shortly after my 30th birthday. He’s done. My heart is not just cracked in two, it’s decimated. But my immediate response is to swivel and find a new boyfriend, as if I have just lost a job and need to find a new source of income pronto. I am online dating within a month. When I can’t get a date, I sit and drink-dial my roster of men from home. I am the female equivalent of the man who texts after midnight saying, ‘You still up? Wanna come over?’ I don’t really care who comes over, as long as someone does. Anything, other than being alone. I am in the market for a man who will provide the boyfriend experience, at 1am, while the men I dial are usually in the market for something entirely different. The Unexpected Joy of Being Single STORYBOOKS AND SCREENS SHAPE LOVE ADDICTS Let’s step out of my story for a moment, and into the cultural landscape as a whole. To take in an aerial sweep of the messages I was – and you were – receiving. Kids are like Play-Doh. They are easily shaped. Here is a nice chat I recently had with a five-year-old. Five-year-old: ‘Where’s your house?’ Me: ‘Well, I don’t have one, I do something called “rent”.’ Five-year-old: ‘You don’t have a house?! MUMMMM, she doesn’t have a house!’ Five-year-old, a few seconds later, once she’s digested this shock: ‘Are you married?’ Me: ‘Nope.’ Five-year-old, hands on hips: ‘Why not?’ Me: ‘Because I haven’t met anyone I want to marry.’ Five-year-old: ‘OK. Do you have children? Looks pointedly at my belly Me: ‘Ummm, anyway, shall we go upstairs and play?’ I find it fascinating that a five-year-old already knows that these three things – property, marriage and children – are markers of a ‘successful’ adult. How do they know that?! These messages get encoded young, no? One of the ways we are conditioned very early on is through fairytales. Let’s consider some of the messages a five-year-old could glean from the most popular ones. Snow White’s stepmother is so jealous of her superior beauty that she tries to kill her – three times. But hey, at least Snow White (along with her band of enchanted woodland friends) is an excellent cook and cleaner for seven men. Cinderella’s only hope of getting away from the Ugly Sisters (ugliness is generally shorthand for being a bell-end, in fairytales) is to fulfil her dreams of going to the ball and landing the prince. Sleeping Beauty is in a cursed coma until a prince kisses her and animates her. Even Ariel, aka the little mermaid, who is indeed a ballsy, father-defying heroine and saves the prince’s life, trades her beautiful voice for legs (that feel like walking on knives) in order to hang out with him. She then dances for him, despite excruciating pain. Beauty is always, always what enchants the princes in these tales. Many of the princes propose before they’ve even talked to the girl for longer than a heartbeat. Modern-day fairytales such as The Princess Bride and Stardust also slot into the narrative mould of beautiful damsel in distress being rescued by a courageous man. One of the reasons Whitney Wolfe started Bumble (a dating app where women have to message men first) was to subvert this man-approaches-woman dynamic. Wolfe	489,881
Zen Encounters with Loneliness (Terrance Keenan) (Z-Library).epub	Zen Encounters with Loneliness Part IV WAYS TO LIVE HAPPILY Zen Encounters with Loneliness 10 LOVE EVERYTHING I read somewhere that the monotheist’s God is an angry god because he has to do everything alone. I think this sense of an angry god is why we are often angry, though we may not know it is why. We are so tired of being alone. We want to be loved, nurtured, understood. One of the world’s great paradoxes that I have experienced but do not understand is that it is precisely what you want that you should give away. Somehow it comes back manyfold: money, time, love. It takes courage to love without expectation or even thought of return, without conditions. Usually, when I want someone to love me, as Iris Murdoch points out so lucidly, I want them to love me , not some abstract intrinsic nature of me. We are trapped by what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the pitches of suchness”—the degrees of value or comparison. We are afraid to lose ourselves even while we know we must. We are afraid of the mystery of love, substituting too often the certainty of desire. Mystery for most people is an interesting uncertainty, something not quite understood. But in love we want to take out the uncertainty. When we do, the mystery goes with it, along with the interest. For a Buddhist love is an incomprehensible certainty. How do we encompass this unconditional hugeness? The “Poet of the Prairie,” William Least Heat-Moon, says, “Only horizon and sky are given up easily. Take the numbing distance in small doses and gorge on the little details that beckon.” And we should, at the same time, as Linda Gregg suggests, “sing as if the sky were listening.” Even Tolkien has written: “He had never before been able to walk into the distance without turning it into mere surroundings . . . [then he found] you could go on and on and have a whole country in a garden.” For love is action. It is not saying or wishing or hoping or longing. And it is in the details. I notice that I love my wife—am filled with my love for her, not by thinking of or desiring her, but by watching her move across a room, catching the tender magic as she handles pie-dough, or as she drifts idly in a canoe, trailing her hand in the water, watching her being in the world in her own small-self way. In a letter Georgia O’Keefe wrote: “It takes time to see, like to have a friend takes time.” We absolutely must give ourselves time to love. In loving one unconditionally, we come to love all. As O’Keefe also writes: “I had nothing but to walk into nowhere and the wide sunset space with the stars.” As Soen Roshi loved to point out, “nowhere” is also “now here.” Further, there are no witnesses to unconditional love, giving and receiving unfrought with meaning. E VERYTHING P OSSIBLE TO BE B ELIEVED I S AN I MAGE OF T RUTH For the moment cars have stopped passing on the main road. Cold crackles the very air over the whole city. A window unlearns itself and the full winter moon rises over the blue neighborhoods. It does not change anything. There is no need to remind the universe you are here. Without conditions, how could it matter? This is the fear we pair with love, that love will not matter, that we will not matter. How can we be centered in that uncaring hugeness? Inertia and monotony are the result of fear. Former poet-laureate Robert Haas speaks of this in regard to Basho and Vermeer: “The extraordinary thing . . . about Basho’s poems or Vermeer’s paintings is that the world is not set against any particular loss or peril to give it intensity or importance, and they do not will into the world any more loss or peril than all of us must suffer as a condition of being alive.” Great Compassion in action. Any part of the world completely seen is the world. When we come to glimpse being in this way no one is surprised by the fullness and the emptiness of things. Again O’Keefe, that long-lived woman who lived alone in the vast empty desert yet who wrought paintings with such loving detail exploded into vastness that they speak to everyone, writes: “My center does not come from my mind. It feels in me like a plot of warm moist well-tilled earth with the sun shining hot on it. . . . It seems I would rather feel it starkly empty than let anything be planted that cannot be tended to the fullest possibility of its growth. . . .” So we must begin loving everything by loving ourselves. With breath we begin and end life. With breath we feel another breathing next to us. There are no thoughts attached. We just do it. Can you not also feel the breath that is more deeply in you than you are yourself? It is love. Breathe it and you breathe everything. Things aren’t supposed to happen according to plan. Plans are conditional. We learn this from John Ashberry, who writes: “It is the lumps and trials / and whether we shall be known / and whether our fate can be exemplary like a star.” Who does not know the burden of living or the debilitating burden of pain? Even as a child I worried about the sadness of things, that the purpose, meaning, value of each little thing would be lost. This is not an uncommon attitude in children. Arnold Lobel has a story called “Tearwater Tea” in which his owl begins to think of chairs with broken legs, things lost behind furniture, broken toys, forks missing tines. The terrible sadness of the lost, broken, and forgotten things brings the owl to tears. The tears fill a kettle and he brews it up for tea. A very refreshing tea! Remembering things, remembering people, knowing them attentively, mindfully, where and as they are—a sadness and a wonder with no blame, kindly, lovingly. Murdoch writes: “Metaphysics and human sciences are made impossible by the penetration of morality into the moment to moment conduct of ordinary life: the understanding of this fact is religion (it makes nonsense of all your solipsistic sophisms). . . . There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.” Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and Lao Tzu arrived independently at the same understanding of nothingness, or shunyata . We should not dismiss it because it is an ancient discovery that came to us as new only recently. Its late arrival in our cultural consciousness has more to do with our own intellectual and spiritual xenophobia than with the validity of the insight. Humanity is not necessary. Nor are we the measure of what is true. “Here is a solution to the problem of creation which is new to Western philosophy: the universe can arise out of nothing because non-existence itself is not characterless or negative. . . . [H]ere is a metaphysical system which starts not with matter or with ideas, but with Law (Tao), non-existence and existence as the three fundamental categories of reality. . . . After Parmenides declared that non-existence cannot exist, Western philosophers never attempted to challenge his dogma. The non-being of Plato and Plotinus, like the empty space of Greek atomists, was given no positive character. Only Einsteinian space-time—which is nothing, yet directs the motion of particles—comes at all close to Lao-Tsu’s concept of non-existence.” 3 However we may imagine this statement to apply to life, it does not, for example, penetrate the cycles of poverty or addiction in which people find themselves, nor can we ever force, with an act of sheer will, this reality to transform our situation. Nothingness remains a concept. I thought I could think my way out of my addiction. If I could just understand it deeply enough I would be able to drink again safely. It’s like trying to think your way out of diabetes or, for that matter, Graves’ Disease. During one counseling session in rehab I tried to talk my way through my thinking about it. In exasperation my counselor threw up his hands and came within inches of my face. He spoke slowly and firmly, “If you’re so fucking smart, what are you doing here?” I had, of course, no answer. I had made a mess of things. I had to sit, listen, and re-learn how to live. There is no recovery pill. Life can only speak life. An alcoholic cannot think his way out of his disease; he has to live his way out. Intellect cannot supersede itself. Intellect raises the questions, but it cannot answer them. It is life itself that resolves them. One has to be open to it, allow it to be blameless, kind, loving. 3 . Wing-Tsit-Chan, quoting H. F. McNair in The Way of Lao Tzu (New York: Prentice Hall, 1963), 8. Zen Encounters with Loneliness Zen Encounters with Loneliness VII. AN ENDLESS VOW S OEN ’ S D RAGON There are some things we know before we had words to tell us we knew them. We are fastened to them though they are not fastened to us. Remember once April hills held the snow and field stones were warm in the sun. I basked like an old dog and found a newt dead by my foot. It’s with me now. The eye sockets are empty. There is nothing inside. How did the body survive the winter? How did it escape the birds and small animals to die there, dry, perfect in each detail, whole down to the last brown toe? As we clutch and breathe the smoke of sublimation I hold this light of emptiness in my hand. O N B ECOMING A M ONK No one behind. No one ahead. Just this place and point. All escape routes end here and the maps proved useless long ago. The thousand disguises are in tatters along the road behind. Out here, vast emptiness— the life-cries of the world’s lost billions. Just these guides in the containing silence: a thrush at dusk, a star at dawn. Who puts his foot down again in the dust? Whose foot again and again, ceaselessly? B OWING —for Shinge Roshi and the sangha of Hoen-ji In this empty house I have thrown all the windows open for you. Upstairs in the irreligious dark nothing remains to whisper as you approach. Come, play here now, each in your shimmering exactitude— spring rains, flowering lilacs, countless birdsongs. M OST I NTIMATE How wonderful, how blessed! Is this one, is this two? —Mumonkan, case 35 Playing alone in the dirt, he smells the tiniest grain as a few small toys push along. Foxgrape ablaze in cedars above him, behind him. He knows their red. So silent, the sparrows stand on the rock just by him. He feels the quick sidelong glance. Late and slow in the cold a bee touches blue chicory. He hears the patient work Sun flash, October shadows on his neck and hair. He sees them. His hand moves. Same day each sky. New winds, this boy. Not once does he wonder. No one in the sky in his heart. N OTHING TO P ROVE Who sees me by form, who seeks me in sound, wrongly turned are his footsteps on the Way. —Diamond Sutra, verse 26 We come to spring both the stakes and the gambler, putting our lives on the table as if life were ours. The light of suspicion in our eyes recalls our own faithless breaths. Swayed by words we wander the wind bewildered, looking for evidence of something not quite there, a face—proof we are not alone. You are not alone my beloveds. You cannot be alone. There is no such thing as alone. You are the air I breathe and I am your very breath. Because of you I cannot be sad in this world. And what with breakdowns and so on who would say it hasn’t been hard going? Do you look up at Death there by the roadside jingling chips of your fate in his pockets, watching us under the cutting north wind, the brilliant moon, the wild white clouds, not so much there as beside the point? And if you ask whether I regret starting out my voice rises like flocks of finches at dawn and blows across the deep blue sky. Zen Encounters with Loneliness 22 ARRIVING IN THE IRRELIGIOUS DARK Praise is how you are in the world. It depends upon nothing and has no object. It is very exact and exacting. We will use irony and detachment as a stay against what love requires. But to what possible end but our own loneliness? Unconditional praise is what love requires. It is not waving hands in the air, nor singing hallelujah, nor bowing in worship of something other. It is getting out of bed in the morning and it is how you get out of bed in the morning. It is putting your feet on cold floorboards, with an urgency to get to the bathroom, recognizing with Master Dogen that “not a thing in the entire universe is missing from the present time.” It is an intimacy with this very moment, this present time. I hear a voice out there saying, “Oh, sure, I always get out of bed thinking of Master Dogen before I take a leak.” That is not what I mean at all. I mean experiencing the timelessness and totality of the moment is nothing special. Usually we are aware only of the irreversibility of processes, including our lives, and our separate place along the flight of the arrow of time. “Hey, I’m the one who’s dying here.” Oh? Sometimes a small thing will shift our perception so the directional paradigm vanishes. We claim it again quickly, but know something has changed. I’m on my way to school, a walk of a little under a mile. I’m in third grade. I hate school, but it’s morning in October and I am not really thinking about school. I start to skip. The sidewalk goes slightly downhill and rises crazily over tree roots in places. I begin to run. I can run very fast, faster than anyone of any age in my school. I love to run. My feet feel light. I am running as fast as I ever have. I stop feeling my feet or my legs. I think this is what flying must be like. Today we would say the endorphins had kicked in, but I am just happy, beyond happy, running, running totally. The world flashes by and at the same time everything moves in slow motion, my steps are so perfect and precise that I feel faster than time itself. In school I spend the rest of the day staring out the window at myself running. On another day I am walking home. On the other side of the street under some huge evergreens the sidewalk runs three feet higher than this side. I cross over the quiet street. It is a vast cliff. I climb among the roots of the trees, poised at the edge of oblivion. My home is miles, countries away. The struggle over the terrain is so difficult I can think of nothing else. My hands are raw from climbing and my shoes beaten from stones and roots. I look up and there is my mother bearing down on me. Where have I been? Didn’t I know it was supper time? Where did the time go? One of my sisters had a high school friend who was born blind. Her perception of the world was so radically different from what we took for granted, including her attitude toward what we called sight (she could not regret what she could not know), that having her around was always surprising. She, Susan, visited us once when we lived in Puerto Rico. With her, we became more aware of the air, the smells, the particularity of thousands of sounds. One evening the three of us got it into our heads to visit El Moro, the old fort guarding the harbor of San Juan. Susan’s delight in the echoing corridors and the cobbled courts made us all feel like children let loose. We ran about laughing and shouting to one another. On one of the lookouts with a pepperpot tower, Susan climbed up on the wall and bet us she could walk around the outside. My knees turned to water. It was at least one hundred feet to the rocks and the sea below. But she couldn’t see that, she had no sense of distance or danger as it applied in this case. Before we could reply, she got up, grabbed the wall and shuffled her way entirely around the pepperpot. Just looking out the gun-slits was too much for me. I had to turn away and hope her grip did not falter. It didn’t. Charged with this success, we scrambled over a wall into a cemetery full of, to us, exotic mausoleums. It was quite dark by now as we traipsed up and down the rows, making up stories about the garish structures. Over the other wall of the cemetery was La Perla, the barrio at the foot of El Moro, one of the most famous barrios in the world, along with those in Calcutta and Rio. Music and cooking smells drifted over to us. Susan wanted to go there. Without thinking, we agreed and helped her over the wall. The three of us began walking the narrow ways. This was an insane act. No gringo ever went there at all, much less after dark, much less two attractive young women and a fairly innocuous guy. Even the local cops avoided the place. Everyone would say it was a death warrant and no one would find our bodies. At the very least, we’d be stripped of everything and left to die. None of these thoughts crossed our minds, arrogant with youth. My sister and I noticed how the smells reminded us of Africa, the slightly sick-sweet smell of palm smoke, the pong of human waste, local music, children everywhere, voices shouting, and boxes, wood-scraps, corrugated tin patched together to make dwellings and lean-tos of a community as poor as any in the world. Disease, violence, drugs, you name it, get their good name started in places like this. Hundreds died during hurricanes, swept away into the sea. The survivors always came back quickly to nest again. Susan asked us to describe everything. We became absorbed in details we related to her. People watched us, shocked. Who were these white folks? Where did they come from (we’d sort of landed in the middle of things over the wall)? Were they stupid or what? People watched us to see who would make the first move on us. But a mystery was becoming attached to our unheard of presence. We never noticed. We talked with Susan, waved hello boldly to everyone. My sister, whose Spanish and local accent was good, spoke to children. Then we heard the whispers. “Mira! Mira! Una Ciega! Mira!” “Look, look, a blind girl! Look, she’s come to visit us.” In that instant everything went into that strange slow motion. We became aware of not just where we were walking but of the whole barrio whispering, of smiles, of curiosity, of tears for Susan’s darkness, of gratitude that we in some way blessed them with a visit in this place no one visits, home of the world’s throwaways. People wanted to touch her, hold her hand, ask for a blessing. “Mira! Gracias Ciega, muchas gracias.” We were suspended in a total present. So surprised, without fear or judgment, so grateful and open ourselves to see life looking out attentive and kind, blameless from dark eyes, eyes that could see, to one who could not, one who nevertheless saw what few have seen, the opening of the flower of gratitude in what custom had taught to be unfruitful ground. Space-time stopped. Being-time opened before us. It is available to each of us at any moment at any time in life. What is it? Is it real? When I was about ten, we lived for a brief time on Long Island. At that time, during the huge postwar Catholic revival of the 1950s, all the parochial schools in the town of Westbury were filled beyond capacity and I had to go to public schools. This meant I also had to go to catechism classes after school at our parish church a couple of times a week to make up for what I was missing in public school. Because it was considered a sin to miss the class and my dad had the car at work until late every night, I had to bike there through heavy suburban traffic, regardless of weather or how dark it was. My mother brooked no arguments. She never even thought there was a choice. One day at class a Franciscan monk visited us. I had never seen a monk before, save in pictures of St. Francis in our daily missal. This man looked like he had just walked out of one of those pictures. As far as I knew the clergy dressed only in black or the bright vestments for mass. Here was a man in a coarse brown robe tied by a rough white cord, carrying a long walking stick, wearing sandals and sporting a tonsured head. I was utterly taken with his strange and somehow wonderful appearance. He told us he was on a pilgrimage walking from parish to parish to talk with young people just like ourselves. I can’t recall anything else he said, but the sort of life he must lead fascinated me. When the class was over I asked our nun what the monk did when he wasn’t on pilgrimage. “Oh, he lives in a monastery.” “What is a monastery?” I had no idea what a monastery was. “It’s a place where monks live, mostly in silence.” “What does he do so quietly in a monastery?” Trying to keep it simple and to shut me up, she said, “He talks to God all day.” Wow , I thought, what could be cooler than that! Talking to the Big Guy all the time. No need to talk to scary parents, schoolteachers, boring friends, or anyone else, except the Maker of Everything! When I got home that evening I told my mother I wanted to be a monk. In those days you could enter seminary at age twelve, or so I remember. “That’s nice dear,” she said, “Why don’t you wait awhile, meet some girls, and then see what you think.” So I did that. I traveled the world, met girls, married one, had a life and children, messed things up pretty badly, and then, forty-five years later, I did become a monk, just not a Catholic one. The truth is not sequential. Nor is God. There is no one waiting at the gates with his buddies, Peter and Michael, when we finally come to the end of the road. Our linear, directional hopefulness is just a desire for wish-fulfillment, the self-deceptive wish that the Divine is somehow modeled on our needs and within our experience of time and life, and that we, personally, matter to it. Hope has ever masked the optimist’s disappointment with experience. The Dharma, the all-inclusive truth beyond dualities of real and unreal, without beginning or end, is not sequential. The moment I understood this my life changed. It was a clear, wintry day in February or March and I was sitting in Russ Blackwood’s prestigious Eastern religions class. The class met in the science building for some reason and looked out over woods and the back of the old hockey rink. Professor Blackwood, a tall, lean man and self-proclaimed “American Pragmatist” (which he left completely unexplained) was sitting in the lotus posture on top of his desk, guiding a debate on the nature of God. I was a junior in college. Somehow I had cajoled and badgered my way into the class, collaring Russ and my advisor whenever I’d meet them in the halls, begging to be allowed in. I had not done well in the prerequisite history of philosophy course, especially in the section on Aristotelian logic. Russ had his doubts but eventually relented. It was a wonderful class, one in which I did not so much learn as soak up everything in sight. The debate about the nature of God had been going on for a while. We had read some Sufi text and by this time, late in the section, Catholics, Jews, atheists, and spiritual drug-heads (like myself) had settled into fairly rigid and predictable positions regarding God. Suddenly Jim Iritani (I am sure he doesn’t remember this), an artist, piped up with, “But God is not sequential!” I froze. I stopped listening to anything else. I do not know what karmic circumstances had brought me to that moment of vulnerable openness, but those words rang in me like a deep bell. Indeed they still ring there. The debate continued, with Russ asking Jim to carry the thought further, but I have no recollection of the rest of it. I knew absolutely with my very bones that what Jim had said was true, true in a way I had not understood true before. I did not realize it then, but in that moment my path turned decidedly and I began making my slow painful way to the Buddhist priesthood. It was a statement perhaps tossed off, and while I knew it to be true I did not know what it meant. This was what was different about this truth, that I knew its truth without understanding it. It made no difference that it was without sensible or logical referents. It threw into relief all my questions about faith, time, meaning. It is a statement that shoves all our faces into the final extremity of death, for do we not look at death as the end of our linear lives? For many years I’d lost touch with this experience, but I did not lose some essential residue that remained in my heart. It came back to life, like a seed long dormant that encounters the right conditions at last, like a solution over-dense with dissolved matter. Many things contributed to the ripeness of the moment, my family, my Zen practice, but the crystal that clarified the supersaturated solution my life had become arrived in the person of someone dead several years before I came to Zen. I never knew Soen Nakagawa Roshi. Many have written about him and the wonder he brought to their lives. But I feel like I know him, often feel he is near, as I used to think of my guardian angel watching over my shoulder. No doubt this is partly romantic nostalgia for proximity to a legendary figure. It is also more. Like it or not, I am part of the Dai Bosatsu Mandala he articulated many years ago. He was teacher to both my teachers. Eido Roshi is his Dharma heir and Shinge Roshi is Eido Roshi’s heir. Maurine Stuart—who, when Soen Roshi told her in private, as his student, she should call herself Roshi, became the focus of so much controversy—gave me the Precepts. Even my first publisher, Charles Tuttle, published Nyogen Senzaki’s first major book, The Iron Flute . Nyogen Senzaki was Soen Roshi’s lifelong friend, the person to whom Soen conveyed his vision of the Mandala, and the major reason he and Eido Roshi came to the West. But there is more. Every time I attend sesshin at Dai Bosatsu, I make a small pilgrimage on the first night to the Sangha Meadow where a portion of Soen’s ashes are laid. I make three profound bows, often in the dark and in snow half way up my thighs—just me, the deer, the snow—and humbly ask for his support in the forthcoming sesshin. Now, I don’t normally do things like this. I gave up believing in ghosts and spirits, spooky or sacred, in my early teens. In AA meetings I get the heebie-jeebies when people say one should pray to God and ask to be given things, from sobriety and peace of mind to better jobs. To me that isn’t praying, it’s begging of the most demeaning, self-centered sort. My first sesshin, Rohatsu, I’d heard there was a marker for Soen in the Sangha Meadow, so I went, curious to see something connected with this Zen master whom everyone said was one of the great T’ang Dynasty crazy Zen heroes returned. Ice was cracking in the trees. The flat toned wind chimes sounded plaintive in the late November dark. Suddenly I found myself on the ground bowing and talking to him as though I had indeed been his student. Some years later Eido Roshi told the story of his mala beads, a kind of rosary used, among other things, to count repetitions of sutras in chanting, and his own experience on Dai Bosatsu mountain in Japan. Soen Roshi used to spend long retreats there and it is where he created the dharani of Namu Dai Bosa . Eido Roshi was always a bit skeptical about that dharani. It wasn’t part of the main tradition of Rinzai Zen, nor was he all that certain about the efficacy of chanting it over and over, though he did so in honor of his teacher. While visiting the mountain and chanting the dharani, he rubbed the beads given to him by Soen Roshi together as part of the ritual. They burst apart, something that had never happened to him before. He was filled with a sense of Soen Roshi’s presence and the interconnectedness of the Dai Bosatsu Mandala begun on this mountain where he was kneeling. He took this as a sign and later shared the beads with his own sangha at Dai Bosatsu Zendo. I now wear one around my neck and so maintain this daily connection through one of my teachers with Soen Nakagawa, a man I have never met but have somehow come to cherish as though I had. A religiously inclined friend said, upon hearing this story, that Soen was my real teacher reaching me through these others. That, of course, is how Dharma transmission works. Past, present, future have no meaning in this context. Certainly he was an appealing figure. Two anecdotes will suffice, perhaps. In his introduction to Endless Vow: The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa , Eido Roshi writes: On another occasion he asked me, “Tai-san (as Eido Roshi was then known), what do you think about Nietzche’s ‘God is dead?’” This was so unexpected that I was speechless. So Soen Roshi answered, “God is not dead, since he was never born.” Soen Roshi was famous for throwing convention out the window. This had enormous appeal to freewheeling Americans, but it often appeared rude or insensitive to Japanese compatriots. His breaks with the expected were always purposeful, however. Shinge Roshi tells how she went to her first dokusan with him: My turn came. Feeling entirely unworthy of Soen Roshi’s time, I timidly struck the bell and walked up the stairs. I entered the dokusan room, but Soen Roshi’s cushion was empty. Then I saw him standing near the door, as though to pounce on me. “Come,” he said. My mind raced. He had seen right through me! I wasn’t going to be allowed to have dokusan! He led me back down the stairs and stopped at the landing. As I was forlornly about to continue down, he said, “Wait! Come here.” He was standing at the window. I went over to him, and he gently positioned me so that I was looking out. There was the enormous, deep-red ball of the sun bursting over the horizon! I had passed right by it on my way to see Roshi, thinking that dokusan had to take place in the dokusan room. The connectivity I have experienced through Shinge Roshi and Eido Roshi took me a long time to accept. It is the transmission of mind directly from teacher to student, from teacher to student, endlessly, from generation to generation. There is no loss of content or degradation of quality because it remains direct, clear. Behind Shinge I hear Eido. Behind Eido I hear Soen. Behind Soen I hear Gempo—on and on. How can this be? I do not know. My western training refuses to accept the literal reincarnative connotations. It is not the Voice of God. It is not really a long string stretching into the past, though that is a common way to describe it. It is immediate, here already—waiting for me, the idiot grandson unable to open his eyes. Beecher Lake, the highest lake in the Catskills at three-thousand feet, rests at the foot of Dai Bosatsu Mountain, the New York State edition. It is rich with life—beaver, fish, fowl, and smaller beings, including salamanders or newts. One afternoon during Holy Days sesshin, I was sitting in the sun on the terrace of Dai Bosatsu Zendo. That morning I had passed an extraordinarily difficult koan and now it was lunch break time. I was joyous, exhausted, drained in every way. It was April and there was still snow banked around the grounds and terrace, but I was in a sunny spot and the sun toasted the slate and my weary body. I found myself looking at something right next to my hand, which was resting on the warm stone. It took me several minutes to register what I was seeing. How could this be, perhaps two hundred yards from the lake at the end of winter? There was still ice-skim on the north-facing edge of the lake. What I was seeing was the tiny, perfectly formed body of a newt. I realized it was dead and had been so a long time. It was dried out, more like an empty paper shell, yet perfectly formed and intact, lighter than a leaf. Gently I picked it up and spent a few minutes examining it. How could it be here? An inch to the left and I would have sat on it, crunched it to dust without knowing it was there. My eyes looked up through the trees under the bright April sky, across the lake to the Sangha Meadow. It seemed a priceless gift, this small dead thing. It was like a key that unlocked a door in my sense of self. For a moment that self dropped away, a moment like sublimation. S OEN ’ S D RAGON There are some things we know before we had words to tell us we knew them. We are fastened to them though they are not fastened to us. Remember once April hills held the snow and field stones were warm in the sun. I basked like an old dog and found a newt dead by my foot. It’s with me now. The eye sockets are empty. There is nothing inside. How did the body survive the winter? How did it escape the birds and small animals to die there, dry, perfect in each detail, whole down to the last brown toe? As we clutch and breathe the smoke of sublimation I hold this light of emptiness in my hand. It is part of our tradition to write a poem when one is to be ordained. I found myself in awe of the step I was taking, fearful of the commitment and responsibility, knowing that somehow I had also passed the point of choice and was entering upon one of the inevitabilities of my life. Just before I was ordained, Shinge Roshi gave me prepublication excerpts from what became Endless Vow , upon which she was then working with Eido Roshi and Kaz Tanahashi. The opening lines in the excerpt, titled “Upon Determining to Become a Monk” were: Reflecting my heart sky and water sobering chill. I felt a chill run down my own back. I knew that taking this step was not trivial. I had always thought masters did inevitable things without the usual trepidation. Infinite responsibility was a scary prospect. Later, when Endless Vow was published, the title of the excerpt had become “A Monk’s Determination” and the translation changed somewhat to: Clearness! sky and water reflecting my heart. This tells another part of Soen’s story. It would be interesting to go into the nuances of translating Japanese to English and the differences in consciousness each language represents, but I am not the person to engage in that discussion. I would never have seen the earlier, put aside version of the poem had it not been for my teacher. Eido Roshi has often pointed out that Soen did not become a monk in order to engage in a priestly administrative career. Soen was completely surprised when Gempo Roshi, his teacher, made him abbot of Ryutakuji. I left my own church and the possibilities of becoming a monk there only in part because of its appalling history of war, brutality, cruelty, mendacity, betrayal, corruption, and death. I wanted a way in which I could “talk to God all day,” a nonsequential God who was closer to me than I was to myself—already and always discovering. Soen Roshi identified himself with Bassui, who asked the question, “Who is it who hears the sound?” Who is it who takes these steps in the yellow dust of the world? Soen Roshi answers: Crawling out from the Dead Sea spring glitters over my body I heard Eiso Roshi tell the following story during a lecture he gave at my university during the 1993 centennial celebration of Buddhism in America we hosted. He recounts it again in Endless Vow . It is a quintessential Soen story, bringing East and West together seamlessly, filled with passion and skillful means, that deep sensitivity to the moment, what Eido Roshi calls ichigo ichie , an unrepeatable encounter. I quote in full from Endless Vow : When I was Soen Roshi’s attendant monk at Ryutaku-ji, there was an American professor who came to practice there. He was desperate to have some kind of insight experience. Evidently the koan Mu had been assigned to him, without any kind of explanation. Many months passed and he was very frustrated. One day it happened that Soen Roshi invited him and me to his mother’s hut to hear music and receive ceremonial tea. Roshi said, “Be seated.” We sat down. The professor’s mind was occupied with the koan he had been assigned. He asked, “Tell me, Roshi, how can I expedite my understanding of “Tell me, Roshi, how can I expedite my understanding of Mu? What is the most effective way to practice Mu and get self-realization?” Continuing to make the ceremonial tea, Soen Roshi asked him, “What did Jesus Christ say on the cross?” The professor replied, “Well, he said, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Soen Roshi said nothing and served the ceremonial tea, as if the conversation was over. But from the professor’s point of view, it was not. So he asked again, “I came all the way from America; I want to know my true nature. So what is the most effective way to practice Mu?” Roshi said, “Tell me, what did Jesus Christ say on the cross?” The professor replied again, rather impatiently, “‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!’” “No!” Roshi answered loudly. “Well, then, what did he say?” the professor asked in exasperation. At that Soen Roshi stood up, spread his arms, became Jesus Christ, and cried in anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is what Eido Roshi calls “direct, no explanation Zen.” Two of Soen’s poems capture his essence for me, one is his death poem, reminding me so much of Maurine Stuart’s last words, and the other is what I think of as his life poem, from which the title of the book about him comes, which echoes Setcho’s famous line and yet remains freshly itself, as Soen Roshi did: S PRING 1984— Death Poem Mustard blossoms! there is nothing left to hurl away And the life poem: Bowing to Hakuin’s Stupa at Ryutaku-ji in Mishima Endless is my vow under the azure sky boundless autumn I was about to write that my other teachers are still living, but that would not be quite correct. All my teachers are living right at this moment. How can this be? Am I making it up, a kind of metaphysical fiction to explain an inner experience? No. It is real. I did not think this relationship between teacher and student, this transmission of mind, was something for which we had a context in the West. But there is this, to me, startling movie by Alain Corneau, Tous les Matins du Monde , which came out and was a wild success in France though it fizzled in the United States—another kind of statement itself, I suppose. It purports to be the story of Marin Marais, court composer to Louis XIV, and his obscure teacher Sainte Columbe, about whom little is really known. Frankly, it doesn’t matter who it is about and the music is a joy all in itself. But the story has many Zen-like echoes without once alluding to anything Eastern. The young Marais, seeking a teacher, is turned away several times to test, among other things, the seriousness of his purpose before he is accepted by Sainte Columbe. There is tragedy and pain in the story, and a love interest, of course. Marais abandons his teacher, achieves great success at court, yet finds himself always turning back to a “something” he did not quite get, that mere talent could not bring him. In middle age he finds himself sneaking back to his master’s house to listen to the master practice, in the hope of gleaning the master’s secret. There is a climactic scene that always leaves me in a total meltdown of emotion—because it is exactly the experience I have found with my teachers, with Shinge Roshi, with Eido Roshi, and in this newly apprehended manner, with my Dharma grandfather, Soen Roshi. The sequence begins with the words: “Each day dawns but once. . .” Why, in other words, do we wait?! On a frozen night the fat and overdressed Marin Marais rides from court and sits shivering outside Sainte Columbe’s practice hut. He hears the master shuffling about, playing some notes, talking to himself, longing for someone who really understands music as he does, so he can die in peace. It is his longing to transmit, mind-to-mind, the Dharma through music. Marais knocks and Sainte Columbe, old and grey and simply dressed, asks him what he seeks in music. “I seek sorrows and tears.” He is allowed to enter. What follows is like a mondo (Zen dialogue) out of classic dokusan. Marais says, “May I beg for one last lesson?” Sainte Columbe replies with, “May I attempt the first lesson?” He continues, “Music exists to express what words cannot say. What is it to you?” Marais begins a litany of wrong answers, the rational struggle to conceptualize, to get it. It is a small leap to transpose Dharma for music in this conversation without changing any of its intent. “God?” “No, God can speak.” “The ear?” “No.” “Gold? Glory? Silence?” “No.” “Other musicians? Love?” “No.” “Sorrows? Abandonment?” “No.” “Water offered to the Invisible?” “Close, but no.” Marais pauses a long time. “I don’t know any more . . .” A longer pause and then it comes out, softly, almost unbidden, “For the time before we were born, before we saw light, before we breathed.” Their hands clasp and they both know the other knows this is the truth. By giving up, letting go of the striving for discovery, teacher and student brought forth the answer that is already and always there. The teacher cannot make you get it, can only assiduously model the practice with his or her particular voice, for, as we often chant, whether singing or dancing, we are the voice of the Dharma. Only when the student stops struggling and grasping to match the teacher and realizes there is nothing to learn or be taught do all the doors and windows fly open and we are affirmed by all things blowing through us and through our teacher, for now there is no distance at all. Like radio waves, we don’t see or hear anything unless we are tuned in. Without the proper instrumentation of the practice we cannot even know what is there. When we are tuned in it comes to us complete and it cannot be used up or diminished. We get the whole experience. O N B ECOMING A M ONK No one behind. No one ahead. Just this place and point. All escape routes end here and the maps proved useless long ago. The thousand disguises are in tatters along the road behind. Out here, vast emptiness— the life-cries of the world’s lost billions. Just these guides in the containing silence: a thrush at dusk, a star at dawn. Who puts his foot down again in the dust? Whose foot again and again, ceaselessly? When I can put my driven, grasping ego away for a while I join with my teachers to give them my gratitude. It is significant to me that Soen Roshi wrote his life poem while bowing to his great Dharma ancestor. I bow again to all my teachers: B OWING —for Shinge Roshi and the sangha of Hoen-ji In this empty house I have thrown all the windows open for you. Upstairs in the irreligious dark nothing remains to whisper as you approach. Come, play here now, each in your shimmering exactitude— spring rains, flowering lilacs, countless birdsongs. Zen Encounters with Loneliness “Reminds us once again that the small truths are often more powerful than those shouted from the rooftops. This heartfelt book is filled with light, wisdom, and courage.” —D INTY W. M OORE , author of The Mindful Writer “Every few years, if you’re lucky, a book comes along that changes your life. Zen Encounters with Loneliness is one of those books for me.” —S ATYA R OBYN , author of Afterwards I n Zen Encounters with Loneliness Terrance Keenan delivers a breathtaking portrayal of the human hunger for selfhood and connection. Through his reflections, we find that Zen does not comfort our dream of being somebody, but rather reveals connection only when we face who we really are—nobody. Embark on a poignant journey through addiction, Zen, and the transformative practice of writing. “A remarkable kaleidoscope of moving poetry and prose, touching the emptiness in all of us.” —J EAN S MITH , author of NOW “Keenan identifies, explores, and ultimately embraces the spine of isolation inherent in the human experience, illustrating that there is grace and wonder to be found in loss, yearning, and everyday life.” —J IM M C G REEVEY , LCPC, Clinical Director of the Kolmac Clinic T ERRANCE K EENAN is an artist and writer and was formerly a senior monk at the Zen Center of Syracuse. He lives in County Cork, Ireland. Zen Encounters with Loneliness AFTERWORD When we first looked at this old farmstead in West Cork, now our home in Ireland, we were told that somewhere “down there” on a narrow strip of the property that fell steeply away was an orchard. A footpath went part-way down and then disappeared into an impenetrable tangle of six-foot-tall bracken, dense twisted bramble with canes more than an inch thick that ran even higher than the bracken, and countless unidentifiable weeds, saplings, and rampant grasses—all of which filled a secluded area in which one might imagine a small orchard. On one side rose a sheer, solid stone escarpment topped by an even denser growth of ancient gorse, so thorny and rough that it defied assault like a castle wall. On the other side were a stone wall and the sagging barns of Willie’s farm, abandoned, sinking into boggy fields behind an overgrown hedgerow of hawthorn, ash, masses of wild ivy, pines, elder, and oaks. The whole place was also sinking into a jungle of weeds, rushes, and choking vines. There were no signs of the branches of fruit trees above the small sea of weedy neglect on the patch before us. An orchard? No way. One mild sunny day during our first winter here, having invested in a heavy-duty strimmer, or weed-whacker, with a blade attachment, I decided to attack the jungle and see if I could discover this orchard. I was armored in tall green wellies, thick leather garden gloves, iron Carhartt overalls, a padded Carhartt vest over them, ear muffs to guard against the powerful whine of the strimmer, and a meshed mask to keep flying debris away from my face and eyes. I really felt like an armored knight going to some strange battle, the outcome of which was far from certain. And a battle it was. It took me more than three days to clear an area roughly the size a tennis court. From the broad ruthless sweeps of the strimmer I was covered from head to foot in a green surface of shredded leaf, twig, sappy moisture, and bits of seed, along with a settling cloud of dust and debris. After just a couple of hours my arms began to feel like rubber from the weight of the machine, which sent numbing vibrations through my hands. My wife began gathering the masses of fallen debris to create a bonfire with the express glee of an avowed pyromaniac. We were getting there, but it was very hard work. Gradually some small trees did begin to emerge, bent and twisted, almost falling over from the weight of the huge choking brambles. I began to take more care in my cutting, hoping to avoid scarring the bark of the struggling plants. In the end, exhausted but happy, we looked upon six apple trees, a pear tree, and what turned out to be two plum trees, all still alive. At that moment of weary but joyous revelation, we couldn’t be absolutely sure what each tree was, save that they were fruit trees, given their unpruned, gnarled state of neglect. We had to wait until the following summer to see what they were and what, if anything, they produced. The pear tree produced one pear. One. The plums produced nothing at all. But the apples seemed to burst with fruit in the joy of finally being free in the wind and the sun. Only one did we know right away, the Bramley. Huge green, lumpy cooking apples, so rich in crisp sour tanginess that they make Granny Smiths look like bland afterthoughts. The five other trees were at least three varieties and we are still trying to discover what types they are. We are learning to tend them, how and when to prune, when to let them alone, when to pick the fruit, and how to maintain the space so the trees can grow completely into themselves. We have found our orchard. Now there is a story of another kind of orchard that was lost in a jungle of thorns and neglect, where the fruit bearing beings became bent and twisted from the weight of fear, death, error, and ignorance; a story that gives us a glimpse of the hard work of cutting away the tangled brambles that choked heart and soul. My wife and I both had to armor ourselves, forge new weapons and tools, and enter another kind of strange battle, the outcome of which was also far from certain. Time passes. If you are still enough, you can hear the dew grazed air stirring down the many streets and roads your feet have taken you, you can hear the stars falling. When you look back you can see the nights you have lived moving in a blur of shadow, so that one cannot be told from another. And the daylight of your eyes sees a crowded blur of events and people turning and touching one another, but in what order and with what interconnecting influence, it is all too much to make out. Twelve years in a flash. Twelve years in a long muddle of hurt, failure, insight, and joy. Time passes. The universe is breathing. This book was originally published in 2001 under the title St. Nadie in Winter: Zen Encounters with Loneliness . It had a modest success and was reasonably well reviewed. The publisher at the time, however, was being absorbed into a larger multinational and underwent a change of direction soon after publication. When the contract period ended, they let the book go out of print. Since then St. Nadie has taken on a life of its own on the internet, especially among the lost and lonely “seekers” of the Way. But it also lives on among therapists, who have created a still ongoing conversation about it in blogs and other social media. When I approached Wisdom Publications about the possibility of publishing a new edition, they agreed to pursue it. Yet it couldn’t just be thrown out there again. We thought to reorganize it a little, making the story flow more easily and collecting the bulk of the poems at the end. The poems had been the initial motivation behind St. Nadie and it is still important to read them. It is also important to say something about the years since 2001. That is the other story, though here I will tell it in brief because there are already enough true confessions in St. Nadie. My life in the years between St. Nadie ’s first publication and this one became a very troubled life once again, but, in the end, it has opened into some	357,426
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (Green Hank) (Z-Library).epub	An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Contents Cover Praise Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Acknowledgments About the Author Table of Contents Cover Cover Title Page Start i ii iii iv v vi vii viii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 Cover, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Praise, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Praise for An Absolutely Remarkable Thing “[Green] applies wit, affection, and cultural intelligence to a comic sci-fi novel. . . . A fun, contemporary adventure that cares about who we are as humans, especially when faced with remarkable events.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Green makes an entertaining book debut in this fast-paced, witty first-contact novel. . . . At once funny, exciting, and a tad terrifying, this exploration of aliens and social media culture is bound to have wide appeal to readers interested in either theme.” —Booklist (starred review) “Led by an earnestly flawed, bisexual heroine with direction and commitment issues, coupled with an abundant generosity of spirit, this read is timely and sorely needed. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review), Fall 2018 Best Debut Novels “You’re about to meet somebody named April May whom you’re immediately going to want to be best friends with. And bonus, she spends all her time having incredible adventures with giant robots and dream puzzles and accidental internet fame. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is pure book-joy.” — Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians Trilogy “Fun and full of truth. To be honest, I’m a little irritated at how good the book is. I don’t need this kind of competition.” — Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kingkiller Chronicle “This is the book my teen self would have loved, and my adult self immediately obsessed over. I turned the pages of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing so quickly the pads of my thumbs were worn smooth by the time I finished it. It provokes the mind, tickles the spirit, and April May is the terribly relevant young protagonist we’ve been waiting for.” — Ashley C. Ford, writer “Funny, thrilling, and an absolute blast to read. I knew Hank would be good at this, but I didn’t know he would be this good on the first try.” — John Scalzi , New York Times bestselling author and Hugo Award winner “By turns joyful, devastating, personal, zeitgeisty, modern, classic, fast-paced, and thoughtful, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing blew me away with its fresh take on first contact in this fragile, ever-connected world we live in. Quick but never shallow, it will stand as a snapshot of an era as well as just a darn good read.” —Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Refrigerator Monologues and Space Opera “Hank Green hasn’t just written a great mystery adventure (though he has), and he hasn’t just written the most interesting meditation on the internet and fame I’ve ever seen (but he did that too), Hank has written a book in which the page-turning story and the fascinating ideas inform and support each other. This book expands your mind while taking you on a hell of a ride.” —Joseph Fink, author of Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead Title Page, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Copyright, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2018 by Hank Green Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. “Golden Years” by David Bowie. ©1976 EMI Music Publishing LTD & Publishers Unknown. All rights on behalf of EMI Music Publishing LTD administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Freddie Mercury. ©1978 Queen Music LTD. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Call Me Maybe” Words and Music by Carly Rae Jepsen, Joshua Ramsay and Tavish Crowe © 2011 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP., JEPSEN MUSIC PUBLISHING, BMG GOLD SONGS, CROWE MUSIC INC., BMG PLATINUM SONGS and REGULAR MONKEY PRODUCTIONS. All Rights for JEPSEN MUSIC PUBLISHING Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. All Rights for BMG GOLD SONGS, CROWE MUSIC INC., BMG PLATINUM SONGS and REGULAR MONKEY PRODUCTIONS Administered by BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC. DUTTON and the D colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING - IN - PUBLICATION DATA Names: Green, Hank author. Title: An absolutely remarkable thing : a novel / Hank Green. Description: New York, New York : Dutton, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018010156 (print) \| LCCN 2018014855 (ebook) \| ISBN 9781524743451 (ebook) \| ISBN 9781524743444 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Celebrity—Fiction. \| Social media—Fiction. \| BISAC: FICTION / Coming of Age. \| FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. \| FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary. \| GSAFD: Fantasy fiction \| Science fiction Classification: LCC PS3607.R43285 (ebook) \| LCC PS3607.R43285 A27 2018 (print) \| DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010156 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Version_1 Dedication, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Thanks, Mom! Contents, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Contents Praise Title Page Copyright Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Acknowledgments About the Author CHAPTER ONE, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing CHAPTER ONE Look, I am aware that you’re here for an epic tale of intrigue and mystery and adventure and near death and actual death, but in order to get to that (unless you want to skip to chapter 13—I’m not your boss), you’re going to have to deal with the fact that I, April May, in addition to being one of the most important things that has ever happened to the human race, am also a woman in her twenties who has made some mistakes. I am in the wonderful position of having you by the short hairs. I have the story, and so I get to tell it to you the way I want. That means you get to understand me, not just my story, so don’t be surprised if there’s some drama. I’m going to attempt to come at this account honestly, but I’ll also admit to a significant pro-me bias. If you get anything out of this, ideally it won’t be you being more or less on one side or the other, but simply understanding that I am (or at least was) human. — And I was very much feeling only human as I dragged my tired ass down 23rd Street at 2:45 A.M. after working a sixteen-hour day at a start-up that (thanks to an aggressively shitty contract I signed) will remain nameless. Going to art school might seem like a terrible financial decision, but really that’s only true if you have to take out gobs and gobs of student loans to fund your hoity-toity education. Of course, I had done exactly that. My parents were successful, running a business providing equipment to small and medium-sized dairy farms. Like, the little things you hook up to cows to get the milk out, they sold and distributed them. It was good business, good enough that I wouldn’t have had a lot of debt if I’d gone to a state school. But I did not do that. I had loans. Lots. So, after jumping from major to major (advertising, fine art, photography, illustration) and finally settling on the mundane (but at least useful) BFA in design, I took the first job that would keep me in New York and out of my old bedroom in my parents’ house in Northern California. And that was a job at a doomed start-up funded by the endless well of rich people who can only dream the most boring dream a rich person can dream: being even more rich. Of course, working at a start-up means that you’re part of the “family,” and so when things go wrong, or when deadlines fly past, or when an investor has a hissy fit, or just because , you don’t get out of work until three in the morning. Which, honestly, I hated. I hated it because the company’s time-management app was a dumb idea and didn’t actually help people, I hated it because I knew I was just doing it for money, and I hated it because they asked the staff to treat it like their whole life rather than like a day job, which meant I didn’t have any time to spare to work on personal projects. BUT! I was actually using my degree doing actual graphic design and getting paid enough to afford rent less than one year out of school. My work environment was close to technically criminal and I paid half of my income to sleep in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment, but I was making it work. I fibbed just now. My bed was in the living room, but I mostly slept in the bedroom—Maya’s room. We weren’t living together, we were roommates, and April-from-the-past would want me to be very clear about that. What’s the difference between those two things? Well, mostly that we weren’t dating before we moved in together. Hooking up with your roommate is convenient, but it is also a little confusing when you lived together through much of college. Before finally hooking up and have now been a couple for more than a year. If you happen to already live together, when does the “Should we move in together?” question come up? Well, for Maya and me, the question was “Can we please move that secondhand mattress out of the living room so that we can sit on a couch when we watch Netflix?” and thus far my answer had been “Absolutely not, we are just roommates who are dating.” Which is why our living room still had a bed in it. I told you there would be drama. Anyway, back to the middle of the night that fateful January evening. This shitty app had to get a new release into the App Store by the next week and I had been waiting for final approvals on some user interface changes, and whatever, you don’t care—it was boring work BS. Instead of coming in early, I stayed late, which has always been my preference. My brain was sucked entirely dry from trying to interpret cryptic guidance from bosses who couldn’t tell a raster from a vector. I checked out of the building (it was a coworking space, not even actual leased offices) and walked the three minutes to the subway station. And then my MetroCard got rejected FOR NO REASON. I had another one sitting on my desk at work, and I wasn’t precisely sure how much money I had in my checking account, so it seemed like I should walk the three blocks back to the office just to be safe. The walk sign is on, so I cross 23rd, and a taxicab blares its horn like I shouldn’t be in the crosswalk. Whatever, dude, I have the walk light. I turn to head back to the office and immediately I see it. As I approach, it becomes clear that it is a really . . . REALLY exceptional sculpture. I mean, it’s AWESOME, but it’s also a little bit “New York awesome,” you know? How do I explain how I felt about it? I guess . . . well . . . in New York City people spend ten years making something amazing happen, something that captures the essence of an idea so perfectly that suddenly the world becomes ten times clearer. It’s beautiful and it’s powerful and someone devoted a huge piece of their life to it. The local news does a story about it and everyone goes “Neat!” and then tomorrow we forget about it in favor of some other ABSOLUTELY PERFECT AND REMARKABLE THING. That doesn’t make those things unwonderful or not unique . . . It’s just that there are a lot of people doing a lot of amazing things, so eventually you get a little jaded. So that’s how I felt when I saw it—a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor, its huge barrel chest lifted up to the sky a good four or five feet above my head. It just stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, full of energy and power. It looked like it might, at any moment, turn and fix that empty, regal stare on me . But instead it just stood there, silent and almost scornful, like the world didn’t deserve its attention. In the streetlight, the metal was a patchwork of black-as-night matte and mirror-reflective silver. And it clearly was metal . . . not some spray-painted cardboard cosplay thing. It was stunningly done. I paused for maybe five seconds before shivering both in the cold and in the gaze of the thing and then walking on. And then I. Felt. Like. The. Biggest. Jerk. I mean, I’m an artist working way too hard at a deeply uninteresting job to pay way too much in rent so I can stay in this place—so that I can remain immersed in one of the most creative and influential cultures on earth. Here in the middle of the sidewalk is a piece of art that was a massive undertaking, an installation that the artist worked on, possibly for years, to make people stop and look and consider. And here I am, hardened by big-city life and mentally drained by hours of pixel pushing, not even giving something so magnificent a second glance. I remember this moment pretty clearly, so I guess I’ll mention it. I went back to the sculpture, got up on my tiptoes, and I said, “Do you think I should call Andy?” The sculpture, of course, did nothing. “Just stand there if it’s OK for me to call Andy.” And so I made the call. But first, some background on Andy! You know those moments when your life shifts and you think, I will definitely, without a doubt, continue to love and appreciate and connect with all of these cool people I have spent so many years with, despite the fact that our lives are changing a great deal right now , and then instead you might as well unfriend them on Facebook because you ain’t never gonna see that dude again in your whole life? Well, Andy, Maya, and I had somehow (thus far) managed to avoid that fate. Maya and I had done it by occupying the same four hundred square feet. Andy, on the other hand, lived across town from us, and we didn’t even know him until junior year. Maya and I, by that point, were taking most of the same classes because, well, we really liked each other a lot. We were obviously going to be in the same group whenever there was a group project. But Professor Kennedy was dividing us up into groups of three, which meant a random third wheel. Somehow we got stuck with Andy (or probably, from his perspective, he got stuck with us). I knew who Andy was. I had formed a vague impression of him that was mostly “that guy sure is more confident than he has any right to be.” He was skinny and awkward with printer-paper-pale skin. I assumed he began his haircuts by asking the stylist to make it look like he had never received a haircut. But he was always primed for some quip, and for the most part, those quips were either funny or insightful. The project was a full brand treatment for a fictional product. Packaging was optional, but we needed several logo options and a style guide (which is like a little book that tells everyone how the brand should be presented and what fonts and colors are to be used in what situations). It was more or less a given that we would be doing this for some hip and groovy fictional company that makes ethical, fair-trade jeans with completely useless pockets or something. Actually, it was almost always a fictional brewery because we were college students. We were paying a lot of money to cultivate our taste in beer and be snobby about it. And I’m sure that’s the direction Maya and I would have gone in, but Andy was intolerably stubborn and somehow convinced us both that we would be building the visual identity of “Bubble Bum,” a butt-flavored bubble gum. At first his arguments were silly, that we weren’t going to be doing fancy cool shit when we graduated, so we might as well not take the project so seriously. But he convinced us when he got serious. “Look, guys,” he said, “it’s easy to make something cool look cool, that’s why everyone picks cool things. Ultimately, though, cool is always going to be boring. What if we can make something dumb look amazing? Something unmarketable, awesome? That’s a real challenge. That takes real skill. Let’s show real skill.” I remember this pretty clearly because it was when I realized there was more to Andy. By the end of the project I couldn’t help feeling a little superior to the rest of our classmates, taking their skinny jeans and craft breweries so seriously. And the final product did look great. Andy was—and I had known this but not really filed it as important—an extremely talented illustrator, and with Maya’s hand-lettering skills and my color-palette work, it did end up looking pretty great. So that’s how Maya and I met Andy, and thank god we did. Frankly, we needed a third wheel to even out the intensity of the early part of our relationship. After the Bubble Bum project, which Kennedy loved so much he put it on the class website, we became a bit of a trio. We even worked on some freelance projects together, and occasionally Andy would come over to our apartment and force us to play board games. And then we’d just spend the evening talking about politics or dreams or anxieties. The fact that he was obviously a little bit in love with me never really bothered any of us because he knew I was taken and, well, I don’t think Maya saw him as a threat. Somehow, our dynamic hadn’t fractured after graduation and we kept hanging out with funny, weird, smart, stupid Andy Skampt. Who I was now calling at three o’clock in the morning. “The fuck, April, it’s 3 A.M .” “Hey, I’ve got something you might want to see.” “It seems likely that this can wait until tomorrow.” “No, this is pretty cool. Bring your camera . . . and does Jason have any lights?” Jason was Andy’s roommate—both of them wanted to be internet famous. They would stream themselves playing video games to tiny audiences, and they had a podcast about the best TV death scenes that they also filmed and uploaded to YouTube. To me it just seemed like that incurable ailment so many well-off dudes have, believing despite mountains of evidence that what the world truly needs is another white-guy comedy podcast. This sounds harsh, but that’s what it seemed like to me back then. Now, of course, I know how easy it is to feel like you don’t matter if no one’s watching. I’ve also since listened to Slainspotting and it’s actually pretty funny. “Wait . . . what’s happening? What am I doing?” he asked. “Here’s what you’re doing: You’re walking over to Gramercy Theatre and you’re going to bring as much of Jason’s video shit as you can and you’re not going to regret it, so don’t even think about going back to whatever hentai VR game you’re playing . . . This is better, I promise.” “You say that, but have you played Cherry Blossom Fairy Five , April May? Have you?” “I’m hanging up . . . You’re going to be here in five minutes.” I hung up. Several people who weren’t Andy walked by as I waited for him. Manhattan is less legit than it once was, for sure, but this is still the city that never sleeps. It is also the city of “Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren.” People gave the sculpture a quick glance and kept on walking, just as I had very nearly done. I tried to look busy. Manhattan’s a safe place, but that doesn’t mean a twenty-three-year-old woman by herself on the street at 3 A.M . isn’t going to get randomly harassed. For the next few minutes I got to spend a little time with the structure. Manhattan is never really dark, there was lots of light around, but the deep shadows and the sculpture’s size made it difficult to really understand it. It was massive. It probably weighed several hundred pounds. I took my glove off and poked it, finding the metal surprisingly not cool. Not warm either, exactly . . . but hard. I gave it a knock on the pelvis and didn’t hear the bell ring I expected. It was more of a thunk followed by a low hum. I started to think that this was part of the artist’s intentions . . . that the goal was for the people of New York to interact with this object . . . to discover its properties. When you’re in art school, you do a lot of thinking about objectives and intent. That was just the default state: SEE ART → CRITIQUE ART. Eventually, I stopped my critique and just took it in. I was starting to really love it. Not just as a creation of someone else, but the way that you love really good art . . . just enjoying it. It was so unlike other things I’d seen. And brave in its “Transformerness.” Like, I would be terrified to do anything that visually reflected mecha robots in any way . . . No one wants to be compared to something that’s mainstream popular . That’s the worst of all possible fates. But there was much more to this piece than that. It seemed to have come from a completely different place than any work I’d ever seen before, sculptural or not. I was pretty caught up in the thing when Andy snapped me out of it. “What the absolute fuck . . .” He was wearing a backpack and three camera straps and holding two tripods. “Yup,” I replied. “That. Is. AWESOME.” “I know . . . The awful thing is, I almost walked right by it. I just thought, ‘Well, there’s another fucking cool New York City thing,’ and kept on walking. But it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard or seen anything about it, and since, y’know, you’re always in search of your big viral hit, you might want to get the scoop. So I’ve been guarding it for you.” “So you saw this big, beautiful, muscular piece of art and who sprung into your mind but ANDY Skampt!” His thumbs were digging into his bony chest. “LOL,” I said sarcastically. “In fact, I figured I’d do you a favor, and here it is, so maybe just appreciate it?” A little dejected, he handed me a tripod. “Well, let’s start getting this shit set up then. Gotta work before Channel 6 drunkenly stumbles by and steals our scoop.” In five minutes the camera was set up, a battery-powered light was glaring, and Andy was clamping the mic to his lapel. He didn’t look as dopey as he had in school. He’d stopped wearing stupid ball caps, and he’d given up on his unruly (or just uncommon) haircuts in favor of a short-wavy thing that complemented his face shape. But despite the fact that he was eight inches taller than me and almost exactly my age, he still looked about five years my junior. “April,” he said. “Yah.” “I think maybe it should be you.” I probably replied with some kind of confused grunt. “In front of the camera, I mean.” “Dude, this is your dream, not mine. I don’t know shit about YouTube.” “It’s just . . . I mean, well . . .” Looking back, I think it’s possible, though I’ve never asked him, that he had some idea that this would actually be a big deal. Not as big a deal as it would turn out to be, of course, but big. “Hey, don’t think you’re going to win my favor by giving me internet fame. I don’t even want that.” “Right, but you have no idea how to use this camera.” I could tell he was making an excuse, but I couldn’t figure out why. “I don’t know how to do behind-the-camera stuff, but I also don’t know how to do in-front-of-the-camera stuff. You and Jason talk to the internet all day long, I barely have a Facebook.” “You have an Instagram.” “That’s different.” I smirked. “Not really. I can tell you care about what you post on there. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re a digital girl, April, in a digital world. We all know how to perform.” God bless Andy for being blunt. He was right, of course. I tried not to care about social media, and I really did prefer hanging out in art galleries to hanging out on Twitter. But I wasn’t as disconnected as I made myself out to be. Being annoyed by carefully crafted internet personas was part of my carefully crafted internet persona. Even so, I think we could both feel Andy stretching for a point that wasn’t 100 percent there. “Andy, what is this actually about?” “It’s just”—he took a deep breath—“I think it would be better for the artist if it were you. I’m a fucking goof, I know what I look like. People aren’t going to take me seriously. You look like an artist with your outfit and your cheekbones. You look like you know what you’re talking about. You do know what you’re talking about, and you talk it good, girl. If I do this, I’m going to make it a joke. Plus, you’re the one who found it, I think it just makes more sense for you to be in front of the camera.” Unlike most of my classmates who graduated with design degrees, I thought a lot about fine art. If you’re wondering what the difference is, well, fine art is like art that exists for its own sake. The thing that fine art does is itself. Design is art that does something else. It’s more like visual engineering. I started school focusing on fine art, but I decided by the end of the first semester that maybe I wanted to someday have a job. So I switched to advertising, which I hated, so I switched a bunch more times until I caved and went into design. But I still spent way more time and energy paying attention to the fine art scene in Manhattan than any of my design-track friends did. It was part of why I desperately wanted to stay in the city. This may sound dumb, but just being a twenty-something in New York City made me feel important. Even if I wasn’t doing real art, at least I was making it work in this city, a long ways away from my parents’ literal dairy-supply business. Ultimately, Andy wasn’t showing any signs of giving up and I determined that this wasn’t actually that big of a deal. So I ran the mic up the inside of my shirt . . . The cord was warm from Andy’s body. The light shined in my eyes and I could barely see the lens. It was cold, there was a little breeze, we were alone on the sidewalk. “Are you ready?” he said. “Give me that mic,” I said, pointing at an open bag on the ground. “Your lav is speeding, you don’t need it.” I had no idea what that meant, but I got the gist. “No, just as a prop . . . so I can . . . interview it?” “Ah . . . cool . . .” He handed me the mic. “OK,” I said. “’K, I’m rolling.” CHAPTER TWO, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing CHAPTER TWO ’K, I’m rolling.” You’ve heard Andy say those words . . . if you’re a human who’s ever been near enough to an internet connection to hear them. Whether or not you speak English. Whether or not you’ve ever owned an electronic device in your life. If you’re a Chinese billionaire or a Kiwi sheep farmer, you’ve heard it. Militant rebels in Nepal have heard it. It’s the most-viewed piece of media of all time. It’s been viewed more times than there are humans on earth. Google estimates that “New York Carl” has been watched by 94 percent of living humans. And by this point, I suppose, a fair number of dead ones. After Andy edited the video . . . this is roughly what we had: I’m a mess. I’ve been awake for twenty-two hours. I’m barely wearing makeup and the dress code at work was basically “whatever looks like you care the least,” so I’m wearing a denim jacket over a white hoodie and my jeans have holes in the knees, which isn’t helping me keep warm. My black hair is loose around my shoulders, the light is glaring in my eyes, and I’m fighting to keep from squinting, but considering all that, I don’t look so bad. Maybe I’ve just watched the video enough times that I’m over the embarrassment. My eyes are dark enough that they look all pupil even when the sun is out. My teeth are shining in Jason’s LED light. Somehow, I seem chipper. The giddiness of lack of sleep has taken over. My voice is croaky. “Hello! I’m April May, and I’m here at 23rd and Lexington with an unannounced and peculiar visitor. He arrived sometime before 3 A.M. today, guarding the Chipotle Mexican Grill next door to the Gramercy Theatre like an ancient warrior of an unknown civilization. His icy stare is somehow comforting, it’s like, look, none of us has our lives figured out . . . not even this ten-foot-tall metal warrior. The weight of life getting you down? Don’t worry . . . you’re insignificant! Do I feel safer with him watching over me? I do not! But maybe safety isn’t what it’s all about!” A couple, headed home after a long night, walk by while I say this, looking over their shoulders more at the camera than at the giant freaking ROBOT. The camera angle changes abruptly. (This was after a few seconds of me mumbling around for something to say and sounding like an idiot and Andy assuring me that he’d edit out the parts where I sounded like an idiot.) “His name is Carl! Hello, Carl.” Here I hold the dummy mic to Carl . . . standing on my tiptoes. I’m a small person, five foot two—this makes Carl look even bigger than he is. Carl says nothing. “A robot of few words, but your appearance speaks volumes.” Another cut, now I’m staring back at the camera. “Carl, immovable, solid, and somehow warm to the touch, a ten-foot-tall robot that New Yorkers appear to think is not particularly interesting.” Cut. “What do they think he is? An art installation? A pet project evicted from his apartment along with a deadbeat tenant? A forgotten prop from a nearby film shoot? Has the city that never sleeps become the city that’s too cool to notice even the most peculiar and astounding occurrences? No, wait! One young man has stopped to see, let’s ask him what he thinks.” Cut. Now Andy shares the fake mic with me. “And you are?” “Andy Skampt.” Somehow Andy is more nervous than me. “And you can confirm that there is a ten-foot-tall robot standing outside of Chipotle?” “I can.” “And can you confirm that this is in fact not fucking normal?” “Uh-huh.” “What do you think it means?” “I don’t know, actually. Now that I’m thinking about it, Carl kinda terrifies me.” “Thank you, Andy.” Cut. “And there you have it, citizens of the world. A giant, stately, terrifying, slightly warm robot man has arrived in New York City and, through his inaction, has somehow become only interesting enough for a one-minute-long video.” All of this is said over close shots of the robot, his immobility teeming with movement, energy glistening just below the surface. The whole time I was in front of the camera, I was thinking of the artist. A fellow creator who had poured her soul into something truly remarkable that might simply be ignored by the whole world. I was trying to get in her head. I was trying to figure out why she had created this thing and, in the same breath, calling out the world for its callous ignorance of beauty and form. CALLING ALL NEW YORKERS! APPRECIATE HOW COOL SHIT CAN BE! I wanted people to wake up and spend a few moments looking at the exceptional amazement of human creation. Hilarious in hindsight. — “Is that good?” “Yeah, great, fantastic, you’re adorable and smart and the internet is going to love you.” “Oh, just what I’ve always wanted,” I deadpanned. “I am suddenly extremely tired.” “Yeah, well, that makes sense. Why are you even awake right now?” “Aside from the giant robot? You know, another day, another ‘all hands on deck’ crisis.” “At least you have a job.” Andy was trying his hand at freelance, which is what you do when you don’t have to worry about paying student loans because your dad is a filthy-rich Hollywood lawyer. And just like that Carl was out of the conversation. Andy grabbed a few close-up shots while I whined about work and he told me about a new client who wanted their logo to look more “computery.” I even got on Andy’s shoulders to get as close to the robot’s face as I could, trying to hold the camera steady for B-roll. But we were just talking about work and life and then it was almost 4 A.M . “Well, this has been super fucking weird, April May, thank you for calling me out into the chill of the night to make a robot video with you.” “And thank you for coming, and no, I’m not coming over to watch you edit a video. I’m going to bed. If you call me before noon, I’m going to impale you on that spiky thing Carl’s got on his head.” “Always a pleasure.” “See you tomorrow.” On the subway ride home I set my phone to Do Not Disturb mode. That night was probably the best night’s sleep I had until after I died. CHAPTER THREE, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing CHAPTER THREE I woke up at 2 P . M . I hadn’t even woken up when Maya got out of bed. She came into the room doing that “knock softly while you open the door” thing, which was somehow both annoying and endearing. She was carrying a cup of coffee. The room was, for my tastes, pleasantly cluttered. A couple items of clothes on the floor, one too many cups on the desk, way too many books on the nightstands. I don’t really understand people who keep everything around them constantly neat. It’s way more efficient to do occasional dedicated cleanups than constant maintenance. Plus, my mind likes clutter. It’s almost like I need to make the world around me messy to make my art and ideas neat. Simplicity in design, complete disaster in everything else. It was an entire ethos I was working on. Of course, Maya kept me from going completely off the rails. Maya was far more personally put together than I was, but neither of us were neat freaks, which helped make the roommate thing work. She had clearly been up for hours; her locks were in some fancy updo that remained mostly magical to me. That meant she was probably doing something important later. She’d probably told me about it, but I couldn’t remember what it was if she had. Meeting a client for work, maybe? She was the only one of us who had gotten work at a real design firm. It didn’t pay great, but it was a foot in the door. Her makeup was already done. In addition to being a better apartment steward than I, she was also a much better relationship steward. All the weirdness in the relationship stemmed from me. I actively stopped her from talking about serious stuff. If it weren’t for my issues, we would have “moved in together” a long time ago. “I brought you a cup of coffee,” she said softly, in case I wasn’t already awake. “And after years of living together, you haven’t noticed that I never drink coffee?” “This is not true.” She put the coffee on my nightstand. “You only drink coffee on very, very bad days.” She sat down on the side of the bed. I turned to her with a big ol’ question mark on my face. “April, this robot thing has gotten a little weird.” “You know about Carl?” “Why did you give him that stupid name?” she asked, exasperated. “You know about Carl.” It wasn’t a question anymore. “I know about Carl—” “Has Andy been bugging you?” I cut in before she could continue, annoyed that he couldn’t leave it until morning. Or, rather, late afternoon. “Don’t interrupt, I let you sleep,” she demanded. “Andy has been calling all day and he is freaking out and he needs you to check your email. In there, you’ll find a number of important things to read, including several messages from local news stations and entertainment agents and managers. I don’t think this is the kind of thing you want to ignore, but I also don’t think it’s something to rush.” Maya was the most effective talker I knew. It was like she wrote essays in her brain and then recited them verbatim. She once explained to me that she thought this was part of being Black in America. “Every black person who spends time with a lot of white people eventually ends up being asked to speak for every black person,” she told me one night after it was too late to still be talking, “and I hate that. It’s really stupid. And everyone gets to respond to that idiocy however they want. But my anxiety eventually made me extremely careful about everything I said, because of course I don’t represent capital- B Black People, but if people think I do, then I still feel a responsibility to try to do it well.” I never had any idea what to say when she talked about this stuff. I’m white and I was raised in a very white community. So I just said the thing that I’d heard you should say in situations like this: “That sounds really hard.” “Yeah,” she replied. “Everybody has their hard parts. Thanks.” “God, I hope you don’t feel like you have to represent all black people with me,” I said. “I hope you’re not, like, careful all the time.” “No, April.” And then it was a long time before she continued. “I’m careful with you for different reasons.” I was too afraid to ask what that meant, so I kissed her and then we went to sleep. In any case, Maya’s efficiency of speech was extremely helpful in the maintenance of a relationship that I was subconsciously keeping on the knife-edge between casual and serious. She was capable of talking with her eyes and her body, but she mostly chose to use her mouth. I didn’t mind this. “Maya,” is as far as I got before she put her index finger softly on my lips. I said, through her finger, “Uh . . . are we gonna make out now?” “No, you’re going to drink your coffee and check your email and not talk again to me or anyone else until you’ve brushed your teeth because your mouth smells like trillions of microorganisms. I have taken away your phone, you can have it back when you’re done with your email.” She stood up off the bed without so much as a kiss. “But I—” She drowned me out as she walked to the doorway: “Stop talking! Read!” She closed the door. Ten minutes later I was freshened up a little bit, sitting on the bed with my laptop. Read messages were blue, unread messages were white—“Important and Unread” was white for five pages. I had no idea what to do so I just searched for “andyskampt@gmail.com” and that cleared things up pretty quickly. One of the fifteen messages he had sent me was titled “READ THIS ONE FIRST” and another was titled “READ THIS ONE SECOND” and a third, more recent email was titled “NO! THIS ONE! READ THIS ONE FIRST!” Here they are, copied and pasted straight out of my inbox. NO! THIS ONE! READ THIS ONE FIRST! I’m sorry all of the emails I have sent today sound as if they were written in a demented frenzy. I value our friendship. Let’s try and keep that front of mind. Andy READ THIS ONE FIRST OK, so, whoa. I’m going to give you a quick rundown of everything that has happened in the last six hours. This is everything that isn’t conjecture. Carl didn’t just show up in New York, there’s one in pretty much every city on Earth. There are at least sixty Carls, photos of Carls are popping up everywhere from Beijing to Buenos Aires. People just stumbled across them, like we did, and people around the world have posted photos and videos on social media, yet somehow ours is the one that’s taken off. It has to be some kind of international street art project and you (we?) basically got the scoop. All of them went up without anyone seeing the installers and no one can find any surveillance footage. I’m sure they will eventually but they don’t have anything yet. Everyone is calling them “Carls” because they didn’t have anything else to call them. It’s not like there’s an artist statement on foamcore glued to the sidewalk next to them. They’re playing our video on the news (without permission, I’ll add). Several news outlets have contacted me to talk about it. The video has already had more than a MILLION VIEWS! People love you! Don’t read the comments. I’ve already been back to Carl with a nicer camera to take some daytime footage. I got there before the crowds did, but it’s wild out there now. He’s a freaking tourist attraction! I haven’t slept since you called me. I feel like a small dog is eating my eyeballs from the inside! Andy READ THIS SECOND Hey, so did you know that my dad is a lawyer? Um . . . this is weird but, like, “our” video has gotten a million views already and it’s actually made some money and we need to figure out how to split it. However, since I don’t think there’s any way to figure out exactly who contributed what to this video, and it’s safe to say that neither of us would have made it if it weren’t for the other, I am proposing a 50/50 split on the ownership of the video. I would also like to propose a 50/50 split on the ownership of my YouTube channel “Skamper2001,” which I named when I was eleven and am going to regret for literally the rest of my life. Final proposal . . . we should collaborate on future videos about Carl(s), but we can talk about that later. I had my dad draw up a contract that says that we each own 50% of the video and are entitled to 50% of the revenue from it. It basically also means that I can’t do anything with the content without your approval, and you can’t do anything without my approval. I know this is dumb, but he’s a lawyer, and this is what they do. He would also like for me to propose to you that he represent you as your lawyer when we sue all of the major networks for using our video without permission. I told him to cool his jets, so his jets are currently on ice. Just so you know, the video has, thus far, earned about $2000. So, basically, we’re rich. Andy A quick read through the rest of my inbox made me kinda wish I hadn’t listed my email on my portfolio website. There indeed were a bunch from entertainment managers and agents. Some people wanted me to know how much they liked my video. Some wanted me to know that, if I was going to be in a YouTube video, there were a number of things I could have done to improve my physical appearance and, really, why hadn’t I done that? There was one that was very clearly creepier than the rest of the normal creepiness. It is amazing how disconcerting a single vile, manipulative person can be even if you have never and (hopefully) will never see them. The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and frightened and weak is amazing. This was not the first time someone had made me feel this way, but it was the first time it had happened through the internet, and it was enough to make me want to withdraw from the whole thing for a moment. Just a moment, though. There was a message from my dad. (Really, both my parents—they did this adorable tag team email thing. I swear they sat next to each other on the couch and wrote emails like it was a three-way call. They should make special tablets with two keyboards just for them.) It was sent like a long text message about how they thought the video was great and I sure looked tired and they couldn’t wait to see me at Tom’s wedding and was I getting enough sleep? The only message that is long-term important in the story was one titled “You said it was warm?” I’ll just copy it directly for you. You said it was warm? Ms. May, My name is Miranda Beckwith, I’m a graduate student in materials science at UC Berkeley. I watched your video this morning and found it both entertaining and fascinating. I was particularly interested when you referred to “Carl” as “slightly warm.” Of course, I’m sure your life is ridiculous right now, but knowing a bit about materials, and having seen Carl, it’s unusual for something that seems so heavy and shiny to not have a low thermal conductivity. Basically, Carl looks like he’s made of a metal, but it’s January in New York, so my guess is it’s quite cold and metal at ambient temperature would have felt very cold. Initial reports are that these things are super heavy, so it doesn’t make sense that they would be made out of coated plastic. I have no idea what else would not feel very cold to the touch but also be heavy and shiny. Unless he actually felt warm, in which case there is likely some kind of power source inside of him keeping him warm. There’s a Carl here in the Bay Area, but it’s looking less and less likely that I’ll be getting my hands on him, so I was just wondering if you could satisfy my curiosity. Was Carl warm like touching Styrofoam would be warm? Or was he warm like touching a mug full of coffee would be warm? Did you notice anything else about him that would help with this mystery? Thank you for your time and I totally understand if you’re not able to get back to me. Miranda That was the only email I responded to that day. RE: You said it was warm? Miranda, Thanks for your message! On the list of peculiar things about Carl, this didn’t really stand out, but now that you mention it, it was super weird. He didn’t feel warm, he just didn’t feel like a temperature. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it without the prompt, but it was very much like hard, smooth Styrofoam. Like he didn’t have heat, but all of my hand heat stayed in my hand when I touched him. I did actually give him a good whack with my knuckles and it was like a thunk followed by a faint low hum. It didn’t give at all. It was like knocking on a painted brick wall. I imagine I’ll have a pretty hard time getting up close with NY Carl again too, so I probably won’t be able to be of much further help. Sounds like whoever did this is going above and beyond in the weirdness category. April With that, I considered myself done enough. “MAYA! Phone, please!” “This is super weird, right?!” she shouted back unseen, before coming into her room. “So what’s the damage?” I asked, gesturing to the phone. “Um . . . you are suddenly extremely popular. Andy would like to talk. He would like to talk a lot. He would like to talk for at least four years. Your parents also called.” I called my parents—they were fine, if a little stressed. My slightly older, very successful, extremely normal brother, Tom, was getting married in Northern California in a few months and they were helping with a lot of the planning. Tom had studied math and worked at an investment bank in San Francisco. I kept expecting him to move to New York with all the other investment bankers, but he wasn’t doing it. I want to be very clear that whatever hang-ups I have are 100 percent mine. I had a very happy childhood; I just wasn’t a very happy child. My parents have always been supportive and without expectations, which is pretty much all a kid can ask for. So we talked about Carl and about Tom and about how much they loved Tom’s fiancée and how smooth the planning was going, even if it was still a lot of work. They wanted to know what I knew about Carl, so I told them a bunch of stuff they mostly already knew. They asked about work and hinted that they could give me some money if I needed it, which they always did and I always ignored. They loved the video, and they were proud of me. For what? Who knows. Parents, right? I called Andy, who sounded . . . unstable. “APRIL MAY THIS IS GETTING REALLY WEIRD!” I winced away from the phone. “You’re going to need to be calm with me right now.” “The video has had three million views now, people think you’re fantastic! You aren’t reading the comments, right?” “I haven’t actually watched the video yet.” “You’re, like, the only person who has not seen it. The story just keeps getting weirder. They still haven’t found any surveillance footage. There’s a camera that shows the spot pretty clearly, but at 2:43 A . M . it just cuts out . . . records nothing for five minutes, and when it comes back Carl i	553,622
Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata) (Z-Library).epub	Convenience Store Woman Copyright © 2016 by Sayaka Murata English translation © 2018 by Ginny Tapley Takemori Cover design by Gretchen Mergenthaler Cover photograph © plainpicture/Score. Aflo/Naho Yoshizawa All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com . Original published as Konbini ningen. Japanese edition published by Bungeishunju Ltd., Tokyo. English language translation rights reserved to Grove Atlantic, Inc. under license granted by Sakaya Murata arranged with Bungeishunju Ltd. through The English Agency (Japan) Ltd. Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of America First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: June 2018 This book was set in 11 point Berling by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title. ISBN 978-0-8021-2825-6 eISBN 978-0-8021-6580-0 Grove Press an imprint of Grove Atlantic 154 West 14th Street New York, NY 10011 Grove Atlantic gratefully acknowledges the support from the Japan Foundation for this publication. Distributed by Publishers Group West groveatlantic.com 18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Convenience Store Woman A convenience store is a world of sound. From the tinkle of the door chime to the voices of TV celebrities advertising new products over the in-store cable network, to the calls of the store workers, the beeps of the bar code scanner, the rustle of customers picking up items and placing them in baskets, and the clacking of heels walking around the store. It all blends into the convenience store sound that ceaselessly caresses my eardrums. I hear the faint rattle of a new plastic bottle rolling into place as a customer takes one out of the refrigerator, and look up instantly. A cold drink is often the last item customers take before coming to the checkout till, and my body responds automatically to the sound. I see a woman holding a bottle of mineral water while perusing the desserts and look back down. As I arrange the display of newly delivered rice balls, my body picks up information from the multitude of sounds around the store. At this time of day, rice balls, sandwiches, and salads are what sell best. Another part-timer, Sugawara, is over at the other side of the store checking off items with a handheld scanner. I continue laying out the pristine, machine-made food neatly on the shelves of the cold display: in the middle I place two rows of the new flavor, spicy cod roe with cream cheese, alongside two rows of the store’s best-selling flavor, tuna mayonnaise, and then I line the less popular dry bonito shavings in soy sauce flavor next to those. Speed is of the essence, and I barely use my head as the rules ingrained in me issue instructions directly to my body. Alerted by a faint clink of coins I turn and look over at the cash register. It’s a sound I’m sensitive to, since customers who come just to buy cigarettes or a newspaper often jingle coins in their hand or pocket. And yes: as I’d thought, a man with a can of coffee in one hand, the other hand in his pocket, is approaching the till. I quickly move through the store, slide behind the counter, and stand at the ready so as not to keep him waiting. “Irasshaimasé! Good morning, sir.” I bow and take the can of coffee he holds out to me. “Oh, and a pack of Marlboro Menthol Lights.” “Right away, sir.” I take out a pack of the cigarettes and scan the bar code. “Please confirm your age on the touch screen.” As he does so, I notice him glance at the hot-food cabinet. I could ask him whether he’d like anything else, but when a customer appears to be dithering over whether or not to buy something, I make a point of taking a step back and waiting. “And a corn dog.” “Right away, sir. Thank you.” I disinfect my hands with alcohol, open the hot cabinet, and take out a corn dog. “Shall I put the hot food and cold drink in separate bags?” “Oh no, don’t bother. Together’s fine.” I put the can of coffee, cigarettes, and corn dog into a small-size bag. Until then the man had been jingling the coins in his pocket, but now he suddenly moves his hand to his breast pocket as though something has just occurred to him. Instantly I deduce that he will use electronic money. “I’ll pay by Suica.” “Certainly, sir. Please touch your card here.” I automatically read the customer’s minutest movements and gaze, and my body acts reflexively in response. My ears and eyes are important sensors to catch their every move and desire. Taking the utmost care not to cause the customer any discomfort by observing him or her too closely, I swiftly move my hands according to whatever signals I pick up. “Your receipt, sir. Thank you for your custom!” “Thanks,” he says, taking his receipt and leaving. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” I say with a bow to the woman next in the queue. “Irasshaimasé. Good morning!” The morning period is passing normally in the brightly lit box of the convenience store, I feel. Visible outside the windows, polished free of fingerprints, are the figures of people rushing by. It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. I am one of those cogs, going round and round. I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning. I am just running to put out more rice balls when our supervisor, Mrs. Izumi, calls out to me. “Miss Furukura, how many five-thousand-yen notes are there left in that till?” “Um, only two.” “Oh dear, there must have been a lot of customers paying with ten-thousand-yen notes. There aren’t many left in the safe either. I’d better go to the bank this morning, once the rush and deliveries have calmed down.” “Yes, thank you!” Mrs. Izumi is a casual worker about the same age as me, but the night shift has been so short of staff lately that the store manager has been doing nights and putting her in charge during the day, as though she were a regular staff member sent from head office. “Okay then, I’ll go for change around ten o’clock. And while I’m thinking about it, there happens to be a special order for sushi pockets today, so please keep an eye out for the customer when he comes to collect it.” “I will!” I look at the clock: almost nine thirty. The morning rush is nearly over, and I have to finish dealing with the delivery and start preparing for the lunchtime rush. I stretch my back and go out into the store to finish putting out the rice balls. * * * The time before I was reborn as a convenience store worker is somewhat unclear in my memory. I was born into a normal family and lovingly brought up in a normal suburban residential area. But everyone thought I was a rather strange child. There was the time when I was in nursery school, for example, when I saw a dead bird in the park. It was small, a pretty blue, and must have been someone’s pet. It lay there with its neck twisted and eyes closed, and the other children were all standing around it crying. One girl started to ask: “What should we—” But before she could finish I snatched it up and ran over to the bench where my mother was chatting with the other mothers. “What’s up, Keiko? Oh! A little bird … where did it come from I wonder?” she said gently, stroking my hair. “The poor thing. Shall we make a grave for it?” “Let’s eat it!” I said. “What?” “Daddy likes yakitori, doesn’t he? Let’s grill it and have it for dinner!” She looked at me, startled. Thinking she hadn’t heard properly, I repeated what I’d said, this time clearly enunciating my words. The mother sitting next to her gaped at me, her eyes, nostrils, and mouth forming perfect O’s. She looked so comical I almost burst out laughing. But then I saw her staring at the bird in my hand and I realized that one of these little birds probably wouldn’t be enough for Daddy. “Shall I get some more?” I asked, glancing at two or three other birds strutting around. “Keiko!” my mother exclaimed reprovingly, finally coming to her senses. “Let’s make a grave for Mr. Budgie and bury him. Look, everyone’s crying. His friends must be sad he died. The poor little thing!” “But it’s dead. Let’s eat it!” My mother was speechless, but I was captivated by the vision of my parents and little sister happily tucking in around the dinner table. My father was always saying how tasty yakitori was, and what was that if not grilled bird? There were lots more there in the park, so all we had to do was catch some and take them home. I couldn’t understand why should we bury the bird instead of eating it. “Look how cute little Mr. Budgie is!” my mother said earnestly. “Let’s make a grave for him over there, and everyone can lay flowers on it.” And that’s what we did. Everyone was crying for the poor dead bird as they went around murdering flowers, plucking their stalks, exclaiming, “What lovely flowers! Little Mr. Budgie will definitely be pleased.” They looked so bizarre I thought they must all be out of their minds. We buried the bird in a hole dug on the other side of a fence with a sign that said KEEP OUT and placed the flower corpses on top of it. Someone brought an ice lolly stick from the trash can to use as a grave marker. “Poor little bird. It’s so sad, isn’t it Keiko?” my mother kept murmuring, as if trying to convince me. But I didn’t think it was sad at all. There were many other similar incidents. There was also that big commotion soon after I started primary school, when some boys started fighting during the break time. The other kids started wailing, “Get a teacher!” and “Someone stop them!” And so I went to the tool shed, took out a spade, ran over to the unruly boys, and bashed one of them over the head. Everyone started screaming as he fell down clutching his skull. Seeing as he’d stopped moving, my attention turned to the other boy, and I raised the spade again. “Keiko-chan, stop! Please stop!” the girls shouted at me tearfully. Some teachers came over and, dumbfounded, demanded I explain myself. “Everyone was saying to stop them, so that’s what I did.” Violence was wrong, the bewildered teachers told me in confusion. “But everyone was saying to stop Yamazaki-kun and Aoki-kun fighting! I just thought that would be the quickest way to do it,” I explained patiently. Why on earth were they so angry? I just didn’t get it. They held a teacher’s meeting, and my mother was called to the school. Seeing her bowing to the teachers, apologizing over and over, her face strangely serious, I finally realized that maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I still couldn’t understand why. It was the same that time when our young class teacher became hysterical and began bawling and hitting her desk furiously with the attendance register, and everyone started crying. She wouldn’t calm down even when everyone started begging, “We’re sorry, Miss!” “Please stop, Miss!” So in order to shut her up I ran over and yanked her skirt and knickers down. She was so shocked she burst into tears, but at least she became quiet. The teacher from the next class came running in and asked me what had happened, so I explained that I’d once seen on TV how a grown-up woman who was all worked up went quiet after someone took her clothes off. But then they held another teachers’ meeting and my mother was summoned again. “I wonder why you can’t understand, Keiko …” she muttered helplessly on the way home, hugging me to her. It seemed I’d done something wrong again, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand what was the problem. My parents were at a loss what to do about me, but they were as affectionate to me as ever. I’d never meant to make them sad or have to keep apologizing for things I did, so I decided to keep my mouth shut as best I could outside home. I would no longer do anything of my own accord, and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions. After this, the adults seemed relieved when I didn’t say a single word more than necessary or act on my own initiative. But as I got older, being so quiet apparently became a problem in itself. As far as I was concerned, though, keeping my mouth shut was the most sensible approach to getting by in life. Even when my teachers wrote in my school report that I should make more friends and play outside more, I doggedly refused to say anything more than absolutely necessary. My little sister, who is two years younger than me, was a normal child. Even so, she never tried to avoid me; indeed, she adored me. Unlike me she was always being told off for silly little things, and whenever this happened I would go up to mother and ask her why she was so angry. This generally put an end to the lecture, and my sister always thanked me for it as if she thought I were protecting her. It also helped that I wasn’t all that interested in sweets and toys and would often give them to her, and so she was always hanging around me. My family always loved and cherished me, and that’s why they were so worried and wanted to cure me. I recall hearing my parents discussing how to do this, and wondered what it was about me that needed correcting. My father once drove me some distance to another town to meet a therapist. The therapist immediately assumed there must be some problem at home, but really there wasn’t. My father, a bank clerk, was a mild and steady type, while my mother was kind if a little timid, and my little sister was really fond of me. “For the time being, shower her with affection and let’s see how things go” was the bland conclusion, and so my parents assiduously brought me up with loving care. I didn’t make any friends at school, but I wasn’t particularly picked on or bullied, and I managed to get myself through elementary and secondary without saying anything uncalled for. I didn’t even change after graduating from high school and going on to university. I basically spent my free time alone, and didn’t talk to anyone in private at all. I never repeated the kind of trouble I’d caused in primary school, but still my parents worried that I wouldn’t survive in the real world. And so, believing that I had to be cured, I grew into adulthood. * * * The Smile Mart outside Hiiromachi Station opened on May 1, 1998, soon after I started university. I can still clearly recall the moment I came across the as-yet-unopened store. I’d been to see a Noh performance as part of my coursework and, not having any friends, was making my way home alone when I took a wrong turn and found myself in a completely unfamiliar office district, totally lost. It occurred to me all of a sudden that the place was deserted. I was alone in a world of graceful white buildings, an artificial scene of paper models. It was Sunday afternoon, and there was no sign of anyone other than me in the street. It was like a ghost town. Overwhelmed by a sensation of having stumbled into another dimension, I walked quickly through it looking for a metro station. At last I saw a sign and, relieved, was running toward it when I came across the ground floor of a pure white building converted into what looked like an aquarium. It didn’t have a signboard, or anything else other than a notice stuck on the glass window: HIIROMACHI STATION SMILE MART — OPENING SOON ! STAFF WANTED . I timidly peeked through the glass. There was nobody there, and it appeared still to be under construction, with plastic coverings on the walls and lines of empty white shelves. It was hard to believe this vacant space would soon be a convenience store. The allowance I received from home was enough for me to live on, but still I was interested in some part-time work. I made a note of the number, went home, and called the next day. After a brief interview, I was given the job on the spot. Training would start the following week I was told, and when I headed for the store at the appointed time, I found it looking a little more like a convenience store, now partly stocked, with some stationery, handkerchiefs, and other sundries neatly displayed. There were some other new employees gathered inside: a girl who appeared to be a student like me, a guy who looked like a typical job-hopper, a slightly older woman, probably a housewife—all in all, fifteen very different-looking people of all ages slouched awkwardly about the store. Eventually the trainer from head office appeared and handed out uniforms to everyone. I put mine on and tidied myself up according to the checklist stuck on the wall. Once those of us with long hair had tied it back, and all of us had removed watches and any other accessories as instructed, the motley bunch did actually now look like convenience store workers. First we practiced the various phrases we needed to use in the store. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a line, our backs straight, we lifted the corners of our mouths to match the smiling face in the training poster and in turn called out the stock welcoming phrase: Irasshaimasé! The male trainer checked each of us one by one, instructing us to try again if our voices were too quiet or our expressions too stiff. “Miss Okamoto, don’t be so shy. Smile! Mr. Aizaki, speak up a bit! Try again. Miss Furukura, that’s perfect. Nice and spirited—keep it up!” I was good at mimicking the trainer’s examples and the model video he’d shown us in the back room. It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech. For the two weeks prior to opening, we worked in pairs to role-play dealing with imaginary customers. We practiced looking the customer in the eye, smiling and bowing, cleaning our hands with alcohol before handling items from the hot-food cabinet, putting hot and cold items into separate bags, and sanitary products into paper bags. The money in the till was real so we would become accustomed to handling it, but the receipts were marked TRAINING in big letters, and our “customers” were our fellow uniformed workers, so it was rather like playing at shop. It was fun to see all kinds of people—from university students and guys who played in bands to job-hoppers, housewives, and kids studying for their high school diploma at night school—don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker. Once the day’s training was over, everyone removed their uniforms and reverted to their original state. It was like changing costumes to become a different creature. After two weeks of training, at long last opening day arrived. I arrived at the store in the morning to find the empty white shelves now fully stocked, the tightly packed items looking somehow unreal. Finally, it was time. This is the real thing, I thought to myself as the doors opened. Real customers, not the imaginary ones projected in training. And there were all kinds. Being in an office district, I’d had an image of all our customers in business suits or uniforms, but the people waiting outside appeared to be a group of local residents. I watched on in blank amazement as a little old lady walking with a stick came in first, followed by a long stream of customers clutching discount vouchers for rice balls and lunch boxes. “Hey, Miss Furukura, don’t forget to greet our customers!” the manager prompted me. “Irasshaimasé!” I blurted out, pulling myself together. “Today we are holding a sale to celebrate opening the store. Please look around!” Even the set phrases we’d been taught to use sounded completely different now that there were customers in the store. I never knew customers could be so loud! Their footsteps echoed and voices rang out as they walked around the store, confectionery packs rustling as they tossed them into their baskets, the refrigerator door clunking open and shut as they took out cold drinks. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume, I kept yelling out “Irasshaimasé!” over and over again. The mountain of food and confectionery that was so perfectly displayed it looked artificial soon crumbled under their hands. The store had looked almost fake, but now under their touch it was being vividly transformed. The first at the cash register was the same little old lady who had been the first through the door. I stood at the till, mentally running through the manual as she put her basket containing a choux crème, a sandwich, and several rice balls down on the counter. All the staff behind the counter straightened as she approached. Aware of their eyes on me, I bowed to her the way I’d learned in training. “Irasshaimasé!” I called out in precisely the same tone as the woman in the training video as I pulled the basket toward me and began scanning the bar codes, just as we’d been taught. The manager stood at my side, briskly placing the products in a plastic bag. “What time do you open?” she asked. “Um, today we opened at ten. From now on we’ll be open all the time!” Noting how inept I was at answering questions we hadn’t practiced in training, the manager quickly followed up with: “From now on we shall be open twenty-four hours, seven days a week, year-round. Please come and shop here at your convenience.” “Oh my, you’re open at night too? And early in the morning?” “Yes,” I told her, nodding. “How very convenient! It’s hard for me to walk with my bad hip, you see. The supermarket is so far away. It’s been such a bother,” she said, giving me a smile. “Yes, we’ll be open twenty-four hours from now on. Please come at your convenience,” I said, echoing the phrases the manager had used. “That’s wonderful. It’ll be hard on you store workers, though.” “Thank you!” I said, enthusiastically bowing the way the manager had done. The woman laughed and said, “Thank you, I’ll come again,” and moved away from the till. “Well done, Miss Furukura,” the manager told me. “That was perfect! You kept your calm, even though it was your first time on the till. Good job, keep it up. Oh look, the next customer!” I looked around and saw a man approaching with lots of discounted rice balls in his basket. “Irasshaimasé!” I called in exactly the same tone as before and bowed, then took the basket from him. At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt I’d become a part in the machine of society. I’ve been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society. * * * The Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart has remained open ever since that day, its lights on without a break. Sometimes I use a calculator to work out the number of hours that have passed since then. The other day, the store was open on May 1 for the nineteenth time, having been open continuously for 157,800 hours. I’m now thirty-six years old, and the convenience-store-worker-me is eighteen. None of the other workers who did their training with me are here anymore, and we’re now on our eighth manager. Not a single product on sale in the store at that time is left. But I’m still here. When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual. Even now my parents indulgently look on as I remain in the same dead-end job. There were times in my twenties that I felt sorry for them and went through the motions of applying for career positions, but having only ever had the same job I rarely even passed the screening selection. And even if I made it to an interview I couldn’t explain very well why I had spent so many years working there. Sometimes I even find myself operating the checkout till in my dreams. I wake up with a start, thinking: Oh! This new line of crisps is missing a price tag, or, We’ve sold a lot of hot tea, so I’d better restock the display cabinet. I’ve also been woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of my own voice calling out: “Irasshaimasé!” When I can’t sleep, I think about the transparent glass box that is still stirring with life even in the darkness of night. That pristine aquarium is still operating like clockwork. As I visualize the scene, the sounds of the store reverberate in my eardrums and lull me to sleep. When morning comes, once again I’m a convenience store worker, a cog in society. This is the only way I can be a normal person. * * * I arrive at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart every morning at eight. My shift is from nine, but I come early to have breakfast before starting. I pick up a two-liter bottle of mineral water, select a sandwich or bun close to its sell-by date, pay for them, and take them into the back room to eat. In the back room, the security camera in the store is relayed on a big screen. This morning Dat-kun, a Vietnamese guy new on the night shift, was frantically working the till, while the manager ran around keeping one eye on him. I gulped down my sandwich, ready to change into my uniform and rush out to help at any moment. For breakfast I eat convenience store bread, for lunch I eat convenience store rice balls with something from the hot-food cabinet, and after work I’m often so tired I just buy something from the store and take it home for dinner. I drink about half the bottle of water while I’m at work, then put it in my ecobag and take it home with me to finish at night. When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine. After breakfast, I check the weather forecast and go over the store’s data. The weather forecast is a vital source of information for a convenience store. The difference in temperature from the previous day is an important factor. Today will have a high of 21°C and low of 14°C. It will be cloudy, with rain forecast in the evening, when it will feel cooler. On hot days sandwiches sell briskly, whereas on cold days rice balls, meat dumplings, and buns are more popular. The sale of food from the counter cabinets also varies according to the temperature. In our branch, croquettes sell well on cold days. Today there also happened to be a sales promotion running on them, so we should make a lot of them, I noted to myself. The other day-shift staff always start arriving about now, just after eight thirty, when the door opens and a husky voice calls out: “Morning!” It is Mrs. Izumi, our trusty supervisor. She’s a housewife, one year older than me at age thirty-seven, and rather stern, but she’s an efficient worker. She’s a rather flashy dresser and changes out of her high heels into sneakers by her locker. “Early again today, Miss Furukura? Oh, that’s one of those new buns, isn’t it? What’s it like?” she asked, her eyes settling on the mango-chocolate bun in my hand. “The cream tastes weird, and it smells a bit strong, which is quite off-putting. It’s not very nice, actually.” “Really? Oh dear, the manager ordered a hundred of them. Well, let’s at least try to sell the ones that arrived today.” “Hai!” By far most of the store workers are university students or job-hoppers, and it’s unusual for me to work with a woman my age. Mrs. Izumi tied her hair back and put on a white shirt and light blue tie over her navy-blue jersey blouse. When the current owner took over, he made us all start wearing a shirt and tie under our uniforms, although it was never the rule before. She was checking her appearance in the mirror when Sugawara came flying in calling out: “Good morning!” Sugawara is twenty-four, a loud and cheerful type. She’s a singer in a band and goes on about wanting to dye her short hair red. She’s a bit plump and not without a certain charm, but often used to be late and was frequently scolded by the manager for wearing earrings at work. Thanks to Mrs. Izumi’s forthright manner of scolding and educating her, however, she now takes her job much more seriously and is an enthusiastic member of staff. Also on the day shift are Iwaki, a tall and lanky university student, and job-hopper Yukishita, who’s now found a proper job and will be leaving soon. Iwaki has also said he’ll be looking for a job and will have to take more days off, so the manager thinks he’ll either have to come back to the day shift or employ someone new if the store is to keep running smoothly. My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me. I am currently made up of 30 percent Mrs. Izumi, 30 percent Sugawara, 20 percent the manager, and the rest absorbed from past colleagues such as Sasaki, who left six months ago, and Okasaki, who was our supervisor until a year ago. My speech is especially infected by everyone around me and is currently a mix of that of Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara. I think the same goes for most people. When some of Sugawara’s band members came into the store recently they all dressed and spoke just like her. After Mrs. Izumi came, Sasaki started sounding just like her when she said, “Good job, see you tomorrow!” Once a woman who had gotten on well with Mrs. Izumi at her previous store came to help out, and she dressed so much like Mrs. Izumi I almost mistook the two. And I probably infect others with the way I speak too. Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think. Outside work Mrs. Izumi is rather flashy, but she dresses the way normal women in their thirties do, so I take cues from the brand of shoes she wears and the label of the coats in her locker. Once she left her makeup bag lying around in the back room and I took a peek inside and made a note of the cosmetics she uses. People would notice if I copied her exactly, though, so what I do is read blogs by people who wear the same clothes she does and go for the other brands of clothes and kinds of shawls they talk about buying. Mrs. Izumi’s clothes, accessories, and hairstyles always strike me as the model of what a woman in her thirties should be wearing. As we were chatting in the back room, her gaze suddenly fell on the ballet flats I was wearing. “Oh, those shoes are from that shop in Omotesando, aren’t they? I like that place too. I have some boots from there.” In the back room she speaks in a languid drawl, the end of her words slightly drawn out. I bought these flats after checking the brand name of the shoes she wears for work while she was in the toilet. “Oh really? Wait, do you mean those dark blue ones you wore to the shop before? Those were cute!” I answered, copying Sugawara’s speech pattern, but using a slightly more adult tone. Her speech is a rather excitable staccato, the exact opposite of Mrs. Izumi’s, but mixing the two styles works surprisingly well. “We’ve got quite similar tastes, haven’t we? I like your bag too,” Mrs. Izumi said with a smile. It’s only natural that my tastes would match hers since I’m copying her. I’m sure everyone must see me as someone with an age-appropriate bag and a manner of speech that has a perfect sense of distance without being reserved or rude. “Mrs. Izumi, were you in yesterday?” Sugawara called out loudly as she changed by the lockers. “The stock of ramen noodles is in a total mess!” “Yes, I was here. It was all right in the afternoon, but that kid on the night shift didn’t turn up again so it must have been the new guy, Dat-kun.” Pulling up the zip on her uniform as she came over to us, Sugawara pulled a face. “What, he left us in the lurch again? I can’t believe it! He knows how short-staffed we are right now. No wonder the store’s falling apart. There aren’t any drink cartons out there at all and it’s the morning rush!” “I know. It’s awful, isn’t it? The manager says he’ll have to stick to the night shift. He’s only got new people on it at the moment.” “We’re already having to manage without Iwaki on the day shift since he’s taking so much time off for job interviews. What are we going to do? If people want to leave that’s fine, but they should make sure they give enough notice. Otherwise they’re just making things difficult for the rest of us.” Hearing the two of them speak with such feeling, I felt a twinge of anxiety. There wasn’t a trace of anger in my body. I stole a glance at Sugawara and tried to mimic the way she moved her facial muscles as she spoke, the same way I did in training, and parroted, “Really, he left us in the lurch again? I can’t believe he’d do that knowing how short-staffed we are.” Mrs. Izumi laughed as she removed her watch and rings. “Ha ha ha! You’re really worked up about it, aren’t you Miss Furukura? But you’re right. It’s really not okay.” I’d noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy. If I went along with the manager when he was annoyed or joined in the general irritation at someone skiving off the night shift, there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too. Now, too, I felt reassured by the expression on Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara’s faces: Good, I pulled off being a “person.” I’d felt similarly reassured any number of times here in the convenience store. Mrs. Izumi looked at the clock and announced, “Well then, time for our morning practice session.” “Okay.” The three of us stood in a row and started our morning routine. Mrs. Izumi opened the report book and informed us of the day’s goals and matters to be attended to. “Today’s special is the mango-chocolate bun. Let’s all remember to keep announcing it. Also, it’s cleanliness crackdown time. Lunchtime is busy, but even so let’s be diligent about keeping the floor, windows, and the area around the door clean. We’re running out of time, so I’ll just trust you to get on with it. Well then, let’s practice our phrases, shall we? All together, repeat after me: Irasshaimasé!” “Irasshaimasé!” “Certainly. Right away, sir!” “Certainly. Right away, sir!” “Thank you for your custom!” “Thank you for your custom!” We three repeated in unison the phrases we used with customers, checked our appearance, and one by one filed into the store calling out “Irasshaimasé!” as we went. I was the last to rush through the office door. “Irasshaimasé! Good morning!” I love this moment. It feels like “morning” itself is being loaded into me. The tinkle of the door chime as a customer comes in sounds like church bells to my ears. When I open the door, the brightly lit box awaits me—a dependable, normal world that keeps turning. I have faith in the world inside the light-filled box. * * * My days off are Friday and Sunday, and on Fridays I sometimes go to see a friend who is now married and lives in the area we grew up in. At school I’d been so intent on not speaking that I didn’t make any friends, but later on after I’d already started working, I got to know her after going to an alumni reunion. “Wow, Furukura, you look totally different!” Miho had told me cheerfully at that reunion, then went on to comment excitedly how we both had the same bag in different colors. “We should really go shopping together sometime.” And so we exchanged e-mail addresses and from time to time meet up for lunch or to go shopping. After Miho married, she and her husband bought a secondhand house where she now often holds little parties with her friends. There are times when I feel like it’s too much bother, knowing I have to work the next day. But it’s the only connection I have to the world outside the convenience store and a precious opportunity to mingle with “normal” women my age, so I usually accept her invitations. Today there was Yukari and her young child, and Satsuki, who was married but still childless, and we had all brought cakes along to have with tea. Yukari had been away with her husband on a job placement, so it was the first time we’d seen her for quite some while. We all laughed as she kept looking around, saying how much she’d missed us as we nibbled at the cakes from the station mall. “There’s really nowhere like home. The last time we met was just after I got married, wasn’t it, Keiko?” “Yes! It was at that celebration barbecue, wasn’t it? There were lots of us there that time. Oh, what fun that was!” I said excitedly, mixing Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara’s speech patterns. “You’ve changed somehow.” She stared at me. “Didn’t you use to speak more normally? Maybe it’s just your hairstyle, but somehow there’s a different air about you.” “You think?” Miho asked, tilting her head questioningly. “I don’t feel she’s changed at all, although it could just be because we meet so often.” But Yukari was right I thought. After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too. When we last met a few years ago, most of the store workers were laid-back university students, so of course my way of speaking was different then. “I guess. Yes, I have probably changed,” I said with a smile, not elaborating. “Come to think of it, your fashion sense has changed too. I’m sure you never used to dress so flashily,” Satsuki said. “Oh! Yes, maybe you’re right,” Miho agreed. “That skirt is from a boutique in Omotesando, isn’t it? I tried on the same one in a different color. It’s really cute!” “Isn’t it? Lately all the clothes I wear come from that place.” It was the me with different clothes and speech rhythms that was smiling. Who was it that my friends were talking to? Yet Yukari was still smiling at me, repeating again how much she’d missed me. Miho and Satsuki wear exactly the same expression and speak the same way, perhaps because they live close to each other and often meet up. The way they eat cookies is especially similar, both breaking off tiny pieces and putting them in their mouths with hands that have perfectly manicured nails. I couldn’t help wondering whether they had always been like that, but my memory was hazy. The little habits and gestures they had last time I met them must have already been flushed out of my mind I thought to myself. “Next time let’s get more of us together. Especially now that Yukari’s back home. Like Shiho, for one.” “Mm, yes. Great idea. Let’s do that!” At Miho’s suggestion, we all leaned forward. “Everyone should bring their husbands and kids too. Let’s do another barbecue!” “Yay! That’s a fab idea. It’d be great if all our kids can make friends with each other.” “Yeah, good thinking!” Satsuki sounded a bit envious, so Yukari prompted her. “You are planning on having kids, aren’t you, Satsuki?” “Sure, I want them. I’ve been relying on nature to take its course, but I suppose I should start being a bit more proactive about conceiving.” “Oh yes,” Miho said. “The timing is perfect now.” I noticed Satsuki gazing at Miho’s sleeping baby and got the impression that both of their wombs were resonating in sync. Yukari had been nodding during their exchange, but now she abruptly directed her gaze to me. “Keiko, aren’t you married yet?” “No, I’m not.” “Really? But … you’re not still stuck in the same job, are you?” I thought a moment. I knew it was considered weird for someone of my age to not have either a proper job or be married because my sister had explained it to me. Even so, I balked at being evasive in front of Miho and the others, who knew the truth. “Yep, I’m afraid so.” Yukari looked flustered by my answer and so I hastily added, “I’m not very strong, so I’m better off in a casual job.” I’ve made it known among old friends that I have certain health issues that make it more convenient for me to have a part-time job. At my workplace, I tell them it’s because my parents are ill and I need to care for them. I have my sister to thank for thinking up these excuses for me. When I was in my early twenties it wasn’t unusual to be a freeter, so I didn’t really need to make excuses. But subsequently everyone started hooking up with society, either through employment or marriage, and I was the only one who hadn’t done either. While I always say it’s because I’m frail, deep down everyone must be thinking that if that’s so, why would I choose to do a job in which I’m on my feet for long periods every day? “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? Have you ever been in love, Keiko?” Satsuki asked teasingly. “In love?” “Like, have you ever dated anyone? Come to think of it, I’ve never heard you talk about that sort of thing.” “Oh I see. No, I haven’t,” I answered automatically. Everyone fell quiet and exchanged uncomfortable glances with each other. Too late I remembered that my sister had told me in such cases I should give a vague answer like: “Well, there was someone I liked but I’m not a good judge of men.” This would give the impression that I’d at least had a lover or something that might have involved some kind of physical relationship, even if I’d never had an actual boyfriend. “You can just give a vague answer to a personal question, and they’ll come to their own conclusions,” she’d told me. Well, I messed that one up, I thought to myself. “You know, I’ve got quite a few gay friends,” Miho intervened, “So I kind of get it. These days you can also be asexual or whatever you like.” “Oh yes, I heard that’s on the increase. Like there are young people who just aren’t interested in it at all.” “I saw a program on TV about that. It’s apparently really hard for them to come out too.” I’d never experienced sex, and I’d never even had any particular awareness of my own sexuality. I was indifferent to the whole thing and had never really given it any thought. And here was everyone taking it for granted that I must be miserable when I wasn’t. Even if I had been, though, it didn’t follow that my anguish would be the obvious type of anguish they were all talking about. But they didn’t want to think it through that far. I had the feeling I was being told they wanted to settle the matter this way because that was the easiest option for them. It was the same as when I’d hit that boy with a shovel at school. All the adults had jumped to the unfounded conclusion that I must be an abused child and blamed my family. That way they could understand why I’d done such a terrible thing and therefore have peace of mind. So they’d all pressed me to admit my family situation was to blame for what I’d done. What a pain I thought, wondering why everyone felt such a need for reassurance. But out loud I just parroted the excuse my sister had told me to use whenever I was in a fix: “No, no. It’s just because I’m not strong. That’s all!” “Oh yes, it’s true, you’ve got a chronic condition, haven’t you? It must be really tough on you.” “You’ve been like that for ages now. Are you okay?” I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality—all simply store workers. I looked at the clock—3:00 p.m.—so they’d have finished settling the cash register account and changing money at the bank and would be starting to put the latest truckload of bread and lunch boxes out on display. Even when I’m far away, the convenience store and I are connected. In my mind’s eye I picture the brightly lit and bustling store, and I silently stroke my right hand, its nails neatly trimmed in order to better work the buttons on the cash register. * * * Whenever I wake up early, I make a point of getting off the train one station before my stop and walking the rest of the way to the store. As I walk, the surrounding apartments and restaurants gradually give way to office blocks. The sensation that the world is slowly dying feels good. The view is unchanged since that day I first happened on the store. Early in the morning there are no living creatures in sight other than the occasional suit-clad salaryman rushing past. There are only offices here, but still some of the customers who come into the convenience store look like ordinary residents, and I always wonder where on earth they live. I absently imagine them asleep somewhere within this cast-off-cicada-shell world. When night falls, the brightly lit office windows transform the area into a geometrically aligned landscape. Unlike the lively area in which my cheap apartment is located, the light is cold and lifeless, all one uniform color. For a convenience store worker, walking through the area around the store is a way to glean valuable information. If a nearby restaurant starts selling lunch boxes it will impact our sales, and road works starting up will mean more customers. It was really tough when a rival closed down four years after our store opened and we were inundated with their customers. We all had to work overtime since the lunchtime peak had gone on and on, and when we ran out of lunch boxes the manager was reprimanded by head office for not doing enough research. That’s when I decided to walk around the area keeping my eye on things to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. Today there wasn’t any major change, other than it looked like a new building was nearing completion, which would probably mean more customers when it opened. I made a mental note of this, then made my way to the store. There I bought a sandwich and some tea and went into the back room to find the store manager, who had been on the night shift again, his sweaty body huddled over the store computer inputting figures. “Good morning!” “Oh, morning Miss Furukura. Early again today, I see!” The store manager is thirty years old and always businesslike. He’s manager #8. He has a sharp tongue but works hard. Manager #2 was always slacking off, while #4 was dependable and liked cleaning, and #6, who was rather eccentric and generally disliked, had caused a scandal when the entire night shift walked out on him en masse. Manager #8 is comparatively popular with part-timers and is the type who engages in physical tasks, so I like watching him at work. Manager #7 was a wimp and wasn’t strict enough with the night shift, so the store ended up a mess. While #8 might be a bit brusque, I thought looking at him, in this respect he was easier to work with. For eighteen years, there has always been a manager, even if his appearance keeps changing. Although each is different, taken all together I sometimes have the feeling they are but one single creature. Manager #8 has a loud voice, and it booms around the back room. “Oh, today you’ll be on with that new guy, Shiraha,” he told me. “He did his training at night, so it’ll be his first time on the day shift. Look after him, will you?” “Yes, I will!” I answered energetically, and the manager nodded several times as he continued to input figures without pause. “You know, Miss Furukura, I can always rest easy when you’re here. Iwaki has gone for good now, so it’ll just be you, Mrs. Izumi, Sugawara, and now Shiraha on the frontline day shift. It looks like I’m going to have to stay on the night shift for the time being, so I’m relying on you.” The manager has a way of drawing out the ends of his words just like Mrs. Izumi does, although their tones of voice are completely different. He came after Mrs. Izumi, so it was probably she who infected him, while she in turn probably absorbed his way of talking and ended up lengthening her drawl. Thinking about this I nodded and, imitating Sugawara’s speech, said, “Sure, no problem! The sooner we get someone new the better!” “Yeah, I’ve put up help wanted ads, and I’ve also asked the guys on the night shift if they have any friends looking for a job. Your being able to come in five days a week on the day shift is a big help, Miss Furukura.” In a short-staffed convenience store, a store worker can sometimes be highly appreciated just by existing, by virtue of not rocking the boat. I’m not particularly brilliant compared to Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara, but I’m second to none in terms of never being late or taking days off. I just come in every day without fail, and because of that I’m accepted as a well-functioning part of the store. Just then a thin voice came from the other side of the door. “Um …” “Oh, Shiraha, it’s you. Come in, come in!” the manager said. “Didn’t I tell you to arrive thirty minutes early? You’re late!” The door opened quietly, and a tall man, almost six feet and lanky like a wire coat hanger, came in, his head drooping. He looked as though he were made of wire, and his glasses were like silver twined around his face. He was wearing a white shirt and black trousers as dictated by the store rules, but he was too skinny and the shirt didn’t fit him, so that while his wrists were exposed, the fabric was unnaturally puckered around his stomach. I covered my shock at his skin-and-bone appearance by quickly lowering my head in greeting. “Pleased to meet you! I’m Furukura, from the day shift. Looking forward to working with you!” The way I said this was probably close to the store manager’s speech. Shiraha flinched at my loud voice and answered noncommittally: “Um, ah …” “Come on, Shiraha! Where are your manners?” the manager admonished him. “It’s essential to get off to a good s	175,996
Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Adib Khorram) (Z-Library).epub	Darius the Great Is Not Okay Contents COVER TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION CONTENTS THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES TRUCK NUTS THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT MOBY THE WHALE SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE INTERMIX RATIO OLYMPUS MONS TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS THE DANCING FAN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN-IRANIAN RELATIONS A HOLODECK VISION SOCCER/NON-AMERICAN FOOTBALL THE AYATOLLAH’S TURBAN STANDARD PARENTAL MANEUVER ALPHA THE DESSERT CAPITAL OF THE ANCIENT WORLD SINS OF THE FATHER THE KOLINAHR DISCIPLINE BETTE DAVIS EYES PERSIAN CASUAL MY COUSIN, THE RINGWRAITH MAIN SEQUENCE THE BORG OF HERBS THE KHAKI KINGDOM A TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL THE TOWERS OF SILENCE YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE FATHER ISSUES MAKE IT SO CHELO KABOB THE VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER THE AGE OF BAHRAMIS MAGNETIC CONTAINMENT FIRST, BEST DESTINY THROUGH A WORMHOLE THE CRACKS OF DOOM THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS DARIUS THE GREAT AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Table of Contents Cover Cover Title Page Start i ii iii iv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 COVER, Darius the Great Is Not Okay TITLE PAGE, Darius the Great Is Not Okay COPYRIGHT, Darius the Great Is Not Okay D IAL B OOKS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 Copyright © 2018 by Adib Khorram Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Khorram, Adib. Title: Darius the Great is not okay / Adib Khorram. Description: New York, NY : Dial Books, [2018] \| Summary: Clinically depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life. Identifiers: LCCN 2018009825\| ISBN 9780525552963 (hardback) \| ISBN9780525552987 (ebook) Subjects: \| CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. \| Grandparents—Fiction. \| Depression, Mental—Fiction. \| Iranian Americans—Fiction. \| Americans—Iran—Fiction. \| Iran—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K5362 Dar 2018 \| DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009825 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Jacket art © 2018 by Adams Carvalho Version_1 CONTENTS, Darius the Great Is Not Okay CONTENTS TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES TRUCK NUTS THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT MOBY THE WHALE SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE INTERMIX RATIO OLYMPUS MONS TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS THE DANCING FAN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN-IRANIAN RELATIONS A HOLODECK VISION SOCCER/NON-AMERICAN FOOTBALL THE AYATOLLAH’S TURBAN STANDARD PARENTAL MANEUVER ALPHA THE DESSERT CAPITAL OF THE ANCIENT WORLD SINS OF THE FATHER THE KOLINAHR DISCIPLINE BETTE DAVIS EYES PERSIAN CASUAL MY COUSIN, THE RINGWRAITH MAIN SEQUENCE THE BORG OF HERBS THE KHAKI KINGDOM A TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL THE TOWERS OF SILENCE YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE FATHER ISSUES MAKE IT SO CHELO KABOB THE VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER THE AGE OF BAHRAMIS MAGNETIC CONTAINMENT FIRST, BEST DESTINY THROUGH A WORMHOLE THE CRACKS OF DOOM THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS DARIUS THE GREAT AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR DEDICATION, Darius the Great Is Not Okay FOR MY FAMILY, FOR ALWAYS KEEPING THE KETTLE ON. THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES, Darius the Great Is Not Okay THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES Steam belched and hissed. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. Smaug the Terrible was furious with me. “What does it mean, ‘filter error’?” I asked. “Here.” Mr. Apatan wiggled the hose where it fed into Smaug’s gleaming chrome back. The blinking red error light went dark. “Better?” “I think so.” Smaug gurgled happily and began boiling once again. “Good. Were you pushing buttons?” “No,” I said. “Just to check the temperature.” “You don’t have to check it, Darius. It always stays at two- twelve.” “Right.” There was no use arguing with Charles Apatan, Manager of the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court. He was convinced, despite all the articles I printed out for him—he refused to read web pages—that each and every tea should be steeped at a full boil, whether it was a robust Yunnan or a fragile gyokuro. Not that Tea Haven ever got such fine teas. Everything we sold was enriched with antioxidants or enhanced with natural super-fruit extracts or formulated for health and beauty. Smaug, the Irrepressibly Finicky, was our industrial-strength water boiler. I named it Smaug my first week on the job, when I got scalded three times in a single shift, but so far the name hadn’t stuck with anyone else at Tea Haven. Mr. Apatan passed me an empty pump-action thermos. “We need more Blueberry Açai Bliss.” I shoveled tea from the bright orange tin into the filter basket, topped it with two scoops of rock sugar, and tucked it under the spigot. Smaug, the Unassailably Pressurized, spat its steaming contents into the thermos. I flinched as boiling water spattered my hands. Smaug, the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, was triumphant once more. As a people group, Persians are genetically predisposed to like tea. And even though I was only half Persian, I had inherited a full-strength tea-loving gene sequence from my mom. “You know how Persians make tea?” my mom would ask. “How?” I would say. “We put hell in it and we damn it,” she would say, and I would laugh because it was funny to hear my mom, who never used colorful metaphors, pretend to curse. In Farsi, hel means “cardamom,” which is what makes Persian tea so delicious, and dam means “to steep.” When I explained the joke to Mr. Apatan, he was not amused. “You can’t swear at the customers, Darius,” he said. “I wasn’t going to. It’s Farsi. It’s a joke.” “You can’t do that.” Charles Apatan was the most literal person I knew. After I replenished our strategically located sample thermoses with fresh tea, I refilled the plastic cups at each station. I was categorically opposed to plastic sample cups. Everything tasted gross out of plastic, all chemical-y and bland. It was deeply disgusting. Not that it made much difference at Tea Haven. The sugar content in our samples was high enough to mask the taste of the plastic cups. Maybe even high enough to dissolve them, given enough time. The Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court was not a bad place to work. Not really. It was a significant upgrade over my last job—spinning the daily special sign at one of those take-it-and-bake-it pizza places—and it would look good on my resume. That way, when I graduated, I could work at an artisanal tea store, instead of one that added the latest superfood extract to whatever dismal fannings the corporate tea blenders could find at the steepest discount. My dream job was Rose City Teas, this place in the Northwest District that did small-batch, hand-selected teas. There were no artificial flavorings in Rose City’s tea. But you had to be eighteen to work there. I was stuffing the cups into their spring-loaded dispenser when Trent Bolger’s hyena laugh rang through the open doorway. I was completely exposed. The entire front of Tea Haven was composed of giant windows, which, though tinted to reduce sun exposure, still offered a full and enticing view of the wares (and employees) inside. I silently wished for the sun to bounce off the window, blinding Trent and cloaking me from what was sure to be an unpleasant encounter. Or, at the very least, for Trent to keep on walking and not recognize me in my work uniform of black shirt and bright blue apron. It did not work. Trent Bolger rounded the corner and instantly got a sensor lock on me. He grabbed the doorframe and swung himself into the store, followed by one of his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy, Chip Cusumano. “Hey! D’s Nuts!” Trent Bolger never called me Darius. Not if there was a suggestive nickname he could use instead. Mom always said she named me after Darius the Great, but I think she and Dad were setting themselves up for disappointment, naming me after a historical figure like that. I was many things—D-Hole, D-Wad, D’s Nuts—but I was definitely not great. If anything, I was a great target for Trent Bolger and his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy. When your name begins with D, the sexual innuendos practically write themselves. At least Trent was predictable. Trent Bolger was not technically a bully. Chapel Hill High School—where Trent, Chip, and I were sophomores—had a Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying. It also had Zero Tolerance Policies toward fighting, plagiarism, drugs, and alcohol. And if everyone at Chapel Hill High School tolerated Trent’s behavior, that meant he wasn’t a bully. Right? Trent and I had known each other since kindergarten. We were friends back then, in the way that everyone is friends in kindergarten, before sociopolitical alliances begin to cement, and then, by the time third grade rolls around, you find yourself spending every game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up with your head down and your thumb up, completely ignored by your entire class until you begin to wonder if you’ve turned invisible. Trent Bolger was only a Level Two Athlete (Level Three at best). He played something - back on the Chapel Hill High School junior varsity football team (Go Chargers). And he was not particularly good-looking, either. Trent was almost a head shorter than me, with close-cropped black hair, blocky black glasses, and a nose that turned up sharply at the end. Trent Bolger had the largest nostrils of anyone I had ever seen. Nonetheless, Trent was disproportionately popular among Chapel Hill High School’s sophomore class. Chip Cusumano was taller, better-looking, and cooler. His hair was long and swoopy on top, with the sides shaved. He had the elegant sort of curved nose you saw in statues and paintings, and his nostrils were perfectly proportioned. He was also nicer than Trent (to most people if not to me), which of course meant he was far less popular. Also, his real name was Cyprian, which was an even more unusual name than Darius. Trent Bolger shared his last name with Fredegar “Fatty” Bolger, a Hobbit from The Lord of the Rings . He’s the one that stays home in the Shire while Frodo and company go on their adventure. Fatty Bolger is pretty much the most boring Hobbit ever. I never called Trent “Fatty” to his face. It was a Level Five Disaster. I had avoided letting anyone at Chapel Hill High School know where I worked, specifically to keep that knowledge from falling into the hands of Trent and the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy. Chip Cusumano nodded at me from the doorway and began to examine our line of brightly colored steeper mugs. But Trent Bolger headed straight for my station. He was wearing gray swishy shorts and his Chapel Hill High School Wrestling Team sweatshirt. Trent and Chip both wrestled in the winter. Trent was junior varsity, but Chip had managed a spot on the varsity roster, the only sophomore to do so. Chip had on his team sweatshirt too, but he wore it with his usual black joggers, the kind with stripes down the sides that taper around the ankles. I never saw Chip in swishy shorts outside of gym class, which I assumed was for the same reason I avoided them. It was the only thing we had in common. Trent Bolger stood in front of me, grinning. He knew I couldn’t escape him at work. “Welcome to Tea Haven,” I said, which was the Corporate Mandated Greeting. “Would you like to sample one of our fine teas today?” Technically, I was also supposed to produce a Corporate Mandated Smile, but I was not a miracle worker. “Do you guys sell tea bags?” Across the store, Chip smirked and shook his head. “Uh.” I knew what Trent was trying to do. This was not Chapel Hill High School, and the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court did not have a Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying. “No. We only sell mesh strainers and biodegradable sachets.” “That’s a shame. I bet you really like tea bags.” Trent’s grin crept up one side of his face. He only ever smiled with half his mouth. “You just seem like the type of guy who would really enjoy them.” “Um.” “You must get tea-bagged a lot, right?” “I’m trying to work, Trent,” I said. Then, because I had the tingly feeling that Mr. Apatan was somewhere close by, carefully watching and critiquing my customer service, I cleared my throat and asked, “Would you like to try our Orange Blossom Awesome Herbal Tisane?” I refused to call it tea when it did not contain any actual tea leaves. “What’s it taste like?” I pulled a sample cup out of the stack, filled it with a pump of Orange Blossom Awesome, and offered it to Trent, using my flat palm as a sort of saucer. He downed it in one swallow. “Ugh. This tastes like orange juice and balls.” Chip Cusumano laughed into the empty tea tin he was examining. It was one of our new spring-patterned ones, with cherry blossoms on it. “Did you brew it right, Darius?” Mr. Apatan asked behind me. Mr. Apatan was even shorter than Fatty Bolger, but somehow he managed to take up more space as he stepped between us to fill a sample cup of his own. Fatty winked at me. “Catch you later. D-Bag.” D-Bag. My newest suggestive nickname. It was only a matter of time. Trent nodded at Chip, who grinned and waved innocently at me, as if he hadn’t just played accomplice to my humiliation. They jostled each other out the door, laughing. “Thank you for visiting Tea Haven,” I said. “Come again soon.” The Corporate Mandated Farewell. “Did he just call you tea bag ?” Mr. Apatan asked. “No.” “Did you tell him about our mesh baskets?” I nodded. “Hmm.” He slurped his sample. “Well, this is right. Good job, Darius.” “Thanks.” I had done nothing worthy of praise. Anyone could brew Orange Blossom Awesome. That was the whole point and purpose of Tea Haven. “Was that a friend of yours from school?” Clearly the nuances of my interaction with Fatty Bolger, the World’s Most Boring Hobbit, were lost on Charles Apatan. “Next time, have him try the Blueberry Bliss.” “Okay.” TRUCK NUTS, Darius the Great Is Not Okay TRUCK NUTS The bike rack for the Shoppes at Fairview Court was located at the far end of the shopping center, right outside one of those clothing stores that catered to Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy like Fatty Bolger and Chip Cusumano. The kind that had pictures of shirtless guys with abdomens that could only be expressed in integers. Five different kinds of overpowering cologne waged war in my sinuses as I passed the store. When I made it out into the parking lot, the sun was still up, barely, but the mercury lights had come on. The air smelled dry and vacant after weeks of rain. I had been riding my bike from Chapel Hill High School to the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court ever since I got the job. It was easier than getting a ride from either of my parents. But when I got to the bike rack, my bicycle was gone. Upon closer inspection, that was not technically true—only part of my bike was gone. The frame was there, but the wheels were missing. The bike slumped against the post, held on by my lock. The seat was missing too, and whoever had taken it had left some sort of blue blob in its place. Well, it was not a blue blob. It was a pair of blue rubber testicles. I had never seen blue rubber testicles before, but I knew right away where they had come from. Like I said, there was no Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying at the Shoppes at Fairview Court. There was one toward stealing, but apparently that didn’t cover bicycle seats. My backpack sagged on my shoulders. I had to call my dad. “Darius? Is everything okay?” Dad always said that. Not Hi, Darius , but Is everything okay? “Hey. Can you come pick me up from work?” “Did something happen?” It was humiliating, telling my father about the blue rubber testicles, especially because I knew he would laugh. “Really? You mean like truck nuts?” “What are truck nuts?” “People hook them on the hitch of their truck, so it looks like the truck has testicles.” The back of my neck prickled. In the course of our phone call, my father and I had used the word testicles more than was healthy for any father-son relationship. “All right, I’ll be there in a bit. Did you get the goldfish?” “Um.” Dad breathed a Level Five Disappointed Sigh. My ears burned. “I’ll go grab them now.” “Hey, son.” Dad got out of his car and helped me load my wheel-less, seat-less bike into the trunk of his Audi. Stephen Kellner loved his Audi. “Hi, Dad.” “What happened to the truck nuts?” “I threw them away.” I did not need the reminder. Dad pressed the button to close the trunk and got back in. I tossed my backpack onto the backseat and then slumped in the passenger seat with the goldfish suspended in their plastic prison between my legs. “I almost didn’t believe you.” “I know.” It had taken him thirty minutes to come get me. We only lived a ten-minute drive away. “Sorry about your bike. Does security know who did it?” I buckled my seat belt. “No. But I’m sure it was Trent Bolger.” Dad put the Audi in drive and took off down the parking lot. Stephen Kellner liked to drive much too fast, because his Audi had lots of horsepower and he could do that kind of thing: Accelerate to escape velocity, slam the brakes when he had to (in order to avoid running over a toddler holding his brand-new Build-a-Bear), and then accelerate again. Thankfully, the Audi had all sorts of flashing lights and sensors, so it could sound Red Alert when a collision was imminent. Dad kept his eyes on the road. “What makes you think it was Trent?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell my father the entire humiliating saga. “Darius?” Stephen Kellner never took no for an answer. I told him about Trent and Chip, but only in the broadest strokes. I avoided mentioning Trent’s references to tea-bagging. I did not want to talk to Stephen Kellner about testicles ever again. “That’s it?” Dad shook his head. “How do you know it was them, then?” I knew, but that never mattered to Stephen Kellner, Devil’s Advocate. “Never mind, Dad.” “You know, if you just stood up for yourself, they’d leave you alone.” I sucked on the tassels of my hoodie. Stephen Kellner didn’t understand anything about the sociopolitical dynamics of Chapel Hill High School. As we turned onto the freeway, he said, “You need a haircut.” I scratched the back of my head. “It’s not that long.” My hair barely touched my shoulders, though part of that was how it curled away at the ends. That didn’t matter, though. Stephen Kellner had very short, very straight, very blond hair, and he had very blue eyes too. My father was pretty much the Übermensch. I did not inherit any of Dad’s good looks. Well, people said I had his “strong jawline,” whatever that meant. But really, I mostly looked like Mom, with black, loosely curled hair and brown eyes. Standard Persian. Some people said Dad had Aryan looks, which always made him uncomfortable. The word Aryan used to mean noble—it’s an old Sanskrit word, and Mom says it’s actually the root word for Iran—but it means something different now. Sometimes I thought about how I was half Aryan and half Aryan , but I guess that made me kind of uncomfortable too. Sometimes I thought about how strange it was that a word could change its meaning so drastically. Sometimes I thought about how I didn’t really feel like Stephen Kellner’s son at all. THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT, Darius the Great Is Not Okay THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT Despite what boring Hobbits like Fatty Bolger might have thought, I did not go home and have falafel for dinner. First of all, falafel is not really a Persian food. Its mysterious origins are lost to a prior age of this world. Whether it came from Egypt or Israel or somewhere else entirely, one thing is certain: Falafel is not Persian. Second, I did not like falafel because I was categorically opposed to beans. Except jelly beans. I changed out of my Tea Haven shirt and joined my family at the dinner table. Mom had made spaghetti and meat sauce—perhaps the least Persian food ever, though she did add a bit of turmeric to the sauce, which gave a slight orange cast to the oil in it. Mom only ever cooked Persian food on the weekends, because pretty much every Persian menu was a complicated affair involving several hours of stewing, and she didn’t have the time to devote to a stew when she was overwhelmed with a Level Six Coding Emergency. Mom was a UX designer at a firm in downtown Portland, which sounded incredibly cool. Except I didn’t really understand what it was that Mom actually did. Dad was a partner in an architecture firm that mostly designed museums and concert halls and other “centerpieces for urban living.” Most nights, we ate dinner at a round, marble-topped table in the corner of the kitchen, all four of us arranged in a little circle: Mom across from Dad, and me across from my little sister, Laleh, who was in second grade. While I twirled spaghetti around my fork, Laleh launched into a detailed description of her day, including a complete play-by-play of the game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up they played after lunch, in which Laleh was “it” three different times. She was only in second grade, with an even more Persian name than mine, and yet she was way more popular than I was. I didn’t get it. “Park never guessed it was me,” Laleh said. “He never guesses right.” “It’s because you have such a good poker face,” I said. “Probably.” I loved my little sister. Really. It was impossible not to. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could ever say to anyone. Not out loud, at least. I mean, guys are not supposed to love their little sisters. We can look out for them. We can intimidate whatever dates they bring home, although I hoped that was still a few years away for Laleh. But we can’t say we love them. We can’t admit to having tea parties or playing dolls with them, because that’s unmanly. But I did play dolls with Laleh. And I had tea parties with her (though I insisted we serve real tea, not imaginary tea, and certainly not anything from Tea Haven). And I was not ashamed of it. I just didn’t tell anyone about it. That’s normal. Right? At last, Laleh’s story ran out of steam, and she began scooping spaghetti into her mouth with her spoon. My sister always cut her spaghetti up instead of twirling it, which I felt defeated the point and purpose of spaghetti. I used the lull in conversation to reach across the table for more pasta, but Dad pressed the salad bowl into my hands instead. There was no point arguing with Stephen Kellner about dietary indiscretions. “Thanks,” I mumbled. Salad was inferior to spaghetti in every possible way. After dinner, Dad washed the dishes and I dried them while I waited for my electric kettle to reach 180º Fahrenheit, which is what I liked for steeping my genmaicha. Genmaicha is a Japanese green tea with toasted rice in it. Sometimes the toasted rice pops like popcorn, leaving little white fluffy clouds in the tea. It’s grassy and nutty and delicious, kind of like pistachios. And it’s the same greenish yellow color as pistachios too. No one else in my family drank genmaicha. No one ever drank anything besides Persian tea. Mom and Dad would sniff and sip sometimes, if I made a cup of something and begged them to taste it, but that was it. My parents didn’t know genmaicha had toasted rice in it, mostly because I didn’t want Mom to know. Persians have very strong feelings about the proper applications of rice. No True Persian ever popped theirs. When the dishes were done, Dad and I settled in for our nightly tradition. We sank into the tan suede couch shoulder to shoulder—the only time we ever sat like this—and Dad cued up our next episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation . Every night, Dad and I watched exactly one episode of Star Trek . We watched them in broadcast order, starting with The Original Series , though things got complicated after the fifth season of The Next Generation , since its sixth season overlapped Deep Space Nine. I had long since seen every episode of each series, even The Animated Series. Probably more than once, though watching with Dad stretched back to when I was little, and my memory was a bit hazy. But that didn’t matter. One episode a night, every night. That was our thing. It felt good to have a thing with Dad, when I could have him to myself for forty-seven minutes, and he could act like he enjoyed my company for the span of one episode. Tonight, it was “Who Watches the Watchers?” which is an episode from the third season where a pre-warp culture starts to worship Captain Picard as a deity called The Picard. I could understand their impulse. Captain Picard was, without doubt, the best captain from Star Trek . He was smart; he loved “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”; and he had the best voice ever: deep and resonant and British. My own voice was far too squeaky to ever captain a starship. Not only that, but he was bald and still managed to be confident, which was good, because I had seen pictures of the men on my mom’s side of the family, and they all shared the distinguished Picard Crescent. I didn’t take after Stephen Kellner, Teutonic Übermensch, in many ways, but I hoped I would keep a full head of hair like his, even if mine was black and curly. And needed a haircut, according to Übermensch standards. Sometimes I thought about getting the sides faded, or maybe growing my hair out and doing a man-bun. That would drive Stephen Kellner crazy. Captain Picard was delivering his first monologue of the episode when the doot-doot klaxon of Mom’s computer rang through the house. She was getting a video call. Dad paused the show for a second and glanced up the stairs. “Uh-oh,” he said. “We’re being hailed.” Dad smiled at me, and I smiled back. Dad and I never smiled at each other—not really—but we were still in our magic forty-seven-minute window where the normal rules didn’t apply. Dad preemptively turned up the volume on the TV. Sure enough, after a second, Mom started yelling in Farsi at her computer. “Jamsheed!” Mom shouted. I could hear her even over the musical swell right before the act break. For some reason, whenever she was talking over the computer, Mom had to make sure the sound of her voice reached low Earth orbit. “ Chetori toh?” she bellowed. That’s Farsi for “How are you,” but only if you are familiar with the person you are speaking to, or older than them. Farsi has different ways of talking to people, depending on the formality of the situation and your relationship to the person you’re addressing. The thing about Farsi is, it’s a very deep language: deeply specific, deeply poetic, deeply context-sensitive. For instance, take my Mom’s oldest brother, Jamsheed. Dayi is the word for uncle. But not just uncle, a specific uncle: your mother’s brother. And it’s not only the word for uncle—it’s also the relationship between you and your uncle. So I could call Dayi Jamsheed my dayi, but he could call me dayi also, as a term of endearment. My knowledge of Farsi consisted of four primary vectors: (1) familial relations; (2) food words, because Mom always called the Persian food she cooked by its proper name; (3) tea words, because, well, I’m me; and (4) politeness phrases, the sort you learn in middle school foreign language classes, though no middle school in Portland has ever offered Farsi as an option. The truth was, my Farsi was abysmal. I never really learned growing up. “I didn’t think you’d ever use it,” Mom told me when I asked her why, which didn’t make any sense, because Mom had Persian friends here in the States, plus all her family back in Iran. Unlike me, Laleh did speak Farsi, pretty much fluently. When she was a baby, Mom talked to her in Farsi, and had all her friends do the same. Laleh grew up with the ear for it—the uvular fricatives and alveolar trills that I could never get quite right. When she was a baby, I tried to talk to Laleh in Farsi too. But I never really got the hang of it, and Mom’s friends kept correcting me, so after a while I kind of gave up. After that, me and Dad talked to Laleh exclusively in English. It always seemed like Farsi was this special thing between Mom and Laleh, like Star Trek was between Dad and me. That left the two of us in the dark whenever we were at gatherings with Mom’s friends. That was the only time Dad and I were on the same team: when we were stuck with Farsi-speakers and left with each other for company. But even when that happened, we just ended up standing around in a Level Seven Awkward Silence. Stephen Kellner and I were experts at High Level Awkward Silences. Laleh flounced onto the couch on Dad’s other side and tucked her feet underneath her butt, disturbing the gravitational fields on the couch so Dad leaned away from me and toward her. Dad paused the show. Laleh never watched Star Trek with us. It was me and Dad’s thing. “What’s up, Laleh?” Dad asked. “Mom’s talking to Dayi Jamsheed,” she said. “He’s at Mamou and Babou’s house right now.” Mamou and Babou were Mom’s parents. Their real names were Fariba and Ardeshir, but we always called them Mamou and Babou. Mamou and babou mean mother and father in Dari, which is the dialect my grandparents spoke growing up Zoroastrian in Yazd. “Stephen! Laleh! Darius!” Mom’s voice carried from upstairs. “Come say hello!” Laleh sprang from the couch and ran back upstairs. I looked at Dad, who shrugged, and we both followed my sister up to the office. MOBY THE WHALE, Darius the Great Is Not Okay MOBY THE WHALE My grandmother loomed large on the monitor, her head tiny and her torso enormous. I only ever saw my grandparents from an up-the-nose perspective. She was talking to Laleh in rapid-fire Farsi, something about school, I thought, because Laleh kept switching from Farsi to English for words like cafeteria and Heads Down, Thumbs Up . Mamou’s picture kept freezing and unfreezing, occasionally turning into chunky blocks as the bandwidth fluctuated. It was like a garbled transmission from a starship in distress. “Maman,” Mom said, “Darius and Stephen want to say hello.” Maman is another Farsi word that means both a person and a relationship—in this case, mother. But it could also mean grandmother, even though technically that would be mamanbozorg . I was pretty sure maman was borrowed from French, but Mom would neither confirm nor deny. Dad and I knelt on the floor to squeeze our faces into the camera shot, while Laleh sat on Mom’s lap in her rolling office chair. “Eh! Hi, maman! Hi, Stephen! How are you?” “Hi, Mamou,” Dad said. “Hi,” I said. “I miss you, maman. How is your school? How is work?” “Um.” I never knew how to talk to Mamou, even though I was happy to see her. It was like I had this well inside me, but every time I saw Mamou, it got blocked up. I didn’t know how to let my feelings out. “School is okay. Work is good. Um.” “How is Babou?” Dad asked. “You know, he is okay,” Mamou said. She glanced at Mom and said, “Jamsheed took him to the doctor today.” As she said it, my uncle Jamsheed appeared over her shoulder. His bald head looked even tinier. “Eh! Hi, Darioush! Hi, Laleh! Chetori toh?” “Khoobam, merci,” Laleh said, and before I knew it, she had launched into her third retelling of her latest game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up. Dad smiled and waved and stood up. My knees were getting sore, so I did the same, and edged toward the door. Mom nodded along with Laleh and laughed at all the right spots while I followed Dad back down to the living room. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to talk to Mamou. I always wanted to talk to her. But it was hard. It didn’t feel like she was half a world away, it felt like she was half a universe away—like she was coming to me from some alternate reality. It was like Laleh belonged to that reality, but I was just a guest. I suppose Dad was a guest too. At least we had that in common. Dad and I sat all the way through the ending credits—that was part of the tradition too—and then Dad went upstairs to check on Mom. Laleh had wandered back down during the last few minutes of the show, but she stood by the Haft-Seen, watching the goldfish swim in their bowl. Dad makes us turn our end table into a Haft-Seen on March 1 every year. And every year, Mom tells him that’s too early. And every year, Dad says it’s to get us in the Nowruz spirit, even though Nowruz—the Persian New Year—isn’t until the first day of spring. Most Haft-Seens have vinegar and sumac and sprouts and apples and pudding and dried olives and garlic on them—all things that start with the sound of S in Farsi. Some people add other things that don’t begin with S to theirs too: symbols of renewal and prosperity, like mirrors and bowls of coins. And some families—like ours—have goldfish too. Mom said it had something to do with the zodiac and Pisces, but then she admitted that if it weren’t for Laleh, who loved taking care of the goldfish, she wouldn’t include them at all. Sometimes I thought Dad liked Nowruz more than the rest of us combined. Maybe it let him feel a little bit Persian. Maybe it did. So our Haft-Seen was loaded with everything tradition allowed, plus a framed photo of Dad in the corner. Laleh insisted we had to add it, because Stephen begins with the sound of S . It was hard to argue with my sister’s logic. “Darius?” “Yeah?” “This goldfish only has one eyeball!” I knelt next to Laleh as she pointed at the fish in question. “Look!” It was true. The largest fish, a leviathan nearly the size of Laleh’s hand, only had its right eye. The left side of its head—face—(do fish have faces?)—was all smooth, unbroken orange scales. “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t notice that.” “I’m going to name him Ahab.” Since Laleh was in charge of feeding the fish, she had also taken upon herself the solemn duty of naming them. “Captain Ahab had one leg, not one eye,” I pointed out. “But it’s a good literary reference.” Laleh looked up at me, her eyes big and round. I was kind of jealous of Laleh’s eyes. They were huge and blue, just like Dad’s. Everyone always said how beautiful Laleh’s eyes were. No one ever told me I had beautiful brown eyes, except Mom, which didn’t count because (a) I had inherited them from her, and (b) she was my mom, so she had to say that kind of thing. Just like she had to call me handsome when that wasn’t true at all. “Are you making fun of me?” “No,” I said. “I promise. Ahab is a good name. And I’m proud of you for knowing it. It’s from a very famous book.” “Moby the Whale!” “Right.” I could not bring myself to say Moby-Dick in front of my little sister. “What about the others?” “He’s Simon.” She pointed to the smallest fish. “And he’s Garfunkel. And that’s Bob.” I wondered how Laleh was certain they were male fish. I wondered how people identified male fish from female fish. I decided I didn’t want to know. “Those are all good names. I like them.” I leaned down to kiss Laleh on the head. She squirmed but didn’t try that hard to get away. Just like I had to pretend I didn’t like having tea parties with my little sister, Laleh had to pretend she didn’t like kisses from her big brother, but she wasn’t very good at pretending yet. I took my empty cup of genmaicha to the kitchen and washed and dried it by hand. Then I filled a regular glass with water from the fridge and went to the cabinet where we kept everyone’s medicine. I sorted through the orange capsules until I found my own. “Mind grabbing mine?” Dad asked from the door. “Sure.” Dad stepped into the kitchen and slid the door closed. It was this heavy wooden door, on a track so that it slid into a slot right behind the oven. I didn’t know anyone else who had a door like that. When I was little, and Dad had just introduced me to Star Trek, I liked to call it the Turbolift Door. I played with it all the time, and Dad played too, calling out deck numbers for the computer to take us to like we were really on board the Enterprise . Then I accidentally slid the door shut on my fingers, really hard, and ended up sobbing for ten minutes in pain and shock that the door had betrayed me. I had a very sharp memory of Dad yelling at me to stop crying so he could examine my hand, and how I wouldn’t let him hold it because I was afraid he was going to make it worse. Dad and I didn’t play with the door anymore after that. I pulled down Dad’s bottle and set it on the counter, then popped the lid off my own and shook out my pills. Dad and I both took medication for depression. Aside from Star Trek —and not speaking Farsi—depression was pretty much the only thing we had in common. We took different medications, but we did see the same doctor, which I thought was kind of weird. I guess I was paranoid Dr. Howell would talk about me to my dad, even though I knew he wasn’t supposed to do that kind of thing. And Dr. Howell was always honest with me, so I tried not to worry so much. I took my pills and gulped down the whole glass of water. Dad stood next to me, watching, like he was worried I was going to choke. He had this look on his face, the same disappointed look he had when I told him about how Fatty Bolger had replaced my bicycle’s seat with blue truck nuts. He was ashamed of me. He was ashamed of us. Übermensches aren’t supposed to need medication. Dad swallowed his pills dry; his prominent Teutonic Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he did it. And then he turned to me and said, “So, you heard that Babou went to the doctor today?” He looked down. A Level Three Awkward Silence began to coalesce around us, like interstellar hydrogen pulled together by gravity to form a new nebula. “Yeah. Um.” I swallowed. “For his tumor?” I still felt weird saying the word out loud. Tumor. Babou had a brain tumor. Dad glanced at the turbolift door, which was still closed, and then back to me. “His latest tests didn’t look good.” “Oh.” I had never met Babou in person, only over a computer screen. And he never really talked to me. He spoke English well enough, and what few words I could extract from him were accented but articulate. He just didn’t have much to say to me. I guess I didn’t have much to say to him either. “He’s not going to get better, Darius. I’m sorry.” I twisted my glass between my hands. I was sorry too. But not as sorry as I should have been. And I felt kind of terrible for it. The thing is, my grandfather’s presence in my life had been purely photonic up to that point. I didn’t know how to be sad about him dying. Like I said, the well inside me was blocked. “What happens now?” “Your mom and I talked it over,” Dad said. “We’re going to Iran.” SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS, Darius the Great Is Not Okay SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS It wasn’t like we could drop everything and leave the next day. Mom and Dad knew it might happen. But we still had to get plane tickets and visas and everything. So it was a couple weeks later when I sat down at the lunch table and announced, “We’re leaving tomorrow.” I immediately executed Evasive Pattern Beta, a swift dodge to the left. My lunch companion, Javaneh Esfahani, tended to spray Dr Pepper out her nostrils if I surprised her at the lunch table. Javaneh sneezed twice—she always sneezed twice after spraying Dr Pepper out of her nose—and wiped her face with one of the cafeteria-issue brown paper towels. She tucked a lock of hair blown loose by her violent sinus eruptions back into her headscarf. Javaneh always wore her headscarf at Chapel Hill High School, which I thought was very brave. The sociopolitical landscape of Chapel Hill High School was treacherous enough without giving people an excuse to pick on you. Javaneh Esfahani was a lioness. She blinked at me. “Tomorrow? That’s fast. You’re serious?” “Yeah. We got our visas and everything.” “Wow.” I mopped up the carbonated explosion on the table while Javaneh sipped her Dr Pepper through a straw. Javaneh Esfahani claimed she was physiologically incapable of burping, so she always used a straw to drink her Dr Pepper from the can. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that was really a thing—being physiologically incapable of burping—but Javaneh was the closest thing I had to a friend at Chapel Hill High School, so I didn’t want to risk alienating her by prying too deeply. Javaneh had the smooth, olive-toned look of a True Persian, arched eyebrows and all. I was kind of jealous of her—Mom had inherited Mamou’s pale coloring, which meant I didn’t even get a half dose of Persian melanin—but then again, Javaneh was constantly getting asked where she was from, something I mostly avoided until people learned my first name. She grabbed a tater tot. “I’ve always wanted to see Iran. But my parents don’t want to risk it.” “Yeah. My mom didn’t either, but . . .” “I can’t believe you’re really going. You’re going to be there for Nowruz!” Javaneh shook her head. “But won’t you miss Chaharshanbeh Suri?” “They were the cheapest tickets,” I said. “Besides. We might fly over a fire. That counts, right?” Chaharshanbeh Suri is the Tuesday night before Nowruz. Which is weird since Chaharshanbeh technically means Wednesday. But I guess it sort of means the night before Wednesday. Either way, the traditional way to celebrate Chaharshanbeh Suri is with fire jumping. (And a mountain of Persian food. There are no Persian celebrations that do not involve enough Persian food to feed the entire Willamette Valley.) Mom and Dad always took us to the Chaharshanbeh Suri celebration at Oaks Park, where all the True Persians and Fractional Persians and Persians-by-Marriage—regardless of faith—gathered every year for a huge nighttime picnic and bonfire approved by the Fire Marshall of the City of Portland. Stephen Kellner, with his long legs and Teutonic jumping strength, was an excellent fire jumper. I was not a fan. According to family legend, when I was two years old, Dad tried to hold me in his arms as he jumped over the fire, but I wailed and cried so much, he and Mom had to abandon the celebration of Chaharshanbeh Suri and take me home. Dad didn’t try it again. Not until Laleh came along. When Dad held her in his arms and jumped over the fire, she squealed and laughed and clapped and demanded to go again. My sister was a lot braver than me. Truth be told, I was not that sad to miss Chaharshanbeh Suri. I was much more comfortable flying over a bonfire at 32,000 feet than I was jumping over one, even if it did deprive Stephen Kellner of another excellent opportunity to be disappointed in me. After lunch, I headed to the nurse’s office. Because of Chapel Hill High School’s strict Zero Tolerance Policy toward drugs, the school nurse had to dispense all medications for Chapel Hill High School students. Mrs. Killinger handed me the little crinkly paper cup with my pill in it. It was the kind used in every mental institution in every movie and television show ever. Except Star Trek, of course, because they used hyposprays to deliver medication directly through the skin in compressed air streams. There were slightly larger crinkly paper cups for water, which I poured from the drinking fountain in the corner of Mrs. Killinger’s office. I couldn’t bend over a drinking fountain and take medication that way; I either choked or accidentally spit my pills all over the basin. And I couldn’t dry-swallow my pills like Stephen Kellner either; the one time I tried, I got a Prozac lodged in the back of my throat and spent five minutes trying to hack it back up, while it slowly dissolved into skunky powder in my esophagus. That was before Dr. Howell switched me off Prozac, which gave me mood swings so extreme, they were more like Mood Slingshot Maneuvers, powerful enough to fling me around the sun and accelerate me into a time warp. I was only on Prozac for three months before Dr. Howell switched me, but it was pretty much the worst three months in the Search for the Right Medication. Dad never really talked about his own diagnosis for depression. It was lost to the histories of a prior age of this world. All he ever said was that it happened when he was in college, and that his medication had kept him healthy for years, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. It wasn’t a big deal. By the time I was diagnosed, and Dr. Howell was trying to find some combination of medications to treat me properly, Stephen Kellner had been managing his depression so long that he couldn’t remember what it was like. Or maybe he’d never had Mood Slingshot Maneuvers in the first place. Maybe his medication had recalibrated his brain right away, and he was back to being a high-functioning Übermensch in no time. My own brain was much harder to recalibrate. Prozac was the third medication Dr. Howell tried me on, back when I was in eighth grade. And I was on it for six weeks before I experienced my first Slingshot Maneuver, when I freaked out at a kid in my Boy Scouts troop named Vance Henderson, who had made a joke about Mom’s accent. I’d been dealing with jokes like that my entire life—well, ever since I started school, anyway—so it was nothing new. But that time it set me off like a high-yield quantum torpedo. It was the only time in my life I have ever hit anyone. I felt very sorry for myself afterward. And then I felt angry. I really hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping and I hated the other boys, who were all on their way to becoming Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy. And then I felt ashamed. I made a lot of Mood Slingshot Maneuvers that afternoon. But I wasn’t ashamed of standing up for Mom, even if it did mean hitting Vance Henderson. Even if it did mean leaving a perfect red palm-print on his face. Dad was so disappointed. A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE, Darius the Great Is Not Okay A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE Chapel Hill High School had two gymnasiums, supposedly called the Main Gym and the Little Gym, but most of us called them the Boys’ Gym and the Girls’ Gym, because the boys were always in the larger Main Gym. This, despite Chapel Hill High School’s Zero Tolerance Policy toward sexism. I was halfway down the stairs to gym when I heard him: Chip Cusumano. I kept my head down and took the stairs faster, swinging myself around the rail as I reached the landing. “Hey,” he called from behind. “Hey! Darius!” I ignored him and went faster. “Wait!” Chip shouted again, his voice echoing off the concrete walls of the stairwell. I had just hit the last landing when he tugged on my backpack. “Let go.” “Just—” “Leave me alone, Chip.” I jerked forward to loosen his grip. Instead, my backpack experienced a non-passive failure, splitting across the seam holding the main pocket together. My books and papers spilled down the stairs, but at least my tablet stayed Velcroed in. “Oh.” “Really, Chip?” I knelt and grabbed for my papers before someone could kick them away. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” “Sorry.” Chip handed me a book from a few steps down. He had this goofy grin on his face as he shook the hair out of his eyes. “I was just gonna tell you your backpack was open.” “Wasn’t my bike enough?” “Hey. That was just a joke.” “Me not having a bike anymore is a joke to you?” “What are you talking about? Your tires were right in the bushes.” I glared at him. How was I supposed to know that? “You never found them?” “Leave me alone, Chip.” The warning bell rang: One minute to make it to class. “Come on, man. Let me help.” “Go away.” There was no way I was going to trust Cyprian Cusumano to help me. He shrugged and stood. “Okay. I’ll tell Coach Fortes you’ll be late.” I got all my papers into a mostly straight pile and sandwiched them between my econ and geometry books. My backpack was tota	385,586
Educated (Tara Westover) (Z-Library).epub	Educated Copyright Educated . Copyright © 2018 by Second Sally, Ltd. All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. COVER PHOTOS: School desk in field: Getty Images Buck Peak mountain: supplied by author FIRST CANADIAN EDITION EDUCATED is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 1A8 www.harpercollins.ca Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request. EPub Edition: February 2018 EPub ISBN: 9781443452502 Print ISBN: 978-1-44345-347-2 (hardcover) Print ISBN: 978-1-44345-248-9 (original trade paperback) LSC / H 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Educated * The italicized language in the description of the referenced text exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted. The meaning has been preserved. Educated Chapter 27 If I Were a Woman I ’D COME TO BYU TO STUDY MUSIC, SO THAT ONE DAY I COULD direct a church choir. But that semester—the fall of my junior year—I didn’t enroll in a single music course. I couldn’t have explained why I dropped advanced music theory in favor of geography and comparative politics, or gave up sight-singing to take History of the Jews. But when I’d seen those courses in the catalog, and read their titles aloud, I had felt something infinite, and I wanted a taste of that infinity. For four months I attended lectures on geography and history and politics. I learned about Margaret Thatcher and the Thirty-Eighth Parallel and the Cultural Revolution; I learned about parliamentary politics and electoral systems around the world. I learned about the Jewish diaspora and the strange history of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . By the end of the semester the world felt big, and it was hard to imagine returning to the mountain, to a kitchen, or even to a piano in the room next to the kitchen. This caused a kind of crisis in me. My love of music, and my desire to study it, had been compatible with my idea of what a woman is. My love of history and politics and world affairs was not. And yet they called to me. A few days before finals, I sat for an hour with my friend Josh in an empty classroom. He was reviewing his applications for law school. I was choosing my courses for the next semester. “If you were a woman,” I asked, “would you still study law?” Josh didn’t look up. “If I were a woman,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to study it.” “But you’ve talked about nothing except law school for as long as I’ve known you,” I said. “It’s your dream, isn’t it?” “It is,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t be if I were a woman. Women are made differently. They don’t have this ambition. Their ambition is for children.” He smiled at me as if I knew what he was talking about. And I did. I smiled, and for a few seconds we were in agreement. Then: “But what if you were a woman, and somehow you felt exactly as you do now?” Josh’s eyes fixed on the wall for a moment. He was really thinking about it. Then he said, “I’d know something was wrong with me.” I’d been wondering whether something was wrong with me since the beginning of the semester, when I’d attended my first lecture on world affairs. I’d been wondering how I could be a woman and yet be drawn to unwomanly things. I knew someone must have the answer so I decided to ask one of my professors. I chose the professor of my Jewish history class, because he was quiet and soft-spoken. Dr. Kerry was a short man with dark eyes and a serious expression. He lectured in a thick wool jacket even in hot weather. I knocked on his office door quietly, as if I hoped he wouldn’t answer, and soon was sitting silently across from him. I didn’t know what my question was, and Dr. Kerry didn’t ask. Instead he posed general questions—about my grades, what courses I was taking. He asked why I’d chosen Jewish history, and without thinking I blurted that I’d learned of the Holocaust only a few semesters before and wanted to learn the rest of the story. “You learned of the Holocaust when?” he said. “At BYU.” “They didn’t teach about it in your school?” “They probably did,” I said. “Only I wasn’t there.” “Where were you?” I explained as best I could, that my parents didn’t believe in public education, that they’d kept us home. When I’d finished, he laced his fingers as if he were contemplating a difficult problem. “I think you should stretch yourself. See what happens.” “Stretch myself how?” He leaned forward suddenly, as if he’d just had an idea. “Have you heard of Cambridge?” I hadn’t. “It’s a university in England,” he said. “One of the best in the world. I organize a study abroad program there for students. It’s highly competitive and extremely demanding. You might not be accepted, but if you are, it may give you some idea of your abilities.” I walked to my apartment wondering what to make of the conversation. I’d wanted moral advice, someone to reconcile my calling as a wife and mother with the call I heard of something else. But he’d put that aside. He’d seemed to say, “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.” I applied to the program. E MILY WAS PREGNANT. T HE pregnancy was not going well. She’d nearly miscarried in the first trimester, and now that she was approaching twenty weeks, she was beginning to have contractions. Mother, who was the midwife, had given her Saint-John’s-wort and other remedies. The contractions lessened but continued. When I arrived at Buck’s Peak for Christmas, I expected to find Emily on bed rest. She wasn’t. She was standing at the kitchen counter straining herbs, along with half a dozen other women. She rarely spoke and smiled even more rarely, just moved about the house carrying vats of cramp bark and motherwort. She was quiet to the point of invisibility, and after a few minutes, I forgot she was there. It had been six months since the explosion, and while Dad was back on his feet, it was clear he would never be the man he was. He could scarcely walk across a room without gasping for air, so damaged were his lungs. The skin on his lower face had regrown, but it was thin and waxy, as if someone had taken sandpaper and rubbed it to the point of transparency. His ears were thick with scars. He had thin lips and his mouth drooped, giving him the haggard appearance of a much older man. But it was his right hand, more than his face, that drew stares: each finger was frozen in its own pose, some curled, some bowed, twisting together into a gnarled claw. He could hold a spoon by wedging it between his index finger, which bowed upward, and his ring finger, which curved downward, but he ate with difficulty. Still, I wondered whether skin grafts could have achieved what Mother had with her comfrey and lobelia salve. It was a miracle, everyone said, so that was the new name they gave Mother’s recipe: after Dad’s burn it was known as Miracle Salve. At dinner my first night on the peak, Dad described the explosion as a tender mercy from the Lord. “It was a blessing,” he said. “A miracle. God spared my life and extended to me a great calling. To testify of His power. To show people there’s another way besides the Medical Establishment.” I watched as he tried and failed to wedge his knife tightly enough to cut his roast. “I was never in any danger,” he said. “I’ll prove it to you. As soon as I can walk across the yard without near passing out, I’ll get a torch and cut off another tank.” The next morning when I came out for breakfast, there was a crowd of women gathered around my father. They listened with hushed voices and glistening eyes as Dad told of the heavenly visitations he’d received while hovering between life and death. He had been ministered to by angels, he said, like the prophets of old. There was something in the way the women looked at him. Something like adoration. I watched the women throughout the morning and became aware of the change my father’s miracle had wrought in them. Before, the women who worked for my mother had always approached her casually, with matter-of-fact questions about their work. Now their speech was soft, admiring. Dramas broke out between them as they vied for my mother’s esteem, and for my father’s. The change could be summed up simply: before, they had been employees; now they were followers. The story of Dad’s burn had become something of a founding myth: it was told over and over, to newcomers but also to the old. In fact, it was rare to spend an afternoon in the house without hearing some kind of recitation of the miracle, and occasionally these recitations were less than accurate. I heard Mother tell a room of devoted faces that sixty-five percent of Dad’s upper body had been burned to the third degree. That was not what I remembered. In my memory the bulk of the damage had been skin-deep—his arms, back and shoulders had hardly been burned at all. It was only his lower face and hands that had been third-degree. But I kept this to myself. For the first time, my parents seemed to be of one mind. Mother no longer moderated Dad’s statements after he left the room, no longer quietly gave her own opinion. She had been transformed by the miracle—transformed into him. I remembered her as a young midwife, so cautious, so meek about the lives over which she had such power. There was little of that meekness in her now. The Lord Himself guided her hands, and no misfortune would occur except by the will of God. A FEW WEEKS AFTER C HRISTMAS, the University of Cambridge wrote to Dr. Kerry, rejecting my application. “The competition was very steep,” Dr. Kerry told me when I visited his office. I thanked him and stood to go. “One moment,” he said. “Cambridge instructed me to write if I felt there were any gross injustices.” I didn’t understand, so he repeated himself. “I could only help one student,” he said. “They have offered you a place, if you want it.” It seemed impossible that I would really be allowed to go. Then I realized that I would need a passport, and that without a real birth certificate, I was unlikely to get one. Someone like me did not belong at Cambridge. It was as if the universe understood this and was trying to prevent the blasphemy of my going. I applied in person. The clerk laughed out loud at my Delayed Certificate of Birth. “Nine years!” she said. “Nine years is not a delay. Do you have any other documentation?” “Yes,” I said. “But they have different birth dates. Also, one has a different name.” She was still smiling. “Different date and different name? No, that’s not gonna work. There’s no way you’re gonna get a passport.” I visited the clerk several more times, becoming more and more desperate, until, finally, a solution was found. My aunt Debbie visited the courthouse and swore an affidavit that I was who I said I was. I was issued a passport. I N F EBRUARY, E MILY GAVE BIRTH. The baby weighed one pound, four ounces. When Emily had started having contractions at Christmas, Mother had said the pregnancy would unfold according to God’s will. His will, it turned out, was that Emily give birth at home at twenty-six weeks’ gestation. There was a blizzard that night, one of those mighty mountain storms that clears the roads and closes the towns. Emily was in the advanced stages of labor when Mother realized she needed a hospital. The baby, which they named Peter, appeared a few minutes later, slipping from Emily so easily that Mother said she “caught” him more than delivered him. He was still, and the color of ash. Shawn thought he was dead. Then Mother felt a tiny heartbeat—actually she saw his heart beating through a thin film of skin. My father rushed to the van and began scraping at the snow and ice. Shawn carried Emily and laid her on the back seat, then Mother placed the baby against Emily’s chest and covered him, creating a makeshift incubator. Kangaroo care, she called it later. My father drove; the storm raged. In Idaho we call it a whiteout: when the wind whips the snowfall so violently it bleaches the road, covers it as if with a veil, and you can’t see the asphalt, or the fields or rivers; you can’t see anything except billows of white. Somehow, skidding through snow and sleet, they made it to town, but the hospital there was rural, unequipped to care for such a faint whimper of life. The doctors said they had to get him to McKay-Dee in Ogden as soon as possible, there was no time. He could not go by chopper because of the blizzard, so the doctors sent him in an ambulance. In fact they sent two ambulances, a second in case the first succumbed to the storm. Many months would pass, and countless surgeries on his heart and lungs would be performed, before Shawn and Emily would bring home the little twig of flesh that I was told was my nephew. By then he was out of danger, but the doctors said his lungs might never develop fully. He might always be frail. Dad said God had orchestrated the birth just as He had orchestrated the explosion. Mother echoed him, adding that God had placed a veil over her eyes so she wouldn’t stop the contractions. “Peter was supposed to come into the world this way,” she said. “He is a gift from God, and God gives His gifts in whatever way He chooses.” Educated Chapter 34 The Substance of Things I DIDN’T FEEL PARTICULARLY BRAVE AS I APPROACHED MY FATHER in the Chapel that night. I saw my role as reconnaissance: I was there to relay information, to tell Dad that Shawn had threatened Audrey, because Dad would know what to do. Or perhaps I was calm because I was not there, not really. Maybe I was across an ocean, on another continent, reading Hume under a stone archway. Maybe I was racing through King’s College, the Discourse on Inequality tucked under my arm. “Dad, I need to tell you something.” I said that Shawn had made a joke about shooting Audrey, and that I thought it was because Audrey had confronted him about his behavior. Dad stared at me, and the skin where his lips had been tightened. He shouted for Mother and she appeared. Her mood was somber; I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t look me in the eye. “What exactly are you saying?” Dad said. From that moment it was an interrogation. Every time I suggested that Shawn was violent or manipulative in any way, Dad shouted at me: “Where’s your proof? Do you have proof?” “I have journals,” I said. “Get them, I’m going to read them.” “I don’t have them with me.” This was a lie; they were under my bed. “What the hell am I supposed to think if you ain’t got proof?” Dad was still shouting. Mother sat on the sofa’s edge, her mouth open in a slant. She looked in agony. “You don’t need proof,” I said quietly. “You’ve seen it. You’ve both seen it.” Dad said I wouldn’t be happy until Shawn was rotting in prison, that I’d come back from Cambridge just to raise hell. I said I didn’t want Shawn in prison but that some type of intervention was needed. I turned to Mother, waiting for her to add her voice to mine, but she was silent. Her eyes were fixed on the floor as if Dad and I were not there. There was a moment when I realized she would not speak, that she would sit there and say nothing, that I was alone. I tried to calm Dad but my voice trembled, cracked. Then I was wailing—sobs erupted from somewhere, some part of me I had not felt in years, that I had forgotten existed. I thought I might vomit. I ran to the bathroom. I was shaking from my feet to my fingers. I had to strangle the sobs quickly—Dad would never take me seriously if I couldn’t—so I stopped the bawling using the old methods: staring my face down in the mirror and scolding it for every tear. It was such a familiar process, that in doing it I shattered the illusion I’d been building so carefully for the past year. The fake past, the fake future, both gone. I stared at the reflection. The mirror was mesmeric, with its triple panels trimmed with false oak. It was the same mirror I’d gazed into as a child, then as a girl, then as a youth, half woman, half girl. Behind me was the same toilet Shawn had put my head in, holding me there until I confessed I was a whore. I had often locked myself in this bathroom after Shawn let me go. I would move the panels until they showed my face three times, then I would glare at each one, contemplating what Shawn had said and what he had made me say, until it all began to feel true instead of just something I had said to make the pain stop. And here I was still, and here was the mirror. The same face, repeated in the same three panels. Except it wasn’t. This face was older, and floating above a soft cashmere sweater. But Dr. Kerry was right: it wasn’t the clothes that made this face, this woman, different. It was something behind her eyes, something in the set of her jaw—a hope or belief or conviction—that a life is not a thing unalterable. I don’t have a word for what it was I saw, but I suppose it was something like faith . I had regained a fragile sense of calm, and I left the bathroom carrying that calmness delicately, as if it were a china plate balancing on my head. I walked slowly down the hall, taking small, even steps. “I’m going to bed,” I said when I’d made it to the Chapel. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Dad was at his desk, holding a phone in his left hand. “We’ll talk about it now,” he said. “I told Shawn what you said. He is coming.” I CONSIDERED MAKING A run for it. Could I get to my car before Shawn made it to the house? Where were the keys? I need my laptop, I thought, with my research. Leave it, the girl from the mirror said. Dad told me to sit and I did. I don’t know how long I waited, paralyzed with indecision, but I was still wondering if there was time to escape when the French doors opened and Shawn walked in. Suddenly the vast room felt tiny. I looked at my hands. I couldn’t raise my eyes. I heard footsteps. Shawn had crossed the room and was now sitting next to me on the sofa. He waited for me to look at him, and when I didn’t he reached out and took my hand. Gently, as if he were unfolding the petals of a rose, he peeled open my fingers and dropped something into them. I felt the cold of the blade before I saw it, and sensed the blood even before I glimpsed the red streak staining my palm. The knife was small, only five or six inches long and very thin. The blade glowed crimson. I rubbed my thumb and index finger together, then brought them to my nose and inhaled. Metallic. It was definitely blood. Not mine—he’d merely handed me the knife—but whose? “If you’re smart, Siddle Lister,” Shawn said, “you’ll use this on yourself. Because it will be better than what I’ll do to you if you don’t.” “That’s uncalled for,” Mother said. I gaped at Mother, then at Shawn. I must have seemed like an idiot to them, but I couldn’t grasp what was happening well enough to respond to it. I half-wondered if I should return to the bathroom and climb through the mirror, then send out the other girl, the one who was sixteen. She could handle this, I thought. She would not be afraid, like I was. She would not be hurt, like I was. She was a thing of stone, with no fleshy tenderness. I did not yet understand that it was this fact of being tender—of having lived some years of a life that allowed tenderness—that would, finally, save me. I stared at the blade. Dad began a lecture, pausing often so Mother could ratify his remarks. I heard voices, among them my own, chanting harmonies in an ancient hall. I heard laughter, the slosh of wine being poured from a bottle, the tinkle of butter knives tapping porcelain. I heard little of my father’s speech, but I remember exactly, as if it were happening now, being transported over an ocean and back through three sunsets, to the night I had sung with my friends in the chamber choir. I must have fallen asleep, I thought. Too much wine. Too much Christmas turkey. Having decided I was dreaming, I did what one does in dreams: I tried to understand and use the rules of this queer reality. I reasoned with the strange shadows impersonating my family, and when reasoning failed, I lied. The impostors had bent reality. Now it was my turn. I told Shawn I hadn’t said anything to Dad. I said things like “I don’t know how Dad got that idea” and “Dad must have misheard me,” hoping that if I rejected their percipience, they would simply dissipate. An hour later, when the four of us were still seated on the sofas, I finally came to terms with their physical persistence. They were here, and so was I. The blood on my hands had dried. The knife lay on the carpet, forgotten by everyone except me. I tried not to stare at it. Whose was the blood? I studied my brother. He had not cut himself. Dad had begun a new lecture, and this time I was present enough to hear it. He explained that little girls need to be instructed in how to behave appropriately around men, so as not to be too inviting. He’d noticed indecent habits in my sister’s daughters, the oldest of whom was six. Shawn was calm. He had been worn down by the sheer duration of Dad’s droning. More than that, he felt protected, justified, so that when the lecture finally ended he said to me, “I don’t know what you said to Dad tonight, but I can tell just by looking at you that I’ve hurt you. And I’m sorry.” We hugged. We laughed like we always did after a fight. I smiled at him like I’d always done, like she would have. But she wasn’t there, and the smile was a fake. I WENT TO MY ROOM and shut the door, quietly sliding the bolt, and called Drew. I was nearly incoherent with panic but eventually he understood. He said I should leave, right now, and he’d meet me halfway. I can’t, I said. At this moment things are calm. If I try to run off in the middle of the night, I don’t know what will happen. I went to bed but not to sleep. I waited until six in the morning, then I found Mother in the kitchen. I’d borrowed the car I was driving from Drew, so I told Mother something had come up unexpectedly, that Drew needed his car in Salt Lake. I said I’d be back in a day or two. A few minutes later I was driving down the hill. The highway was in sight when I saw something and stopped. It was the trailer where Shawn lived with Emily and Peter. A few feet from the trailer, near the door, the snow was stained with blood. Something had died there. From Mother I would later learn it was Diego, a German shepherd Shawn had purchased a few years before. The dog had been a pet, much beloved by Peter. After Dad had called, Shawn had stepped outside and slashed the dog to death, while his young son, only feet away, listened to the dog scream. Mother said the execution had nothing to do with me, that it had to be done because Diego was killing Luke’s chickens. It was a coincidence, she said. I wanted to believe her but didn’t. Diego had been killing Luke’s chickens for more than a year. Besides, Diego was a purebred. Shawn had paid five hundred dollars for him. He could have been sold. But the real reason I didn’t believe her was the knife. I’d seen my father and brothers put down dozens of dogs over the years—strays mostly, that wouldn’t stay out of the chicken coop. I’d never seen anyone use a knife on a dog. We shot them, in the head or the heart, so it was quick. But Shawn chose a knife, and a knife whose blade was barely bigger than his thumb. It was the knife you’d choose to experience a slaughter, to feel the blood running down your hand the moment the heart stopped beating. It wasn’t the knife of a farmer, or even of a butcher. It was a knife of rage. I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened in the days that followed. Even now, as I scrutinize the components of the confrontation—the threat, the denial, the lecture, the apology—it is difficult to relate them. When I considered it weeks later, it seemed I had made a thousand mistakes, driven a thousand knives into the heart of my own family. Only later did it occur to me that whatever damage was done that night might not have been done solely by me. And it was more than a year before I understood what should have been immediately apparent: that my mother had not confronted my father, and my father had not confronted Shawn. Dad had never promised to help me and Audrey. Mother had lied. Now, when I reflect on my mother’s words, remembering the way they appeared as if by magic on the screen, one detail stands above the rest: that Mother described my father as bipolar. It was the exact disorder that I myself suspected. It was my word, not hers. Then I wonder if perhaps my mother, who had always reflected so perfectly the will of my father, had that night merely been reflecting mine. No, I tell myself. They were her words. But hers or not, those words, which had so comforted and healed me, were hollow. I don’t believe they were faithless, but sincerity failed to give them substance, and they were swept away by other, stronger currents. Educated Chapter 18 Blood and Feathers A FTER THAT, I RARELY SPOKE TO S HANNON OR M ARY AND THEY rarely spoke to me, except to remind me to do my share of the chores, which I never did. The apartment looked fine to me. So what if there were rotting peaches in the fridge and dirty dishes in the sink? So what if the smell slapped you in the face when you came through the door? To my mind if the stench was bearable, the house was clean, and I extended this philosophy to my person. I never used soap except when I showered, usually once or twice a week, and sometimes I didn’t use it even then. When I left the bathroom in the morning, I marched right past the hallway sink where Shannon and Mary always— always —washed their hands. I saw their raised eyebrows and thought of Grandma-over-in-town. Frivolous, I told myself. I don’t pee on my hands . The atmosphere in the apartment was tense. Shannon looked at me like I was a rabid dog, and I did nothing to reassure her. M Y BANK ACCOUNT DECREASED steadily. I had been worried that I might not pass my classes, but a month into the semester, after I’d paid tuition and rent and bought food and books, I began to think that even if I did pass I wouldn’t be coming back to school for one obvious reason: I couldn’t afford it. I looked up the requirements for a scholarship online. A full-tuition waiver would require a near-perfect GPA. I was only a month into the semester, but even so I knew a scholarship was comically out of reach. American history was getting easier, but only in that I was no longer failing the quizzes outright. I was doing well in music theory, but I struggled in English. My teacher said I had a knack for writing but that my language was oddly formal and stilted. I didn’t tell her that I’d learned to read and write by reading only the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and speeches by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The real trouble, however, was Western Civ. To me, the lectures were gibberish, probably because for most of January, I thought Europe was a country, not a continent, so very little of what the professor said made sense. And after the Holocaust incident, I wasn’t about to ask for clarification. Even so, it was my favorite class, because of Vanessa. We sat together for every lecture. I liked her because she seemed like the same kind of Mormon I was: she wore high-necked, loose-fitting clothing, and she’d told me that she never drank Coke or did homework on Sunday. She was the only person I’d met at the university who didn’t seem like a gentile. In February, the professor announced that instead of a single midterm he would be giving monthly exams, the first of which would be the following week. I didn’t know how to prepare. There wasn’t a textbook for the class, just the picture book of paintings and a few CDs of classical compositions. I listened to the music while flipping through the paintings. I made a vague effort to remember who had painted or composed what, but I didn’t memorize spelling. The ACT was the only exam I’d ever taken, and it had been multiple choice, so I assumed all exams were multiple choice. The morning of the exam, the professor instructed everyone to take out their blue books. I barely had time to wonder what a blue book was before everyone produced one from their bags. The motion was fluid, synchronized, as if they had practiced it. I was the only dancer on the stage who seemed to have missed rehearsal. I asked Vanessa if she had a spare, and she did. I opened it, expecting a multiple-choice exam, but it was blank. The windows were shuttered; the projector flickered on, displaying a painting. We had sixty seconds to write the work’s title and the artist’s full name. My mind produced only a dull buzz. This continued through several questions: I sat completely still, giving no answers at all. A Caravaggio flickered onto the screen— Judith Beheading Holofernes . I stared at the image, that of a young girl calmly drawing a sword toward her body, pulling the blade through a man’s neck as she might have pulled a string through cheese. I’d beheaded chickens with Dad, clutching their scabby legs while he raised the ax and brought it down with a loud thwack, then tightening my grip, holding on with all I had, when the chicken convulsed with death, scattering feathers and spattering my jeans with blood. Remembering the chickens, I wondered at the plausibility of Caravaggio’s scene: no one had that look on their face—that tranquil, disinterested expression—when taking off something’s head. I knew the painting was by Caravaggio but I remembered only the surname and even that I couldn’t spell. I was certain the title was Judith Beheading Someone but could not have produced Holofernes even if it had been my neck behind the blade. Thirty seconds left. Perhaps I could score a few points if I could just get something—anything—on the page, so I sounded out the name phonetically: “Carevajio.” That didn’t look right. One of the letters was doubled up, I remembered, so I scratched that out and wrote “Carrevagio.” Wrong again. I auditioned different spellings, each worse than the last. Twenty seconds. Next to me, Vanessa was scribbling steadily. Of course she was. She belonged here. Her handwriting was neat, and I could read what she’d written: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. And next to it, in equally pristine print, Judith Beheading Holofernes . Ten seconds. I copied the text, not including Caravaggio’s full name because, in a selective display of integrity, I decided that would be cheating. The projector flashed to the next slide. I glanced at Vanessa’s paper a few more times during the exam but it was hopeless. I couldn’t copy her essays, and I lacked the factual and stylistic know-how to compose my own. In the absence of skill or knowledge, I must have scribbled down whatever occurred to me. I don’t recall whether we were asked to evaluate Judith Beheading Holofernes, but if we were I’m sure I would have given my impressions: that the calm on the girl’s face didn’t sit well with my experience slaughtering chickens. Dressed in the right language this might have made a fantastic answer—something about the woman’s serenity standing in powerful counterpoint to the general realism of the piece. But I doubt the professor was much impressed by my observation that, “When you chop a chicken’s head off, you shouldn’t smile because you might get blood and feathers in your mouth.” The exam ended. The shutters were opened. I walked outside and stood in the winter chill, gazing up at the pinnacles of the Wasatch Mountains. I wanted to stay. The mountains were as unfamiliar and menacing as ever, but I wanted to stay. I waited a week for the exam results, and twice during that time I dreamed of Shawn, of finding him lifeless on the asphalt, of turning his body and seeing his face alight in crimson. Suspended between fear of the past and fear of the future, I recorded the dream in my journal. Then, without any explanation, as if the connection between the two were obvious, I wrote, I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child. The results were handed back a few days later. I had failed. O NE WINTER, WHEN I was very young, Luke found a great horned owl in the pasture, unconscious and half frozen. It was the color of soot, and seemed as big as me to my child eyes. Luke carried it into the house, where we marveled at its soft plumage and pitiless talons. I remember stroking its striped feathers, so smooth they were waterlike, as my father held its limp body. I knew that if it were conscious, I would never get this close. I was in defiance of nature just by touching it. Its feathers were soaked in blood. A thorn had lanced its wing. “I’m not a vet,” Mother said. “I treat people .” But she removed the thorn and cleaned the wound. Dad said the wing would take weeks to mend, and that the owl would wake up long before then. Finding itself trapped, surrounded by predators, it would beat itself to death trying to get free. It was wild, he said, and in the wild that wound was fatal. We laid the owl on the linoleum by the back door and, when it awoke, told Mother to stay out of the kitchen. Mother said hell would freeze over before she surrendered her kitchen to an owl, then marched in and began slamming pots to make breakfast. The owl flopped about pathetically, its talons scratching the door, bashing its head in a panic. We cried, and Mother retreated. Two hours later Dad had blocked off half the kitchen with plywood sheets. The owl convalesced there for several weeks. We trapped mice to feed it, but sometimes it didn’t eat them, and we couldn’t clear away the carcasses. The smell of death was strong and foul, a punch to the gut. The owl grew restless. When it began to refuse food, we opened the back door and let it escape. It wasn’t fully healed, but Dad said its chances were better with the mountain than with us. It didn’t belong. It couldn’t be taught to belong. I WANTED TO TELL SOMEONE I’d failed the exam, but something stopped me from calling Tyler. It might have been shame. Or it might have been that Tyler was preparing to be a father. He’d met his wife, Stefanie, at Purdue, and they’d married quickly. She didn’t know anything about our family. To me, it felt as though he preferred his new life—his new family—to his old one. I called home. Dad answered. Mother was delivering a baby, which she was doing more and more now the migraines had stopped. “When will Mother be home?” I said. “Don’t know,” said Dad. “Might as well ask the Lord as me, as He’s the one deciding.” He chuckled, then asked, “How’s school?” Dad and I hadn’t spoken since he’d screamed at me about the VCR. I could tell he was trying to be supportive, but I didn’t think I could admit to him that I was failing. I wanted to tell him it was going well. So easy, I imagined myself saying. “Not great,” I said instead. “I had no idea it would be this hard.” The line was silent, and I imagined Dad’s stern face hardening. I waited for the jab I imagined he was preparing, but instead a quiet voice said, “It’ll be okay, honey.” “It won’t,” I said. “There will be no scholarship. I’m not even going to pass.” My voice was shaky now. “If there’s no scholarship, there’s no scholarship,” he said. “Maybe I can help with the money. We’ll figure it out. Just be happy, okay?” “Okay,” I said. “Come on home if you need.” I hung up, not sure what I’d just heard. I knew it wouldn’t last, that the next time we spoke everything would be different, the tenderness of this moment forgotten, the endless struggle between us again in the foreground. But tonight he wanted to help. And that was something. I N M ARCH, THERE WAS ANOTHER exam in Western Civ. This time I made flash cards. I spent hours memorizing odd spellings, many of them French (France, I now understood, was a part of Europe). Jacques-Louis David and François Boucher: I couldn’t say them but I could spell them. My lecture notes were nonsensical, so I asked Vanessa if I could look at hers. She looked at me skeptically, and for a moment I wondered if she’d noticed me cheating off her exam. She said she wouldn’t give me her notes but that we could study together, so after class I followed her to her dorm room. We sat on the floor with our legs crossed and our notebooks open in front of us. I tried to read from my notes but the sentences were incomplete, scrambled. “Don’t worry about your notes,” Vanessa said. “They aren’t as important as the textbook.” “What textbook?” I said. “ The textbook,” Vanessa said. She laughed as if I were being funny. I tensed because I wasn’t. “I don’t have a textbook,” I said. “Sure you do!” She held up the thick picture book I’d used to memorize titles and artists. “Oh that,” I said. “I looked at that.” “You looked at it? You didn’t read it?” I stared at her. I didn’t understand. This was a class on music and art. We’d been given CDs with music to listen to, and a book with pictures of art to look at. It hadn’t occurred to me to read the art book any more than it had to read the CDs. “I thought we were just supposed to look at the pictures.” This sounded stupid when said aloud. “So when the syllabus assigned pages fifty through eighty-five, you didn’t think you had to read anything?” “I looked at the pictures,” I said again. It sounded worse the second time. Vanessa began thumbing through the book, which suddenly looked very much like a textbook. “That’s your problem then,” she said. “You have to read the textbook.” As she said this, her voice lilted with sarcasm, as if this blunder, after everything else—after joking about the Holocaust and glancing at her test—was too much and she was done with me. She said it was time for me to go; she had to study for another class. I picked up my notebook and left. “Read the textbook” turned out to be excellent advice. On the next exam I scored a B, and by the end of the semester I was pulling A’s. It was a miracle and I interpreted it as such. I continued to study until two or three A.M . each night, believing it was the price I had to pay to earn God’s support. I did well in my history class, better in English, and best of all in music theory. A full-tuition scholarship was unlikely, but I could maybe get half. During the final lecture in Western Civ, the professor announced that so many students had failed the first exam, he’d decided to drop it altogether. And poof. My failing grade was gone. I wanted to punch the air, give Vanessa a high five. Then I remembered that she didn’t sit with me anymore. Educated * It is possible that my timeline is off here by one or two days. According to some who were there, although my father was horribly burned, he did not seem in any real danger until the third day, when the scabbing began, making it difficult to breathe. Dehydration compounded the situation. In this account, it was then that they feared for his life, and that is when my sister called me, only I misunderstood and assumed that the explosion had happened the day before. Educated Acknowledgments T O MY BROTHERS T YLER, R ICHARD AND T ONY I OWE THE GREATEST debt for making this book possible, first in the living of it, then in the writing of it. From them and their wives, Stefanie, Kami and Michele, I learned much of what I know about family. Tyler and Richard in particular were generous with their time and their memories, reading multiple drafts, adding their own details, and in general helping me make the book as accurate as possible. Though our perspectives may have differed in some particulars, their willingness to verify the facts of this story enabled me to write it. Professor David Runciman encouraged me to write this memoir and was among the first to read the manuscript. Without his confidence in it, I might never have had confidence in it myself. I am grateful to those who make books their life’s work and who gave a portion of that life to this book: my agents, Anna Stein and Karolina Sutton; and my wonderful editors, Hilary Redmon and Andy Ward at Random House, and Jocasta Hamilton at Hutchinson; as well as the many other people who worked to edit, typeset and launch this story. Most notably, Boaty Boatwright at ICM was a tireless champion. Special thanks are owed to Ben Phelan, who was given the difficult task of fact-checking this book, and who did so rigorously but with great sensitivity and professionalism. I am especially grateful to those who believed in this book before it was a book, when it was just a jumble of home-printed papers. Among those early readers are Dr. Marion Kant, Dr. Paul Kerry, Annie Wilding, Livia Gainham, Sonya Teich, Dunni Alao and Suraya Sidhi Singh. My aunts Debbie and Angie came back into my life at a crucial moment, and their support means everything. For believing in me, always, thanks to Professor Jonathan Steinberg. For granting me haven, emotional as well as practical, in which to write this book, I am indebted to my dear friend, Drew Mecham. Educated Chapter 22 What We Whispered and What We Screamed W HEN I ARRIVED AT THE PEAK, M OTHER WAS MAKING THE Thanksgiving meal. The large oak table was covered with jars of tincture and vials of essential oil, which I cleared away. Charles was coming for dinner. Shawn was in a mood. He sat on a bench at the table, watching me gather the bottles and hide them. I’d washed Mother’s china, which had never been used, and I began laying it out, eyeing the distance between each plate and knife. Shawn resented my making a fuss. “It’s just Charles,” he said. “His standards aren’t that high. He’s with you, after all.” I fetched glasses. When I put one in front of him, Shawn jabbed a finger into my ribs, digging hard. “Don’t touch me!” I shrieked. Then the room turned upside down. My feet were knocked out from under me and I was swept into the living room, just out of Mother’s sight. Shawn turned me onto my back and sat on my stomach, pinning my arms at my sides with his knees. The shock of his weight forced the breath from my chest. He pressed his forearm into my windpipe. I sputtered, trying to gulp enough air to shout, but the airway was blocked. “When you act like a child, you force me to treat you like one.” Shawn said this loudly, he almost shouted it. He was saying it to me, but he was not saying it for me. He was saying it for Mother, to define the moment: I was a misbehaving child; he was setting the child right. The pressure on my windpipe eased and I felt a delicious fullness in my lungs. He knew I would not call out. “Knock it off,” Mother hollered from the kitchen, though I wasn’t sure whether she meant Shawn or me. “Yelling is rude,” Shawn said, again speaking to the kitchen. “You’ll stay down until you apologize.” I said I was sorry for yelling at him. A moment later I was standing. I folded napkins from paper towels and put one at each setting. When I placed one at Shawn’s plate, he again jabbed his finger into my ribs. I said nothing. Charles arrived early—Dad hadn’t even come in from the junkyard yet—and sat at the table across from Shawn, who glared at him, never blinking. I didn’t want to leave them alone together, but Mother needed help with the cooking, so I returned to the stove but devised small errands to bring me back to the table. On one of those trips I heard Shawn telling Charles about his guns, and on another, about all the ways he could kill a man. I laughed loudly at both, hoping Charles would think they were jokes. The third time I returned to the table, Shawn pulled me onto his lap. I laughed at that, too. The charade couldn’t last, not even until supper. I passed Shawn carrying a large china plate of dinner rolls, and he stabbed my gut so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I dropped the plate. It shattered. “Why did you do that?” I shouted. It happened so quickly, I don’t know how he got me to the floor, but again I was on my back and he was on top of me. He demanded that I apologize for breaking the plate. I whispered the apology, quietly, so Charles wouldn’t hear, but this enraged Shawn. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, again near the scalp, for leverage, and yanked me upright, then dragged me toward the bathroom. The movement was so abrupt, Charles had no time to react. The last thing I saw as my head hurled down the hall was Charles leaping to his feet, eyes wide, face pale. My wrist was folded, my arm twisted behind my back. My head was shoved into the toilet so that my nose hovered above the water. Shawn was yelling something but I didn’t hear what. I was listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall, and when I heard them I became deranged. Charles could not see me like this. He could not know that for all my pretenses—my makeup, my new clothes, my china place settings— this is who I was. I convulsed, arching my body and ripping my wrist away from Shawn. I’d caught him off guard; I was stronger than he’d expected, or maybe just more reckless, and he lost his hold. I sprang for the door. I’d made it through the frame and had taken a step into the hallway when my head shot backward. Shawn had caught me by the hair, and he yanked me toward him with such force that we both tumbled back and into the bathtub. The next thing I remember, Charles was lifting me and I was laughing—a shrill, demented howl. I thought if I could just laugh loudly enough, the situation might still be saved, that Charles might yet be convinced it was all a joke. Tears streamed from my eyes—my big toe was broken—but I kept cackling. Shawn stood in the doorway looking awkward. “Are you okay?” Charles kept saying. “Of course I am! Shawn is so, so, so— funny .” My voice strangled on the last word as I put weight on my foot and a wave of pain swept through me. Charles tried to carry me but I pushed him off and walked on the break, grinding my teeth to stop myself from crying out, while I slapped playfully at my brother. Charles didn’t stay for supper. He fled to his jeep and I didn’t hear from him for several hours, then he called and asked me to meet him at the church. He wouldn’t come to Buck’s Peak. We sat in his jeep in the dark, empty parking lot. He was crying. “You didn’t see what you thought you saw,” I said. If someone had asked me, I’d have said Charles was the most important thing in the world to me. But he wasn’t. And I would prove it to him. What was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my ability to lie convincingly to myself: to believe I was strong. I could never forgive Charles for knowing I wasn’t. I became erratic, demanding, hostile. I devised a bizarre and ever- evolving rubric by which I measured his love for me, and when he failed to meet it, I became paranoid. I surrendered to rages, venting all my savage anger, every fearful resentment I’d ever felt toward Dad or Shawn, at him, this bewildered bystander who’d only ever helped me. When we argued, I screamed that I never wanted to see him again, and I screamed it so many times that one night, when I called to change my mind, like I always did, he wouldn’t let me. We met one final time, in a field off the highway. Buck’s Peak loomed over us. He said he loved me but this was over his head. He couldn’t save me. Only I could. I had no idea what he was talking about. W INTER COVERED CAMPUS IN thick snow. I stayed indoors, memorizing algebraic equations, trying to live as I had before—to imagine my life at the university as disconnected from my life on Buck’s Peak. The wall separating the two had been impregnable. Charles was a hole in it. The stomach ulcers returned, burning and aching through the night. Once, I awoke to Robin shaking me. She said I’d been shouting in my sleep. I touched my face and it was wet. She wrapped me in her arms so tight I felt cocooned. The next morning, Robin asked me to go with her to a doctor—for the ulcers but also for an X-ray of my foot, because my big toe had turned black. I said I didn’t need a doctor. The ulcers would heal, and someone had already treated the toe. Robin’s eyebrow rose. “Who? Who treated it?” I shrugged. She assumed my mother had, and I let her believe it. The truth was, the morning after Thanksgiving, I had asked Shawn to tell me if it was broken. He’d knelt on the kitchen floor and I’d dropped my foot into his lap. In that posture he seemed to shrink. He examined the toe for a moment, then he looked up at me and I saw something in his blue eyes. I thought he was about to say he was sorry, but just when I expected his lips to part he grasped the tip of my toe and yanked. It felt as if my foot had exploded, so intense was the shock that shot through my leg. I was still trying to swallow spasms of pain when Shawn stood, put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Sorry, Siddle Lister, but it hurts less if you don’t see it coming.” A week after Robin asked to take me to the doctor, I again awoke to her shaking me. She gathered me up and pressed me to her, as if her body could hold me together, could keep me from flying apart. “I think you need to see the bishop,” she said the next morning. “I’m fine,” I said, making a cliché of myself the way not-fine people do. “I just need sleep.” Soon after, I found a pamphlet for the university counseling service on my desk. I barely looked at it, just knocked it into the trash. I could not see a counselor. To see one would be to ask for help, and I believed myself invincible. It was a	633,784
Everything Is Fcked A Book About Hope (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck (2 Book Series)) (Mark Manson) (Z-Library).epub	Everything Is Fcked Acknowledgments This book, in many ways, lived up to its title while being written. There were many occasions when it seemed as though everything was irreparably fucked because I had fallen victim to my own overzealous hopes. Yet, somehow—often late at night, with me staring bleary-eyed at a mush of words on my screen—things came together. And now I am incredibly proud of the result. I wouldn’t have survived this ordeal without the help and support of a great number of people. My editor, Luke Dempsey, who lived with the same gun to his head for six months (or more) that I did—you really came through in stoppage time, mate. Thank you. Mollie Glick, who is more like a fairy godmother at this point than an agent—I wake up, and amazing shit just appears in my life out of nowhere. It’s incredible. To my Web team, Philip Kemper and Drew Birnie, who continue to make me appear far more competent and knowledgeable than I actually am—I’m extremely proud of what the three of us have built online and I can’t wait to see what you two are capable of in coming years. And then there’s the smattering of friends who showed up big when it counted: Nir Eyal—for getting me up and writing during many frigid New York mornings when I could easily have stayed in bed. Taylor Pearson, James Clear, and Ryan Holiday—for listening to me vent and ramble and freak out when I needed to (which was fairly often) and for patiently offering advice. Peter Shallard, Jon Krop, and Jodi Ettenberg—for dropping everything to read some maimed chapter and then sending me notes and feedback. Michael Covell—for being a top-shelf bro. And WS, who somehow managed to be both the cause and solution to this whole fucking mess—you were an unexpected inspiration without even trying to be. “The trick is you bite off more than you can chew . . . and then you chew it.” I’d be remiss if I did not give a shout out the NYC Chapter of the Gentleman’s Literary Safari—how could I have known that a nerdy book club started in my kitchen last summer would regularly be the highlight of my month? Much of this book was born from those long philosophical meanderings with you guys. Thank you. And remember, lads: “Being is always the being of a being.” And finally, to my wonderful wife, Fernanda Neute. I could fill an entire page with superlatives about this woman and how much she means to me, and every single one of them would be true. But I will spare the ink and extra paper—just as she would want—and keep it short. Thank you for the gift of commitment and self-limitation. If I’m ever able to hope for nothing, it will be for the simple reason that I’m already with you. Everything Is Fcked Also by Mark Manson The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Everything Is Fcked Everything Is Fcked Chapter 1 The Uncomfortable Truth On a small plot of land in the monotonous countryside of central Europe, amid the warehouses of a former military barracks, a nexus of geographically concentrated evil would arise, denser and darker than anything the world had ever seen. Over the span of four years, more than 1.3 million people would be systematically sorted, enslaved, tortured, and murdered here, and it would all happen in an area slightly larger than Central Park in Manhattan. And no one would do anything to stop it. Except for one man. It is the stuff of fairy tales and comic books: a hero marches headlong into the fiery jaws of hell to confront some great manifestation of evil. The odds are impossible. The rationale is laughable. Yet our fantastical hero never hesitates, never flinches. He stands tall and slays the dragon, crushes the demon invaders, saves the planet and maybe even a princess or two. And for a brief time, there is hope. But this is not a story of hope. This is a story of everything being completely and utterly fucked. Fucked in proportions and on scales that today, with the comfort of our free Wi-Fi and oversize Snuggie blankets, you and I can hardly imagine. Witold Pilecki was already a war hero before he decided to sneak into Auschwitz. As a young man, Pilecki had been a decorated officer in the Polish-Soviet War of 1918. He had kicked the Communists in the nuts before most people even knew what a pinko Commie bastard was. After the war, Pilecki moved to the Polish countryside, married a schoolteacher, and had two kids. He enjoyed riding horses and wearing fancy hats and smoking cigars. Life was simple and good. Then that whole Hitler thing happened, and before Poland could get both its boots on, the Nazis had already Blitzkrieged through half the country. Poland lost its entire territory in a little more than a month. It wasn’t exactly a fair fight: while the Nazis invaded in the west, the Soviets invaded in the east. It was like being stuck between a rock and a hard place—except the rock was a megalomaniacal mass murderer trying to conquer the world and the hard place was rampant, senseless genocide. I’m still not sure which was which. Early on, the Soviets were actually far crueler than the Nazis. They had done this shit before, you know—the whole “overthrow a government and enslave a population to your faulty ideology” thing. The Nazis were still somewhat imperialist virgins (which, when you look at pictures of Hitler’s mustache, isn’t hard to imagine). In those first months of the war, it’s estimated that the Soviets rounded up over a million Polish citizens and sent them east. Think about that for a second. A million people, in a matter of months, just gone. Some didn’t stop until they hit the gulags in Siberia; others were found in mass graves decades later. Many are still unaccounted for to this day. Pilecki fought in those battles—against both the Germans and the Soviets. And after their defeat, he and fellow Polish officers started an underground resistance group in Warsaw. They called themselves the Secret Polish Army. In the spring of 1940, the Secret Polish Army got wind of the fact that the Germans were building a massive prison complex outside some backwater town in the southern part of the country. The Germans named this new prison complex Auschwitz. By the summer of 1940, thousands of military officers and leading Polish nationals were disappearing from western Poland. Fears arose among the resistance that the same mass incarceration that had occurred in the east with the Soviets was now on the menu in the west. Pilecki and his crew suspected that Auschwitz, a prison the size of a small town, was likely involved in the disappearances and that it might already house thousands of former Polish soldiers. That’s when Pilecki volunteered to sneak into Auschwitz. Initially, it was a rescue mission—he would allow himself to get arrested, and once there, he would organize with other Polish soldiers, coordinate a mutiny, and break out of the prison camp. It was a mission so suicidal that he might as well have asked his commander permission to drink a bucket of bleach. His superiors thought he was crazy, and told him as much. But, as the weeks went by, the problem only grew worse: thousands of elite Poles were disappearing, and Auschwitz was still a huge blind spot in the Allied intelligence network. The Allies had no idea what was going on there and little chance of finding out. Eventually, Pilecki’s commanders relented. One evening, at a routine checkpoint in Warsaw, Pilecki let himself be arrested by the SS for violating curfew. And soon, he was on his way to Auschwitz, the only man known ever to have voluntarily entered a Nazi concentration camp. Once he got there, he saw that the reality of Auschwitz was far worse than anyone had suspected. Prisoners were routinely shot in roll call lineups for transgressions as minor as fidgeting or not standing up straight. The manual labor was grueling and endless. Men were literally worked to death, often performing tasks that were useless or meant nothing. The first month Pilecki was there, a full third of the men in his barracks died of exhaustion or pneumonia or were shot. Regardless, by the end of the 1940, Pilecki, the comic book superhero motherfucker, had still somehow set up an espionage operation. Oh, Pilecki—you titan, you champion, flying above the abyss—how did you manage to create an intelligence network by embedding messages in laundry baskets? How did you build your own transistor radio out of spare parts and stolen batteries, MacGyver -style, and then successfully transmit plans for an attack on the prison camp to the Secret Polish Army in Warsaw? How did you create smuggling rings to bring in food, medicine, and clothing for prisoners, saving countless lives and delivering hope to the remotest desert of the human heart? What did this world do to deserve you? Over the course of two years, Pilecki built an entire resistance unit within Auschwitz. There was a chain of command, with ranks and officers; a logistics network; and lines of communication to the outside world. And all this went undiscovered by the SS guards for almost two years. Pilecki’s ultimate aim was to foment a full-scale revolt within the camp. With help and coordination from the outside, he believed he could stoke a prison break, overrun the undermanned SS guards, and release tens of thousands of highly trained Polish guerrilla fighters into the wild. He sent his plans and reports to Warsaw. For months, he waited. For months, he survived. But then came the Jews. First, in buses. Then, packed in train cars. Soon, they were arriving by the tens of thousands, an undulating current of people floating in an ocean of death and despair. Stripped of all family possessions and dignity, they filed mechani cally into the newly renovated “shower” barracks, where they were gassed and their bodies burned. Pilecki’s reports to the outside became frantic. They’re murdering tens of thousands of people here each day. Mostly Jews. The death toll could potentially be in the millions. He pleaded with the Secret Polish Army to liberate the camp at once. He said if you can’t liberate the camp, then at least bomb it. For God’s sake, at least destroy the gas chambers. At least. The Secret Polish Army received his messages but figured he was exaggerating. In the farthest reaches of their minds, nothing could be that fucked. Nothing. Pilecki was the first person ever to alert the world to the Holocaust. His intelligence was forwarded through the various resistance groups around Poland, then on to the Polish government-in-exile in the United Kingdom, who then passed his reports to the Allied Command in London. The information eventually even made its way to Eisenhower and Churchill. They, too, figured Pilecki had to be exaggerating. In 1943, Pilecki realized that his plans of a mutiny and prison break were never going to happen: The Secret Polish Army wasn’t coming. The Americans and British weren’t coming. And in all likelihood, it was the Soviets who were coming—and they would be worse. Pilecki decided that remaining inside the camp was too risky. It was time to escape. He made it look easy, of course. First, he faked illness and got himself admitted to the camp’s hospital. From there, he lied to the doctors about what work group he was supposed to return to, saying he had the night shift at the bakery, which was on the edge of camp, near the river. When the doctors discharged him, he headed to the bakery, where he proceeded to “work” until 2:00 a.m., when the last batch of bread finished baking. From there, it was just a matter of cutting the telephone wire, silently prying open the back door, changing into stolen civilian clothes without the SS guards noticing, sprinting to the river a mile away while being shot at, and then navigating his way back to civilization via the stars. Today, much in our world appears to be fucked. Not Nazi Holocaust–level fucked (not even close), but still, pretty fucked nonetheless. Stories such as Pilecki’s inspire us. They give us hope. They make us say, “Well, damn, things were way worse then, and that guy transcended it all. What have I done lately?”—which, in this couch-potato-pundit era of tweetstorms and outrage porn is probably what we should be asking ourselves. When we zoom out and get perspective, we realize that while heroes like Pilecki save the world, we swat at gnats and complain that the AC isn’t high enough. Pilecki’s story is the single most heroic thing I’ve ever come across in my life. Because heroism isn’t just bravery or guts or shrewd maneuvering. These things are common and are often used in unheroic ways. No, being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn’t know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good. Bravery is common. Resilience is common. But heroism has a philosophical component to it. There’s some great “Why?” that heroes bring to the table—some incredible cause or belief that goes unshaken, no matter what. And this is why, as a culture, we are so desperate for a hero today: not because things are necessarily so bad, but because we’ve lost the clear “Why?” that drove previous generations. We are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our electric cars. We have all that. We are a culture in need of something far more precarious. We are a culture and a people in need of hope. After witnessing years of war, torture, death, and genocide, Pilecki never lost hope. Despite losing his country, his family, his friends, and nearly his own life, he never lost hope. Even after the war, while enduring Soviet domination, he never lost the hope of a free and independent Poland. He never lost the hope of a quiet and happy life for his children. He never lost the hope of being able to save a few more lives, of helping a few more people. After the war, Pilecki returned to Warsaw and continued spying, this time on the Communist Party, which had just come to power there. Again, he would be the first person to notify the West of an ongoing evil, in this case that the Soviets had infiltrated the Polish government and rigged its elections. He would also be the first to document the Soviet atrocities committed in the east during the war. This time, though, he was discovered. He was warned that he was about to be arrested, and he had a chance to flee to Italy. Yet, Pilecki declined—he would rather stay and die Polish than run and live as something he didn’t recognize. A free and independent Poland, by then, was his only source of hope. Without it, he was nothing. And thus, his hope would also be his undoing. The Communists captured Pilecki in 1947, and they didn’t go easy on him. He was tortured for almost a year, so harshly and consistently that he told his wife that “Auschwitz was just a trifle” by comparison. Still, he never cooperated with his interrogators. Eventually, realizing they could get no information from him, the Communists decided to make an example of him. In 1948, they held a show trial and charged Pilecki with everything from falsifying documents and violating curfew to engaging in espionage and treason. A month later, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. On the final day of the trial, Pilecki was allowed to speak. He stated that his allegiance had always been to Poland and its people, that he had never harmed or betrayed any Polish citizen, and that he regretted nothing. He concluded his statement with “I have tried to live my life such that in the hour of my death I would feel joy rather than fear.” And if that’s not the most hardcore thing you’ve ever heard, then I want some of what you’re having. How May I Help You? If I worked at Starbucks, instead of writing people’s names on their coffee cup, I’d write the following: One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncomfortable Truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose—we are nothing. Enjoy your fucking coffee. I’d have to write it in really tiny lettering, of course. And it’d take a while to write, meaning the line of morning rush-hour customers would be backed out the door. Not exactly stellar customer service, either. This is probably just one of the reasons why I’m not employable. But seriously, how could you tell someone, in good conscience, to “have a nice day” while knowing that all their thoughts and motivations stem from a never-ending need to avoid the inherent meaninglessness of human existence? Because, in the infinite expanse of space/time, the universe does not care whether your mother’s hip replacement goes well, or your kids attend college, or your boss thinks you made a bitching spreadsheet. It doesn’t care if the Democrats or the Republicans win the presidential election. It doesn’t care if a celebrity gets caught doing cocaine while furiously masturbating in an airport bathroom (again). It doesn’t care if the forests burn or the ice melts or the waters rise or the air simmers or we all get vaporized by a superior alien race. You care. You care, and you desperately convince yourself that because you care, it all must have some great cosmic meaning behind it. You care because, deep down, you need to feel that sense of importance in order to avoid the Uncomfortable Truth, to avoid the incomprehensibility of your existence, to avoid being crushed by the weight of your own material insignificance. And you—like me, like everyone—then project that imagined sense of importance onto the world around you because it gives you hope. Is it too early to have this conversation? Here, have another coffee. I even made a winky-smiley face with the steamed milk. Isn’t it cute? I’ll wait while you Instagram it. Okay, where were we? Oh yeah! The incomprehensibility of your existence—right. Now, you might be thinking, “Well, Mark, I believe we’re all here for a reason, and nothing is a coincidence, and everyone matters because all our actions affect somebody , and even if we can help one person, then it’s still worth it, right?” Now, aren’t you just as cute as a button! See, that’s your hope talking. That’s a story your mind spins to make it worth waking up in the morning: something needs to matter because without something mattering, then there’s no reason to go on living. And some form of simple altruism or a reduction in suffering is always our mind’s go-to for making it feel like it’s worth doing anything. Our psyche needs hope to survive the way a fish needs water. Hope is the fuel for our mental engine. It’s the butter on our biscuit. It’s a lot of really cheesy metaphors. Without hope, your whole mental apparatus will stall out or starve. If we don’t believe there’s any hope that the future will be better than the present, that our lives will improve in some way, then we spiritually die. After all, if there’s no hope of things ever being better, then why live—why do anything? Here’s what a lot of people don’t get: the opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. 1 If you’re angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means you still have hope. 2 No, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference. 3 It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all? Hopelessness is a cold and bleak nihilism, a sense that there is no point, so fuck it—why not run with scissors or sleep with your boss’s wife or shoot up a school? It is the Uncomfortable Truth, a silent realization that in the face of infinity, everything we could possibly care about quickly approaches zero. Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction. This is not an overstatement. 4 Chronic anxiety is a crisis of hope. It is the fear of a failed future. Depression is a crisis of hope. It is the belief in a meaningless future. Delusion, addiction, obsession—these are all the mind’s desperate and compulsive attempts at generating hope one neurotic tic or obsessive craving at a time. 5 The avoidance of hopelessness—that is, the construction of hope—then becomes our mind’s primary project. All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore, hope is the only thing any of us willingly dies for. Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing. When I was in college, my grandfather died. For a few years afterward, I had this intense feeling that I must live in such a way as to make him proud. This felt reasonable and obvious on some deep level, but it wasn’t. In fact, it made no logical sense at all. I hadn’t had a close relationship with my grandfather. We’d never talked on the phone. We hadn’t corresponded. I didn’t even see him the last five years or so that he was alive. Not to mention: he was dead. How did my “living to make him proud” affect anything? His death caused me to brush up against that Uncomfortable Truth. So, my mind got to work, looking to build hope out of the situation in order to sustain me, to keep any nihilism at bay. My mind decided that because my grandfather was now deprived of his ability to hope and aspire in his own life, it was important for me to carry on hope and aspiration in his honor. This was my mind’s bite-size piece of faith, my own personal mini-religion of purpose. And it worked! For a short while, his death infused otherwise banal and empty experiences with import and meaning. And that meaning gave me hope. You’ve probably felt something similar when someone close to you passed away. It’s a common feeling. You tell yourself you’ll live in a way that will make your loved one proud. You tell yourself you will use your life to celebrate his . You tell yourself that this is an important and good thing. And that “good thing” is what sustains us in these moments of existential terror. I walked around imagining that my grandfather was following me, like a really nosy ghost, constantly looking over my shoulder. This man whom I barely knew when he was alive was now somehow extremely concerned with how I did on my calculus exam. It was totally irrational. Our psyches construct little narratives like this whenever they face adversity, these before/after stories we invent for ourselves. And we must keep these hope narratives alive, all the time, even if they become unreasonable or destructive, as they are the only stabilizing force protecting our minds from the Uncomfortable Truth. These hope narratives are then what give our lives a sense of purpose. Not only do they imply that there is something better in the future, but also that it’s actually possible to go out and achieve that something. When people prattle on about needing to find their “life’s purpose,” what they really mean is that it’s no longer clear to them what matters, what is a worthy use of their limited time here on earth 6 —in short, what to hope for. They are struggling to see what the before/after of their lives should be. That’s the hard part: finding that before/after for yourself. It’s difficult because there’s no way ever to know for sure if you’ve got it right. This is why a lot of people flock to religion, because religions acknowledge this permanent state of unknowing and demand faith in the face of it. This is also probably partly why religious people suffer from depression and commit suicide in far fewer numbers than nonreligious people: that practiced faith protects them from the Uncomfortable Truth. 7 But your hope narratives don’t need to be religious. They can be anything. This book is my little source of hope. It gives me purpose; it gives me meaning. And the narrative that I’ve constructed around that hope is that I believe this book might help some people, that it might make both my life and the world a little bit better. Do I know that for sure? No. But it’s my little before/after story, and I’m sticking to it. It gets me up in the morning and gets me excited about my life. And not only is that not a bad thing, it’s the only thing. For some people, the before/after story is raising their kids well. For others, it’s saving the environment. For others, it’s making a bunch of money and having a big-ass boat. For others, it’s simply trying to improve their golf swing. Whether we realize it or not, we all have these narratives we’ve elected to buy into for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter if the way you get to hope is via religious faith or evidence-based theory or an intuition or a well-reasoned argument—they all produce the same result: you have some belief that (a) there is potential for growth or improvement or salvation in the future, and (b) there are ways we can navigate ourselves to get there. That’s it. Day after day, year after year, our lives are made up of the endless overlapping of these hope narratives. They are the psychological carrot at the end of the stick. If this all sounds nihilistic, please, don’t get the wrong idea. This book is not an argument for nihilism. It is one against nihilism—both the nihilism within us and the growing sense of nihilism that seems to emerge with the modern world. 8 And to successfully argue against nihilism, you must start at nihilism. You must start at the Uncomfortable Truth. From there, you must slowly build a convincing case for hope. And not just any hope, but a sustainable, benevolent form of hope. A hope that can bring us together rather than tear us apart. A hope that is robust and powerful, yet still grounded in reason and reality. A hope that can carry us to the end of our days with a sense of gratitude and satisfaction. This is not easy to do (obviously). And in the twenty-first century, it’s arguably more difficult than ever. Nihilism and the pure indulgence of desire that accompanies it are gripping the modern world. It is power for the sake of power. Success for the sake of success. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Nihilism acknowledges no broader “Why?” It adheres to no great truth or cause. It’s a simple “Because it feels good.” And this, as we’ll see, is what is making everything seem so bad. The Paradox of Progress We live in an interesting time in that, materially, things are arguably better than they have ever been before, yet we all seem to be losing our minds thinking the world is one giant toilet bowl about to be flushed. An irrational sense of hopelessness is spreading across the rich, developed world. It’s a paradox of progress: the better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel. 9 In recent years, writers such as Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling have been making the case that we’re wrong to feel so pessimistic, that things are, in fact, the best they’ve ever been and likely going to get even better. 10 Both men have filled long, heavy books with many charts and graphs that start at one corner and always seem somehow to end up in the opposite corner. 11 Both men have explained, at length, the biases and incorrect assumptions we all carry that cause us to feel that things are much worse than they are. Progress, they argue, has continued, uninterrupted, throughout modern history. People are more educated and literate than ever before. 12 Violence has trended down for decades, possibly centuries. 13 Racism, sexism, discrimination, and violence against women are at their lowest points in recorded history. 14 We have more rights than ever before. 15 Half the planet has access to the internet. 16 Extreme poverty is at an all-time low worldwide. 17 Wars are smaller and less frequent than at any other time in recorded history. 18 Children are dying less, and people are living longer. 19 There’s more wealth than ever before. 20 We’ve, like, cured a bunch of diseases and stuff. 21 And they’re right. It’s important to know these facts. But reading these books is also kind of like listening to your Uncle Larry prattle on about how much worse things were when he was your age. Even though he’s right, it doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better about your problems. Because, for all the good news being published today, here are some other surprising statistics: in the United States, symptoms of depression and anxiety are on an eighty-year upswing among young people and a twenty-year upswing among the adult population. 22 Not only are people experiencing depression in greater numbers, but they’re experiencing it at earlier ages, with each generation. 23 Since 1985, men and women have reported lower levels of life satisfaction. 24 Part of that is probably because stress levels have risen over the past thirty years. 25 Drug overdoses have recently hit an all-time high as the opioid crisis has wrecked much of the United States and Canada. 26 Across the U.S. population, feelings of loneliness and social isolation are up. Nearly half of all Americans now report feeling isolated, left out, or alone in their lives. 27 Social trust is also not only down across the developed world but plummeting, meaning fewer people than ever trust their government, the media, or one another. 28 In the 1980s, when researchers asked survey participants how many people they had discussed important personal matters with over the previous six months, the most common answer was “three.” By 2006, the most common answer was “zero.” 29 Meanwhile, the environment is completely fucked. Nutjobs either have access to nuclear weapons or are a hop, skip, and a jump away from getting them. Extremism across the world continues to grow—in all forms, on both the right and the left, both religious and secular. Conspiracy theorists, citizen militias, survivalists, and “preppers” (as in, prepping for Armageddon) are all becoming more popular subcultures, to the point where they are borderline mainstream. Basically, we are the safest and most prosperous humans in the history of the world, yet we are feeling more hopeless than ever before. The better things get, the more we seem to despair. It’s the paradox of progress. And perhaps it can be summed up in one startling fact: the wealthier and safer the place you live, the more likely you are to commit suicide. 30 The incredible progress made in health, safety, and material wealth over the past few hundred years is not to be denied. But these are statistics about the past, not the future. And that’s where hope inevitably must be found: in our visions of the future. Because hope is not based on statistics. Hope doesn’t care about the downward trend of gun-related deaths or car accident fatalities. It doesn’t care that there wasn’t a commercial plane crash last year or that literacy hit an all-time high in Mongolia (well, unless you’re Mongolian). 31 Hope doesn’t care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose. And the more we have to lose, the less we feel we have to hope for. To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. 32 “Control” means we feel as though we’re in control of our own life, that we can affect our fate. “Values” means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for. And “community” means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things. Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything. Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope. For us to understand why we’re suffering through such a crisis of hope today, we need to understand the mechanics of hope, how it is generated and maintained. The next three chapters will look at how we develop these three areas of our lives: our sense of control ( chapter 2 ), our values ( chapter 3 ), and our communities ( chapter 4 ). We will then return to the original question: what is happening in our world that is causing us to feel worse despite everything consistently getting better? And the answer might surprise you. Everything Is F*cked Chapter 2 Self-Control Is an Illusion It all started with a headache. 1 “Elliot” was a successful man, an executive at a successful company. He was well liked by his coworkers and neighbors. He could be charming and disarmingly funny. He was a husband and a father and a friend and took sweet-ass beach vacations. Except he had headaches, regularly. And these weren’t your typical, pop-an-Advil kind of headaches. These were mind-crunching, corkscrewing headaches, like a wrecking ball banging against the back of your eye sockets. Elliot took medicine. He took naps. He tried to de-stress and chill out and hang loose and brush it off and suck it up. Yet, the headaches continued. In fact, they only got worse. Soon, they became so severe that Elliot couldn’t sleep at night or work during the day. Finally, he went to a doctor. The doctor did doctor things and ran doctor tests and received the doctor results and told Elliot the bad news: he had a brain tumor, right there on his frontal lobe. Right there. See it? That gray blotch, in the front. And man, is it a big one. Size of a baseball, I reckon. The surgeon cut the tumor out, and Elliot went home. He went back to work. He went back to his family and friends. Everything seemed fine and normal. Then things went horribly wrong. Elliot’s work performance suffered. Tasks that were once a breeze to him now required mountains of concentration and ef fort. Simple decisions, such as whether to use a blue pen or a black pen, would consume him for hours. He would make basic errors and leave them unfixed for weeks. He became a scheduling black hole, missing meetings and deadlines as if they were an insult to the fabric of space/time itself. At first, his coworkers felt bad and covered for him. After all, the guy had just had a tumor the size of a small fruit basket cut out of his head. But then the covering became too much for them, and Elliot’s excuses too unreasonable. You skipped an investor’s meeting to buy a new stapler, Elliot? Really? What were you thinking? 2 After months of the botched meetings and the bullshit, the truth was undeniable: Elliot had lost something more than a tumor in the surgery, and as far as his colleagues were concerned, that something was a shitload of company money. So, Elliot was fired. Meanwhile, his home life wasn’t faring much better. Imagine if you took a deadbeat dad, stuffed him inside a couch potato, lightly glazed it with Family Feud reruns, and baked it at 350°F for twenty-four hours a day. That was Elliot’s new life. He missed his son’s Little League games. He skipped a parent-teacher conference to watch a James Bond marathon on TV. He forgot that his wife generally preferred it if he spoke to her more than once a week. Fights erupted in Elliot’s marriage along new and unexpected fault lines—except, they couldn’t really be considered fights. Fights require that two people give a shit. And while his wife breathed fire, Elliot had trouble following the plot. Instead of acting with urgency to change or to patch things up, to show that he loved and cared for these people who were his own, he remained isolated and indifferent. It was as though he were living in another area code, one never quite reachable from anywhere on earth. Eventually, his wife couldn’t take it anymore. Elliot had lost something else besides that tumor, she yelled. And that something was called his goddamn heart. She divorced him and took the kids. And Elliot was alone. Dejected and confused, Elliot began looking for ways to restart his career. He got sucked into some bad business ventures. A scam artist conned him out of much of his savings. A predatory woman seduced him, convinced him to elope, and then divorced him a year later, making off with half his assets. He loafed around town, settling in increasingly cheaper and shittier apartments until, after a few years, he was effectively homeless. His brother took him in and began supporting him. Friends and family looked on aghast while, over a few short years, a man they had once admired essentially threw his life away. No one could make sense of it. It was undeniable that something in Elliot had changed; that those debilitating headaches had caused more than pain. The question was, what had changed? Elliot’s brother chaperoned him from one doctor’s visit to the next. “He’s not himself,” the brother would say. “He has a problem. He seems fine, but he’s not. I promise.” The doctors did their doctor things and received their doctor results, and unfortunately, they said that Elliot was perfectly normal—or, at least, he fit their definition of normal; above average, even. His CAT scans looked fine. His IQ was still high. His reasoning was solid. His memory was great. He could discuss, at length, the repercussions and consequences of his poor choices. He could converse on a wide range of subjects with humor and charm. His psychiatrist said Elliot wasn’t depressed. On the contrary, he had high self-esteem, and no signs of chronic anxiety or stress—he exhibited almost Zen-like calm in the eye of a hurricane caused by his own negligence. His brother couldn’t accept this. Something was wrong. Something was missing in him. Finally, in desperation, Elliot was referred to a famous neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio. Initially, Antonio Damasio did the same things the other doctors had done: he gave Elliot a bunch of cognitive tests. Memory, reflexes, intelligence, personality, spatial relations, moral reasoning—everything checked out. Elliot passed with flying colors. Then, Damasio did something to Elliot no other doctor had thought to do: he talked to him—like, really talked to him. He wanted to know everything: every mistake, every error, every regret. How had he lost his job, his family, his house, his savings? Take me through each decision, explain the thought process (or, in this case, the lack of a thought process). Elliot could explain, at length, what decisions he’d made, but he couldn’t explain the why of those decisions. He could recount facts and sequences of events with perfect fluidity and even a certain dramatic flair, but when asked to analyze his decision making—why did he decide that buying a new stapler was more important than meeting with an investor, why did he decide that James Bond was more interesting than his kids?—he was at a loss. He had no answers. And not only that, he wasn’t even upset about having no answers. In fact, he didn’t care. This was a man who had lost everything due to his own poor choices and mistakes, who had exhibited no self-control whatsoever, and who was completely aware of the disaster his life had become, and yet he apparently showed no remorse, no self-loathing, not even a little bit of embarrassment. Many people have been driven to suicide for less than what Elliot had endured. Yet there he was, not only comfortable with his own misfortune but indifferent to it. That’s when Damasio had a brilliant realization: the psychological tests Elliot had undergone were designed to measure his ability to think , but none of the tests was designed to measure his ability to feel . Every doctor had been so concerned about Elliot’s reasoning abilities that no one had stopped to consider that it was Elliot’s capacity for emotion that had been damaged. And even if they had realized it, there was no standardized way of measuring that damage. One day, one of Damasio’s colleagues printed up a bunch of grotesque and disturbing pictures. There were burn victims, gruesome murder scenes, war-torn cities, and starving children. He then showed Elliot the photos, one by one. Elliot was completely indifferent. He felt nothing. And the fact that he didn’t care was so shocking that even he had to comment on how fucked up it was. He admitted that he knew for sure that these images would have disturbed him in the past, that his heart would have welled up with empathy and horror, that he would have turned away in disgust. But now? As he sat there, staring at the darkest corruptions of the human experience, Elliot felt nothing. And this, Damasio discovered, was the problem: while Elliot’s knowledge and reasoning were left intact, the tumor and/or the surgery to remove it had debilitated his ability to empathize and feel. His inner world no longer possessed lightness and darkness but was instead an endless gray miasma. Attending his daughter’s piano recital evoked in him all the vibrancy and joyful fatherly pride of buying a new pair of socks. Losing a million dollars felt exactly the same to him as pumping gas, laundering his sheets, or watching Family Feud . He had become a walking, talking indifference machine. And without that ability to make value judgments, to determine better from worse, no matter how intelligent he was, Elliot had lost his self-control. 3 But this raised a huge question: if Elliot’s cognitive abilities (his intelligence, his memory, his attention) were all in perfect shape, why couldn’t he make effective decisions anymore? This stumped Damasio and his colleagues. We’ve all wished at times that we couldn’t feel emotion, because our emotions often drive us to do stupid shit we later regret. For centuries, psychologists and philosophers assumed that dampening or suppressing our emotions was the solution to all life’s problems. Yet, here was a man stripped of his emotions and empathy entirely, someone who had nothing but his intelligence and reasoning, and his life had quickly degenerated into a total clusterfuck. His case went against all the common wisdom about rational decision making and self-control. But there was a second, equally perplexing question: If Elliot was still as smart as a whip and could reason his way through problems presented to him, why did his work performance fall off a cliff? Why did his productivity morph into a raging dumpster fire? Why did he essentially abandon his family knowing full well the negative consequences? Even if you don’t give a shit about your wife or your job anymore, you should be able to reason that it’s still important to maintain them, right? I mean, that’s what sociopaths eventually figure out. So, why couldn’t Elliot? Really, how hard is it to show up to a Little League game every once in a while? Somehow, by losing his ability to feel, Elliot had also lost his ability to make decisions. He’d lost the ability to control his own life. We’ve all had the experience of knowing what we should do yet failing to do it. We’ve all put off important tasks, ignored people we care about, and failed to act in our own self-interest. And usually when we fail to do the things we should, we assume it’s because we can’t sufficiently control our emotions. We’re too undisciplined or we lack knowledge. Yet Elliot’s case called all this into question. It called into question the very idea of self-control, the idea that we can logically force ourselves to do things that are good for us despite our impulses and emotions. To generate hope in our lives, we must first feel as though we have control over our lives. We must feel as though we’re following through on what we know is good and right; that we’re chasing after “something better.” Yet many of us struggle with the inability to control ourselves. Elliot’s case would be one of the breakthroughs to understanding why this occurs. This man, poor, isolated and alone; this man staring at photos of broken bodies and earthquake rubble that could easily have been metaphors for his life; this man who had lost everything, absolutely everything, and still cracked a smile to tell about it—this man would be the key to revolutionizing our understanding of the human mind, how we make decisions, and how much self-control we actually have. The Classic Assumption Once, when asked about his drinking, the musician Tom Waits famously muttered, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” He appeared to be hammered when he said it. Oh, and he was on national television. 4 The frontal lobotomy is a form of brain surgery wherein a hole is drilled into your skull through your nose and then the frontal lobe is gently sliced with an icepick. 5 The procedure was invented in 1935 by a neurologist named António Egas Moniz. 6 Egas Moniz discovered that if you took people with extreme anxiety, suicidal depression, or other mental health issues (aka crises of hope) and maimed their brain in just the right way, they’d chill the fuck out. Egas Moniz believed that the lobotomy, once perfected, could cure all mental illness, and he marketed it to the world as such. By end of the 1940s, the procedure was a hit, being performed on tens of thousands of patients all over the world. Egas Moniz would even win a Nobel Prize for his discovery. But by the 1950s, people began to notice that—and this might sound crazy—drilling a hole through somebody’s face and scraping their brain the same way you clean ice off your windshield can produce a few negative side effects. And by “a few negative side effects,” I mean the patients became goddamn potatoes. While often “curing” patients of their extreme emotional afflictions, the procedure also left them with an inability to focus, make decisions, have careers, make long-term plans, or think abstractly about themselves. Essentially, they became mindlessly satisfied zombies. They became Elliots. The Soviet Union, of all places, was the first country to outlaw the lobotomy. The Soviets declared the procedure “contrary to human principles” and claimed that it “turned an insane person into an idiot.” 7 This was sort of a wake-up call to the rest of the world, because let’s face it, when Joseph Stalin is lecturing you about ethics and human decency, you know you’ve fucked up. After that, the rest of the world began, slowly, to ban the practice, and by the 1960s, pretty much everyone hated it. The last lobotomy would be performed in the United States in 1967, and the patient would die. Ten years later, a drunken Tom Waits muttered his famous line on television, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tom Waits was a blistering alcoholic who spent most of the 1970s trying to keep his eyes open and remember where he last left his cigarettes. 8 He also found time to write and record seven brilliant albums in this period. He was both prolific and profound, winning awards and selling millions of records that were celebrated worldwide. He was one of those rare artists whose insight into the human condition could be startling. Waits’s quip about the lobotomy makes us laugh, but there’s a hidden wisdom to it: that he’d rather have the problem of passion with the bottle than have no passion at all; that it’s better to find hope in lowly places than to find none; that without our unruly impulses, we are nothing. There’s pretty much always been a tacit assumption that our emotions cause all our problems, and that our reason must swoop in to clean up the mess. This line of thinking goes all the way back to Socrates, who declared reason the root of all virtue. 9 At the beginning of the Enlightenment, Descartes argued that our reason was separate from our animalistic desires and that it had to learn to control those desires. 10 Kant sort of said the same thing. 11 Freud, too, except there were a lot of penises involved. 12 And when Egas Moniz lobotomized his first patient in 1935, I’m sure he thought he had just discovered a way to do what, for more than two thousand years, philosophers had declared needed to be done: to grant reason dominion over the unruly passions, to help humanity finally exercise some damn control over itself. This assumption (that we must use our rational mind to dominate our emotions) has trickled down through the centuries and continues to define much of our culture today. Let’s call it the “Classic Assumption.” The Classic Assumption says that if a person is undisciplined, unruly, or malicious, it’s because he lacks the ability to subjugate his feelings, that he is weak-willed or just plain fucked up. The Classic Assumption sees passion and emo tion as flaws, errors within the human psyche that must be overcome and fixed within the self. Today, we usually judge people based on the Classic Assumption. Obese people are ridiculed and shamed because their obesity is seen as a failure of self-control. They know they should be thin, yet they continue to eat. Why? Something must be wrong with them, we assume. Smokers: same deal. Drug addicts receive the same treatment, of course, but often with the extra stigma of being defined as criminals. Depressed and suicidal people are subjected to the Classic Assumption in a way that’s dangerous, being told that their inability to create hope and meaning in their lives is their own damn fault, that maybe, if they just tried a little harder, hanging themselves by the necktie wouldn’t sound so appealing. We see succumbing to our emotional impulses as a moral failing. We see a lack of self-control as a sign of a deficient character. Conversely, we celebrate people who beat their emotions into submission. We get collective hard-ons for athletes and busi	492,802
My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh) (Z-Library).epub	Epigraph, My Year of Rest and Relaxation If you’re smart or rich or lucky Maybe you’ll beat the laws of man But the inner laws of spirit And the outer laws of nature No man can No, no man can . . . “ THE WOLF THAT LIVES IN LI NDSEY ,” JONI MITCHELL Chapter Five, My Year of Rest and Relaxation Five I WOKE UP ALONE on the sofa a few days later. The air smelled like stale smoke and perfume. The TV was on at low volume. My tongue was thick and gritty, like I had dirt in my mouth. I listened to the world weather report: floods in India, an earthquake in Guatemala, another blizzard approaching the northeastern United States, fires burning down million-dollar homes in Southern California, “but sunny skies in our nation’s capital today as Yasser Arafat visits the White House for talks with President Clinton aimed at reviving the stalled peace process in the Middle East. More on that story in a minute.” I opened my eyes. The room was dim, the shades were down. As I pushed myself upright, lifting my head slowly off the arm of the sofa, the blood drained out of my brain like sand in an hourglass. My vision pixelated, moiréed, then blurred and womped back into focus. I looked down at my feet. I had on Reva’s dead mother’s shoes, seascapes of salt rounding across the leather toes. Nude fishnet stockings. I undid the belt of my white fur coat and found that all I was wearing underneath was a flesh-colored bustier bodysuit. I looked down at my crotch. My pubic hair had been waxed off recently. A good waxing—my skin was neither red nor bumpy nor itchy. My fingernails, I saw, were French-manicured. I could smell my own sweat. It smelled like gin. It smelled like vinegar. A stamp across my knuckles showed I’d been to a club called Dawn’s Early. I’d never heard of it. I sat back and closed my eyes and tried to remember the previous night. It was all black, empty space. “Let’s take a look at the snowfall forecast for the New York metro area.” I opened my eyes. The meteorologist on TV looked like a black Rick Moranis. He pointed to a swirling white cartoon cloud. “Happy New Year, Reva,” I remember I’d said. That was all I could recall. The coffee table was spread over with empty ice-cube trays and a full gallon jug of distilled water and an empty half-gallon jug of Gordon’s gin and a ripped-out page from a book called The Art of Happiness. Reva had given it to me for my birthday a few years earlier, saying I’d “get a lot out of the Dalai Lama. He’s really insightful.” I’d never read the book. On the torn-out page, a single line had been underlined in blue ballpoint pen: “It didn’t happen overnight,” it read. I deduced that I’d been crushing Xanax with the handle of a butcher knife and snorting it with a rolled-up flyer for an open mic night at a club on Hester Street called Portnoy’s Porthole. I’d never heard of it. A few dozen Polaroids splattered between my videotapes and empty cases proved that my blackout activities had not gone undocumented, although I didn’t see my camera anywhere. The photos were of pretty party people—young strangers making sultry, self-serious faces. Girls in dark lipstick, boys with red pupils, some caught unawares by the loud white flash of my camera, others posing fashionably or simply raising an eyebrow or faking wide smiles. Some photos appeared to have been taken on a downtown street at night, others in a dark, low-ceilinged interior with Day-Glo fake graffiti on the walls. I didn’t recognize anybody in the photos. In one, a group of six clubgoers huddled together, each holding up a middle finger. In another, a skinny redhead flashed her breasts, revealing lavender pasties. A chubby black boy in a fedora and tuxedo T-shirt blew smoke rings. Male twins dressed as heroin-thin Elvises in slouchy gold lamé suits high-fived in front of a Basquiat rip-off. There was a girl holding a rat on a leash hooked to the bicycle chain she wore around her neck. A close-up shot showed someone’s pale pink tongue, split to look like a snake’s and pierced on both forks with big diamond studs. There was a series of snapshots taken in what I guessed was the line for the toilet. The whole place looked like some arty rave. “Expect road closures, hurricane force gales, coastal flooding,” the weatherman was saying. I dug the remote out from between the sofa cushions and turned the TV off. One photo had fallen under the coffee table. I picked it up and flipped it over. A small Asian man stood still and apart from the crowd at the bar. He wore blue coveralls splattered in paint. I looked closely. He had a round face and ruddy acne scars. His eyes were closed. He seemed familiar. Then I recognized him. It was Ping Xi. There was a streak of pink glitter across his cheeks. I put the photo down. • • • IT HAD BEEN MONTHS since I’d even thought of Ping Xi. Whenever Ducat had popped into my mind, I’d tried to winnow my focus down to the simple memory of the long walk to the Eighty-sixth Street subway station, the express train to Union Square, the L train across town, the walk up Eighth Avenue and left on Twenty-third Street, the hobble over the old cobblestones in my high heels. Remembering the geography of Manhattan seemed worth hanging on to. But I would have preferred to forget the names and details of the people I’d met in Chelsea. The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine. I might as well have worked on Wall Street. Speculation and opinions drove not only the market but the products, sadly, the values of which were hinged not to the ineffable quality of art as a sacred human ritual—a value impossible to measure, anyway—but to what a bunch of rich assholes thought would “elevate” their portfolios and inspire jealousy and, delusional as they all were, respect. I was perfectly happy to wipe out all that garbage from my mind. I’d never been to the kind of party in the Polaroid photos, but I’d seen it from afar: young and beautiful and fascinating people hailing cabs and flicking cigarettes, cocaine, mascara, the diamond grit of a night out on the town, random sex a simple gesture in a bathroom stall, wading once onto the dance floor then back out again, screaming drink orders at the bar, everyone pushing toward the ecstasy of the dream of tomorrow, where they’d have more fun, feel more beautiful, be surrounded by more interesting people. I’d always preferred a septic hotel bar, maybe because that’s where Trevor liked to take me. He and I agreed that people looked stupid when they were “having a good time.” The interns at the gallery had told me about their weekends out at Tunnel and Life and Sound Factory and Spa and Lotus and Centro-Fly and Luke + Leroy. So I had some sense of what went on in the city at night. And as Natasha’s assistant, I’d been responsible for keeping a list of some of the most socially valuable people at an art party—specifically the young impresarios and their attendants. She invited them to openings and told me to study their bios. Maggie Kahpour’s father had owned the largest private collection of Picasso doodles in the world, and when he died, she donated them to an abbey in the south of France. The monks named a cheese after her. Gwen Elbaz-Burke was the grandniece of Ken Burke, the performance artist who was eaten by the shark he kept in his swimming pool, and the daughter of Zara Ali Elbaz, a Syrian princess who was exiled for making a pornographic art film with her German boyfriend, a descendant of Heinrich Himmler. Stacey Bloom had started a magazine called Kun(s)t about “women in the arts,” mostly profiles of rich art-party girls who were starting their own fashion lines or opening galleries or nightclubs or starring in indie movies. Her father was the president of Citibank. Zaza Nakazawa was a nineteen-year-old heiress who had written a book about being in a sexual relationship with her aunt, the painter Elaine Meeks. Eugenie Pratt was the half sister of the documentary filmmaker and architect Emilio Wolford who famously made her eat a raw lamb’s heart on camera when she was twelve. There was Claudia Martini-Richards. Jane Swarovski-Kahn. Pepper Jacobin-Sills. Kylie Jensen. Nell “Nikita” Patrick. Patsy Weinberger. Maybe these were the girls in the photos. I wouldn’t have recognized them outside the gallery. Imogene Behrman. Odette Quincy Adams. Kitty Cavalli. I remembered their names. Dawn’s Early must have been some new after-hours club for the next generation of rich kids and art hags if Ping Xi was hanging out there, presumably among his devotees. I vaguely remembered Natasha saying he’d gone to boarding school with a set of gay royal twins from Prussia. But how had I found him? Or had he found me? I collected the photos and stuffed them under the sofa cushion, then got up to peek into my bedroom to make sure nobody was there. All my bedding was in a heap on the floor, the mattress bare. I stepped closer to make sure there was no human-sized bloodstain, nobody wrapped up in the sheets, no corpse tucked under the bed. I opened the closet and found nobody bound and gagged. Just the little plastic Baggies of Victoria’s Secret lingerie spilled out. Nothing was amiss. I was alone. Back in the living room, my phone was dead on the windowsill next to a single sneaker I’d used as an ashtray. I snagged down a slat in the blinds to look out the window. The snow was already beginning to fall. That was good, I thought—I’d stay home through the blizzard and get some hard sleeping done. I’d return to my old rhythm, my daily rituals. I needed the stability of my familiar routine. And I wouldn’t take any more Infermiterol, at least for a while. It was working against my goal of doing nothing. I plugged my phone in to charge and threw the sneaker away in the kitchen. The trash was filled with the brittle peels of clementines and cloudy plastic packaging from single-serving slices of cheese, which I couldn’t remember buying or eating. The fridge contained only the small, light wood crate the clementines came in, and a second gallon jug of distilled water. I took off the white fur and the bustier and the fishnets and went to the bathroom to run the hot water in the shower. My toenails were painted lilac, my previously flaky calloused soles now smooth and soft. I used the toilet and watched a vein throb in my thigh. What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing? It seemed preposterous. Had Reva convinced me to go “enjoy myself” or something just as idiotic? I peed, and when I wiped myself, it was slick. I had recently been aroused, it seemed. Who had aroused me? I remembered nothing. A wave of nausea made me lurch over and regurgitate an acrid globule of phlegm, which I spat into the sink. From the sandy feel of my mouth, I was expecting to see granules of dirt or the grit of a crushed pill speckling my saliva. Instead, it was pink glitter. I opened the medicine cabinet and took two Valiums and two Ativans, guzzled water from the tap. When I righted myself, someone appeared in the mirror as if through a porthole window, and it startled me. My own startled face startled me. Mascara had streaked down my cheeks like a masquerade mask. Remnants of bright pink lipstick stained the outer edges and corners of my lips. I brushed my teeth and tried my best to scrub the makeup off. I looked in the mirror again. Wrinkles in my forehead and lines around my mouth looked like they’d been drawn in pencil. My cheeks were slack. My skin was pale. Something flashed in the gloss of my eyeballs. I got close up to the mirror and looked very carefully. There I was, a tiny dark reflection of myself deep down in my right pupil. Someone said once that pupils were just empty space, black holes, twin caves of infinite nothingness. “When something disappears, that’s usually where it disappears—into the black holes in our eyes.” I couldn’t remember who had said it. I watched my reflection disappear in the steam. • • • IN THE SHOWER, a memory returned from middle school: a cop who visited our seventh grade class to warn us about the dangers of drug use. He hung up a chart depicting every illicit drug in Western civilization and pointed at the little sample pictures one by one—a pile of white powder, cloudy yellow crystals, blue pills, pink pills, yellow pills, black tar. Under each was the drug’s name and nicknames. Heroin: smack, dope, horse, skag, junk, H, hero, white stuff, boy, chiva, black pearl, brown sugar. “This feels like this. That feels like that.” The cop had some kind of disorder that made it hard for him to moderate the volume of his own voice. “Cocaine! Methamphetamine! Psilocybin! PCP!” he shouted, then suddenly lowered his voice to point at Rohypnol. “Forget-me pills, lunch money, Mexican Valium, mind eraser, rib, roach, roofies, trip-and-falls, wolfies . . .” He was almost inaudible. And then he was screaming again. “This is why you don’t accept drinks from strangers! Girls! Never leave a friend alone at a party! The upside is that the victim forgets!” He stopped to catch his breath. He was a sweaty blonde with a V-shaped build like Superman. “But it isn’t addictive,” he said casually, then turned back to the chart. So my memory seemed to be intact insofar as I could recall with pristine clarity this moment from my adolescence, but I had no recall of what had happened under the influence of Infermiterol. Were there other holes in my memory? I hoped there might be. I tested myself: Who signed the Magna Carta? How tall is the Statue of Liberty? When was the Nazarene Movement? Who shot Andy Warhol? The questions alone proved that my mind was still pretty sound. I knew my social security number. Bill Clinton was president, but not for much longer. In fact, my mind felt sharper, the pathways of my thoughts more direct than before. I could remember things I hadn’t thought of in years: I could remember the time senior year of college when my heel broke on the way to Feminist Theories and Art Practices, 1960s–1990s, and I walked in late, limping and disgruntled, and the professor pointed at me and said, “We were just discussing feminist performance art as a political deconstruction of the art world as a commercial industry,” and told me to stand at the front of the classroom, which I did, my left foot arched like a Barbie’s, and the class analyzed it as a performance piece. “I can’t get past the context of the art history classroom,” a Barnard girl said. “There are so many conflicting layers of meaning here, it’s wonderful,” said the bearded TA. And then, simply to humiliate me, the professor, a woman with long waxy hair and crude silver jewelry, asked me how much I’d paid for my shoes. They were black suede stiletto boots, and they’d cost almost five hundred dollars, one of many purchases I’d made to mitigate the pain of having lost my parents, or whatever it was I was feeling. I could remember all of this, each sniveling, pouty face in that classroom. One idiot said I was “broken by the male gaze.” I remembered the tick of the clock as they stared. “I guess that’s enough,” said the professor, finally. I was permitted to take my seat. Out the window of the classroom, flat, wide yellow leaves fell from a single tree onto gray concrete. I dropped the class, had to explain to my adviser that I wanted to focus more on Neoclassicism, and switched to “Jacques-Louis David: Art, Virtue, and Revolution.” The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub. I got out of the shower, took an Ambien and two Benadryl, wrapped a mildewed towel around my shoulders, and went back out into the living room to check my phone, which had charged sufficiently for me to turn it on. When I looked through my call history, the numbers I had dialed were Trevor’s and an unidentified 646 number, which I had to assume was Ping Xi’s. I deleted the number and took a Risperdal, pulled a gray cable-knit sweater and pair of leggings out of a pile of dirty laundry in the hallway, put the fur coat back on, stuck my feet into slippers, and looked for my keys. I found them still stuck in the lock on the door. • • • IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON, I gathered, from the clouds drifting overhead like crumpled bedsheets. In the lobby, I ignored the doorman’s cautious salutation about the storm and shuffled out and down the disappearing path snaking between the banks of snow piled high on the sidewalk and over the curb. Everything was hushed, but the air was angry and wet. Any more snow and the whole city would be covered. I passed a twitching, sweater-clad Pomeranian and its nanny on the corner, watched it lift its leg and piss on a flat, glassy plane of ice on the pavement, heard the singe of the hot stuff melting through, steam spreading in a contained bubble for a moment, then dissipating. The Egyptians extended no special greeting when I walked into the bodega. They just nodded as usual and went back to their cell phones. That was a good sign, I thought. Whatever I’d done on the Infermiterol, whomever I’d cavorted with or how hard I’d “partied,” I hadn’t behaved so badly at the bodega at least to solicit any special attention. I hadn’t shit where I ate, as the saying goes. I got cash out of the ATM, poured my two coffees and stirred in the cream and sugar, then picked out a slice of prepackaged banana bread, a cup of organic yogurt, and a rock hard pear. Three Brearley girls in tracksuits formed a line at the counter. I glanced at the newspapers while I waited to pay. Nothing earth shattering was going on, it seemed. Strom Thurmond gave Hillary Clinton a hug. A pack of wolves was spotted in Washington Heights. Nigerians smuggled into Libya might one day be washing dishes at your favorite downtown bistro. Giuliani said cursing at a cop should be a crime. It was January 3, 2001. In the elevator back up to my apartment, I thought up combinations of pills that I hoped would put me out—Ambien plus Placidyl plus Theraflu. Solfoton plus Ambien plus Dimetapp. I wanted a cocktail that would arrest my imagination and put me into a deep, boring, inert sleep. I needed to dispose of those photographs. Nembutal plus Ativan plus Benadryl. At home, I took a good helping of the latter, washing the pills down with the second coffee. Then I ate a handful of melatonin and the yogurt, and watched The Player and Soapdish, but I couldn’t sleep. I was distracted by the Polaroids under the couch cushions. I put in Presumed Innocent, hit rewind, pulled the Polaroids out, and took them and sent them down the garbage chute. That was better, I thought, and went back in and sat down. Night was falling. I felt tired, heavy, but not exactly sleepy. So I took another Nembutal, watched Presumed Innocent, then took a few Lunestas and drank the second bottle of funeral wine, but somehow the alcohol undid the sleeping pills, and I felt even more awake than before. Then I had to vomit, and did so. I had drunk too much. I lay back down on the sofa. Then I was hungry, so I ate the banana bread and watched Frantic three times in a row, taking a few Ativan every thirty minutes or so. But I still couldn’t sleep. I watched Schindler’s List, which I hoped would depress me, but it only irritated me, and then the sun came up, so I took some Lamictal and watched The Last of the Mohicans and Patriot Games, but that had no effect either, so I took a few Placidyl and put The Player back in. When it was over, I checked the digital clock on the VCR. It was noon. I ordered Pad See Ew from the Thai place, ate half of it, watched the 1995 remake of Sabrina starring Harrison Ford, took another shower, downed the last of my Ambien, and found the porn channel again. I turned the volume down low, shifted my body away from the screen so that the grunts and moans could lull me. Still, I didn’t sleep. Life could go on forever like this, I thought. Life would, if I didn’t take action. I fingered myself on the sofa under the blanket, came twice, then turned the TV off. I got up and raised the blinds and sat in a daze for a while and watched the sun go down—was it possible?—then I rewound Sabrina and watched it again and ate the rest of the Pad See Ew. I watched Driving Miss Daisy and Sling Blade . I took a Nembutal and drank half a bottle of Robitussin. I watched The World According to Garp and Stargate and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Moonstruck and Flashdance, then Dirty Dancing and Ghost , then Pretty Woman. Not even a yawn. I wasn’t remotely sleepy. I could tell my sense of balance was off—I nearly fell over when I tried to stand up, but I pushed through it and tidied up for a while, sliding the videocassettes into their cases and putting them back on the shelf. I thought some activity might tire me out. I took a Zyprexa and some more Ativan. I ate a handful of melatonin, chewing like a cow on cud. Nothing was working. So I called Trevor. “It’s five in the morning,” he said. He sounded irritated and foggy, but he’d answered. My number must have shown up on his caller ID, and he’d answered. “I’ve been sexually assaulted,” I lied. I hadn’t said anything aloud in days by then. My voice had a sexy rasp. I felt like I might vomit again. “Can you come over? I need you to come look to see if there are any tears in my vagina. You’re the only one I trust,” I said. “Please?” “Who is it?” I heard a woman’s voice murmuring in the distance. “Nobody,” Trevor said to her. Then, “Wrong number,” he said to me and hung up. I took three Solfoton and six Benadryl, put Frantic in to rewind, cracked the window in the living room to circulate the air, found the blizzard was howling outside, and then I remembered that I’d bought cigarettes, so I smoked one out the window, pressed “play” on the VCR, and lay back down on the sofa. I felt my head get heavy. Harrison Ford was my dream man. My heart slowed, but still, I couldn’t sleep. I drank from the jug of gin. It seemed to settle my stomach. At eight A.M ., I called Trevor again. This time he didn’t answer. “Just checking in,” I said in my message. “It’s been a while. Curious how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. Let’s catch up soon.” I called again fifteen minutes later. “Look, I don’t know how to say this. I’m HIV positive. I probably got it from one of the black guys at the gym.” At eight thirty, I called and said, “I’ve been thinking I might get a boob job, just take them clean off. What do you think? Could I pull off the flat-chested look?” At eight forty-five, I called and said, “I need some financial advice. Actually, I’m serious. I’m in a bind.” At nine o’clock, I called again. He answered. “What do you want?” he asked. “I was hoping to hear you say you miss me.” “I miss you,” he said. “Is that it?” I hung up. • • • I’D INHERITED the complete VHS set of Star Trek: The Next Generation from my father. Ordering those cassettes was probably the one time in my father’s life that he’d dialed a 1-800 number. Watching Star Trek as an adolescent was when I first came to regard Whoopi Goldberg with the reverence she deserves. Whoopi seemed like an absurd interloper on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Whenever she appeared on-screen, I sensed she was laughing at the whole production. Her presence made the show completely absurd. That was true of all her movies, too. Whoopi in her nun’s habit. Whoopi dressed like a churchgoing Georgian in the 1930s with her Sunday hat and Bible. Whoopi in Moonlight and Valentino alongside the pasty Elizabeth Perkins. Wherever she went, everything around her became a parody of itself, gauche and ridiculous. That was a comfort to see. Thank God for Whoopi. Nothing was sacred. Whoopi was proof. After a few episodes, I got up and took a few Nembutals and a Placidyl and guzzled another half a bottle of children’s Robitussin and sat down to watch Whoopi—in a cornflower blue velour tunic and an upside-down cone-shaped hat like a futuristic bishop—have a heart-to-heart talk with Marina Sirtis. It was all nonsense. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept watching. I went through three seasons. I took Solfoton. I took Ambien. I even made myself a cup of chamomile tea, the nauseating sweet smell wafting up from my chipped coffee cup like a hot diaper. This was supposed to be relaxing? I took a bath and put on a brand new set of slippery satin pajamas I found in the closet. Still I wasn’t sleepy. Nothing was working. I thought I’d watch Braveheart again so I put it into the VCR and pressed “rewind.” And then the VCR broke. I heard the wheels spin, then whine, then screech, then stop. I hit “eject” and nothing happened. I poked at all the buttons. I unplugged and replugged the machine. I picked it up and shook it. I banged on it with the butt of my hand, then a shoe. Nothing was working. Outside, it was dark. My phone said it was January 6, 11:52 P.M . So now I was stuck with TV. I surfed the channels. A commercial for cat food. A commercial for home saunas. A commercial for low-fat butter. Fabric softener. Potato chips in individually portioned packages. Chocolate yogurt. Go to Greece, the birthplace of civilization. Drinks that give you energy. Face cream that makes you younger. Fish for your kitties. Coca-Cola means “I love you.” Sleep in the most comfortable bed in the world. Ice cream is not just for children, ladies: your husbands like it, too! If your house smells like shit, light this candle that smells like freshly baked brownies. My mother used to say that if I couldn’t sleep I should count something that matters, anything but sheep. Count stars. Count Mercedes-Benzes. Count U.S. presidents. Count the years you have left to live. I might jump out the window, I thought, if I couldn’t sleep. I pulled the blanket up to my chest. I counted state capitals. I counted different kinds of flowers. I counted shades of blue. Cerulean. Cadet. Electric. Teal. Tiffany. Egyptian. Persian. Oxford. I didn’t sleep. I wouldn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I counted as many kinds of birds as I could think of. I counted TV shows from the eighties. I counted movies set in New York City. I counted famous people who committed suicide: Diane Arbus, the Hemingways, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, van Gogh, Virginia Woolf. Poor Kurt Cobain. I counted the times I’d cried since my parents died. I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen. I pulled the blanket off me. On TV, a young couple spelunking in a cave in New Zealand lowered themselves down into a huge black crevasse, shimmied through a narrow crack in the stone, passed under a field of what looked like huge boogers dripping from the ceiling, and then entered a room illuminated by glowing blue worms. I tried to imagine something stupid Reva would have said to try to soothe me, but nothing came to mind. I was so tired. I truly believed I might never sleep again. So my throat clenched. I cried. I did it. My breath sputtered like from a scraped knee on the playground. It was so stupid. I counted down from a thousand and flicked the tears off my cheeks with my fingers. My muscles ticked like a car that’s been driven a long distance and is left parked in the shade. I changed the channel. It was a British nature show. A small white fox burrowed down into the snow on a blinding sunny day. “While many mammals hibernate during the winter, the arctic fox does not. With special fur and fat covering her stocky body, low temperatures are not going to slow down this little fox! Its tremendous tolerance for cold climes is thanks to an extraordinary metabolism. It only starts to increase at negative fifty degrees Centigrade. That means she doesn’t even shiver before temps drop to negative seventy degrees and below. Wow.” I counted furs: mink, chinchilla, sable, rabbit, muskrat, raccoon, ermine, skunk, possum. Reva had taken her mother’s beaver fur coat. It had a boxy cut and made me think of a gunslinging outlaw hiding out in a snow-filled forest, then taking off west along the train tracks by moonlight, his beaver fur keeping him warm against the biting wind. The image impressed me. It was unusual. I was being creative. Maybe I was dreaming, I thought. I pictured the man in the beaver fur rolling up the ankles of his worn-out trousers to cross an ice-cold brook, his feet so white, like fish in the water. There, I thought. A dream is starting. My eyes were closed. I felt myself begin to drift. And then, as though she’d timed it, as though she’d heard my thoughts, Reva was banging on my door. I opened my eyes. Slivers of white, snowy light striped the bare floor. It felt like the crack of dawn. “Hello? It’s me, Reva.” Had I slept at all? “Let me in.” I got up slowly and made my way down the hall. “I’m sleeping ,” I hissed through the door. I squinted into the peephole: Reva looked bedraggled and deranged. “Can I come in?” she asked. “I really need to talk.” “Can I just call you later? What time is it?” “One fifteen. I tried calling,” she said. “Here, the doorman sent up your mail. I need to talk. It’s serious.” Maybe Reva had been involved somehow in my Infermiterol escapade downtown. Maybe she had some privileged information about what I’d done. Did I care? I did, a little. I unlocked the door and let her in. She wore, as I’d imagined, her mother’s huge beaver coat. “Nice sweater,” she said, slicking past me into the apartment, a whiff of cold and mothballs. “Gray is in for spring.” “It’s still January, right?” I asked, still paralyzed in the hallway. I waited for Reva to confirm but she just dumped the armful of mail on the dining table, then took off her coat and draped it over the back of the sofa next to my fox fur. Two pelts. I thought of Ping Xi’s dead dogs again. A memory arose from one of my last days at Ducat: a rich gay Brazilian petting the stuffed poodle and telling Natasha he wanted “a coat just like this, with a hood.” My head hurt. “I’m thirsty,” I said, but it came out like I was just clearing my throat. “Huh?” The floor shifted slightly beneath my feet. I felt my way into the living room, my hand skimming the cool wall. Reva had made herself comfortable in the armchair already. I steadied myself, hands free, before staggering toward the sofa. “Well, it’s over,” Reva said, “It’s officially over.” “What is?” “With Ken!” Her bottom lip trembled. She crooked her finger under her nose, held her breath, then got up and came toward me, cornering me against the end of the sofa. I couldn’t move. I felt slightly ill watching her face turn red from lack of oxygen, holding in her sobs, then realized that I was holding my breath, too. I gasped, and Reva, mistaking this for an exclamation of compassionate woe, put her arms around me. She smelled like shampoo and perfume. She smelled like tequila. She smelled vaguely of French fries. She held me and shook and cried and snotted for a good minute. “You’re so skinny,” she said, between her sniffles. “No fair.” “I need to sit down,” I told her. “Get off.” She let me go. “Sorry,” she said and went into the bathroom to blow her nose. I lay down and turned to face the back of the sofa, snuggled against the fox and beaver furs. Maybe I could sleep now, I thought. I closed my eyes. I pictured the fox and the beaver, cozied up together in a little cave near a waterfall, the beaver’s buckteeth, its raspy snore, the perfect animal avatar for Reva. And me, the little white fox splayed out on its back, a bubble-gum pink tongue lolling out of its pristine, furry snout, impervious to the cold. I heard the toilet flush. “You’re out of toilet paper,” Reva said, rupturing the vision. I’d been wiping myself with napkins from the bodega for weeks—she must have realized that before. “I could really use a drink,” she huffed. Her heels clacked on the tile in the kitchen. “I’m sorry to come over like this. I’m such a mess right now.” “What is it, Reva?” I groaned. “Spit it out. I’m not feeling well.” I heard her open and close a few cabinets. Then she came back with a mug and sat down in the armchair and poured herself a cupful of gin. She wasn’t crying anymore. She sighed once morosely, and then once again violently, and drank. “Ken got me transferred. And he says he doesn’t want to see me anymore. So that’s it. After all this time. I’ve had such a day, I can’t even tell you.” But there she was, telling me. Five whole minutes spent on what it was like to come back from lunch and find a note on her desk. “Like you can break up with someone over memo. Like he doesn’t care about me at all. Like I’m some kind of secretary. Like this is a matter of business. Which it is not!” “Then what was it, Reva?” “A matter of the heart!” “Oh.” “So I go in and he’s like, ‘Leave the door open,’ and my heart is pounding because, you know? A memo? So I just close the door and I’m like, ‘What is this? How can you do this?’ And he’s like, ‘It’s over. I can’t see you anymore.’ Like in a movie!” “What did the memo say?” “That I’m getting a promotion, and they’re transferring me to the Towers. On my first day back to work after my mom died. Ken was at the funeral. He saw the state I was in. And now suddenly it’s over? Just like that?” “You’re getting a promotion?” “Marsh is starting a new crisis consulting firm. Terrorist risks, blah blah. But did you hear what I said? He doesn’t want to see me anymore, not even at the office.” “What a dick,” I said robotically. “I know. He’s a coward. I mean, we were in love . Totally in love!” “You were?” “How do you just decide to turn that off?” I kept my eyes closed. Reva went on without any breaks, repeating the story six or seven times, each version highlighting a new aspect of the experience and analyzing it accordingly. I tried to disengage from her words and just listen to the drone of her voice. I had to admit that it was a comfort to have Reva there. She was just as good as a VCR, I thought. The cadence of her speech was as familiar and predictable as the audio from any movie I’d watched a hundred times. That’s why I’d held on to her this long, I thought as I lay there, not listening. Since I’d known her, the drone of what-ifs, the seemingly endless descriptions of her delusional romantic projections had become a kind of lullaby. Reva was a magnet for my angst. She sucked it right out of me. I was a Zen Buddhist monk when she was around. I was above fear, above desire, above worldly concerns in general. I could live in the now in her company. I had no past or present. No thoughts. I was too evolved for all her jibber-jabber. And too cool. Reva could get angry, impassioned, depressed, ecstatic. I wouldn’t. I refused to. I would feel nothing, be a blank slate. Trevor had told me once he thought I was frigid, and that was fine with me. Fine. Let me be a cold bitch. Let me be the ice queen. Someone once said that when you die of hypothermia, you get cold and sleepy, things slow down, and then you just drift away. You don’t feel a thing. That sounded nice. That was the best way to die—awake and dreaming, feeling nothing. I could take the train to Coney Island, I thought, walk along the beach in the freezing wind, and swim out into the ocean. Then I’d just float on my back looking up at the stars, go numb, get sleepy, drift, drift. Isn’t it only fair that I should get to choose how I’ll die? I wouldn’t die like my father did, passive and quiet while the cancer ate him alive. At least my mother did things her own way. I’d never thought to admire her before for that. At least she had guts. At least she took matters into her own hands. I opened my eyes. There was a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling, fluttering like a scrap of moth-eaten silk in the draft. I tuned in to Reva for a moment. Her words cleansed the palette of my mind. Thank God for her, I thought, my whiny, moronic analgesic. “So then I was like, ‘I’m tired of you jerking me around.’ And he starts talking about how he’s my boss. All macho, right? And actually evading the real issue which is the thing I told you about, which I can’t even think about right now.” I had no memory of her telling me anything. The sound of more gin. “I mean, I’m not keeping it. Obviously. Especially not now! But no. Ken can’t be bothered about that. Being evasive is totally his thing .” I turned around and peeked at her. “If he thinks he can get rid of me so easily . . . ,” she said, wagging her finger. “If he thinks he’s gonna get away with this . . .” “What, Reva? What are you going to do to him? Are you going to kill him? You’re going to burn his house down?” “If he thinks I’m just going to eat his shit and slink away . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence. She had no threats to make. She was too afraid of her own rage to ever imagine it through to any violent end. She would never exact revenge. So I suggested, “Tell his wife he’s been fucking you. Or sue him for sexual harassment.” Reva wrinkled her nose and sucked her teeth, her rage suddenly transformed into calculated pragmatism. “I don’t want people to know, though. That puts me in such an awkward position. And I am getting a raise, so that’s good. Plus, I’ve always wanted to work in the World Trade Center. So it’s not like I can complain exactly. I just want Ken to feel bad.” “Men don’t feel bad the way you want them to,” I told her. “They just get grouchy and depressed when they can’t have what they want. That’s why you got fired. You’re depressing. Consider it a compliment, if you want.” “Transferred, not fired.” Reva set her mug down on the coffee table and lifted her hands up in front of her face. “Look, I’m shaking.” “I don’t see it,” I said. “There’s a tremor. I can feel it.” “Do you want a Xanax?” I asked sarcastically. To my surprise, Reva said yes. I told her to bring me the bottle from the medicine cabinet. She clacked back and forth to the bathroom and handed me the bottle. “There must be twenty prescriptions in there,” she said. “Are you on all of them?” I gave Reva one Xanax. I took two. “I’m just going to lie here with my eyes closed, Reva. You can stay if you want, but I might fall asleep. I’m really tired.” “Yeah, OK,” she said. “But can I keep talking, though?” “Sure.” “Can I have a cigarette?” I waved my hand. I’d never seen Reva so shamelessly unbridled. Even when she drank a lot, she was extremely uptight. I heard her spark the lighter. She coughed for a while. “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said. She sounded calmer now. “Maybe I can move on and meet somebody new. Maybe I’ll go online again. Or maybe there’ll be someone at the downtown office. I kind of like the Twin Towers. It’s peaceful up there. And I think if I start things off on the right foot, with a whole new group of people, they won’t treat me like a slave. Nobody ever listened to me at Ken’s office. We’d have these strategy meetings, and instead of letting me speak, they’d make me take notes like I’m some nineteen-year-old intern. And Ken treated me like shit at work because he didn’t want people to know we’re involved. Were involved. Isn’t it kind of weird that he brought his wife to my mother’s funeral? Who does that? What was that about?” “He’s an idiot, Reva,” I mumbled into my pillow. “Whatever. Everything’s going to be different now,” Reva said, putting out her cigarette in the mug. “I had a feeling this was going to happen. I told him I loved him, you know? Of course that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. What a pussy.” “Maybe you’ll run into Trevor.” “Where?” “At the World Trade Center.” “I don’t even know what he looks like.” “He looks like any other corporate asshole.” “Do you still love him?” “Gross, Reva.” “Do you think he still loves you?” “I don’t know.” “Do you wish he did?” The answer was yes, but only so that he would feel the pain of me rejecting him. “And did I tell you my dad’s been having an affair?” Reva said. “Some client of his named Barbara . A divorcée with no kids. He’s taking her to Boca. Apparently he went in on a timeshare there. He’d been planning it for months. Now I know why he was being so cheap. Cremation? And Florida? Mom dies and suddenly he likes warm weather? I don’t understand him. I wish he had died and not her.” “Just wait,” I said. “Can I have another Xanax?” Reva asked. “I can’t spare another, Reva. Sorry.” She was quiet for a while. The air got tense. “The only thing I can think to do to make Ken pay for the way he’s jerked me around is to keep it. But I won’t. Anyway, thanks for listening.” She leaned over me on the sofa, kissed my cheek, said, “I love you,” and left. So I gathered that Reva was pregnant. I lay on the sofa contemplating that for a while. There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up. I got up and took a Solfoton and a Xanax. Now more than ever, a movie would have helped me relax. I turned the TV on—ABC7 news—and off. I didn’t want to hear about a shooting in the Bronx, a gas explosion on the Lower East Side, police cracking down on high school kids jumping the turnstiles in the subway, ice sculptures defaced at Columbus Circle. I got up and took another Nembutal. I called Trevor again. “It’s me,” is all he let me say before he started talking. It was the same speech he’d given me a dozen times: he’s involved now and can’t see me anymore. “Not even as just friends,” he said. “Claudia doesn’t believe in platonic relationships between the sexes, and I’m starting to see that she’s right. And she’s going through a divorce, so it’s a sensitive time. And I really like this woman. She’s incredible. Her son is autistic .” “I was just calling to ask if I could borrow some money,” I told him. “My VCR just broke. And I’m horny.” I knew I sounded crazy. I could picture Trevor leaning back in his chair, loosening his tie, cock twitching in his lap despite his better judgment. I heard him sigh. “You need money? That’s why you’re calling?” “I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.” I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand. “Look, I can’t deal with you now. I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up. That was fair. He could keep his flabby old vagina lady and her retarded kid. I knew how this new affair would play out for him. He’d win her over with a few months of honorable declarations—“I want to be there for you. Please, lean on me. I love you!”—but when something actually difficult happened—her ex-husband sued her for custody, for example—Trevor would start to have doubts. “You’re asking me to sacrifice my own needs for yours—don’t you see how selfish that is?” They’d argue. He’d bolt. He might even call me to apologize for “being cold on the phone the last time we talked. I was under a lot of pressure at the time. I hope we can move past it. Your friendship means a lot to me. I’d hate to lose you.” If he didn’t come over now, I thought, it was just a matter of days. I got up and took a few trazodones and lay back down. I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn’t let him say a word. “If you’re not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I’ll be here bleeding to death and I’m not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you’re not here in forty-five minutes, I’m gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I’m going to call my lawyer and tell him I’m leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa. So you can lean on Claudia or whoever when it comes time to deal with all that. She might know a good upholsterer.” I hung up. I felt better. I called down to the doorman. “My friend Trevor is on his way. Let him up when he gets here.” I unlocked the door to my apartment, turned off my phone and sealed it in Tupperware with packing tape and slid it into the depths of the highest shelf in the cabinet over the sink. I took a few more Ambien, ate the pear, watched a commercial for ExxonMobil and tried not to think of Trevor. While I waited, I ticked open a slat in the blinds and saw that it was the dead of night, black and cold and icy, and I thought of all the cruel people out there sleeping soundly, like newborn babes in blankets held to the bosoms of their loving mothers, and thought of my mother’s bony clavicles, the white lace of her bras and white lace of her silk camisoles and slip dresses that she wore under everything, and the white of her terry-cloth robe hanging on the back of her bathroom door, thick and luxurious like the ones at nice hotels, and the gray satin dressing gown whose belt slipped out of its loops because it was slippery silk satin, and it rippled like the water in a river in a Japanese painting, my mother’s taut, pale legs flashing like the white bellies of sun-flashed koi, their fanlike tails stirring the silt and clouding the pond water like a puff of smoke in a magic show, and my mother’s powdered foundation, how when she dipped her fat, rounded brush in it, then lifted it to her wan, sallow face shiny with moisturizer, it also made a puff of smoke, and I remembered watching her “put her face on,” as she called it, and wondering if one day I’d be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts. For a moment, a life like that didn’t sound bad at all, so I got up off the sofa and took an Infermiterol, brushed my teeth, went into my room, took off all my clothes, got into bed, pulled the duvet up over my head, and woke up sometime later—a few days, I guessed—gagging and coughing, Trevor’s testicles swinging in my face. “Jesus Christ,” he was mumbling. I was still adrift, dizzy. I closed my eyes and kept them closed, heard the crackling of his hand jerking his spit-covered penis, then felt him ejaculate on my breasts. A drop slid down a ridge between my ribs. I turned away, felt him sit on the edge of the bed, listened to his breathing. “I should go,” he said after a minute. “I’ve been here too long again. Claudia will start to worry.” I tried to lift my hand to give him the finger, but I couldn’t. I tried to speak but I groaned instead. “VCRs are going to be obsolete in a year or two, you know,” he said. Then I heard him in the bathroom, the clink of the seat hitting the tank, a spattering of piss, a flush, then a long rush of water at the sink. He was probably washing off his dick. He came back in and got dressed, then lay down behind me on the bed, spooned me for about twenty seconds. His hands were cold on my breasts, his breath hot on my neck. “This was the last time,” he said, as though he’d been put out, as though he’d done me some huge favor. Then he lurched up off the bed, making my body bounce like a buoy on an empty sea. I heard the door slam. I got up, pulled on some clothes, took a few Advil, and dragged the duvet from the bedroom to the sofa. There on the coffee table was a DVD player, still in its box. The sight of it disgusted me, the receipt tucked under the lid. Paid in cash. Trevor would have known I didn’t own any DVDs. I put on the Home Shopping Network. In a haze, I ordered a rice cooker from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, a cubic zirconia tennis bracelet, two push-up bras with silicone inserts, and seven hand-painted porcelain figurines of sleeping babies. I’d give them to Reva, I reasoned, to condole her. Finally, exhausted, I drifted off just a centimeter from my mind, and spent the night on the sofa in fitful half sleep, my bones digging hard into the sagging cushions, my throat itchy and sore, my heart racing and slowing at intervals, my eyes flicking open now and then to make sure I was really alone in the room. About the Author, My Year of Rest and Relaxation About the Author Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue , a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World . Her stories have been published in The Paris Review , The New Yorker , and Granta , and have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Discovery Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Eileen , her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Chapter Seven, My Year of Rest and Relaxation Seven “ARE YOU SURE you won’t wear this stuff? What if I stretch something out, and then you want it back?” I had called Reva to say that I was cleaning out my closets. She brought over a collection of large paper shopping bags from various Manhattan department stores, bags she’d obviously saved in case she had to transport something and needed a vessel that would connote her good taste and affirm that she was respectable because she’d spent money. I’d seen housekeepers and nannies do the same thing, walking around the Upper East Side with their lunch in tiny, rumpled gift bags from Tiffany’s or Sak	385,611
The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo) (Z-Library).epub	The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Copyright © 2014 by Marie Kondo All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. www.crownpublishing.com www.tenspeed.com Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Originally published in Japan as Jinsei Ga Tokimeku Katazuke No Maho by Sunmark Publishing, Inc., Tokyo, in 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Marie Kondo. English translation rights arranged with Sunmark Publishing, Inc., through InterRights, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, and Waterside Productions Inc., California, USA. This English translation by Cathy Hirano first published in Great Britain by Ebury Publishing, an imprint of Random House UK, London. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kondo, Marie, author. [Jinsei ga tokimeku katazuke no maho. English] The life-changing magic of tidying up : the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing / Marie Kondo; translated from Japanese by Cathy Hirano. — First North American edition. pages cm 1. Housekeeping. 2. Home economics. I. Title. TX321.K6613 2014 648—dc23 2014017930 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-730-7 eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-731-4 Design by Betsy Stromberg Front cover image copyright © Vadim Georgiev/ Shutterstock.com v3.1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction 1 Why can’t I keep my house in order? You can’t tidy if you’ve never learned how A tidying marathon doesn’t cause rebound Tidy a little a day and you’ll be tidying forever Why you should aim for perfection The moment you start you reset your life Storage experts are hoarders Sort by category, not by location Don’t change the method to suit your personality Make tidying a special event, not a daily chore 2 Finish discarding first Start by discarding, all at once, intensely and completely Before you start, visualize your destination Selection criterion: does it spark joy? One category at a time Starting with mementos spells certain failure Don’t let your family see If you’re mad at your family, your room may be the cause What you don’t need, your family doesn’t either Tidying is a dialogue with one’s self What to do when you can’t throw something away 3 Tidying by category works like magic Tidying order: follow the correct order of categories Clothing: place every item of clothing in the house on the floor Loungewear: downgrading to “loungewear” is taboo Clothing storage: fold it right and solve your storage problems How to fold: the best way to fold for perfect appearance Arranging clothes: the secret to energizing your closet Storing socks: treat your socks and stockings with respect Seasonal clothes: eliminate the need to store off-season clothes Storing books: put all your books on the floor Unread books: “sometime” means “never” Books to keep: those that belong in the hall of fame Sorting papers: rule of thumb—discard everything All about papers: how to organize troublesome papers Komono (miscellaneous items): keep things because you love them—not “just because” Common types of komono : disposables Small change: make “into my wallet” your motto Sentimental items: your parents’ home is not a haven for mementos Photos: cherish who you are now Astounding stockpiles I have seen Reduce until you reach the point where something clicks Follow your intuition and all will be well 4 Storing your things to make your life shine Designate a place for each thing Discard first, store later Storage: pursue ultimate simplicity Don’t scatter storage spaces Forget about “flow planning” and “frequency of use” Never pile things: vertical storage is the key No need for commercial storage items The best way to store bags is in another bag Empty your bag every day Items that usurp floor space belong in the closet Keep things out of the bath and the kitchen sink Make the top shelf of the bookcase your personal shrine Decorate your closet with your secret delights Unpack and de-tag new clothes immediately Don’t underestimate the “noise” of written information Appreciate your possessions and gain strong allies 5 The magic of tidying dramatically transforms your life Put your house in order and discover what you really want to do The magic effect of tidying Gaining confidence in life through the magic of tidying An attachment to the past or anxiety about the future Learning that you can do without Do you greet your house? Your possessions want to help you Your living space affects your body Is it true that tidying increases good fortune? How to identify what is truly precious Being surrounded by things that spark joy makes you happy Your real life begins after putting your house in order Afterword About the author The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Introduction In this book, I have summed up how to put your space in order in a way that will change your life forever. Impossible? A common response and not surprising, considering that almost everyone has experienced a rebound effect at least once, if not multiple times, after tidying. Have you ever tidied madly, only to find that all too soon your home or workspace is cluttered again? If so, let me share with you the secret of success. Start by discarding. Then organize your space, thoroughly, completely, in one go . If you adopt this approach—the KonMari Method—you’ll never revert to clutter again. Although this approach contradicts conventional wisdom, everyone who completes my private course has successfully kept their house in order—with unexpected results. Putting their house in order positively affects all other aspects of their lives, including work and family. Having devoted more than 80 percent of my life to this subject, I know that tidying can transform your life. Does it still sound too good to be true? If your idea of tidying is getting rid of one unnecessary item a day or cleaning up your room a little at a time, then you are right. It won’t have much effect on your life. If you change your approach, however, tidying can have an immeasurable impact. In fact, that is what it means to put your house in order. I started reading home and lifestyle magazines when I was five, and it was this that inspired me, from the age of fifteen, to undertake a serious study of tidying that led to my development of the KonMari Method (based on a combination of my first and last names). I am now a consultant and spend most of my days visiting homes and offices, giving hands-on advice to people who find it difficult to tidy, who tidy but suffer rebounds, or who want to tidy but don’t know where to start. The number of things my clients have discarded, from clothes and undergarments to photos, pens, magazine clippings, and makeup samples, easily exceeds a million items. This is no exaggeration. I have assisted individual clients who have thrown out two hundred 45-liter garbage bags in one go. From my exploration of the art of organizing and my experience helping messy people become tidy, there is one thing I can say with confidence: A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life transforming. I mean it. Here are just a few of the testimonies I receive on a daily basis from former clients. After your course, I quit my job and launched my own business doing something I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a child . Your course taught me to see what I really need and what I don’t. So I got a divorce. Now I feel much happier . Someone I have been wanting to get in touch with recently contacted me . I’m delighted to report that since cleaning up my apartment, I’ve been able to really increase my sales . My husband and I are getting along much better . I’m amazed to find that just throwing things away has changed me so much . I finally succeeded in losing ten pounds . My clients always sound so happy, and the results show that tidying has changed their way of thinking and their approach to life. In fact, it has changed their future. Why? This question is addressed in more detail throughout the book, but basically, when you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too . As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do. I currently offer a course for clients in their homes and for company owners in their offices. These are all private, one-on-one consultations, but I have yet to run out of clients. There is currently a three-month waiting list, and I receive inquiries daily from people who have been introduced by a former client or who have heard about the course from someone else. I travel from one end of Japan to the other and sometimes even overseas. Tickets for one of my public talks for stay-at-home parents sold out overnight. There was a waiting list not only for cancellations but also for the waiting list. Yet my repeater rate is zero. From a business perspective, this would appear to be a fatal flaw. But what if my lack of repeaters was actually the secret to the popularity of my approach? As I said at the beginning, people who use the KonMari Method never revert to clutter again. Because they can keep their space in order, they don’t need to come back for more lessons. I occasionally check in with graduates of my courses to see how they are doing. In almost every case, not only is their home or office still in order but they are continuing to improve their space. It is evident from the photographs they send that they have even fewer belongings than when they finished the course, and have acquired new curtains and furnishings. They are surrounded only by the things they love . Why does my course transform people? Because my approach is not simply a technique. The act of tidying is a series of simple actions in which objects are moved from one place to another. It involves putting things away where they belong. This seems so simple that even a six-year-old should be able to do it. Yet most people can’t. A short time after tidying, their space is a disorganized mess. The cause is not lack of skills but rather lack of awareness and the inability to make tidying a regular habit. In other words, the root of the problem lies in the mind. Success is 90 percent dependent on our mind-set. Excluding the fortunate few to whom organizing comes naturally, if we do not address this aspect, rebound is inevitable no matter how much is discarded or how cleverly things are organized. So how can you acquire the right kind of mind-set? There is just one way, and, paradoxically, it is by acquiring the right technique. Remember: the KonMari Method I describe in this book is not a mere set of rules on how to sort, organize, and put things away. It is a guide to acquiring the right mind-set for creating order and becoming a tidy person. Of course, I can’t claim that all my students have perfected the art of tidying. Unfortunately, some had to stop for one reason or another before completing the course. And some quit because they expected me to do the work for them. As an organizing fanatic and professional, I can tell you right now that no matter how hard I try to organize another’s space, no matter how perfect a storage system I devise, I can never put someone else’s house in order in the true sense of the term. Why? Because a person’s awareness and perspective on his or her own lifestyle are far more important than any skill at sorting, storing, or whatever. Order is dependent on the extremely personal values of what a person wants to live with. Most people would prefer to live in a clean and tidy space. Anyone who has managed to tidy even once will have wished to keep it that way. But many don’t believe it’s possible. They try out various approaches to tidying only to find that things soon return to “normal.” I am absolutely convinced, however, that everyone can keep his or her space in order. To do that, it is essential to thoroughly reassess your habits and assumptions about tidying. That may sound like far too much work, but don’t worry. By the time you finish reading this book, you will be ready and willing. People often tell me, “I’m disorganized by nature,” “I can’t do it,” or “I don’t have time”; but being messy is not hereditary nor is it related to lack of time. It has far more to do with the accumulation of mistaken notions about tidying, such as “it’s best to tackle one room at a time” or “it’s better to do a little each day” or “storage should follow the flow plan of the house.” In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your bathroom spick-and-span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited. The same is true for the practice of feng shui. It is only when you put your house in order that your furniture and decorations come to life. When you’ve finished putting your house in order, your life will change dramatically. Once you have experienced what it’s like to have a truly ordered house, you’ll feel your whole world brighten. Never again will you revert to clutter. This is what I call the magic of tidying . And the effects are stupendous. Not only will you never be messy again, but you’ll also get a new start on life. This is the magic I want to share with as many people as possible. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing 1 Why can’t I keep my house in order? You can’t tidy if you’ve never learned how When I tell people that my profession is teaching others how to tidy, I am usually met with looks of astonishment. “Can you actually make money doing that?” is their first question. This is almost always followed by, “Do people need lessons in tidying?” It’s true that while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and how to wear a kimono to yoga and Zen meditation, you’ll be hard-pressed to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption, in Japan at least, is that tidying doesn’t need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed down as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household. Think back to your own childhood. I’m sure most of us have been scolded for not tidying up our rooms, but how many of our parents consciously taught us how to tidy as part of our upbringing? Our parents demanded that we clean up our rooms, but they, too, had never been trained in how to do that. When it comes to tidying, we are all self-taught. Instruction in tidying is neglected not only in the home but also at school. When we think back to our home economics classes, most of us remember making hamburgers or learning how to use a sewing machine to make an apron, but compared to cooking and sewing, surprisingly little time is devoted to the subject of tidying. Even if it is included in a textbook, that section is either just read in class, or worse, assigned for reading at home so that students can skip ahead to more popular topics, such as food and health. Consequently, even the extremely rare home economics graduates who have formally studied “tidying” can’t do it. Food, clothing, and shelter are the most basic human needs, so you would think that where we live would be considered just as important as what we eat and what we wear. Yet in most societies tidying, the job that keeps a home livable, is completely disregarded because of the misconception that the ability to tidy is acquired through experience and therefore doesn’t require training. Do people who have been tidying for more years than others tidy better? The answer is no. Twenty-five percent of my students are women in their fifties, and the majority of them have been homemakers for close to thirty years, which makes them veterans at this job. But do they tidy better than women in their twenties? The opposite is true. Many of them have spent so many years applying erroneous conventional approaches that their homes overflow with unnecessary items and they struggle to keep clutter under control with ineffective storage methods. How can they be expected to know how to tidy when they have never studied it properly? If you, too, don’t know how to tidy, don’t be discouraged. Now is the time to learn. By studying and applying the KonMari Method presented in this book, you can escape the vicious cycle of clutter. A tidying marathon doesn’t cause rebound “I clean up when I realize how untidy my place is, but once I’m done, it’s not long before it’s a mess again.” This is a common complaint, and the standard response touted by magazine advice columns is, “Don’t try tidying your entire house all at once. You’ll just rebound. Make a habit of doing a little at a time.” I first stumbled across this refrain when I was five. As the middle child of three children, I was raised with a great deal of freedom. My mother was busy taking care of my newborn younger sister, and my brother, who was two years older than me, was always glued to the TV playing video games. Consequently, I spent most of my time at home on my own. My favorite pastime was reading home and lifestyle magazines. My mother subscribed to ESSE —a magazine with features on interior decorating, cleaning tips, and product reviews. As soon as it was delivered, I would snatch it from the mailbox before my mother even knew it had arrived, rip open the envelope, and immerse myself in the contents. On my way home from school, I liked to stop at the bookstore and browse through Orange Page , a popular Japanese food magazine. I wasn’t actually able to read all the words, but these magazines, with their photos of scrumptious dishes, amazing tips for removing stains and grease, and penny-saving ideas, were as fascinating for me as game guides were for my brother. I would fold the corner of a page that caught my interest and dream of trying out the tip described. I also made up a variety of my own solitary “games.” For example, after reading a feature on saving money, I immediately launched into a “power-saving game” that involved roaming about the house and unplugging things that weren’t in use, even though I knew nothing about electric meters. In response to another feature, I filled plastic bottles with water and put them in the toilet tank in a solo “water-saving contest.” Articles on storage inspired me to convert milk cartons into dividers for my drawers and make a letter rack by stacking empty video cases between two pieces of furniture. At school, while other kids were playing dodge ball or skipping, I’d slip away to rearrange the bookshelves in our classroom, or check the contents of the mop cupboard, all the while muttering about the poor storage methods. “If only there were an S-hook, it would be so much easier to use.” But there was one problem that seemed unsolvable. No matter how much I tidied, it wasn’t long before every space was a mess again. The milk carton dividers in my desk drawer soon overflowed with pens. The rack made from video cases was soon so crammed with letters and papers that it crumpled to the floor. With cooking or sewing, practice makes perfect, but even though tidying is also housework, I never seemed to improve no matter how often I did it—nowhere stayed tidy for long. “It can’t be helped,” I consoled myself. “Rebound comes with the territory. If I tackle the job all at once, I’ll just get discouraged.” I had read this in many articles about tidying and assumed it was true. If I had a time machine now, I’d go back and tell myself, “That’s wrong. If you use the right approach, you’ll never rebound.” Most people associate the word “rebound” with dieting, but when they hear it used in the context of tidying, it still makes sense. It seems logical that a sudden, drastic reduction in clutter could have the same effect as a drastic cut in calories. But don’t be deceived. The moment you begin moving furniture around and getting rid of garbage, your room changes. It’s very simple. If you put your house in order in one fell swoop, you will have tidied up in one fell swoop. (In Japanese, the term is ikki ni , or “in one go.”) Rebound occurs because people mistakenly believe they have tidied thoroughly, when in fact they have only sorted and stored things halfway. If you put your house in order properly, you’ll be able to keep your room tidy, even if you are lazy or sloppy by nature. Tidy a little a day and you’ll be tidying forever “If you tidy your house all at once, you’ll rebound. It’s better to make it a habit to do a little at a time.” Although this advice sounds very tempting, we’ve already seen that the first part is wrong. How about the suggestion that we should do only a little a day? Although it sounds convincing, don’t be fooled. The reason you never seem to finish is precisely because you tidy a little at a time. Changing lifestyle habits acquired over a span of many years is generally extremely difficult. If you have never succeeded in staying tidy to date, you will find it next to impossible to develop the habit of tidying a little at a time. People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking . And that’s not easy! After all, it’s quite hard to control what we think. There is, however, one way to drastically transform the way we think about tidying. The subject of tidying first caught my attention when I was in junior high school. The catalyst was a book called The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi (Takarajimasha, Inc.), which explained the importance of getting rid of unnecessary things. I picked the book up on my way home from school, intrigued to see a topic I had never encountered before, and I can still remember the shock of surprise I felt as I read it on the train. I became so absorbed that I almost missed my stop. Once home, I went straight to my room with a handful of garbage bags and stayed closeted for several hours. Although my room was small, by the time I finished I had eight bags full of stuff—clothes I never wore, textbooks from elementary school, toys I had not played with in years, my eraser and seal collection. I had forgotten that most of these things even existed. I sat motionless on the floor for about an hour afterward staring at the pile of bags and wondering, “Why on earth did I bother keeping all this stuff?” What shocked me most, however, was how different my room looked. After only a few hours, I could see parts of the floor that had never been revealed before. My room seemed to have been transformed, and the air inside seemed so much fresher and brighter that even my mind felt clearer. Tidying, I realized, could have far more impact than I had ever imagined. Thunderstruck by the extent of the change, from that day on I turned my attention from cooking and sewing, which I had thought were the essentials of a well-kept home, to the art of tidying. Tidying brings visible results. Tidying never lies. The ultimate secret of success is this: If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set . A change so profound that it touches your emotions will irresistibly affect your way of thinking and your lifestyle habits. My clients do not develop the habit of tidying gradually. Every one of them has been clutter-free since they undertook their tidying marathon. This approach is the key to preventing rebound. When people revert to clutter no matter how much they tidy, it is not their room or their belongings but their way of thinking that is at fault. Even if they are initially inspired, they can’t stay motivated and their efforts peter out. The root cause lies in the fact that they can’t see the results or feel the effects. This is precisely why success depends on experiencing tangible results immediately. If you use the right method and concentrate your efforts on eliminating clutter thoroughly and completely within a short span of time, you’ll see instant results that will empower you to keep your space in order ever after . Anyone who experiences this process, no matter who they are, will vow never to revert to clutter again. Why you should aim for perfection “Don’t aim for perfection. Start off slowly and discard just one item a day.” What lovely words to ease the hearts of those who lack confidence in their ability to tidy. I came across this advice when I was devouring every book about tidying that had ever been published in Japan, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. The momentum sparked by my epiphany concerning the power of tidying was beginning to wear off, and I was starting to feel jaded by the lack of solid results. These words seemed to make sense. It seems daunting to aim for perfection from the beginning. Besides, perfection is supposedly unattainable. By discarding one thing a day, I could get rid of 365 things by the end of the year. Convinced that I had discovered a very practical method, I immediately followed the book’s instructions. I opened my closet in the morning wondering what to dispose of that day. Seeing a T-shirt that I no longer wore, I put it in the garbage bag. Before going to bed the next night, I opened my desk drawer and discovered a notebook that seemed too childish for me. I put it in the bag. Noticing a memo pad in the same drawer, I thought to myself, “Oh, I don’t need that anymore,” but as I reached out to pick it up, I paused at a new thought. “I can save that to discard tomorrow.” And I waited until the next morning to throw it away. The day after that, I forgot completely, so I got rid of two items on the following day. To be honest, I did not last two weeks. I am not the type of person who likes to plug away at something, one step at a time. For people like me, who do their assignments on the very last day right before the deadline, this approach just doesn’t work. Besides, casting off one object a day did not compensate for the fact that when I shop, I buy several items at one time. In the end, the pace at which I reduced could not keep up with the pace at which I acquired new things, and I was confronted with the discouraging fact that my space was still cluttered. It wasn’t long before I had completely forgotten to follow the rule of discarding one item per day. So I can tell you from experience that you will never get your house in order if you only clean up half-heartedly. If, like me, you are not the diligent, persevering type, then I recommend aiming for perfection just once. Many people may protest when I use the word “perfection,” insisting that it’s an impossible goal. But don’t worry. Tidying in the end is just a physical act. The work involved can be broadly divided into two kinds: deciding whether or not to dispose of something and deciding where to put it. If you can do these two things, you can achieve perfection. Objects can be counted. All you need to do is look at each item, one at a time, and decide whether or not to keep it and where to put it. That’s all you need to do to complete this job. It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop. In fact, anyone can do it. And if you want to avoid rebound, this is the only way to do it. The moment you start you reset your life Have you ever found yourself unable to study the night before an exam and begun frantically tidying? I confess, I have. In fact, for me it was a regular event. I would take the piles of handouts covering my desk and throw them in the garbage. Then, unable to stop, I’d tackle the textbooks and papers littering the floor and begin arranging them in my bookcase. Finally, I’d open my desk drawer and start organizing my pens and pencils. Before I knew it, it would be two-thirty in the morning. Overcome by sleep, I’d jolt awake again at five and only then, in a complete panic, would I open my textbook and buckle down to study. I thought that this urge to tidy before an exam was a peculiar quirk of my own, but after meeting many others who do the same, I realized that it was a common phenomenon. Many people get the urge to clean up when under pressure, such as just before an exam. But this urge doesn’t occur because they want to clean their room. It occurs because they need to put “something else” in order. Their brain is actually clamoring to study, but when it notices the cluttered space, the focus switches to “I need to clean up my room.” The fact that the tidying urge rarely continues once the crisis is over proves my theory. Once the exam has ended, the passion poured into cleaning the previous night dissipates and life returns to normal. All thought of tidying is wiped from the person’s mind. Why? Because the problem faced—that is, the need to study for the exam—has been “tidied away.” This doesn’t mean that tidying your room will actually calm your troubled mind. While it may help you feel refreshed temporarily, the relief won’t last because you haven’t addressed the true cause of your anxiety. If you let the temporary relief achieved by tidying up your physical space deceive you, you will never recognize the need to clean up your psychological space. This was true for me. Distracted by the “need” to tidy my room, it took me so long to get down to studying that my grades were always terrible. Let’s imagine a cluttered room. It does not get messy all by itself. You, the person who lives in it, makes the mess. There is a saying that “a messy room equals a messy mind.” I look at it this way. When a room becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical. Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder. The act of cluttering is really an instinctive reflex that draws our attention away from the heart of an issue. If you can’t feel relaxed in a clean and tidy room, try confronting your feeling of anxiety. It may shed light on what is really bothering you. When your room is clean and uncluttered, you have no choice but to examine your inner state. You can see any issues you have been avoiding and are forced to deal with them. From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination . The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order. Storage experts are hoarders What is the first problem that comes to mind when you think of tidying? For many, the answer is storage. My clients often want me to teach them what to put where. Believe me, I can relate, but unfortunately, this is not the real issue. A booby trap lies within the term “storage.” Features on how to organize and store your belongings and convenient storage products are always accompanied by stock phrases that make it sound simple, such as “organize your space in no time” or “make tidying fast and easy.” It’s human nature to take the easy route, and most people leap at storage methods that promise quick and convenient ways to remove visible clutter. I confess that I, too, was once captivated by the storage myth. An avid fan of home and lifestyle magazines since kindergarten, I would read a feature on how to put things away and have to try out each suggestion immediately. I made drawers out of tissue boxes and broke my piggybank to purchase nifty storage items. In junior high on my way home from school, I would drop in at a DIY store or browse at a magazine stand to check out the latest products. In high school, I even called up the manufacturer of particularly intriguing items and pestered the receptionist to tell me the story of how they were invented. I dutifully used these storage items to organize my things. Then I would stand and admire my handiwork, content with how convenient the world had become. From this experience, I can honestly declare that storage methods do not solve the problem of how to get rid of clutter. In the end, they are only a superficial answer. When I finally came to my senses, I saw that my room still wasn’t tidy even though it was full of magazine racks, bookshelves, drawer dividers, and other storage units of every kind. “Why does my room still feel cluttered when I’ve worked so hard to organize and store things away?” I wondered. Filled with despair, I looked at the contents of each storage unit and had a flash of revelation. I didn’t need most of the things that were in them! Although I thought that I had been tidying, in fact I had merely been wasting my time shoving stuff out of sight, concealing the things I didn’t need under a lid. Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved . But sooner or later, all the storage units are full, the room once again overflows with things, and some new and “easy” storage method becomes necessary, creating a negative spiral. This is why tidying must start with discarding. We need to exercise self-control and resist storing our belongings until we have finished identifying what we really want and need to keep. Sort by category, not by location My study of tidying began in earnest when I was in junior high and basically consisted of repeated practice. Every day I cleaned one place at a time—my own room, my brother’s room, my sister’s room, the bathroom. Each day I planned where to tidy and launched solo campaigns that resembled bargain sales. “The fifth of every month is ‘living room day’!” “Today is ‘clean the pantry day.’ ” “Tomorrow I conquer the bathroom cupboards!” I maintained this custom even after entering high school. When I came home, I headed straight for the place I had decided to clean that day without even changing out of my school uniform. If my target was a set of plastic drawers in the washroom cupboard, I would open the doors and dump everything out of one of the drawers, including makeup samples, soaps, toothbrushes, and razors. Then I would sort them by category, organize them into box dividers, and return them to the drawer. Finally, I would gaze in quiet admiration at the neatly organized contents before going on to the next drawer. I would sit on the floor for hours sorting things in the cupboard until my mother called me for supper. One day, I was sorting the contents of a drawer in the hall cupboard when I stopped in surprise. “This must be the same drawer that I cleaned yesterday,” I thought. It wasn’t, but the items inside were the same—makeup samples, soaps, toothbrushes, and razors. I was sorting them by category, putting them in boxes, and returning them to the drawer just like I had the day before. It was at this moment that it hit me: Tidying up by location is a fatal mistake . I’m ashamed to admit that it took me three years to see this. Many people are surprised to hear that such a seemingly viable approach is actually a common pitfall. The root of the problem lies in the fact that people often store the same type of item in more than one place. When we tidy each place separately, we fail to see that we’re repeating the same work in many locations and become locked into a vicious circle of tidying. To avoid this, I recommend tidying by category. For example, instead of deciding that today you’ll tidy a particular room, set goals like “clothes today, books tomorrow.” One reason so many of us never succeed at tidying is because we have too much stuff. This excess is caused by our ignorance of how much we actually own. When we disperse storage of a particular item throughout the house and tidy one place at a time, we can never grasp the overall volume and therefore can never finish. To escape this negative spiral, tidy by category, not by place. Don’t change the method to suit your personality Handbooks for tidying often claim that the cause of clutter differs depending on the person, and that therefore we should select the method that best suits our personality type. At first glance, this argument seems convincing. “So that’s why I can’t seem to keep my space tidy,” we might think. “The method I’ve been using doesn’t suit my character.” We can check the handy chart on what method works for lazy people, busy people, picky people, or nonpicky people, and choose the one that fits. At one point, I explored this idea of categorizing methods of tidying by character type. I read books on psychology, interviewed my clients about their blood types, their parents’ characters, and so on, and even tried a popular type of astrology called Dobutsu uranai , or zoological fortune-telling. I spent over five years analyzing my findings in my search for a general principle governing the best method for each personality type. Instead, I discovered that there is no point whatsoever in changing your approach to suit your personality. When it comes to tidying, the majority of people are lazy. They are also busy. As for being picky, everyone is particular about certain things but not about others. When I examined the personality categories suggested, I realized that I fit all of them. So by what standard was I to categorize people’s reasons for being untidy? I have a habit of trying to categorize everything, probably because I have spent so much time pondering how to organize. When I first started out as a consultant, I worked very hard to categorize my clients and tailor the content of my services to suit each type. In retrospect, however, I can see that I had an ulterior motive. Somehow I imagined that a complex approach consisting of different methods for different character types would make me look more professional. After careful consideration, however, I came to the conclusion that it makes far more sense to categorize people by their actions rather than by some generalized personality trait. Using this approach, people who can’t stay tidy can be categorized into just three types: the “can’t-throw-it-away” type, the “can’t-put-it-back” type, and the “first-two-combined” type. Looking at my clients, I further realized that 90 percent fall into the third category—the “can’t-throw-it-away, can’t-put-it-back” type—while the remaining 10 percent fall into the “can’t-put-it-back” type. I have yet to find someone who is purely the “can’t throw it away” type, probably because anyone who can’t throw things away will soon end up with so much stuff that their storage space overflows. As for the 10 percent who can discard but can’t put things away, when we start tidying seriously, it is soon obvious that they could discard much more because they produce at least thirty bags of garbage. My point is that tidying must begin with discarding regardless of personality type. As long as my clients grasp this principle, there is no need for me to change the content of what I teach to suit the person. I teach the same approach to everyone. How I convey it and the way each client puts it into practice will naturally differ because each individual is just as unique as the way he or she furnishes the house. But I don’t need to worry about identifying these differences or creating complex categories. Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first . This principle does not change. The rest depends on the level of tidiness you personally want to achieve. Make tidying a special event, not a daily chore I begin my course with these words: Tidying is a special event. Don’t do it every day . This usually elicits a moment of stunned silence. Of course, there are countless perspectives on tidying, and even though I have undertaken an exhaustive study of the subject, I don’t claim to know every method that exists. Therefore, what I say here applies only to my own method. Still, let me repeat: tidying should be done just once. Or, to put it more accurately, the work of tidying should be completed once and for all within a single period of time. If you think tidying is an endless chore that must be done every day, you are gravely mistaken. There are two types of tidying—“daily tidying” and “special event tidying.” Daily tidying, which consists of using something and putting it back in its place, will always be part of our lives as long as we need to use clothes, books, writing materials, and so on. But the purpose of this book is to inspire you to tackle the “special event” of putting your house in order as soon as possible. By successfully concluding this once-in-a-lifetime task, you will gain the lifestyle you aspire to and enjoy a clean and orderly space of your choosing. Can you place your hand on your heart and swear that you are happy when surrounded by so much stuff that you don’t even remember what’s there? Most people desperately need to put their house in order. Unfortunately, the majority of them fail to embrace this as a “special event” and instead make do with rooms that are more like storage sheds. Decades drag by as they struggle unsuccessfully to maintain order by tidying every day. Believe me. Until you have completed the once-in-a-lifetime event of putting your house in order, any attempt to tidy on a daily basis is doomed to failure. Conversely, once you have put your house in order, tidying will be reduced to the very simple task of putting things back where they belong. In fact, this becomes an unconscious habit. I use the term “special event” because it is crucial to tackle this job within a short space of time while your spirits are uplifted. After all, it isn’t desirable to stay in a state of excitement forever. You may worry that even when this event is over your space will sink back into disorder. Perhaps you shop a lot and imagine that your possessions will just pile up again. I realize that it’s hard to believe if you have never tried it, but once you have completed this dramatic cleanup, you will have no difficulty whatsoever in putting things back where they belong or in deciding where to keep new things. Unbelievable as it may sound, you only have to experience a state of perfect order once to be able to maintain it. All you need to do is take the time to sit down and examine each item you own, decide whether you want to keep or discard it, and then choose where to put what you keep. Have you ever told yourself, “I’m just no good at tidying,” or “It’s not worth trying; I was born untidy”? Many people carry this type of negative self-image for years, but it is swept away the instant they experience their own perfectly clean space. This drastic change in self-perception, the belief that you can do anything if you set your mind to it, transforms behavior and lifestyles. This is precisely why my students never experience rebound. Once you have experienced the powerful impact of a perfectly ordered space, you, too, will never return to clutter. Yes, I mean you! It may sound too difficult, but I can honestly say that it’s quite simple. When you tidy, you are dealing with objects. Objects are easy to discard and move around. Anyone can do it. Your goal is clearly in sight. The moment you have put everything in its place, you have crossed the finish line . Unlike work, studies, or sports, there is no need to compare your performance to that of anyone else. You are the standard. Better yet, the one thing that everyone finds hardest to do—continuing—is totally unnecessary. You only have to decide where to put things once. I never tidy my room. Why? Because it is already tidy. The only tidying I do is once or sometimes twice a year, and for a total of about one hour each time. The many days I spent tidying without seeing permanent results now seem hard to believe. In contrast, I feel happy and content. I have time to experience bliss in my quiet space, where even the air feels fresh and clean; time to sit and sip herbal tea while I reflect on my day. As I look around, my glance falls on a painting that I particularly love, purchased overseas, and a vase of fresh flowers in one corner. Although not large, the space I live in is graced only with those things that speak to my heart. My lifestyle brings me joy. Wouldn’t you like to live this way, too? It’s easy, once you know how to truly put your home in order. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing 2 Finish discarding first Start by discarding, all at once, intensely and completely You think you have tidied everything perfectly, but within a few days you notice that your room is becoming cluttered again. As time goes by, you collect more things, and before you know it, your space has reverted to its previous state. This rebound effect is caused by ineffective methods that tackle tidying only halfway. As I’ve already mentioned, there is just one way to escape this negative spiral—by tidying efficiently all at once, as quickly as possible, to make the perfect clutter-free environment. But how does this create the right mind-set? When you tidy your space completely, you transform the scenery. The change is so profound that you feel as if you are living in a totally different world. This deeply affects your mind and inspires a strong aversion to reverting to your previously cluttered state. The key is to make the change so sudden that you experience a complete change of heart. The same impact can never be achieved if the process is gradual. To achieve a sudden change like this, you need to use the most efficient method of tidying. Otherwise, before you know it, the day will be gone and you will have made no headway. The more time it takes, the more tired you feel, and the more likely you are to give up when you’re only halfway through. When things pile up again, you will be caught in a downward spiral. From my experience with private individual lessons, “quickly” means about half a year. That may seem like a long time, but it is only six months out of your entire life. Once the process is complete and you’ve experienced what it’s like to be perfectly tidy, you will have been freed forever from the mistaken assumption that you’re no good at tidying. For the best results, I ask that you adhere faithfully to the following rule: Tidy in the right order . As we’ve seen, there are only two tasks involved—discarding and deciding where to keep things. Just two, but discarding must come first. Be sure to completely finish the first task before starting the next. Do not even think of putting your things away until you have finished the process of discarding . Failure to follow this order is one reason many people never make permanent progress. In the middle of discarding, they start thinking about where to put things. As soon as they think, “I wonder if it will fit in this drawer,” the work of discarding comes to a halt. You can think about where to put things when you’ve finished getting rid of everything you don’t need. To summarize, the secret of success is to tidy in one shot, as quickly and completely as possible, and to start by discarding. Before you start, visualize your destination By now you understand why it is crucial to discard before thinking about where to keep things. But to start discarding without thinking ahead at all would be like casting yourself into the negative spiral of clutter. Instead, begin by identifying your goal. There must have been some reason you picked up this book. What was it that motivated you to tidy in the first place? What do you hope to gain through tidying? Before you start getting rid of things, take the time to think this through carefully. This means visualizing the ideal lifestyle you dream of. If you skip this step, not only will it delay the whole process, but it will also put you at higher risk for rebound. Goals like “I want to live clutter-free” or “I want to be able to put things away” are too broad. You need to think much more deeply than that. Think in concrete terms so that you can vividly picture what it would be like to live in a clutter-free space . One client in her twenties defined her dream as “a more feminine lifestyle.” She lived in a messy seven-mat room (seven tatami mats take up about ten by thirteen feet of floor space) with a built-in closet and three sets of shelves of different sizes. This should have been sufficient storage space, but no matter which way I turned, all I could see was clutter. The closet was so stuffed the doors wouldn’t shut, and clothes oozed from the set of drawers inside like the stuffing in a hamburger. The curtain rail over the bay window was hung with so many clothes that there was no need for a curtain. The floor and bed were covered in baskets and bags filled with magazines and papers. When my client came home from work, she moved the things on her bed to the floor and when she woke up, she put them back on the bed to make a path to the door so she could go to work. Her lifestyle could not have been called “feminine” by any stretch of the imagination. “What do you mean by a ‘feminine lifestyle’?” I asked. She thought for a long moment before finally responding. “Well, when I come home from work, the floor would be clear of clutter … and my room, as tidy as a hotel suite with nothing obstructing the line of sight. I’d have a pink bedspread an	278,832
The Martian (Andy Weir) (Z-Library).epub	The Martian: A Novel The Martian: A Novel This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2011, 2014 by Andy Weir All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Originally self-published, in different form, as an ebook in 2011. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request. ISBN 9780804139021 eBook ISBN: 9780804139038 Printed in the United States of America Book design by Elizabeth Rendfleisch Map by Fred Haynes Photograph by Antonio M. Rosario/Stockbyte/Getty Images Jacket design by Eric White Jacket photograph (astronaut): NASA ep_v4.0 The Martian: A Novel For Mom, who calls me “Pickle,” and Dad, who calls me “Dude.” The Martian: A Novel The Martian: A Novel The Martian: A Novel The Martian: A Novel Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Map Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 The Martian: A Novel CHAPTER 1 The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 6 I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked. Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare. I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now. For the record…I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, “Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.” And it’ll be right, probably. ’Cause I’ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did. Let’s see…where do I begin? The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world. Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home. Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” of the mission if I were the only remaining person. What do you know? I’m in command. I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age. I presume they got back to Earth all right. Guys, if you’re reading this: It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived. I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes . All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It’s really big and cost a lot so NASA built only one. Once we got to Hermes , four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits. Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time. I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. I don’t feel like reliving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other. From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them. And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: having all of our shit there in advance. A total of fourteen unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for surface operations. They tried their best to land all the supply vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies aren’t nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tend to bounce around a lot. Naturally, they didn’t send us to Mars until they’d confirmed that all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers weren’t breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about three years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2 crew were on their way home. The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The Mars ascent vehicle. That was how we would get back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft-landed (as opposed to the balloon bounce-fest the other supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if there had been any problems with it, we would have passed by Mars and gone home without ever landing. The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. It’s a slow process, though. It takes twenty-four months to fill the tank. That’s why they sent it long before we got here. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone. It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving. The mission is designed to handle sandstorm gusts up to 150 kph. So Houston got understandably nervous when we got whacked with 175 kph winds. We all got in our flight space suits and huddled in the middle of the Hab, just in case it lost pressure. But the Hab wasn’t the problem. The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it can’t just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a monthlong mission after only six days, but if the MAV took any more punishment, we’d all have gotten stranded down there. We had to go out in the storm to get from the Hab to the MAV. That was going to be risky, but what choice did we have? Everyone made it but me. Our main communications dish, which relayed signals from the Hab to Hermes , acted like a parachute, getting torn from its foundation and carried with the torrent. Along the way, it crashed through the reception antenna array. Then one of those long thin antennae slammed into me end-first. It tore through my suit like a bullet through butter, and I felt the worst pain of my life as it ripped open my side. I vaguely remember having the wind knocked out of me (pulled out of me, really) and my ears popping painfully as the pressure of my suit escaped. The last thing I remember was seeing Johanssen hopelessly reaching out toward me. I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit. A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just fucking die. The storm had abated; I was facedown, almost totally buried in sand. As I groggily came to, I wondered why I wasn’t more dead. The antenna had enough force to punch through the suit and my side, but it had been stopped by my pelvis. So there was only one hole in the suit (and a hole in me, of course). I had been knocked back quite a ways and rolled down a steep hill. Somehow I landed facedown, which forced the antenna to a strongly oblique angle that put a lot of torque on the hole in the suit. It made a weak seal. Then, the copious blood from my wound trickled down toward the hole. As the blood reached the site of the breach, the water in it quickly evaporated from the airflow and low pressure, leaving a gunky residue behind. More blood came in behind it and was also reduced to gunk. Eventually, it sealed the gaps around the hole and reduced the leak to something the suit could counteract. The suit did its job admirably. Sensing the drop in pressure, it constantly flooded itself with air from my nitrogen tank to equalize. Once the leak became manageable, it only had to trickle new air in slowly to relieve the air lost. After a while, the CO 2 (carbon dioxide) absorbers in the suit were expended. That’s really the limiting factor to life support. Not the amount of oxygen you bring with you, but the amount of CO 2 you can remove. In the Hab, I have the oxygenator, a large piece of equipment that breaks apart CO 2 to give the oxygen back. But the space suits have to be portable, so they use a simple chemical absorption process with expendable filters. I’d been asleep long enough that my filters were useless. The suit saw this problem and moved into an emergency mode the engineers call “bloodletting.” Having no way to separate out the CO 2 , the suit deliberately vented air to the Martian atmosphere, then backfilled with nitrogen. Between the breach and the bloodletting, it quickly ran out of nitrogen. All it had left was my oxygen tank. So it did the only thing it could to keep me alive. It started backfilling with pure oxygen. I now risked dying from oxygen toxicity, as the excessively high amount of oxygen threatened to burn up my nervous system, lungs, and eyes. An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen. Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the high-oxygen warning that woke me. The sheer volume of training for a space mission is astounding. I’d spent a week back on Earth practicing emergency space suit drills. I knew what to do. Carefully reaching to the side of my helmet, I got the breach kit. It’s nothing more than a funnel with a valve at the small end and an unbelievably sticky resin on the wide end. The idea is you have the valve open and stick the wide end over a hole. The air can escape through the valve, so it doesn’t interfere with the resin making a good seal. Then you close the valve, and you’ve sealed the breach. The tricky part was getting the antenna out of the way. I pulled it out as fast as I could, wincing as the sudden pressure drop dizzied me and made the wound in my side scream in agony. I got the breach kit over the hole and sealed it. It held. The suit backfilled the missing air with yet more oxygen. Checking my arm readouts, I saw the suit was now at 85 percent oxygen. For reference, Earth’s atmosphere is about 21 percent. I’d be okay, so long as I didn’t spend too much time like that. I stumbled up the hill back toward the Hab. As I crested the rise, I saw something that made me very happy and something that made me very sad: The Hab was intact (yay!) and the MAV was gone (boo!). Right that moment I knew I was screwed. But I didn’t want to just die out on the surface. I limped back to the Hab and fumbled my way into an airlock. As soon as it equalized, I threw off my helmet. Once inside the Hab, I doffed the suit and got my first good look at the injury. It would need stitches. Fortunately, all of us had been trained in basic medical procedures, and the Hab had excellent medical supplies. A quick shot of local anesthetic, irrigate the wound, nine stitches, and I was done. I’d be taking antibiotics for a couple of weeks, but other than that I’d be fine. I knew it was hopeless, but I tried firing up the communications array. No signal, of course. The primary satellite dish had broken off, remember? And it took the reception antennae with it. The Hab had secondary and tertiary communications systems, but they were both just for talking to the MAV, which would use its much more powerful systems to relay to Hermes . Thing is, that only works if the MAV is still around. I had no way to talk to Hermes . In time, I could locate the dish out on the surface, but it would take weeks for me to rig up any repairs, and that would be too late. In an abort, Hermes would leave orbit within twenty-four hours. The orbital dynamics made the trip safer and shorter the earlier you left, so why wait? Checking out my suit, I saw the antenna had plowed through my bio-monitor computer. When on an EVA, all the crew’s suits are networked so we can see each other’s status. The rest of the crew would have seen the pressure in my suit drop to nearly zero, followed immediately by my bio-signs going flat. Add to that watching me tumble down a hill with a spear through me in the middle of a sandstorm…yeah. They thought I was dead. How could they not? They may have even had a brief discussion about recovering my body, but regulations are clear. In the event a crewman dies on Mars, he stays on Mars. Leaving his body behind reduces weight for the MAV on the trip back. That means more disposable fuel and a larger margin of error for the return thrust. No point in giving that up for sentimentality. So that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last thirty-one days. If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I’m fucked. The Martian: A Novel CHAPTER 2 The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 7 Okay, I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and things don’t seem as hopeless as they did yesterday. Today I took stock of supplies and did a quick EVA to check up on the external equipment. Here’s my situation: The surface mission was supposed to be thirty-one days. For redundancy, the supply probes had enough food to last the whole crew fifty-six days. That way if one or two probes had problems, we’d still have enough food to complete the mission. We were six days in when all hell broke loose, so that leaves enough food to feed six people for fifty days. I’m just one guy, so it’ll last me three hundred days. And that’s if I don’t ration it. So I’ve got a fair bit of time. I’m pretty flush on EVA suits, too. Each crew member had two space suits: a flight spacesuit to wear during descent and ascent, and the much bulkier and more robust EVA suit to wear when doing surface operations. My flight spacesuit has a hole in it, and of course the crew was wearing the other five when they returned to Hermes . But all six EVA suits are still here and in perfect condition. The Hab stood up to the storm without any problems. Outside, things aren’t so rosy. I can’t find the satellite dish. It probably got blown kilometers away. The MAV is gone, of course. My crewmates took it up to Hermes . Though the bottom half (the landing stage) is still here. No reason to take that back up when weight is the enemy. It includes the landing gear, the fuel plant, and anything else NASA figured it wouldn’t need for the trip back up to orbit. The MDV is on its side and there’s a breach in the hull. Looks like the storm ripped the cowling off the reserve chute (which we didn’t have to use on landing). Once the chute was exposed, it dragged the MDV all over the place, smashing it against every rock in the area. Not that the MDV would be much use to me. Its thrusters can’t even lift its own weight. But it might have been valuable for parts. Might still be. Both rovers are half-buried in sand, but they’re in good shape otherwise. Their pressure seals are intact. Makes sense. Operating procedure when a storm hits is to stop motion and wait for the storm to pass. They’re made to stand up to punishment. I’ll be able to dig them out with a day or so of work. I’ve lost communication with the weather stations, placed a kilometer away from the Hab in four directions. They might be in perfect working order for all I know. The Hab’s communications are so weak right now it probably can’t even reach a kilometer. The solar cell array was covered in sand, rendering it useless (hint: solar cells need sunlight to make electricity). But once I swept the cells off, they returned to full efficiency. Whatever I end up doing, I’ll have plenty of power for it. Two hundred square meters of solar cells, with hydrogen fuel cells to store plenty of reserve. All I need to do is sweep them off every few days. Things indoors are great, thanks to the Hab’s sturdy design. I ran a full diagnostic on the oxygenator. Twice. It’s perfect. If anything goes wrong with it, there’s a short-term spare I can use. But it’s solely for emergency use while repairing the main one. The spare doesn’t actually pull CO 2 apart and recapture the oxygen. It just absorbs the CO 2 the same way the space suits do. It’s intended to last five days before it saturates the filters, which means thirty days for me (just one person breathing, instead of six). So there’s some insurance there. The water reclaimer is working fine, too. The bad news is there’s no backup. If it stops working, I’ll be drinking reserve water while I rig up a primitive distillery to boil piss. Also, I’ll lose half a liter of water per day to breathing until the humidity in the Hab reaches its maximum and water starts condensing on every surface. Then I’ll be licking the walls. Yay. Anyway, for now, no problems with the water reclaimer. So yeah. Food, water, shelter all taken care of. I’m going to start rationing food right now. Meals are pretty minimal already, but I think I can eat a three-fourths portion per meal and still be all right. That should turn my three hundred days of food into four hundred. Foraging around the medical area, I found the main bottle of vitamins. There’s enough multivitamins there to last years. So I won’t have any nutritional problems (though I’ll still starve to death when I’m out of food, no matter how many vitamins I take). The medical area has morphine for emergencies. And there’s enough there for a lethal dose. I’m not going to slowly starve to death, I’ll tell you that. If I get to that point, I’ll take an easier way out. Everyone on the mission had two specialties. I’m a botanist and mechanical engineer; basically, the mission’s fix-it man who played with plants. The mechanical engineering might save my life if something breaks. I’ve been thinking about how to survive this. It’s not completely hopeless. There’ll be humans back on Mars in about four years when Ares 4 arrives (assuming they didn’t cancel the program in the wake of my “death”). Ares 4 will be landing at the Schiaparelli crater, which is about 3200 kilometers away from my location here in Acidalia Planitia. No way for me to get there on my own. But if I could communicate, I might be able to get a rescue. Not sure how they’d manage that with the resources on hand, but NASA has a lot of smart people. So that’s my mission now. Find a way to communicate with Earth. If I can’t manage that, find a way to communicate with Hermes when it returns in four years with the Ares 4 crew. Of course, I don’t have any plan for surviving four years on one year of food. But one thing at a time here. For now, I’m well fed and have a purpose: Fix the damn radio. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 10 Well, I’ve done three EVAs and haven’t found any hint of the communications dish. I dug out one of the rovers and had a good drive around, but after days of wandering, I think it’s time to give up. The storm probably blew the dish far away and then erased any drag-marks or scuffs that might have led to a trail. Probably buried it, too. I spent most of today out at what’s left of the communications array. It’s really a sorry sight. I may as well yell toward Earth for all the good that damned thing will do me. I could throw together a rudimentary dish out of metal I find around the base, but this isn’t some walkie-talkie I’m working with here. Communicating from Mars to Earth is a pretty big deal, and requires extremely specialized equipment. I won’t be able to whip something up with tinfoil and gum. I need to ration my EVAs as well as food. The CO 2 filters are not cleanable. Once they’re saturated, they’re done. The mission accounted for a four-hour EVA per crew member per day. Fortunately, CO 2 filters are light and small, so NASA had the luxury of sending more than we needed. All told, I have about 1500 hours’ worth of CO 2 filters. After that, any EVAs I do will have to be managed with bloodletting the air. Fifteen hundred hours may sound like a lot, but I’m faced with spending at least four years here if I’m going to have any hope of rescue, with a minimum of several hours per week dedicated to sweeping off the solar array. Anyway. No needless EVAs. In other news, I’m starting to come up with an idea for food. My botany background may come in useful after all. Why bring a botanist to Mars? After all, it’s famous for not having anything growing there. Well, the idea was to figure out how well things grow in Martian gravity, and see what, if anything, we can do with Martian soil. The short answer is: quite a lot…almost. Martian soil has the basic building blocks needed for plant growth, but there’s a lot of stuff going on in Earth soil that Mars soil doesn’t have, even when it’s placed in an Earth atmosphere and given plenty of water. Bacterial activity, certain nutrients provided by animal life, etc. None of that is happening on Mars. One of my tasks for the mission was to see how plants grow here, in various combinations of Earth and Mars soil and atmosphere. That’s why I have a small amount of Earth soil and a bunch of plant seeds with me. I can’t get too excited, however. It’s about the amount of soil you’d put in a window box, and the only seeds I have are a few species of grass and ferns. They’re the most rugged and easily grown plants on Earth, so NASA picked them as the test subjects. So I have two problems: not enough dirt, and nothing edible to plant in it. But I’m a botanist, damn it. I should be able to find a way to make this happen. If I don’t, I’ll be a really hungry botanist in about a year. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 11 I wonder how the Cubs are doing. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 14 I got my undergrad degree at the University of Chicago. Half the people who studied botany were hippies who thought they could return to some natural world system. Somehow feeding seven billion people through pure gathering. They spent most of their time working out better ways to grow pot. I didn’t like them. I’ve always been in it for the science, not for any New World Order bullshit. When they made compost heaps and tried to conserve every little ounce of living matter, I laughed at them. “Look at the silly hippies! Look at their pathetic attempts to simulate a complex global ecosystem in their backyard.” Of course, now I’m doing exactly that. I’m saving every scrap of biomatter I can find. Every time I finish a meal, the leftovers go to the compost bucket. As for other biological material… The Hab has sophisticated toilets. Shit is usually vaccum-dried, then accumulated in sealed bags to be discarded on the surface. Not anymore! In fact, I even did an EVA to recover the previous bags of shit from before the crew left. Being completely desiccated, this particular shit didn’t have bacteria in it anymore, but it still had complex proteins and would serve as useful manure. Adding it to water and active bacteria would quickly get it inundated, replacing any population killed by the Toilet of Doom. I found a big container and put a bit of water in it, then added the dried shit. Since then, I’ve added my own shit to it as well. The worse it smells, the better things are going. That’s the bacteria at work! Once I get some Martian soil in here, I can mix in the shit and spread it out. Then I can sprinkle the Earth soil on top. You might not think that would be an important step, but it is. There are dozens of species of bacteria living in Earth soil, and they’re critical to plant growth. They’ll spread out and breed like…well, like a bacterial infection. People have been using human waste as fertilizer for centuries. It’s even got a pleasant name: “night soil.” Normally, it’s not an ideal way to grow crops, because it spreads disease: Human waste has pathogens in it that, you guessed it, infect humans. But it’s not a problem for me. The only pathogens in this waste are the ones I already have. Within a week, the Martian soil will be ready for plants to germinate in. But I won’t plant yet. I’ll bring in more lifeless soil from outside and spread some of the live soil over it. It’ll “infect” the new soil and I’ll have double what I started with. After another week, I’ll double it again. And so on. Of course, all the while, I’ll be adding all new manure to the effort. My asshole is doing as much to keep me alive as my brain. This isn’t a new concept I just came up with. People have speculated on how to make crop soil out of Martian dirt for decades. I’ll just be putting it to the test for the first time. I searched through the food supplies and found all sorts of things that I can plant. Peas, for instance. Plenty of beans, too. I also found several potatoes. If any of them can still germinate after their ordeal, that’ll be great. With a nearly infinite supply of vitamins, all I need are calories of any kind to survive. The total floor space of the Hab is about 92 square meters. I plan to dedicate all of it to this endeavor. I don’t mind walking on dirt. It’ll be a lot of work, but I’m going to need to cover the entire floor to a depth of 10 centimeters. That means I’ll have to transport 9.2 cubic meters of Martian soil into the Hab. I can get maybe one-tenth of a cubic meter in through the airlock at a time, and it’ll be backbreaking work to collect it. But in the end, if everything goes to plan, I’ll have 92 square meters of crop-able soil. Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers! The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 15 Ugh! This is backbreaking work! I spent twelve hours today on EVAs to bring dirt into the Hab. I only managed to cover a small corner of the base, maybe five square meters. At this rate it’ll take me weeks to get all the soil in. But hey, time is one thing I’ve got. The first few EVAs were pretty inefficient; me filling small containers and bringing them in through the airlock. Then I got wise and just put one big container in the airlock itself and filled that with small containers till it was full. That sped things up a lot because the airlock takes about ten minutes to get through. I ache all over. And the shovels I have are made for taking samples, not heavy digging. My back is killing me. I foraged in the medical supplies and found some Vicodin. I took it about ten minutes ago. Should be kicking in soon. Anyway, it’s nice to see progress. Time to start getting the bacteria to work on these minerals. After lunch. No three-fourths ration today. I’ve earned a full meal. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 16 One complication I hadn’t thought of: water. Turns out being on the surface of Mars for a few million years eliminates all the water in the soil. My master’s degree in botany makes me pretty sure plants need wet dirt to grow in. Not to mention the bacteria that has to live in the dirt first. Fortunately, I have water. But not as much as I want. To be viable, soil needs 40 liters of water per cubic meter. My overall plan calls for 9.2 cubic meters of soil. So I’ll eventually need 368 liters of water to feed it. The Hab has an excellent water reclaimer. Best technology available on Earth. So NASA figured, “Why send a lot of water up there? Just send enough for an emergency.” Humans need three liters of water per day to be comfortable. They gave us 50 liters each, making 300 liters total in the Hab. I’m willing to dedicate all but an emergency 50 liters to the cause. That means I can feed 62.5 square meters at a depth of 10 centimeters. About two-thirds of the Hab’s floor. It’ll have to do. That’s the long-term plan. For today, my goal was five square meters. I wadded up blankets and uniforms from my departed crewmates to serve as one edge of a planter box with the curved walls of the Hab being the rest of the perimeter. It was as close to five square meters as I could manage. I filled it with sand to a depth of 10 centimeters. Then I sacrificed 20 liters of precious water to the dirt gods. Then things got disgusting. I dumped my big container o’ shit onto the soil and nearly puked from the smell. I mixed this soil and shit together with a shovel, and spread it out evenly again. Then I sprinkled the Earth soil on top. Get to work, bacteria. I’m counting on you. That smell’s going to stick around for a while, too. It’s not like I can open a window. Still, you get used to it. In other news, today is Thanksgiving. My family will be gathering in Chicago for the usual feast at my parents’ house. My guess is it won’t be much fun, what with me having died ten days ago. Hell, they probably just got done with my funeral. I wonder if they’ll ever find out what really happened. I’ve been so busy staying alive I never thought of what this must be like for my parents. Right now, they’re suffering the worst pain anyone can endure. I’d give anything just to let them know I’m still alive. I’ll just have to survive to make up for it. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 22 Wow. Things really came along. I got all the sand in and ready to go. Two-thirds of the base is now dirt. And today I executed my first dirt-doubling. It’s been a week, and the former Martian soil is rich and lovely. Two more doublings and I’ll have covered the whole field. All that work was great for my morale. It gave me something to do. But after things settled down a bit, and I had dinner while listening to Johanssen’s Beatles music collection, I got depressed again. Doing the math, this won’t keep me from starving. My best bet for making calories is potatoes. They grow prolifically and have a reasonable caloric content (770 calories per kilogram). I’m pretty sure the ones I have will germinate. Problem is I can’t grow enough of them. In 62 square meters, I could grow maybe 150 kilograms of potatoes in 400 days (the time I have before running out of food). That’s a grand total of 115,500 calories, a sustainable average of 288 calories per day. With my height and weight, if I’m willing to starve a little, I need 1500 calories per day. Not even close. So I can’t just live off the land forever. But I can extend my life. The potatoes will last me 76 days. Potatoes grow continually, so in those 76 days, I can grow another 22,000 calories of potatoes, which will tide me over for another 15 days. After that, it’s kind of pointless to continue the trend. All told it buys me about 90 days. So now I’ll start starving to death on Sol 490 instead of Sol 400. It’s progress, but any hope of survival rests on me surviving until Sol 1412, when Ares 4 will land. There’s about a thousand days of food I don’t have. And I don’t have a plan for how to get it. Shit. The Martian: A Novel CHAPTER 3 The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 25 Remember those old math questions you had in algebra class? Where water is entering a container at a certain rate and leaving at a different rate and you need to figure out when it’ll be empty? Well, that concept is critical to the “Mark Watney doesn’t die” project I’m working on. I need to create calories. And I need enough to last the 1387 sols until Ares 4 arrives. If I don’t get rescued by Ares 4, I’m dead anyway. A sol is 39 minutes longer than a day, so it works out to be 1425 days. That’s my target: 1425 days of food. I have plenty of multivitamins; over double what I need. And there’s five times the minimum protein in each food pack, so careful rationing of portions takes care of my protein needs for at least four years. My general nutrition is taken care of. I just need calories. I need 1500 calories every day. I have 400 days of food to start off with. So how many calories do I need to generate per day along the entire time period to stay alive for around 1425 days? I’ll spare you the math. The answer is about 1100. I need to create 1100 calories per day with my farming efforts to survive until Ares 4 gets here. Actually, a little more than that, because it’s Sol 25 right now and I haven’t actually planted anything yet. With my 62 square meters of farmland, I’ll be able to create about 288 calories per day. So I need almost four times my current plan’s production to survive. That means I need more surface area for farming, and more water to hydrate the soil. So let’s take the problems one at a time. How much farmland can I really make? There are 92 square meters in the Hab. Let’s say I could make use of all of it. Also, there are five unused bunks. Let’s say I put soil in on them, too. They’re 2 square meters each, giving me 10 more square meters. So we’re up to 102. The Hab has three lab tables, each about 2 square meters. I want to keep one for my own use, leaving two for the cause. That’s another 4 square meters, bringing the total to 106. I have two Martian rovers. They have pressure seals, allowing the occupants to drive without space suits during long periods traversing the surface. They’re too cramped to plant crops in, and I want to be able to drive them around anyway. But both rovers have an emergency pop-tent. There are a lot of problems with using pop-tents as farmland, but they have 10 square meters of floor space each. Presuming I can overcome the problems, they net me another 20 square meters, bringing my farmland up to 126. One hundred and twenty-six square meters of farmable land. That’s something to work with. I still don’t have the water to moisten all that soil, but like I said, one thing at a time. The next thing to consider is how efficient I can be in growing potatoes. I based my crop yield estimates on the potato industry back on Earth. But potato farmers aren’t in a desperate race for survival like I am. Can I get a better yield? For starters, I can give attention to each individual plant. I can trim them and keep them healthy and not interfering with each other. Also, as their flowering bodies breach the surface, I can replant them deeper, then plant younger plants above them. For normal potato farmers, it’s not worth doing because they’re working with literally millions of potato plants. Also, this sort of farming annihilates the soil. Any farmer doing it would turn their land into a dust bowl within twelve years. It’s not sustainable. But who cares? I just need to survive for four years. I estimate I can get 50 percent higher yield by using these tactics. And with the 126 square meters of farmland (just over double the 62 square meters I now have) it works out to be over 850 calories per day. That’s real progress. I’d still be in danger of starvation, but it gets me in the range of survival. I might be able to make it by nearly starving but not quite dying. I could reduce my caloric use by minimizing manual labor. I could set the temperature of the Hab higher than normal, meaning my body would expend less energy keeping its temperature. I could cut off an arm and eat it, gaining me valuable calories and reducing my overall caloric need. No, not really. So let’s say I could clear up that much farmland. Seems reasonable. Where do I get the water? To go from 62 to 126 square meters of farmland at 10 centimeters deep, I’ll need 6.4 more cubic meters of soil (more shoveling, whee!) and that’ll need over 250 liters of water. The 50 liters I have is for me to drink if the water reclaimer breaks. So I’m 250 liters short of my 250-liter goal. Bleh. I’m going to bed. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 26 It was a backbreaking yet productive day. I was sick of thinking, so instead of trying to figure out where I’ll get 250 liters of water, I did some manual labor. I need to get a whole assload more soil into the Hab, even if it is dry and useless right now. I got a cubic meter in before getting exhausted. Then, a minor dust storm dropped by for an hour and covered the solar collectors with crap. So I had to suit up again and do another EVA. I was in a pissy mood the whole time. Sweeping off a huge field of solar cells is boring and physically demanding. But once the job was done, I came back to my Little Hab on the Prairie. It was about time for another dirt-doubling, so I figured I might as well get it over with. It took an hour. One more doubling and the usable soil will all be good to go. Also, I figured it was time to start up a seed crop. I’d doubled the soil enough that I could afford to leave a little corner of it alone. I had twelve potatoes to work with. I am one lucky son of a bitch they aren’t freeze-dried or mulched. Why did NASA send twelve whole potatoes, refrigerated but not frozen? And why send them along with us as in-pressure cargo rather than in a crate with the rest of the Hab supplies? Because Thanksgiving was going to happen while we were doing surface operations, and NASA’s shrinks thought it would be good for us to make a meal together. Not just to eat it, but to actually prepare it. There’s probably some logic to that, but who cares? I cut each potato into four pieces, making sure each piece had at least two eyes. The eyes are where they sprout from. I let them sit for a few hours to harden a bit, then planted them, well spaced apart, in the corner. Godspeed, little taters. My life depends on you. Normally, it takes at least 90 days to yield full-sized potatoes. But I can’t wait that long. I’ll need to cut up all the potatoes from this crop to seed the rest of the field. By setting the Hab temperature to a balmy 25.5°C, I can make the plants grow faster. Also, the internal lights will provide plenty of “sunlight,” and I’ll make sure they get lots of water (once I figure out where to get water). There will be no foul weather, or any parasites to hassle them, or any weeds to compete with for soil or nutrients. With all this going for them, they should yield healthy, sproutable tubers within forty days. I figured that was enough being Farmer Mark for one day. A full meal for dinner. I’d earned it. Plus, I’d burned a ton of calories, and I wanted them back. I rifled through Commander Lewis’s stuff until I found her personal data-stick. Everyone got to bring whatever digital entertainment they wanted, and I was tired of listening to Johanssen’s Beatles albums for now. Time to see what Lewis had. Crappy TV shows. That’s what she had. Countless entire runs of TV shows from forever ago. Well. Beggars can’t be choosers. Three’s Company it is. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 29 Over the last few days, I got in all the dirt that I’ll need. I prepped the tables and bunks for holding the weight of soil, and even put the dirt in place. There’s still no water to make it viable, but I have some ideas. Really bad ideas, but they’re ideas. Today’s big accomplishment was setting up the pop-tents. The problem with the rovers’ pop-tents is they weren’t designed for frequent use. The idea was you’d throw out a pop-tent, get in, and wait for rescue. The airlock is nothing more than valves and two doors. Equalize the airlock with your side of it, get in, equalize with the other side, get out. This means you lose a lot of air with each use. And I’ll need to get in there at least once a day. The total volume of each pop-tent is pretty low, so I can’t afford to lose air from it. I spent hours trying to figure out how to attach a pop-tent airlock to a Hab airlock. I have three airlocks in the Hab. I’d be willing to dedicate two to pop-tents. That would have been awesome. The frustrating part is pop-tent airlocks can attach to other airlocks! You might have injured people in there, or not enough space suits. You need to be able to get people out without exposing them to the Martian atmosphere. But the pop-tents were designed for your crewmates to come rescue you in a rover. The airlocks on the Hab are much larger and completely different from the airlocks on the rovers. When you think about it, there’s really no reason to attach a pop-tent to the Hab. Unless you’re stranded on Mars, everyone thinks you’re dead, and you’re in a desperate fight against time and the elements to stay alive. But, you know, other than that edge case, there’s no reason. So I finally decided I’d just take the hit. I’ll be losing some air every time I enter or exit a pop-tent. The good news is each pop-tent has an air feed valve on the outside. Remember, these are emergency shelters. The occupants might need air, and you can provide it from a rover by hooking up an air line. It’s nothing more than a tube that equalizes the rover’s air with the pop-tent’s. The Hab and the rovers use the same valve and tubing standards, so I was able to attach the pop-tents directly to the Hab. That’ll automatically replenish the air I lose with my entries and exits (what we NASA folk call ingress and egress). NASA was not screwing around with these emergency tents. The moment I pushed the panic button in the rover, there was an ear-popping whoosh as the pop-tent fired out, attached to the rover airlock. It took about two seconds. I closed the airlock from the rover side and ended up with a nice, isolated pop-tent. Setting up the equalizer hose was trivial (for once I’m using equipment the way it was designed to be used). Then, after a few trips through the airlock (with the air-loss automatically equalized by the Hab) I got the dirt in. I repeated the process for the other tent. Everything went really easily. Sigh…water. In high school, I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. (You may not have guessed this botanist/mechanical engineer was a bit of a nerd in high school, but indeed I was.) In the game I played a cleric. One of the magic spells I could cast was “Create Water.” I always thought it was a really stupid spell, and I never used it. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to be able to do that in real life right now. Anyway. That’s a problem for tomorrow. For tonight, I have to get back to Three’s Company . I stopped last night in the middle of the episode where Mr. Roper saw something and took it out of context. The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 30 I have an idiotically dangerous plan for getting the water I need. And boy, do I mean dangerous . But I don’t have much choice. I’m out of ideas and I’m due for another dirt-doubling in a few days. When I do the final doubling, I’ll be doubling on to all that new soil I’ve brought in. If I don’t wet it first, it’ll just die. There isn’t a lot of water here on Mars. There’s ice at the poles, but they’re too far away. If I want water, I’ll have to make it from scratch. Fortunately, I know the recipe: Take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn. Let’s take them one at a time. I’ll start with oxygen. I have a fair bit of O 2 reserves, but not enough to make 250 liters of water. Two high-pressure tanks at one end of the Hab are my entire supply (plus the air in the Hab of course). They each contain 25 liters of liquid O 2 . The Hab would use them only in an emergency; it has the oxygenator to balance the atmosphere. The reason the O 2 tanks are here is to feed the space suits and rovers. Anyway, the reserve oxygen would only be enough to make 100 liters of water (50 liters of O 2 makes 100 liters of molecules that only have one O each). That would mean no EVAs for me, and no emergency reserves. And it would make less than half the water I need. Out of the question. But oxygen’s easier to find on Mars than you might think. The atmosphere is 95 percent CO 2 . And I happen to have a machine whose sole purpose is liberating oxygen from CO 2 . Yay, oxygenator! One problem: The atmosphere is very thin—less than 1 percent of the pressure on Earth. So it’s hard to collect. Getting air from outside to inside is nearly impossible. The whole purpose of the Hab is to keep that sort of thing from happening. The tiny amount of Martian atmosphere that enters when I use an airlock is laughable. That’s where the MAV fuel plant comes in. My crewmates took away the MAV weeks ago. But the bottom half of it stayed behind. NASA isn’t in the habit of putting unnecessary mass into orbit. The landing gear, ingress ramp, and fuel plant are still here. Remember how the MAV made its own fuel with help from the Martian atmosphere? Step one of that is to collect CO 2 and store it in a high-pressure vessel. Once I get the fuel plant hooked up to the Hab’s power, it’ll give me half a liter of liquid CO 2 per hour, indefinitely. After ten sols it’ll have made 125 liters of CO 2 , which will make 125 liters of O 2 after I feed it through the oxygenator. That’s enough to make 250 liters of water. So I have a plan for oxygen. The hydrogen will be a little trickier. I considered raiding the hydrogen fuel cells, but I need those batteries to maintain power at night. If I don’t have that, it’ll get too cold. I could bundle up, but the cold would kill my crops. And each fuel cell has only a small amount of H 2 anyway. It’s just not worth sacrificing so much usefulness for so little gain. The one thing I have going for me is that energy is not a problem. I don’t want to give that up. So I’ll have to go a different route. I often talk about the MAV. But now I want to talk about the MDV. During the most terrifying twenty-three minutes of my life, four of my crewmates and I tried not to shit ourselves while Martinez piloted the MDV down to the surface. It was kind of like being in a tumble-dryer. First, we descended from Hermes , and decelerated our orbital velocity so we could start falling properly. Everything was smooth until we hit the atmosphere. If you think turbulence is rough in a jetliner going 720 kph, just imagine what it’s like at 28,000 kph. Several staged sets of chutes deployed automatically to slow our descent, then Martinez manually piloted us to the ground, using the thrusters to slow descent and control our lateral motion. He’d trained for this for years, and he did his job extraordinarily well. He exceeded all plausible expectations of landings, putting us just nine meters from the target. The guy just plain owned that landing. Thanks, Martinez! You may have saved my life! Not because of the perfect landing, but because he left so much fuel behind. Hundreds of liters of unused hydrazine. Each molecule of hydrazine has four hydrogen atoms in it. So each liter of hydrazine has enough hydrogen for two liters of water. I did a little EVA today to check. The MDV has 292 liters of juice left in the tanks. Enough to make almost 600 liters of water! Way more than I need! There’s just one catch: Liberating hydrogen from hydrazine is…well…it’s how rockets work. It’s really, really hot. And dangerous. If I do it in an oxygen atmosphere, the hot and newly liberated hydrogen will explode. There’ll be a lot of H 2 O at the end, but I’ll be too dead to appreciate it. At its root, hydrazine is pretty simple. The Germans used it as far back as World War II for rocket-assisted fighter fuel (and occasionally blew themselves up with it). All you have to do is run it over a catalyst (which I can extract from the MDV engine) and it will turn into nitrogen and hydrogen. I’ll spare you the chemistry, but the end result is that five molecules of hydrazine becomes five molecules of harmless N 2 and ten molecules of lovely H 2 . During this process, it goes through an intermediate step of being ammonia. Chemistry, being the sloppy bitch it is, ensures there’ll be some ammonia that doesn’t react with the hydrazine, so it’ll just stay ammonia. You like the smell of ammonia? Well, it’ll be prevalent in my increasingly hellish existence. The chemistry is on my side. The question now is how do I actually make this reaction happen slowly, and how do I collect the hydrogen? The answer is: I don’t know. I suppose I’ll think of something. Or die. Anyway, much more important: I simply can’t abide the replacement of Chrissy with Cindy. Three’s Company may never be the same after this fiasco. Time will tell. The Martian: A Novel CHAPTER 4 The Martian: A Novel LOG ENTRY: SOL 32 So I ran into a bunch of problems with my water plan. My idea is to make 600 liters of water (limited by the hydrogen I can get from the hydrazine). That means I’ll need 300 liters of liquid O 2 . I can create the O 2 easily enough. It takes twenty hours for the MAV fuel plant to fill its 10-liter tank with CO 2 . The oxygenator can turn it into O 2 , then the atmospheric regulator will see the O 2 content in the Hab is high, and pull it out of the air, storing it in the main O 2 tanks. They’ll fill up, so I’ll have to transfer O 2 over to the rovers’ tanks and even the space suit tanks as necessary. But I can’t create it very quickly. At half a liter of CO 2 per hour, it will take twenty-five days to make the oxygen I need. That’s longer than I’d like. A	587,053
We Are Okay (Nina LaCour) (Z-Library).epub	We Are Okay We Are Okay chapter twenty-three “COME WITH ME,” Mabel says. Our talk is over. We’re on the floor across from each other, each of us leaning against a bed. I should feel a weight lifted now that I’ve told her everything, but I don’t. Not yet. Maybe in the morning some new feeling will settle. “I promise, this is the last time I’ll ask. Just come home for a few days.” If it weren’t for the lies he told me. If Birdie had been an elderly woman with beautiful penmanship. If his coats were all that hung in the closet and he’d known his lungs were black and he drank his whiskey without suspicion. If I could stop dreaming up a deathbed scene where his hospital blankets are crisp over his stomach and his hands are holding mine. Where he says something like, See you on the other side, Sailor . Or, I love you, sweetheart . And a nurse touches my shoulder and tells me it’s over even though I can already see it by the peaceful stillness of him. Take your time , she says, so we just stay there, he and I, until the darkness falls and I am strong enough to leave the room without him. “How am I supposed to leave you here?” Mabel asks. “I’m sorry. I will go with you. Someday. But I can’t do it tomorrow.” She picks at the frayed edges of the rug. “Mabel.” She won’t look at me. Everything is quiet. I’d suggest going somewhere, just out for a walk even, but we’re both confounded by the cold. The moon is framed perfectly in the window, a crescent of white against black, and I can see by its clearness that it isn’t snowing anymore. “I shouldn’t have only called and texted. I should have flown to you.” “It’s okay.” “He seemed sick for so long. Kind of frail or something.” “I know.” Her eyes tear over, and she looks out the window. I wonder if she sees what I do. If she feels the same stillness. Mabel , I want to say. We don’t have much time left. Mabel. There is me and there is you and the snow has finished falling. Let’s just sit here. Sometime later, we stand side by side at the sinks in the bathroom. We look tired and something else, too. It takes me a minute to identify it. And then I know. We look young. Mabel smears toothpaste onto her toothbrush. She hands me the tube. She doesn’t say Here you go . I don’t say Thank you . I brush in the circular way you’re supposed to. Mabel brushes back and forth, hard. I watch my reflection and concentrate on giving each tooth enough time. Standing like this in Mabel’s bathroom back home, we would never have been silent. There were always millions of things to talk about, each topic pressing in so that our conversations rarely began and ended but rather began and were interrupted and continued, strands of thoughts that got pushed aside and picked up later. If our past selves got a glimpse of us now, what would they make of us? Our bodies are the same but there’s a heaviness in Mabel’s shoulders, a weariness in the way my hip leans against the counter. A puffiness around her eyes, a darkness under mine. But more than those things, there’s the separateness of us. I didn’t return Mabel’s nine hundred texts because I knew we’d end up like this no matter what. What happened had broken us even if it wasn’t about us at all. Because I know that for all her care and understanding, when this visit is over and she’s back in LA with Jacob and her new friends, sitting in her lecture halls or riding the Ferris wheel in Santa Monica or eating dinner by herself in front of an open textbook, she’ll be the same as she’s always been—fearless and funny and whole. She’ll still be herself and I’ll be learning who I am now. She spits into the sink. I spit into the sink. We rinse our brushes, tap-tap , in close succession. Both faucets run as we splash our faces. I don’t know what she’s thinking about. I can’t even guess. We walk back down the hallway, shut off the lights, and climb into opposite twin beds. My eyes are open in the dark. “Good night,” I say. She’s quiet. “I hope you don’t think,” she says, “that because of Jacob . . .” She looks at me for an indication that I understand. She gives up. “It’s not that I met him and forgot about you. I was trying to move on. You didn’t give me other options. The night before I was supposed to go out with him I tried sending you another text. Remember Nebraska? That’s what I wrote. I stayed up late hoping you’d answer me. I slept with the phone by my pillow. All it would have taken was one word from you and I wouldn’t have gone. I would have waited longer, but you shut me out,” she says. “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I understand now. Really. But I just need you to know how it happened. I’m happy now, with him, but I wouldn’t be with him if you’d have answered me.” The pain when she says this, it’s not her fault. Deep in my chest is still an aching hollowness, vacancy, fear. I can’t imagine opening myself up to the rush of kissing her, can’t imagine her hands under my clothes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know I’m the one who disappeared.” I can still see the moon out the window. I can still feel the stillness of the night. I can hear Mabel saying that Gramps is dead— gone —sounding so certain and I try to feel that certainty, too. I try not to think of her heartbreak, how I caused it, but I can’t keep it out and it rushes over me. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I know,” Mabel says. “I understand.” “Thank you for coming,” I say. The hours stretch on, and I fall in and out of sleep, and at some point she slips out of bed and out of the room. She stays away for a long time, and I try to stay awake until she comes back, but I just wait and wait and wait. When I wake up again at the first light of the morning, she’s back in Hannah’s bed, sleeping with her arm covering her eyes as if she could stave off the day. We Are Okay chapter twenty-one AUGUST YOU GO THROUGH LIFE thinking there’s so much you need. Your favorite jeans and sweater. The jacket with the faux-fur lining to keep you warm. Your phone and your music and your favorite books. Mascara. Irish Breakfast tea and cappuccinos from Trouble Coffee. You need your yearbooks, every stiffly posed school-dance photo, the notes your friends slipped into your locker. You need the camera you got for your sixteenth birthday and the flowers you dried. You need your notebooks full of the things you learned and don’t want to forget. You need your bedspread, white with black diamonds. You need your pillow—it fits the way you sleep. You need magazines promising self-improvement. You need your running shoes and your sandals and your boots. Your grade report from the semester you got straight As. Your prom dress, your shiny earrings, your pendants on delicate chains. You need your underwear, your light-colored bras and your black ones. The dream catcher hanging above your bed. The dozens and dozens of shells in glass jars. The cab was waiting outside the station. The airport, I said, but no sound came out. “The airport,” I said, and we pulled away. You think you need all of it. Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. We Are Okay chapter three MAY I SLEPT THROUGH MY ALARM, woke to Gramps singing to me from the living room. A song about a sailor dreaming, about Marin, his sailor girl. His accent was slight—he’d lived in San Francisco since he was nine—but when he sang, he became unmistakably Irish. He tapped on my door, sang a verse loudly just outside. Mine was the front bedroom, overlooking the street, while Gramps occupied two rooms in the back of the house. Between us were the living room and dining room and kitchen, so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted without fear that the other would be listening. He never came into my room; I never went into his. That might sound unfriendly, but it wasn’t. We spent plenty of time together in the in-between rooms, reading on the sofa and the easy chair; playing cards in the dining room; cooking together; eating at the round kitchen table, so small that we never had to ask the other to pass the salt and our knees bumped so often we didn’t bother apologizing. Our hampers were in the hall by the bathroom and we took turns doing laundry, leaving neatly folded stacks on the dining room table for the other to take whenever the time was right. Maybe parents or spouses would have taken the clothes and opened up the other one’s drawers, but we were not father and daughter. We were not spouses. And in our house, we enjoyed our togetherness but we enjoyed our apartness, too. His song trailed off as I opened my door to his wide-knuckled, age-spotted hand, holding out coffee in the yellow mug. “You’ll need a ride today. And from the looks of you, you’ll need this coffee.” Yellow morning light, beating through the curtains. Blond hair in my eyes until I pushed it away. A few minutes later we were in the car. The news was all about a prisoner of war who had been brought back, and Gramps kept saying, “What a shame. Such a young boy,” and I was glad he had something to engage himself because I was thinking about last night. About Mabel and all of our other friends, cross-legged in the sand, part shadowed, part lit in the bonfire glow. It was May already. We’d all be leaving one another, going to other places in the fall; and now that the season was changing, rushing toward graduation, everything we did felt like a long good-bye or a premature reunion. We were nostalgic for a time that wasn’t yet over. “So young,” Gramps was saying. “To endure a thing like that. And people can be so heartless.” He set his blinker on as we approached the drop-off zone at Convent. I held my coffee cup out so it wouldn’t slosh as he turned. “Look at that,” he said, pointing at the dashboard clock. “Two minutes to spare.” “You’re my hero,” I told him. “You be good,” he said. “And careful—don’t let the sisters know we’re heathens.” He grinned. I took my last sips. “I won’t.” “Take an extra helping of the blood of Christ for me, will you?” I rolled my eyes, set my empty mug on the seat. I shut the door and leaned down to wave at him, still delighted by his own jokes, through the rolled-up window. He made his face fake-somber and crossed himself before laughing and driving away. In English, we were talking about ghosts. About whether they were there at all, and if they were, whether they were as evil as the governess in The Turn of the Screw thought. “Here are two statements,” Sister Josephine said. “One: The governess is hallucinating. Two: The ghosts are real.” She turned and wrote both on the board. “Find evidence in the novel for both of these. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss as a class.” My hand shot up. “I have a third idea.” “Oh?” “The staff is conspiring against her. An elaborate trick.” Sister Josephine smiled. “Intriguing theory.” Mabel said, “It’s complicated enough with two,” and a few other people agreed with her. “It’s better if it’s complicated,” I said. Mabel turned in her desk to face me. “Wait. Excuse me? It’s better if it’s complicated? ” “Of course it is! It’s the point of the novel. We can search for the truth, we can convince ourselves of whatever we want to believe, but we’ll never actually know. I guarantee that we can find evidence to argue that the staff is playing a trick on the governess.” Sister Josephine said, “I’ll add it to the list.” After school, Mabel and I split up our science assignment on the 31, hopped off around the corner from Trouble Coffee, and went in to celebrate our excellent time management with two cappuccinos. “I keep thinking about ghosts,” I said as we walked alongside the pastel houses with flat facades and square windows. “They show up in all my favorite books.” “Final essay topic?” I nodded. “But I have to figure out a thesis.” “The only thing I like about The Turn of the Screw is the governess’s first sentence.” Mabel paused to tug on her sandal strap. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face. I said, “‘I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong.’” “Of course you would know it by heart.” “Well, it’s amazing.” “I thought the whole thing would be that way, but it’s just confusing and pointless. The ghosts—if there are ghosts—don’t even do anything. They just show up and stand around.” I opened our iron gate and we climbed the stairs to the landing. Gramps was calling hello before we’d even closed the door behind us. We set down our coffees, shrugged off our backpacks, and went straight to the kitchen. His hands were covered in flour; Wednesdays were his favorite because there were two of us to bake for. “Smells delicious,” Mabel said. “Say it in Spanish,” Gramps said. “ Huele delicioso . What is it?” Mabel said. “Chocolate Bundt cake. Now say, ‘The chocolate Bundt cake smells delicious.’” “Gramps,” I said. “You’re exoticizing her again.” He lifted his hands, busted. “I can’t help it if I want to hear some words in a beautiful language.” She laughed and said the sentence, and many other sentences with only a few words I understood, and Gramps wiped his hands on his apron and then touched them to his heart. “Beautiful!” he said. “ Hermosa! ” And then he headed out of the kitchen and saw something that made him stop. “Girls. Please sit.” “Uh-oh. The love seat,” Mabel whispered. We crossed to the faded red love seat and sat together, waiting to discover the subject of that afternoon’s lecture. “Girls,” he said again. “We have to talk about this .” He picked up one of the to-go cups that we’d set on the coffee table, held it with disdain. “When I was growing up, none of this stuff was here. Trouble Coffee . Who names an establishment ‘Trouble’? A bar, sure, maybe. But a café? No. Mabel’s parents and I spend good money to send you girls to a nice school. Now you want to stand in lines to buy lunch and spend far too much on a cup of coffee. How much did this cost?” “Four dollars,” I said. “ Four? Each? ” He shook his head. “Let me offer you a helpful piece of advice. That is three dollars more than a cup of coffee should be.” “It’s a cappuccino.” He sniffed the cup. “They can call it whatever they want to call it. I have a perfectly good pot in the kitchen and some beans that are fresh enough for anyone.” I rolled my eyes, but Mabel was ardent in her respect for elders. “It was a splurge,” she said. “But you’re right.” “ Four dollars.” “Come on, Gramps. I smell the cake. Shouldn’t you check on it?” “You’re a sly girl,” he said to me. “No,” I said. “Only hungry.” And I was. It was torture to wait for the cake to cool, but when it did, we devoured it. “Save a sliver for the fellas!” Gramps implored us, but for four old guys, his friends were the pickiest eaters I’d ever known. Like the girls at school, they were off gluten one week only to suddenly be on it again if the meal was enticing enough. They were laying off sugar or carbs or caffeine or meat or dairy, but maybe a little butter was fine now and then. When they broke their own rules, they complained about it. Took bites of Gramps’s sweets and declared them too sugary. “They don’t deserve this cake,” I said between bites. “They won’t appreciate it like we do. Maybe you should mail a piece to Birdie. Overnight it.” “Does she know about your baking?” Mabel asked him. “I may have mentioned it once or twice.” “One bite of this and she’ll be yours forever,” Mabel said. Gramps shook his head and laughed, and Mabel and I were soon stuffed and happy, traipsing back out as Jones, the first of Gramps’s buddies, arrived, holding his lucky card deck in one hand and his cane in the other. I took a minute to talk to him. “Agnes is having surgery on her hand again Tuesday,” he told me. “Do you guys need any help with anything?” “Samantha’s taking some days off from the salon,” he said. “Maybe I’ll come by and say hi.” Samantha was Jones and Agnes’s daughter, and she’d been so nice to me in the months I lived with them when I was eight and Gramps had to spend some time in the hospital. She drove me to school and back every day, and even after Gramps came home she helped us, picking up his new prescriptions and making sure we had food in the house. “She’d love to see you.” “All right,” I said. “We’re headed to the beach. Try to hold on to your money.” Mabel and I walked the four blocks to the beach. We slipped off our sandals where the road met the sand and carried them up a dune, weaving through patches of beach grass and the green-and-rust-colored ice plants. We sat at a safe distance from the water while the flocks of gray-and-white sanderlings pecked at the shore. At first it looked like no one was out there, but I knew to watch and to wait, and soon, I saw them: a pair of surfers in the distance, now mounting their boards to catch a wave. We watched them against the horizon line, rising and falling. An hour passed, and we lost sight of them over and over, and each time found them again. “I’m cold,” Mabel said when the fog set in. I scooted closer to her until the sides of our bodies touched. She gave me her hands, and I rubbed them until we were warm. She wanted to go home, but the surfers were still in the water. We stayed until they reached the sand, tucked their boards under their arms, turquoise and gold against their wet suits. I waited to see if one of them would know me. They got closer, a man and a woman, both squinting to see if I was who they thought I’d be. “Hey, Marin,” the man said. I lifted my hand. “Marin, I have something for you.” The woman unzipped her backpack and pulled out a shell. “Claire’s favorite kind,” she said, pressing it into my palm. Then they were past us, making their way to the parking lot. “You haven’t asked me what I’m writing about,” Mabel said. The shell was wide and pink, covered in ridges. Dozens like it filled three large mason jars in my bedroom, all of them gifts. She held out her hand and I dropped it in. “Jane Eyre. Flora and Miles. Basically everyone in A Mercy .” She ran her thumb over the shell’s ridges and then gave it back. She looked at me. “Orphans,” she said. Gramps never spoke about my mother, but he didn’t have to. All I had to do was stop by the surf shop or show up at the beach at dawn, and I’d be handed free Mollusk shirts and thermoses full of tea. When I was a kid, my mom’s old friends liked to wrap their arms around me, pet my hair. They squinted in my direction as I approached and beckoned me toward them on the sand. I didn’t know all of their names, but every one of them knew mine. I guess when you spend a life riding waves—knowing that the ocean is heartless and millions of times stronger than you are, but still trusting that you’re skilled enough or brave enough or charmed enough to survive it—you become indebted to the people who don’t make it. Someone always dies. It’s just a matter of who, and when. You remember her with songs, with shrines of shells and flowers and beach glass, with an arm around her daughter and, later, daughters of your own named after her. She didn’t actually die in the ocean. She died at Laguna Honda Hospital, a gash on her head, her lungs full of water. I was almost three. Sometimes I think I can remember a warmth. A closeness. A feeling of being in arms, maybe. Soft hair against my cheek. There is nothing to remember of my father. He was a traveler, back somewhere in Australia before the pregnancy test. “If only he knew about you,” Gramps would say when I was little and wondering. “You would be his treasure.” I thought of the grief as simple. Quiet. One photograph of Claire hung in the hallway. Sometimes I caught Gramps looking at it. Sometimes I stood in front of it for several minutes at a time, studying her face and her body. Finding hints of myself in her. Imagining that I must have been nearby, playing in the sand or lying on a blanket. Wondering if, when I was twenty-two, my smile would be anywhere close to that pretty. Once in a meeting at Convent, the counselor asked Gramps if he talked about my mother with me. “Remembering the departed is the only way to heal,” she said. Gramps’s eyes lost their sparkle. His mouth became a tight line. “Just a reminder,” the counselor said more quietly, then turned to the computer screen to get back to the matter of my unexcused absences. “Sister,” Gramps said, his voice low and venomous. “I lost my wife when she was forty-six. I lost my daughter when she was twenty-four. And you remind me to remember them?” “Mr. Delaney,” she said. “I am truly sorry for your loss. Both of your losses. I will pray for your healing. But my concern here is for Marin, and all I ask is that you share some of your memories with her .” My body went tense. We were called in because they were concerned about my “academic progress,” but I was getting As or Bs in all my classes and all they had on me was that I’d cut a couple periods. Now I realized that this meeting was actually about a story I’d written, a story in English about a girl raised by sirens. The sirens were guilt-ridden over murdering the girl’s mother, so they told the girl stories about her, made her as real as they could, but there was always a hollowness to the girl that they couldn’t fill. She was always wondering. It was only a story, but sitting in the counselor’s office I realized I should have known better. I should have written about a prince raised by wolves after he lost his father to the woods or whatever, something less transparent, because teachers always thought everything was a cry for help. And young, nice teachers like Sister Josephine were the worst. I knew I had to change the subject or the counselor would start talking about my story. “I’m really sorry about the classes I missed, okay?” I said. “It was poor judgment. I got too swept up in my social life.” The counselor nodded. “May I count on you not to do this again?” she asked. “You have before school and after school. The lunch period. Evenings. Weekends. The majority of your hours are free to spend however you and your grandfather see fit. But during class periods we expect—” “Sister,” Gramps said, his voice a growl again, as if he hadn’t heard anything we’d been saying. “I’m sure that painful things have happened to you. Even marrying Jesus can’t entirely shield you from the realities of life. I ask you now to take a moment to remember those terrible things. I remind you, now, to remember them. There. Don’t you feel healed? Maybe you should tell us about them. Don’t you feel, don’t you feel . . . so much better ? Do they fill you with fondness? Do you find yourself joyful? ” “Mr. Delaney, please.” “Would you care to dazzle us with a tale of redemption ?” “All right, I can see—” “Would you like to sing a song of joy for us now?” “I apologize for upsetting you, but this is—” Gramps stood, puffed out his chest. “Yes,” he said. “This is entirely inappropriate of me. Almost as inappropriate as a nun offering counsel regarding the deaths of a spouse and a child . Marin is getting excellent grades. Marin is an excellent student.” The counselor leaned back in her office chair, stoic. “And Marin,” Gramps said, triumphant, “is coming with me!” He turned and swung open the door. “Bye,” I said, as apologetically as I could. He stormed out. I followed him. The car ride home was a one-man comedy act comprised of every nun joke Gramps could remember. I laughed at the punch lines until he didn’t really need me anymore. It was a monologue. When it was over I asked him if he’d heard from Birdie today, and he smiled. “You write two letters, you get two letters,” he said. And then I thought of the tears in Sister Josephine’s eyes when I was reading my story to the class. How she thanked me for being so brave. And okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely imagined. Maybe the sirens gave the girl shells that filled her underwater room. Maybe the story came from some part of me that wished I knew more, or at least had actual memories instead of feelings that may have only been inventions. We Are Okay contents Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three: May Chapter Four Chapter Five: May Chapter Six Chapter Seven: June Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten: June Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve: June Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen: July And August Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen: August Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen: August Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One: August Chapter Twenty-Two: August Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five: September Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Acknowledgments We Are Okay chapter six WE’RE WAITING AT THE BUS STOP in the snow. Mabel was already showered and dressed by the time I woke up. I opened my eyes and she said, “Let’s go somewhere for breakfast. I want to see more of this town.” But I knew that what she really wanted was to be somewhere else, where it wasn’t the two of us trapped in a room thick with the things we weren’t saying. So now we’re on the side of a street covered in white, trees and mountains in every direction. Once in a while a car passes us and its color stands out against the snow. A blue car. A red car. “My toes are numb,” Mabel says. “Mine, too.” A black car, a green one. “I can’t feel my face.” “Me, neither.” Mabel and I have boarded buses together thousands of times, but when the bus appears in the distance it’s entirely unfamiliar. It’s the wrong landscape, the wrong color, the wrong bus name and number, the wrong fare, and the wrong accent when the driver says, “You heard about the storm, right?” We take halting, interrupted steps, not knowing how far back we should go or who should duck into a row first. She steps to the side to make me lead, as though just because I live here I know which seat would be right for us. I keep walking until we’re out of choices. We sit in the center of the back. I don’t know what a storm here would mean. The snow is so soft when it falls, nothing like hail. Not even like rain so hard it wakes you up or the kind of wind that hurls tree branches into the streets. The bus inches along even though there’s no traffic. “Dunkin’ Donuts,” Mabel says. “I’ve heard of that.” “Everyone likes their coffee.” “Is it good?” I shrug. “It’s not like the coffee we’re used to.” “Because it’s just coffee-coffee?” I pull at a loose stitch in the fingertip of my glove. “I actually haven’t tried it.” “Oh.” “I think it’s like diner coffee,” I say. I stay away from diners now. Whenever Hannah or her friends suggest going out to eat, I make sure to get the name of the place first and look it up. They tease me for being a food snob, an easy misunderstanding to play along with, but I’m not that picky about what I eat. I’m just afraid that one day something’s going to catch me by surprise. Stale coffee. Squares of American cheese. Hard tomatoes, so unripe they’re white in the center. The most innocent things can call back the most terrible. I want to be closer to a window, so I scoot down the row. The glass is freezing, even through my glove, and now that we’re closer to the shopping district, lights line the street, strung from streetlamp to streetlamp. All my life, winter has meant gray skies and rain, puddles and umbrellas. Winter has never looked like this. Wreathes on every door. Menorahs on windowsills. Christmas trees sparkling through parted curtains. I press my forehead to the glass, catch my reflection. I want to be part of the world outside. We reach our stop and step into the cold, and the bus pulls away to reveal a lit-up tree with gold ornaments in the middle of the square. My heart swells. As anti-religion as Gramps was, he was all about the spectacle. Each year we bought a tree from Delancey Street. Guys with prison tattoos tied the tree to the roof of the car, and we heaved it up the stairs ourselves. I’d get the decorations down from the hall closet. They were all old. I didn’t know which ones had been my mother’s and which were older than that, but it didn’t matter. They were my only evidence of a family larger than him and me. We might have been all that was left, but we were still a part of something bigger. Gramps would bake cookies and make eggnog from scratch. We’d listen to Christmas music on the radio and hang ornaments, then sit on the sofa and lean back with our mugs and crumb-covered plates to admire our work. “Jesus Christ,” he’d say. “Now, that’s a tree .” The memory has barely surfaced, but already it’s begun. The doubt creeps in. Is that how it really was? The sickness settles in my stomach. You thought you knew him. I want to buy gifts for people. Something for Mabel. Something to send back for Ana and Javier. Something to leave on Hannah’s bed for when she returns from break or to take with me to Manhattan if I really go to see her. The window of the potter’s studio is lit. It seems too early for it to be open, but I squint and see that the sign in the window says COME IN . The first time I came here was in the fall, and I was too nervous to look closely at everything. It was my first time out with Hannah and her friends. I kept telling myself to act normal, to laugh along with everyone else, to say something once in a while. They didn’t want to spend too long inside—we were wandering in and out of shops—but everything was beautiful and I couldn’t imagine leaving empty-handed. I chose the yellow bowls. They were heavy and cheerful, the perfect size for cereal or soup. Now every time Hannah uses one she sighs and says she wishes she’d bought some for herself. No one is behind the counter when Mabel and I walk in, but the store is warm and bright, full of earth tones and tinted glazes. A wood-burning stove glows with heat, and a scarf is slung over a wooden chair. I head toward the shelves of bowls first for Hannah’s gift. I thought I’d buy her a pair that matched mine, but there are more colors now, including a mossy green that I know she’d love. I take two of them and glance at Mabel. I want her to like this place. She’s found a row of large bells that dangle from thick rope. Each bell is a different color and size, each has a pattern carved into it. She rings one and smiles at the sound it makes. I feel like I’ve done something right in taking her here. “Oh, hi!” A woman appears from a doorway behind the counter, holding up her clay-covered hands. I remember her from the first time. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me then that she was the potter, but knowing it makes everything even better. “I’ve seen you before,” she says. “I came in a couple months ago with my roommate.” “Welcome back,” she says. “It’s nice to see you again.” “I’m going to set these on the counter while I keep looking,” I say, holding out the green bowls. “Yes, sure. Let me know if you need me. I’ll just be back here finishing something up.” I set the bowls next to a stack of postcards inviting people to a three-year-anniversary party. I would have thought the store had been here longer. It’s so warm and lived-in. I wonder what she did before she was here. She’s probably Mabel’s parents’ age, with gray-blond hair swept back in a barrette and lines by her eyes when she smiles. I didn’t notice if she wore a wedding ring. I don’t know why, but I feel like something happened to her, like there’s pain behind her smile. I felt it the first time. When she took my money, I felt like she wanted to keep me here. I wonder if there’s a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn’t yours anymore. “Who are the bowls for?” Mabel asks. “Hannah.” She nods. “I want to get your parents a present, too,” I say. “Do you think they’d like something from here?” “Anything,” she says. “Everything here is so nice.” We look at some things together and then I make another round and Mabel drifts back to the bells. I see her check the price of one of them. Ana and Javier keep flowers in every room of their house, so I take a closer look at a corner of vases. “How’s this?” I ask her, holding up a round one. It’s a dusty-pink color, subtle enough that it would work in their brightest rooms. “Perfect,” she says. “They’ll love it.” I choose a gift for myself, too: a pot for my peperomia, in the same color as Ana and Javier’s vase. I’ve kept my little plant in its plastic pot for too long, and this will look so much prettier. The potter is sitting at the counter now, making notes on a piece of paper, and when I take the vase up to her I’m seized with the wish to stay. I hand her my ATM card when she gives me the total, and then I work up the courage to ask. “I was wondering,” I say as she wraps the first bowl up in tissue paper. “By any chance, are you hiring?” “Oh,” she says. “I wish! But it’s just me. It’s a tiny operation.” “Okay,” I say, trying not to sound too disappointed. “I just really love your shop so I thought I’d ask.” She pauses her wrapping. “Thank you.” She smiles at me. Soon she’s handing me the bag with the wrapped-up vase and dishes, and Mabel and I head back onto the snowy street. We hurry past a pet store and a post office and into the café, both of us shivering. Only one table is occupied and the waitress looks surprised to see us. She takes a couple menus from a stack. “We’re closing up early because of the storm,” she says. “But we can get you fed before then if you can make it quick.” “Sure,” I say. “Yeah,” Mabel says. “That’s fine.” “Can I get you started with some coffee or orange juice?” “Cappuccino?” I ask. She nods. “Same for me,” Mabel says. “And I’ll just have a short stack of pancakes.” I scan the menu. “Eggs Benedict, please.” “Thank you, ladies,” she says. “And just, excuse my reach for a second . . .” She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel’s place and mine, it says OPEN . If this were a short story, it would mean something. The waitress leaves and we turn back to the window. The snow is falling differently; there’s more of it in the sky. “I can’t believe you live in a place this cold.” “I know.” We watch in silence. Soon, our coffees arrive. “It’s so pretty, though,” I say. “Isn’t it?” “Yeah. It is.” She reaches for the dish of sugar packets, takes out a pink one, a white one, a blue. She lines them up, then reaches for more. I don’t know what to make of her nervous hands and faraway expression. Her mouth is a tight line. At another point in my life, I would have leaned across the table and kissed her. At a point further back, I would have sabotaged her, scattered the packets across the table. If I were to go all the way to when we first knew each other, I would have built a careful pattern of my own and both of ours would have expanded until they met in the middle. “Can we return to the reason I came here?” Mabel asks. My body tenses. I wonder if she can see it. I don’t want her to list all the reasons I should go back to San Francisco, back to her parents’ house, because I know that they’ll all be right. I won’t be able to fight against them with any kind of logic. I’ll only look foolish or ungrateful. “I want to say yes,” I tell her. “But you can. You just have to let yourself. You used to spend half your time over there anyway.” She’s right. “We’ll be able to see each other on all our breaks, and you’ll have a place you can always go home to. My parents want to help you with things when you need it. Like money or just advice or whatever. We can be like sisters,” she says. And then she freezes. A drop of my heart, a ringing in my head. I smooth my hair behind my ear. I look at the snow. “I didn’t . . .” She leans forward, cradles her head in her hands. And I think of how time passes so differently for different people. Mabel and Jacob, their months in Los Angeles, months full of doing and seeing and going. Road trips, the ocean. So much living crammed into every day. And then me in my room. Watering my plant. Making ramen. Cleaning my yellow bowls night after night after night. “It’s okay,” I say. But it isn’t. Too much time passes and she still hasn’t moved. “I know what you meant,” I say. Our plates of food appear on the table. A bottle of maple syrup. Ketchup for my home fries. We busy ourselves with eating, but neither of us seems hungry. Right as the check comes, Mabel’s phone rings. She drops her credit card onto the bill. “I got this, okay?” she says. “I’ll be right back.” She takes her phone to the back of the restaurant and slides into an empty booth, her back to me. I abandon our table. The snow is falling harder now. The pet store clerk hangs a CLOSED sign in its window, but I’m relieved to find the pottery studio’s door opens when I push it. “Again!” she says. I smile. I’m a little embarrassed to be back, but I can tell she’s pleased when I set the bell on the counter. “I didn’t want my friend to see it,” I explain. “I could wrap it in tissue and you could stick it in your coat?” she says. “Perfect.” She moves quickly, knowing I’m in a hurry, but then pauses. “How many hours a week would you be looking for?” she asks. “For the job.” “I’m open to pretty much anything.” “After you left I was thinking . . . I really could use a hand. But I could only pay minimum wage, and only a couple shifts per week.” “That would be great,” I say. “I have classes, so I need time to study. A couple shifts would be great.” “Are you interested in making pottery? Maybe we could work something out where you get to use the kiln. To make up for the fact I can’t pay very much.” A warmth passes through me. “Really?” She smiles. “Yes,” she says. “I’m Claudia.” “I’m Marin.” “ Marin . Are you from California?” I nod. “I spent a few months in Fairfax. I walked in the redwoods every day.” I force a smile. She’s waiting for me to say more, but I don’t know what to tell her. “You must be in the middle of your school break . . . but you’re still here.” Worry darts behind her eyes. I wonder what she sees behind mine. Please don’t fuck this up , I tell myself. “Fairfax is beautiful,” I tell her. “I’m actually from San Francisco, but my family doesn’t live there anymore. Can I give you my contact info? And then you can let me know if you do end up wanting help?” “Yes,” Claudia says, handing me a notepad and a pen. When I give it back to her, she says, “You’ll hear from me in early January. Right after the New Year.” “I can’t wait.” “Bye, Marin.” She holds out the bell, wrapped in tissue. Before she lets go, she locks eyes with me and says, “Have a beautiful holiday.” “You, too.” My eyes sting as I walk outside. Back in the café, Mabel isn’t in the booth but she’s not at our table either, so I slip her bell inside the bag with the other gifts and wait. I imagine myself in the pottery studio. I’m taking money from a customer and counting change. I’m wrapping yellow bowls in tissue paper and saying, I have these, too. I’m saying, Welcome . I’m saying, Happy New Year. I’m dusting shelves and mopping the tiled floor. Learning to build a fire in the stove. “Sorry,” Mabel says, sliding in across from me. The waitress appears a moment later. “You’re back! I thought you two left in a panic and forgot your credit card.” “Where were you ?” Mabel asks me. I shrug. “I guess I disappeared for a minute.” “Well,” she says. “You’ve gotten good at that.” We Are Okay chapter twenty-four WHEN I OPEN MY EYES AGAIN, she isn’t here. I’m seized with panic that I’ve missed her altogether, that she’s already gone and I haven’t gotten to say good-bye. But here is her duffel open in the middle of my floor. The thought of her slinging it over her shoulder and walking out is enough to make me double over. I have to fill the minutes between now and then with as much as I can. I climb out of bed and take out the gifts I bought. I wish I had wrapping paper or at least some ribbon, but the tissue paper will have to do. I put on a bra and change into jeans and a T-shirt. I brush my hair. For some reason I don’t want to be in my pajamas when I walk her down the stairs. “Hey,” she says from the doorway. “Good morning,” I say, trying not to cry. “I’ll be right back.” I rush through peeing and brushing my teeth so that I can be back there, with her. I catch her before she zips up her suitcase. “I was thinking we could wrap this in your clothes,” I say, and hand her the vase I bought for her parents. She takes it from me and nestles it into her things. She goes to reach for the zipper but I stop her. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” I say. “Shouldn’t I wait?” she asks. “Lots of people exchange gifts on Christmas Eve.” “But the thing I got you is—” “I know. It doesn’t matter. I want to see you open it.” She nods. “Close your eyes,” I say again. She closes them. I look at her. I wish her everything good. A friendly cab driver and short lines through security. A flight with no turbulence and an empty seat next to her. A beautiful Christmas. I wish her more happiness than can fit in a person. I wish her the kind of happiness that spills over. I place the bell into her open palms. She opens her eyes and unwraps it. “You noticed,” she says. “Ring it.” She does, and the tone lingers and we wait quietly until it’s over. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s so pretty.” She slings her bag over her shoulder, and it hurts just as much as I expected it to. I follow her into the elevator. When we get to the door, the cab is waiting in a sea of white. “You’re sure, right?” she asks. “Yeah,” I say. She looks out the window. She bites a nail. “You’re sure you’re sure?” I nod. She takes a deep breath, manages a smile. “Okay. Well. I’ll see you soon.” She steps toward me and hugs me tight. I close my eyes. There will come a time soon—any second—when she’ll pull away and this will be over. In my mind, we keep ending, ending. I try to stay here, now, for as long as we can. I don’t care that her sweater is scratchy. I don’t care that the cab driver is waiting. I feel her rib cage expand and retract. We stay and stay. Until she lets me go. “See you soon,” I say, but the words come out thick with despair. I’m making the wrong choice. The glass door opens. Cold rushes in. She steps outside and shuts the door behind her. When I lived with Jones and Agnes, it was their daughter, Samantha, who made me breakfast. Wheat bread and applesauce, every morning. We ate matching meals, perched on the stools in their kitchen. She’d look over my homework if I had questions, but I remember not wanting to ask for much help. She’d always scrunch up her forehead and say how it had been a long time since she learned this stuff. She’d figure it out eventually and talk me through it, but it was more fun to ask about her magazines because she delighted in talking about them. I learned what DUIs were because Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie both got them. The news of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s wedding was everywhere. I learned what to wait for with each new issue’s release. I rarely saw Jones and Agnes until after school, because they slept late and entrusted Samantha with my morning care. She was always nice to me after that. She always did my nails for free. I don’t have her number anymore. It’s been a long time since she’s lived with her parents. I wish I had it now. I call the salon, just in case she’s there early doing work before it opens, but the phone rings and rings and then goes to voice mail. I listen to her voice slowly stating the hours and location. I pace the room for a while, waiting for it to be ten in San Francisco. As soon as it’s one here, I press call. “It’s you,” Jones says when I say hello. “Yeah,” I say. “It’s me.” “Where are you?” “School.” He’s quiet. “I see,” he says. “You spending the holiday with some fellow troublemakers?” He’s probably running inventory of who I could be with, envisioning a few of us here, a scrappy team of orphans and outcasts. “Something like that,” I say. I should have prepared something to say to him. The truth is, I only called so that I could remind him—and myself, maybe—that I’m still a part of the world. It feels like now or never with him, and I’m not sure if I want to lose what’s left of the life Gramps and I shared. I used to be sure, but now I’m not. I’m about to ask how Agnes is, but he speaks before I get the words out. “I have everything,” he says. “Just so you know. Whether you want it or not, everything is here in the garage waiting for you. Not the beds or the refrigerator or nothin’ like that. But the real stuff. The owner arranged an estate sale after the place was vacant thirty days. But the guys and I, we bought it all.” I close my eyes: brass candlesticks; the blue-and-gold blanket; my grandmother’s china with the tiny red flowers. “We all feel real bad about it,” he says. “Feel like we shoulda done something. For you.” “What about the letters?” Quiet. He clears his throat. “They’re here. The landlord gave us the, uh, more personal stuff.” “Can you get rid of them?” “I can do that.” “Keep the photographs, though. Okay?” “Mm-hm,” he says. I think of all of those pictures that Gramps kept for himself. My jaw clenches with the wrongness of it. He should have sat next to me and shown me. He should have said, Now, I think this was the time that . . . or Oh yes, I remember this day . . . He should have told me all the ways in which I reminded him of her. He should have helped me remember her. He never should have let me forget. Jones is still quiet. I hear his throat clearing. “Your gramps, he was in a hospital a long time ago, when you stayed with us. Not sure if you remember. It almost killed him, so we didn’t want to send him back there. Wish I could say that was the right decision. Wish I could say I didn’t realize it got so bad again. Wish I could say that.” I breathe in and out. It requires effort. “I thought he was sick.” “Well, he was. Just in more ways than you thought.” He clears his throat again. I wait. “Sometimes it’s difficult,” he says, “to know the right thing to do.” I nod even though he can’t see me. There’s no arguing with a statement like that, even if a different future is unfurling in my head—one where I knew what Gramps’s prescriptions were for, and I watched to make sure he took them, and he took me along to his appointments and his doctors told me what to watch for. I need to find something kind to say, something instead of these thoughts of how Gramps failed me, how Jones failed us. He knows it already; I can hear it in his voice. “Merry Christmas Eve, Jones,” I finally say, wanting the conversation to end. “You get religious all of a sudden? If your gramps had a grave, he’d be turning in it.” It’s a rough joke, the kind they used to make in my kitchen. “It’s just something to say,” I tell him. Out the window, the snow is starting again. Not stormlike, just scattered flakes drifting. “Give Agnes and Samantha my love, Jones. And tell the fellas I say hello.” After I hang up, I cut open Hannah’s envelope and something flutters out. It unfolds in its descent: a paper chain of snowflakes, each one white and crisp. There is no message inside. It’s exactly what it appears to be. We Are Okay We Are Okay chapter nineteen AUGUST GRAMPS’S LEAVING WOKE ME UP. The door shutting, footsteps down the stairs. I peered out to the street and saw him turn the corner in the direction of the store, or Bo’s house, or any number of the places he disappeared to during his walks through the neighborhood. I’d slept in. It was already eleven when I got into the shower. Once out, I boiled some eggs and left two in a bowl for him. I made tea for myself and then placed a second bag into a teacup for him to find when he returned. I read on the sofa for a while. Then I went out. I spent the rest of the day in Dolores Park with Ben and Laney, throwing the ball for her, laughing with Ben, going over every shared memory from the last seven years of our lives. We tied Laney to a pole outside Ben’s favorite taqueria and watched all the hipsters stop and pet her. “How will you live without this?” he said as we bit into our burritos. “ Is there even Mexican food in New York?” “Honestly? I have no idea.” It was past eight when I got home, and immediately, I felt the stillness. “Gramps?” I called, but just like the night before, he didn’t answer. His door was closed. I knocked and waited. Nothing. The car was out front. I took the stairs to the basement in case he was doing laundry, but the machines were silent. In the kitchen, the eggs I’d left him were untouched in their bowl, the tea bag dry in the cup. Ocean Beach. I would look for him there. I grabbed a sweater and went out to the street. The sky was darkening and the headlights on the Great Highway shone as I darted across. I ran onto the sand and up through the dunes. Beach grass grazed my ankles, a flock of birds flew overhead, and then I was passing the warning sign that everybody ignored, even though the danger it warned of was undeniably true. I thought of Gramps’s soaking pants legs, of his skeleton body, of the blood on the handkerchiefs. I had a clear view of the water now, but not enough light to make out details. I wished for my mother’s friends, but skilled as they were, even they didn’t surf at dusk. There were a few clusters of people out walking, a couple lone figures with dogs. No old men that I could see. I turned back. Inside again, I knocked on his door. Silence. Panic tilted my vision. A succession	262,170
管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生 (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life) (馬克・曼森 ( Mar... (Z-Library).epub	管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生第８章拒絕的智慧二○○九年，我收拾所有家當，要嘛變賣，要嘛寄放在儲藏室，離開下榻的公寓，出發前往拉丁美洲。這時，我在網路經營的約會達人部落格已略有人氣，靠著出售電子版文章與課程，小賺了一筆。我打算接下來幾年移居國外，接觸不同的文化。像是去亞洲與拉美幾個開發中國家長居，畢竟當地的生活費相對低廉，有助於我進一步打造事業。這是我的數位遊民夢。對二十五歲、喜歡冒險刺激的我而言，這正是我想要的生活方式。我的計畫聽起來霸氣又讓人羨慕，但是驅策我踏上游牧生活的價值觀，並非個個言之成理。當然啦，有些價值觀值得肯定，諸如渴望看看外面的世界、好奇其他的民族與文化，這些都是出外冒險闖蕩的常見理由。只是在諸般事情底下，隱約藏著一種羞愧感。當時我並不清楚那是什麼，但要是我能百分之百誠實地面對自己，我知道有個搞砸的價值觀隱伏在表面之下。我看不到它，但是夜深人靜誠實面對自己時，我可以感覺到它。二十多歲的我有自以為是的一面，而青少年時期「狗屁倒灶的創傷後遺症」，讓我有承諾恐懼症。由於青少年期間自信不足與社交焦慮，讓我在過去幾年矯枉過正，以為只要自己想要，就可以和任何一個人搭訕、做朋友，想愛誰就愛誰，也可以想睡誰就睡誰。既然如此，我幹嘛單戀或獨鍾某個人、某個社群、城市、國家或文化呢？若我可以雨露均霑，何不多多益善、來者不拒？因為想和全世界連結的雄心與壯志，我飄洋過海，走過一個又一個國家。五年下來，我走訪了五十五個國家，交了好幾十個朋友，擁在臂彎的愛人換了一個又一個。有些露水姻緣，甚至短到搭上往下一個國家的飛機就斷了，一點記憶也不留。那是奇怪的人生，充斥光怪陸離、打破藩籬的經驗，也不乏膚淺的刺激與飄飄然的快感；後者無非是為了麻痹我深層的痛。當時的日子似乎過得既深入又無意義，至今仍是如此。有些人生最寶貴的心得及角色定義關鍵時刻，出自那五年的旅行，但人生裡最大的揮霍（包括時間與精力）也是在周遊列國那期間。而今我住在紐約，買了間房子，添購了家具，每月收到電費帳單，也結了婚。非常平凡，沒什麼高潮或特別吸睛之處。我喜歡這種日子，因為過了多年刺激生活，我從闖蕩世界得到的最大心得是：完全的自由，本身什麼都不是，不具任何意義。自由的意義在於給人機會，成就更大的意義，但是自由本身不見得有意義。要成就人生的意義與分量，唯一的辦法是拒絕替代方案，限縮自由，對一個地方、一個想法或是（吞口水）一個人，從一而終。這一層體認是這些年我在旅遊途中慢慢沉澱而來的。生活盡是吃喝玩樂，當你整天泡在裡面，才會瞭解這些並不會讓你開心。旅行也是如此，當我遊山玩水了五十三、五十四、五十五個國家，我開始明白，途中的經歷刺激又新鮮，但多半是過眼雲煙，鮮少留下深刻而長久的意義。反觀我在家鄉的朋友，紛紛步入婚姻、買了房子、花時間關心有趣的公司或政治訴求，我卻整天聲色犬馬，追求一個又一個刺激。二○一一年，我抵達俄羅斯的聖彼得堡。食物爛透了，天氣爛爆了（五月還下雪？真他ㄨ的開什麼玩笑！），下榻的公寓遜斃了。沒有一件事順心。每樣東西都貴得要命。當地人粗魯無禮，身上老是有怪味。沒有人面帶笑容，各個喝酒喝得好凶。我卻愛上這個國家，這趟俄國行是我最喜歡的行程之一。俄國文化直來直往，這一點往往觸怒西方人。俄國人不會虛與委蛇，或是拐彎抹角。他們不會對陌生人笑，也不會不喜歡卻假裝喜歡。在俄國，若覺得什麼事很蠢，就明講很蠢。若覺得某人是混球，就明講他是混球。若你喜歡某人，和她在一起很開心，你就明白告訴她。不用管對方是朋友、陌生人，還是五分鐘前才在街上認識的人。第一週，我非常不習慣。我在咖啡廳和一個俄國女孩約會，她坐下後不到三分鐘，便以滑稽的表情看著我，告訴我剛剛我講的話很白癡。聽罷，我幾乎被咖啡嗆到。她說這話的態度與語氣並無任何挑釁之意，比較像是在講述一件平凡無奇的事，諸如那天的天氣或是她穿幾號鞋，但我還是難掩詫異。畢竟在西方，說話這麼直接很容易惹人不快，何況才剛認識對方。在俄國，這種經驗不勝枚舉，碰到的每個人都這麼無禮相待，感覺我被西方薰陶的態度與想法受到四面八方攻擊，蜷伏好幾年沒發作的不安全感開始浮現。但是幾週下來，我慢慢習慣俄國人直來直往的說話方式，一如我漸漸習慣半夜才看到落日，伏特加可以當冰水喝。我也開始欣賞俄國人這種不攙雜質的表達方式。文字如實地表達心裡想的。溝通不附帶任何條件，沒有不可告人的動機，沒有買賣的意圖，沒有亟於討好之意。周遊列國幾年，聖彼得堡可能是最不像美國的地方。在這裡，我第一次淋漓盡致地感受到自由的滋味：可以暢所欲言自己的想法與感受，無須擔心遭到追究或反彈。沒想到接受拒絕也是一種自由，儘管這種自由頗為陌生與奇怪。我自小極度渴望這種直來直往的表達方式，卻老是不如願（一開始是因為生活在習慣壓抑感情的家庭，後來則是因為沒自信卻刻意要裝出自信的模樣），所以我陶醉於這種自由，彷彿這自由是我喝過最棒的伏特加。我在聖彼得堡的那一個月匆匆而過，接近尾聲時，實在捨不得離開。旅行是開發自我的絕佳途徑，旅行可以讓你抽離習慣的文化與價值觀，見識到價值觀完全不同的另一個社會，發現人家一樣正常生活，卻不會自我嫌棄。接觸不同文化的價值觀與評量標準，會逼著你重新檢視原本生活裡看似理所當然的東西，逼著自己深思，也許自己既有的想法與觀念並非最好的生活之道。那趟俄國行，讓我重新檢討英美文化裡在溝通時常見的虛與委蛇以及扮假好人的現象。我反問自己，難道這不就是導致人與人之間無法建立互信、無法建立親密關係的原因嗎？我記得有一次和俄語老師討論這個話題，他提出了一個有趣的理論。俄國人長年與共產主義為伍，經濟機會少之又少，掙脫不了恐懼的牢籠。因此俄國社會發現，最值錢的貨幣是「信任」。為了建立互信，人必須誠實。換言之，若事情真的令人煩心，必須坦白說出來，無須覺得抱歉。就算讓人不悅也會誠實以對，為的是求生這個簡單的道理，因為你必須知道誰可靠、誰會出賣你，而且必須立刻分得出好壞。俄語老師繼續說，但是在「自由」的西方社會，不乏經濟機會，也因為機會太多，所以更看重的是求表現。儘管沒有實力，也要裝，而非赤裸裸展現真實的一面。「信任感」因而失去價值，外表與自我推銷反而更有利於占上風。相較於深交幾個好友，認識很多泛泛之交更方便拓展自己的前途。這也是為什麼面帶微笑、說話客氣成了西方文化的常規，即使心裡不悅，也會說出善意的謊言，假裝同意對方的意見。於是大家習慣假裝和不喜歡的人做朋友，購買他們不喜歡的東西。經濟制度催生了這樣的虛假文化。虛假的缺點是，你不知道能否百分之百信任對方（至少在西方社會），有時候，連好友與家人之間也會存在這種猜疑。在西方社會，因為大家急於討好對方，希望得到對方青睞，不惜重新調整自己的個性，投對方之所好。學會拒絕，你的人生會更好在正能量╲消費文化薰陶下長大的我們已經被「洗腦」，深信自己應該多接納、多肯定。這是談論正向思考書籍的主旨與基調：打開心房、擁抱各種機會、學會接納、來者不拒…… 但是我們需要懂得如何拒絕與取捨，否則就表示我們沒有原則、沒有堅持。若沒有東西比另一樣東西更好、更讓人心動，表示我們很空虛，生活缺乏意義與重心。也表示我們沒有看重的價值觀，以致人生缺乏目標與方向。我們以為迴避拒絕（包括拒絕別人或被別人所拒）可以讓自己好過一些，但是迴避拒絕帶給我們的短暫愉快，長期來說卻會讓我們像個沒有舵的船，不知人生方向。要真正喜歡或欣賞一樣東西，必須讓自己心無旁騖，只專注於一樣東西。唯有花數十年專心經營一段關係、鑽研某個工藝、深耕某個事業，才能把生活過得充實而又開心。若是來者不拒，不懂得拒絕其他選擇，不可能達到花數十年時間只做一件事的境界。選擇自己想要的人生價值觀，必須忍心拒絕其他選項。若我選擇讓婚姻成為人生的首要之務，代表我（可能）將毒品雜交轟趴排除在人生的重要項目之外。若我把自己有無能力建立公開而包容的友誼圈作為評斷自我的依據，代表我會拒絕在朋友背後說三道四。這些都是積極而穩當的決定，但仍需時時懂得拒絕。我要強調的是：我們每個人必須在乎某件事，才會珍惜與看重那件事。看重某件事，必須拒絕那件事以外的東西。換言之，看重Ｘ，必須拒絕Ｘ以外的東西。若想堅持或維繫我們的價值觀，拒絕是必備條件，因此拒絕是代表我們身分的名片與標誌。我們是怎樣的人取決於我們拒絕了什麼。若我們來者不拒（也許是因為害怕被拒絕），我們基本上什麼也不是。不計代價避免拒絕，迴避正面對抗與衝突，試圖公平對待一切，希望一切相輔相成、協調一致，這樣的心態反映深層又難捉摸的「理所當得」。因為自以為是，自以為理所當得，所以自我感覺良好也是天經地義，影響所及，他們習慣來者不拒，因為一旦說不，可能影響自己或他人的心情。由於他們不會拒絕，他們的生活缺乏價值，貪圖享樂，過於自戀。他們唯一在意的是如何讓飄飄然的感覺持久一些，所以會迴避人生中少不了的挫折，假裝痛苦不存在。拒絕是人生重要又關鍵的技能。沒有人喜歡受困於坎坷的關係裡；沒有人喜歡被不喜歡或不信任的行業綁住；沒有人喜歡心口不一、言不由衷。不過大家還是選擇這麼做，而且一直是如此。誠實是人的天性，但是人這輩子要過得誠實、坦蕩，必須習慣說「不」或聽人說「不」。拒絕其實會讓關係更好，讓感情生活更健康。界線很久很久以前有一對年輕男女，他們的家族彼此仇視。一天，這名男子偷偷溜進女方家族舉辦的派對（大概有點精蟲衝腦吧）。女子看到他，猶如聽到天使甜美的歌聲，害得小鹿亂撞一通，對男子一見鍾情，兩人就這麼墜入愛河。隔天，他偷偷潛入她家的後花園，兩人決定私訂終身；這也是基於現實做出的決定，畢竟雙方父母可是恨不得將對方碎屍萬段。中間略而不提，快轉到幾天後。雙方家長發現兩人的私情與婚姻，暴跳如雷。獲悉丈夫好友邱西奧（Mercutio）在決鬥中被刺死，女孩難過之至，喝下一劑藥水，假死兩天。可惜，她和新婚夫婿溝通時落東落西，完全忘了把這回事告訴丈夫。丈夫誤以為昏迷假死的妻子自殺而亡，徹底瘋了，決定自殺和妻子共赴黃泉。妻子昏迷了兩天甦醒後，發現丈夫竟已自殺身亡，傷心逾恆的她如法炮製，了結自己的生命。故事完。當代文化裡，《羅密歐與朱麗葉》等於是「羅曼史」的代名詞，兩人的愛情故事是英語文化的經典，也是大家冀求的理想感情。但是真正分析瞭解故事裡的細節後，發現裡面的主人翁根本是腦殘，最後兩人終結自己的生命更印證了這點。許多學者認為，莎士比亞寫《羅密歐與朱麗葉》並非在歌頌愛情，而是諷刺與挖苦愛情，證明愛情有多瘋癲、多不正常。莎翁無意藉這齣悲劇見證愛情的偉大，反而警告大家對愛情敬而遠之：彷彿巨大的霓虹燈招牌閃著「危險勿入」字樣，四周還拉起封鎖線，禁止大家擅闖。揆諸人類歷史，愛情並不像今日這麼被熱烈追捧與歌頌。其實直到十九世紀中葉前，愛情被視為多此一舉，甚至可能有害心理，阻礙人生更重要的正事，像是讓人無法專心農稼，排斥嫁給養了很多羊的「金龜婿」。年輕人往往逼自己壓抑浪漫與激情，務實地和有經濟基礎的人結婚，以求婚後自己和家人過著安穩的生活。今天，看到或聽到不顧一切的熱戀，大家的腦袋彷彿小弟弟立刻「硬起來」。這種愛情主宰了我們的藝術與文化，愈是驚天動地愈好。可能是班・艾佛列克（Ben Affleck）為了他心愛的女孩，摧毀即將衝撞地球的小行星，拯救了全世界（電影《世界末日》）。或是梅爾・吉勃遜以寡擊眾大敗英格蘭軍，最後被捕，一邊受酷刑，一邊回憶遭姦殺的妻子（電影《英雄本色》）。或是精靈公主放棄長生不老，決定和亞拉岡在一起（電影《魔戒》 )。或是棒球迷吉米・法隆（Jimmy Fallon）為了女友茱兒・芭莉摩（Drew Barrymore），放棄紅襪隊季後賽門票（電影《愛情全壘打》）。若說這類浪漫愛情是古柯鹼，那麼我們會多到吸不完：猶如電影《疤面煞星》（Scarface）的主角東尼・莫塔納（Tony Montana），他將整張臉埋在如山高的古柯鹼裡，興奮地大喊：「嗨，我的騷（lee-tle）朋友！」其實，我們發現愈來愈多愛情彷彿古柯鹼，而且相似度驚人。例如，愛情與古柯鹼刺激的大腦區域一模一樣。此外，愛情與古柯鹼都會讓人暫時飄飄欲仙，解決了眼前的問題，卻也衍生更多問題。我們追求的愛情，浪漫成分不外乎談情說愛時，高調感性、充滿戲劇性，還有高低起伏、花樣百出，讓人眼花撩亂。不過這並非健康的真情流露，反而往往是另外一種理所當得的心態在作怪。我知道這麼說實在不討喜，感覺自己是老愛潑人冷水的掃興人。言歸正傳，什麼樣的人會這麼看不起浪漫的愛？請聽我把話說完。實情是，世上有健康的愛，也有不健康的愛。在不健康的愛情關係裡，兩人透過談情說愛試著逃避各自的問題，換言之，他們利用對方逃避現實。健康的愛，是兩個人承認並勇於解決自身的問題，過程中彼此扶持，互為後盾。健康與不健康的關係差別在於兩件事：一、雙方各自的責任感有多強；二、雙方願意拒絕對方或被對方拒絕的程度。不論走到哪裡，一定有不健康或有毒的愛情關係，在這關係裡，雙方的責任感不足，甚至千瘡百孔，也沒有能力拒絕對方或接受對方的拒絕。反觀在健康與互愛的關係裡，雙方有清楚的界線，也各有自己的價值觀，必要時拒絕╲被拒絕的管道暢通。所謂「界線」的意思是，在關係中，雙方對各自問題的責任感有清楚的輪廓與邊界。在健康的關係裡，責任感的界線清楚，雙方各自會為自己的價值觀與問題全權負責，不會越界承擔另一半的價值觀與問題。在有毒的關係裡，責任感界線模糊，甚至沒有界線，習慣迴避責任，將自己的問題丟給別人，或是習慣把另一半的問題攬在自己身上。模糊或不當的界線是什麼模樣呢？以下是幾個實例：「你不能把我留在家裡，自己出去和朋友聚會。你知道我嫉妒心有多重，你得待在家裡陪我。」「我同事都是一群蠢蛋，害我開會老是遲到，因為我得教他們怎麼做事。」「天啊，你竟然讓我在妹妹面前跟個白癡一樣。下次她在時，絕對不准再和我唱反調！」「我想接下在密爾瓦基（Milwaukee）的工作，但是母親絕對不會原諒我搬到那麼遠的地方。」「我可以和你約會，但是你不能告訴我朋友辛蒂。要是我有男友，而她還是一個人，她會沒有安全感。」上述每一個例子，當事人不是越界把別人的問題╲情緒攬在自己身上，就是要求別人承擔他們自己的問題╲情緒。整體而言，自以為是（自命當得）的人在關係裡往往陷入兩種陷阱。一是期待他人負責為他們收拾與解決問題。「我希望這個週末待在家裡輕鬆一下。你應該早知道我的打算，並取消你的行程。」二是他們把別人的問題全攬在自己身上。「她又失業了，這可能是我的錯，因為我沒有盡全力支持她。我明天要幫她重寫履歷。」自以為是的人在愛情關係裡，習慣採用這些模式，藉此逃避自己的問題與該負的責任。因此他們的愛情關係脆弱又虛偽，問題出在他們迴避內在深層的痛，無法誠心欣賞與讚揚另一半。這不僅適用於浪漫的愛情關係，也適用於家庭關係與朋友關係。過度呵護子女的母親可能介入小孩生活的各個層面。她的自以為是讓小孩也變得自以為是，長大後覺得其他人理應幫他們善後。（這也是為什麼當你的愛情關係出了問題，會發現和自己父母間的問題有詭異的相似度。）當責任感的界線模糊，諸如弄不清楚誰該負責、為了什麼樣的問題負責、出錯的是誰、出了什麼錯、為什麼你會這麼做、為什麼你會有這樣的情緒反應，這下你永遠無法為自己建立堅定的價值觀。你唯一的價值觀只是讓另一半開心，或是另一半得讓你開心。當然這是自欺欺人。關係若存在這樣的模糊界線，走到最後通常會像「興登堡號飛船」（Hindenburg）一樣燃燒爆炸，化為煙灰。別人無法為你解決問題，他們也不該這麼做，畢竟這麼做不會令你開心。同理，你也無法解決他人的問題，因為這麼做，對方並不會開心。不健康的關係裡，雙方都試著解決對方的問題，以便讓自我感覺良好。然而，健康的關係是雙方各自解決自己的問題，以求彼此感覺良好。釐清責任感的界線，不代表不能協助、支持另一半，也不代表不能接受對方的協助與支持。雙方應該互相支持打氣，但前提必須是你考量之後，決定支持對方或接受對方的協助，而非你覺得那是你的義務或權利。自以為是的人，若情緒或行為失常，習慣指責他人，是因為他們相信，只要把自己塑造成受害人，早晚會有人出面幫他們一把，並如願得到他們渴望的愛。自以為是的人，為他人的情緒與行為自責不已，因為他們相信，若他們能「修復」另一半的問題，拯救他們脫離苦難，就會得到他們一直想要的愛與肯定。這是有毒關係的陰陽面，受害者與拯救者的關係：一個點火，認為這樣做可增加她的分量；一個負責滅火，認為這樣做可增加他的分量。這兩類人深受彼此吸引，最後也多半成為一對。他們的毛病剛好完全互補，搭配得天衣無縫。而他們的父母往往也處於這種關係，所以他們理想的「幸福」範本建立在自以為是以及模糊的責任感界線之上。不幸的是，在這樣的關係裡，雙方都無法符合對方的實際需求。其實雙方關係裡，一個一味卸責，一個一味扛責，這會讓自以為是、糟糕的自我價值不斷惡性循環下去，反而無法徹底滿足彼此的感情需求。受害者製造問題讓對方解決，這些層出不窮的問題多半不值一提，不過是受害者想藉此得到她希冀的關愛。拯救者解決了一個又一個問題，並非她在意問題的本質，而是她認為，解決對方的問題可以得到她想要的關愛與肯定。兩個例子都顯示，雙方的出發點都不脫自私，也附帶了條件，因此會自扯後腿。這種人鮮少得到真愛。受害者若真的愛拯救者，他會說：「聽我說，這是我自己的問題，無須你出面替我解決。你只要支持我，替我打氣就行了。」這才是真愛的表現：為自己的問題負責，而非要另一半負責。若拯救者真的想拯救受害者，他會說：「聽我說，你不該指責別人；這問題你要自己處理。」從旁協助，讓他們自己解決問題，這才是真愛。但是受害者與拯救者彼此利用，以便讓自己時時保持亢奮狀態，這就像對什麼上了癮，唯有對方可以滿足。說來諷刺，約會對象要是心理機能健康，往往讓人覺得無趣或缺乏「魅力」。心理機能健康、讓人放心的人，往往不受青睞，因為他們有清楚而明確的責任感界線，所以不夠「刺激誘人」，無法激起火花，讓自以為是的人時時處於亢奮狀態。對受害者而言，最困難的莫過於為自己的問題負責。他們堅信自己的命運由別人負責，要他們踏出為自己負責的第一步，他們會嚇破膽。對拯救者而言，最困難的事莫過於停止為別人的問題扛責。他們堅信唯有拯救別人，自己才會受到重視、得到愛。所以放手不管同樣會令他們嚇破膽。為了自己心儀與在乎的人犧牲自己不是不行，但得是你自願，而非出於義務或害怕伴隨拒絕而來的後果。若另一半想為你犧牲，必須是出於誠心誠意、心甘情願，而非因為你耍手段，故意生氣或利用罪惡感逼對方犧牲。愛的表現唯有無條件、無預期，才是名副其實的愛。做事時，人不易分辨是出於義務還是出於自願。所以這裡提供一個小小的測試：自問：「若我拒絕，兩人關係會有何變化？」此外，自問：「若另一半拒絕我的要求，兩人關係會有何變化？」若拒絕會出現戲劇性爆走或杯盤齊飛的場面，這可不是好徵兆。顯示你們關係是有條件的，看重的是對方能提供的表面利益與好處，而非無條件地接納與包容（連同對方的缺點也一併接受）。人有了清楚的責任感界線，不會害怕大發脾氣、吵架、受傷。界線不清不楚，就會害怕上述這些事，也會不斷調整自己的行為，適應有如雲霄飛車般跌宕起伏的關係。責任感界線清楚的人，不會不切實際地期待兩人可以百分之百互補，滿足對方的一切需求。他們瞭解，自己有時可能會傷到對方的感情，但他們無法決定或左右對方的喜怒哀樂。他們瞭解健康的關係不是控制另外一人的情緒，而是彼此互相扶持，放手讓對方成長，解決自己的問題。他們不會斤斤計較另一半做了什麼，而是不管另一半做了什麼，都無損他們對另一半的關心與愛護。各位，這才是無條件的愛。如何建立互信我老婆花很多時間照鏡子。她喜歡漂漂亮亮出門，而我也喜歡帶著美女出門（沒錯，男人是視覺動物）。晚上我們若要出門，她會在浴室待上一個小時化妝╲整理頭髮╲換穿衣服，反正一堆女人家的事，然後問我「好看嗎」。她的打扮多半非常得體漂亮，但偶爾也會凸槌。可能是換了新髮型感覺怪怪的，可能是穿了米蘭一位搞怪時裝設計師推出的前衛時尚靴子。總之，看起來就是和她不搭。當我誠實地告訴她我的看法時，往往惹得她冒火跳腳。她會返回浴室或衣櫃間重新梳妝打扮，導致我們遲到三十分鐘，同時口出三字經，有幾句還直接衝著我來。碰到這種情況，男的多半會說謊，好讓女友╲老婆開心，但是我不會。為什麼呢？因為我認為，誠實在我們夫妻關係裡比讓對方開心還重要。所以我對心愛的女人說話時，絕對不會先想好哪些可說、哪些不能說。所幸，我娶了和我想法一致的女子為妻，她願意聽我沒有事先把關過濾的真心話。若我說了或做了什麼蠢事，她也會直言不諱點醒我。這是她作為我另一半送給我最寶貴的禮物之一。當然啦，她的話有時的確會讓我的自尊心受傷，我會口出惡言、抱怨或是反駁，但是過了幾小時，我悶悶不樂地回頭向她示好，坦承她是對的。我靠，她真的讓我變成更好的人，即使她的話乍聽實在刺耳。若我們排在第一位的要務，是讓自己或另一半隨時保持樂呵呵的狀態，那麼最後的結果是沒有一個人開心，雙方也會在不明就裡的情況下走向分手一途。沒有衝突，就沒有互信。衝突的目的是讓我們知道，誰無條件在背後支持我們，誰是為了好處與利益而和我們在一起。只會滿口「好好好」、來者不拒的人，不值得信賴。若「掃興貓熊」在這裡，他會告訴你，關係裡要有痛、有衝突，才能鞏固彼此的信任感，讓彼此關係更親、更緊密。關係要健康，雙方都必須有意願、有能力拒絕或被拒絕。沒有這樣一來一往的拒絕，界線會模糊，一方的問題與價值會主宰另一方。衝突不僅正常，也是維持健康關係時絕不可少的元素。若關係親密的雙方無法暢所欲言說出彼此的差異，這關係等於建立在操控與言不由衷之上，久了會漸漸變成有毒關係。信任是各種關係中最重要的元素。原因很簡單，少了信任，彼此的關係不具任何實質意義。某人可能跟你說她愛你，希望和你在一起，為了你她願意放棄一切。但你若不信任她，對方所說的一切對你毫無意義，你也無法從中得到任何好處與利益。唯有當愛的表達不附帶任何特殊條件與包袱，才能得到你的信任，你才會感到被愛。這也是為什麼出軌或劈腿這麼具殺傷力。並非因為偷吃和人發生性關係導致兩人分手，而是因為偷腥導致彼此互信蕩然無存。少了信任，關係無法繼續，要嘛重新建立互信，要嘛只有分手一途。我常常收到讀者來信，說自己被另一半劈腿，但是不想和對方分手，又不知道能否再相信對方。他們說，少了信任，關係變成了生活的包袱與威脅，必須時時刻刻監視、懷疑，而非樂在其中。多數人被抓到劈腿，會向對方道歉，並發誓「絕不再犯」，彷彿自己的下半身出軌全是意外與不小心。許多遭劈腿的人接受對方表面的說詞，不會深究或質疑另一半的價值觀與「愛操的事」（這是我刻意用的雙關語）；他們不會反問那些價值觀與「愛操的事」是否讓另一半成為可以廝守的好對象。他們太想維繫彼此的關係，於是忽略關係已然變質，成了吞噬他們自尊的黑洞。人劈腿或偷吃，是因為他們發現了比感情更重要的東西。也許是高高在上的權力，也許是想用性證明自己，也許是屈從於自己的衝動。不管理由為何，劈腿者的價值觀已不符合維持健康關係的條件。若劈腿者不承認或接受這個事實，只會用老套的說詞，諸如「我不知道我在想什麼」、「我壓力大喝醉了，而她剛好在身邊」，表示這個人缺乏解決人際關係問題所需的自覺力。劈腿者必須剝開包覆自我覺察的層層外皮，找出是哪些價值觀導致他們破壞了關係中的信任感（或者認清自己是否仍然在乎這段關係）。他們必須說得出：「你知道的：我為人自私，相較於這個關係，我更在乎自己。老實說，我一點也不看重這個關係。」若劈腿者無法誠實講出他們糟透的價值觀，坦言有些價值觀已被其他更重要的事情取代，那就沒有理由繼續相信他們。若他們不值得信任，關係不可能改善或改變。重新建立互信的另一個辦法比較務實：以行動為憑。若有人打破你對他的信任，口頭保證固然好，但是行動更為可靠。你必須看到對方確實改邪歸正，並持之以恆，這時你才會開始相信對方的價值符合關係的要求，而且對方真的會改變。無奈建立可被追蹤的表現紀錄需要時間，畢竟打破信任只要一下子，重新建立互信卻要費時良久。在建立信任感期間，可能會碰到棘手而難堪的情況，所以雙方必須清楚，他們可以忍受什麼樣的曲折與打擊。我以戀人關係裡的出軌、劈腿為例，但這過程也適用於其他破裂的關係。一旦信任感被破壞，唯有做到以下兩件事，才可能重獲對方信任。一、破壞信任關係的一方，承認是自己的價值觀導致關係出現裂痕，勇敢認錯。二、破壞信任關係的一方，以行動證明自己改邪歸正，並持之以恆，建立可被追蹤的表現紀錄。少了第一步，想要重修舊好是不可能的。信任感脆弱得猶如瓷盤。打破一次，透過巧手，仍有可能恢復。但若再破一次，可能碎成更多片，得花上更多時間才能修復。再摔個幾次，就可能回天乏術。畢竟碎裂得太厲害，也沾了太多塵土。堅持到底，以求自由消費文化非常擅長讓我們消費者買了再買，要了再要。剝開高調炒作與行銷手法，發現背後總是鼓吹愈多愈好的概念。我被這種想法洗腦了多年，所以拚命賺錢，走訪不同的國家，不斷累積歷練，女友交了一個又一個。但是愈多不見得愈好。其實，相反才是真理：我們擁有的愈少，過得愈開心。若眼前不乏機會與選項，我們會出現心理學家所謂「選擇的弔詭」（多到難以選擇）。基本上，選擇愈多，我們對最後敲定的選擇愈不滿意，因為我們會對其他未雀屏中選的選項念念不忘。如果現在有兩個地方讓你選，你可能信心十足，自己做了正確的選擇，滿意自己的決定。但若現在有多達二十八個地方讓你選，選擇的弔詭顯示，你可能花上幾年的時間怨嘆、煩惱、質疑自己是不是錯了，自己是不是做了「正確」的選擇，是不是真的得到最大的幸福快樂。因為有疑慮，於是便顯得焦慮不安，再加上要求十全十美、追求成就感，所以過得並不開心。這下子我們該怎麼辦？要是你和以前的我一樣，你會迴避，不做任何選擇。你會盡可能拖到最後一刻才做決定，不敢給承諾。全心全意忠於一個人、一個地方、一份工作、一樣活動，可能剝奪我們經驗的廣度，反之追求經驗的廣度，可能剝奪我們深化經驗的機會。有些東西必須在同一個地點生活了五年才可能體會，和同一個人生活了十多年才可能有默契，和一項技能與工藝打交道了半輩子才可能精進。我現在三十多歲，終於認清，全心全意投入一件事，機會與經驗才會不斷上門；這些原本是我之前不論到什麼地方或做了什麼事，都無緣獲得的。只顧追求經驗的廣度，每增加一次冒險闖蕩、每多認識一個人、每新學一樣東西，收穫與感動就減分一次。若你從未出國，第一次出訪的國家會讓你大開眼界，因為可參考的經驗少之又少。但是當你走過二十個國家，到了第二十一個國家，可能就沒什麼新鮮感了。當你走過五十個國家，到了第五十一個國家可能更無感。同理也適用於追求家當、鈔票、嗜好、工作、朋友、愛人╲性伴侶，這些都是可以自選的低俗膚淺價值觀。年紀愈長，經驗愈多，每新增一次經驗，它對你的重要性與影響就失色一分。我第一次在派對上飲酒，覺得非常新鮮刺激。第一百次時，仍覺得開心。第五百次，覺得跟平常週末沒兩樣。到了第一千次，覺得無聊又普通。過去幾年，我個人最大的改變是學會專注與承諾。我去蕪存菁，只保留人生裡重要的親友、經驗與價值觀，其他一律放棄。我結束所有事業，決定全職專注於寫作，自此網頁人氣爆增，讓我始料未及。我不再約炮、亂來、搞一夜情，只單戀一個女子，結果收穫更豐。我只鍾情於一個地點，也加倍專注經營對我很重要、推心置腹、關係健康的好友群。我發現一個完全違反直覺的結果：全心全意投入反而讓人自由、解放。去蕪存菁、拒絕其他選項、拒絕分心、專注於自己所選以及對自己真正重要的事物，結果機會不減反增，利反而多於弊。全心全意投入反而讓你自由，因為你不再被其他不重要的瑣事搞得三心二意。全心全意讓你自由，因為你的注意力與專注力得以聚焦在讓你健康又開心的事物。全心全意讓決策更快、更容易，不用擔心掛一漏萬，因為既已知道現有的夠好了，何須對自己施壓、追求更多呢？全心全意讓你隨時保持專注，聚焦在幾個極重要的目標，成功率自然跟著提高。由此看來，拒絕反而給予我們自由。凡是與人生重要價值觀相左、不符我們所選的評量標準，還有一味地追求廣度而捨棄深度（亦即重量不重質），都該被列為拒絕對象。的確，年輕時，累積經驗的廣度有其必要，也較受到年輕人青睞，畢竟人應該趁年輕時多走多看，從中找出值得投資的對象。但是深掘才挖得到寶藏，全心全意專注於某樣東西，繼而深入鑽研才是正道。這道理適用於人際關係、職涯，以及生活的各個層面。管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生第６章每一件事，你都錯了（我也不例外）五百年前，製圖者相信加州是島嶼。醫師認為割開病患的手臂（或其他部位）放血，可以治癒疾病。科學家認為火是一種實質物體，由燃素構成。女性以為用狗尿搽臉，可以永保青春。天文學家認為，太陽繞地球而轉。小時候，我以為「mediocre」（平凡）是一種自己不愛吃的蔬菜。以為哥哥在祖母家發現了密道，所以不用走出浴室就可直接出現在屋外（有雷慎入：原來浴室有窗）。聽到朋友和他的家人前往「華盛頓 B. C. 」，我以為他們有辦法穿越時光隧道回到恐龍的時代，因為「 B. C. 」（西元前，編按：原文應是Washington D.C.，即華盛頓哥倫比亞特區， B. C. 推測是作者小時候誤聽）代表很久很久以前。到了十幾歲，我告訴每一個人，我啥也不在乎，但其實我在乎得要命。我還沒弄清楚狀況，其他人就已主宰了我的世界。例如，我以為幸福快樂是宿命，而非後天的選擇。以為愛情會自然而然出現，不需要努力爭取。以為「酷」必須靠訓練、向他人借鏡學習，而非可以自創的個人風格。認識初戀女友後，我以為兩人可以天長地久。分手後，我以為我再也無法對另一個女人有同樣的熱情。我覺得有時候光有愛還不夠。之後我才明白，每個人都要漸漸學會決定什麼是「夠了」，而愛可以隨我們定義之。回顧一路上的每一步、每一件事，我都發現自己錯了。這一輩子，我一路錯到底，不管是對我自己、別人、社會、文化、世界，乃至宇宙，一切的一切，我都錯了。我希望接下來的人生還是這麼回事：一錯再錯。一如「現在的馬克」回頭看「過去的馬克」所犯的每一個錯誤，有一天，「未來的馬克」也會回頭看「現在的馬克」的想法（包括本書的內容），然後發現類似的瑕疵與缺點，從中發現自己進步了。這感覺真不錯，因為代表我長大了，也成熟了。麥可・喬丹（Michael Jordan）有句名言，說他的生命充滿一次又一次的失敗，正因為如此，所以他成功了。成長是不斷重複的過程。學習了一件新事物，不會讓你從「錯」立刻變成「對」，而是從錯進化到少錯。再學一樣東西之後，從少一點錯進化到很少的錯，然後從很少的錯進步到更少的錯，以此類推。我們不斷減輕犯錯的程度，慢慢逼近真理與完美，但實際上永遠搆不到真理與完美之境。我們不該一步到位，追求人生最後的「正確」答案，而是一點又一點修正今天的錯，讓明天比今天更好，明天比今天少一些錯。從這個觀點來看，個人成長可以非常的科學。我們抱持的價值觀就如同研究計畫裡的假設：假設這個行為良好而重要；另一個行為不是。我們的行動是實驗；隨著行動而來的情緒與思考模式是數據。世上沒有放諸四海皆準的教條或零缺失的意識形態，唯有你的所作所為與親身經歷，可以告訴你什麼對你而言才是對的。即使如此，這些經歷本身可能也非萬無一失。因為你我每一個人都有不同的需求、個人際遇、生活環境，所以不可免地，我們對於生活的意義、該如何過生活，會有不同的「正確答案」。我的正解包括：一個人連續幾年環遊世界、生活在偏遠的異鄉、笑看自己的糗事。至少這是現階段的正確答案。人生的答案會改變、會修正，因為我會改變、會修正；隨著年紀漸長、經驗漸豐，慢慢修正自己的謬誤與不足，每天少錯一點。很多人對於生命與人生，過於執著「要正確」，最後落得從來沒有真正活過。某個單身寂寞的女子希望找個伴，但是她足不出戶，也不會為了找伴做任何努力。一個男子埋首於工作，認為自己理應被拔擢或加薪，但是他從來不把這個想法明白告訴主管。一般人會說，他們是因為害怕失敗、害怕被拒絕、害怕聽到別人說不，因此遲遲不行動。但是真相並非如此。沒錯，被人拒絕的確讓人傷心。失敗真是讓人不爽到極點。但我們習慣死抱著一些道理與想法，鮮少質疑其真假，也不太敢拋棄多年來賦予我們人生意義的價值觀。那位孤單女子走不出自己的圈子，沒辦法找到約會對象，因為她不想面對或質疑多年來自己想要什麼。那位男子不去向上司爭取升官加薪，因為他不想挑戰自己的技術到底有多值錢。自顧自沉浸在沒人覺得你迷人、沒人欣賞你才氣等自怨自艾的想法裡，儘管痛苦，比起勇於測試這些想法的真假，顯然容易多了。這類想法（我不夠迷人，所以幹嘛多事；我的上司是人渣，所以幹嘛多事）多半讓我們安於舒適的現狀，卻得拿我們未來更大的幸福或成就作為抵押。無法忍受不確定感、甘心安於現狀，是非常糟糕的長期策略，但我們緊握著不放，因為我們以為這麼做是對的，以為我們自知會發生什麼事。換言之，我們以為自己知道故事的結局。確定感是成長與進步的天敵。直到確實發生前，沒有事情是百分之百會怎樣或不會怎樣──就算到了真正攤牌的時刻，也還有商榷的空間。因此要成長、要進步，就必須先接受自己的想法與價值觀有其不足、有其缺陷。既然放棄爭取確定感，取而代之的，應該是不斷地懷疑以及打問號：懷疑自己的想法，懷疑自己的感受，也懷疑未來可能面對何種光景。這些都要等到我們走到那一步、為自己另創一個未來，才會有答案。與其確認自己時時都是對的，不如檢討自己何以時時都在出錯，因為我們的確是這樣。弄錯、做錯，給了我們改變的可能，以及成長進步的機會。代表我們無須割開手臂放血治療感冒、無須為了抗老而把狗尿抹在臉上。代表我們不會把「平凡」視為拒吃的蔬菜。代表我們不會害怕伸出觸角，關心發生的大小事。有件事怪是怪，卻是真理：我們無法確切知道自己經驗的現實到底是利是弊，是正面還是負面。例如，人生最辛苦、壓力最大的時刻，最後可能是形塑個性、激勵人生的重大時刻。有些最讓人陶醉滿足的事，卻也最讓人沮喪、洩氣。別相信自己對正╲負經驗的想法，我們唯一能確信的是，當下什麼會讓我們傷心、什麼不會。但說到底這件事沒那麼重要。回顧五百年前人類的生活，我們覺得不可思議。同理，五百年後的人們看我們現在對一些想法確信不疑時，應該也會大聲嘲笑吧。嘲笑我們怎麼會讓金錢與工作決定生命的意義。嘲笑我們怎麼不敢肯定對我們影響甚巨的人物，而去追捧名不副實的公眾人物。他們會嘲笑我們的儀式、迷信、憂慮與戰爭；對我們的殘酷冷血瞠目結舌。他們會研究我們的藝術，論辯我們的歷史。他們會瞭解有關我們的諸多真相，只不過我們現在沒有一個人能夠明白這些真相是什麼。然而，未來人類的想法與作為也並非都正確，只不過比我們少錯一些。想法的建築師試試這個。隨機找一些人，帶他們到一個房間，房間有幾個按鈕。告訴他們，若完成某個動作（至於是什麼動作，他們要自己摸索），燈會亮，顯示他們拿到一分。他們有三十分鐘的時間，最後看誰的得分最高。心理學家做過這項實驗，結果可想而知。受訪者坐下來，開始猛按按鈕，直到燈亮得分為止。接下來，他們會重複剛剛的動作，以便拿到更多分數。只不過現在燈不再亮了，所以他們開始變通，諸如這個按鈕按三下，那個按鈕按一下，然後等個五秒，叮咚！再添一分。最後，這一招也不管用。他們只好再想別的辦法。心想也許跟按鈕無關，搞不好跟坐姿或摸了什麼東西有關，也許是雙腳的關係。叮咚！再拿到一分。沒錯，也許是我的腿，所以我按了另一個鈕。叮咚！通常在十至十五分鐘內，每位受訪者都可摸出一套得分的行為順序，動作多半很奇怪，諸如單腳站立，或是朝某個方向按鈕、記住一長串按鈕順序，以及手指在每個按鈕上停留特定的時間。有趣的是：得分不過是隨機的結果，並非因為做對了某個動作。得分沒有所謂的順序或模式。只因為「叮咚」一聲燈亮了，展現「特技」的受訪者就以為動作做對了，再添一分。該實驗並非以虐人為目的，而是凸顯人腦非常厲害，能在短時間內想出一堆不成立或不存在的理論，並信以為真。事實證明，我們各個都是這方面的高手。每位受訪者離開時，莫不覺得自己搞定了這個實驗，順利打敗其他參賽者。他們深信自己找到了「萬無一失」的按鈕順序，可以次次得分。其實他們想出的辦法，和他們的人一樣獨一無二，全世界只有一個。有名男子想出一長串按鈕順序，不過只有他一個人看得懂，其他人都一頭霧水。有個女孩相信她必須伸手碰天花板數次才能得分，因此實驗結束時，她因為頻頻跳上跳下而累癱了。我們人腦是會摸索意義的機器（meaning machine）。我們所瞭解的「意義」（meaning），其實是人腦將兩個或兩個以上的經驗加以聯想的結果。我們按了個鈕，看到燈亮，以為是按鈕導致燈亮，這種連結就是意義建構的基礎與核心。按鈕，燈光；燈光，按鈕。我們看到一張椅子，發現它是灰色，腦袋開始把顏色（灰色）與物體（椅子）加以連結，並建構意義：「這椅子是灰色。」我們的腦袋不斷在轉，產生一個又一個連結，協助我們瞭解並掌控周遭的環境。我們所經驗的一切（不論內外）會在腦海衍生更多的連結與聯想。從書頁上的文字、剖析句子的文法概念，乃至走神想歪冒出齷齪的想法（因為我的文章愈來愈乏味無趣、愈來愈千篇一律），這些思維、突然冒出的想法與觀點，點點滴滴建構了成千上萬的神經元連結，然後萬箭齊發，形成知識與理解的熊熊大火，照亮你的心智。但是這樣的連結有兩個問題。首先，人腦並非完美得沒有一點瑕疵，我們會搞錯所見所聞，也很容易忘東忘西、張冠李戴。其次，我們的腦袋一旦建構了連結與意義，我們會對那意義堅信不疑。我們會偏向自己腦袋建構的意義，捨不得放手。即使明明有證據抵觸我們想出來的意義，我們卻往往選擇漠視，堅持自己的想法才對。美國喜劇演員艾墨・菲利普斯（Emo Philips）說過：「我一向認為腦袋是全身最重要的器官。但是後來想了一想，才瞭解是誰對我說了這句話（就是自己的腦袋）。」說來不幸，我們自以為的「知道」與相信，其實大都衍生於腦袋裡一堆根深柢固的謬見與偏見。我們的價值觀有一大部分得之於無法代表世界全貌的事件，或是出於完全曲解的過去經驗。這樣會導致什麼結果呢？我們大部分的想法都是錯的，更正確地說，我們所有的想法都是錯的，只不過有些錯的程度較低罷了。人腦是一堆錯謬的大雜燴。這點可能讓你不舒服、不習慣，卻是非常重要的概念，接下來你會明白我為什麼這麼說。小心你所堅信的事一九八八年，記者兼女性主義作家梅瑞迪斯・馬蘭（Meredith Maran）在接受心理治療的過程中，驚訝地發現自己小時候曾被父親性侵。她覺得青天霹靂，發現自己大半的成人時間都花在壓抑、遺忘這段過去。直到三十七歲，她站出來和父親對質，並將事情經過告訴家人。梅瑞迪斯的吐實嚇壞了全家。她的父親全盤否認女兒的指控，有些家人站在梅瑞迪斯這邊，有些則和她父親站在同一陣線，家族自此一分為二。這個痛，早在梅瑞迪斯出面指控父親前，就決定了她和父親的關係，而今事情曝光，彷彿黴菌蔓延滋生，蠶食撕裂每一個人。過了八年（一九九六年），另一個驚人的發現浮出檯面：實際上，她的父親並未性侵她（我知道，這實在是……）。原來梅瑞迪斯之前在那位立意良善的治療師的協助下，杜撰了幼時記憶。受到罪惡感譴責，她努力在父親過世前，設法和父親及其他家人和解，不斷向他們道歉與解釋，可惜一切為時已晚。她的父親過世，家族關係也無法回到從前。我們發現，梅瑞迪斯的遭遇並非特例。她的自傳《我的謊言：不實記憶的真人實事》（ My Lie: A True Story of False Memory ）透露，一九八○年代許多女性指控家族裡的男性成員性侵，結果數年後都翻了口不承認。同一期間，也有一堆人宣稱有些邪魔外道教派性侵兒童，但是警方在十多個城市調查後，沒有發現任何犯罪證據。為什麼有人會突然杜撰家人性侵或邪教染指兒童的可怕記憶與遭遇？為何這些都發生在一九八○年代呢？小時候玩過傳話遊戲嗎？對著一個人的耳朵小聲說出傳話內容，這個人再把內容傳給下一個人。十個人下來，最後一個人聽到的內容，和第一個人聽到的幾乎南轅北轍，八竿子打不著。基本上，我們的記憶也是這麼回事。我們碰到了一些事，幾天後，我們的記憶可能和原先的稍有不同，一如傳話遊戲，後面的人常會漏聽或聽錯。我們把遭遇告訴另一個人，為了填補情節漏洞，往往會加油添醋，讓一切看起來合理，以免別人覺得我們在胡說八道、異想天開。接著，大家漸漸相信這些加料的部分，再告訴下一個人，以訛傳訛就是這麼回事。一年後，我們喝醉了，醉言醉語說出這段故事，又再加油添醋了一番（打開天窗說亮話吧，約有三分之一的內容是捏造的）。但是酒醒之後，我們不願承認自己撒大謊、信口雌黃，所以將錯就錯照著這個醉言醉語、加料灌水的版本走下去。五年後，我們對天發誓、對母親大人的陵墓發誓，堅持我們說的話真到不能再真，但真實成分至多只有五成。我們都做過這種事，無一例外。不管我們多麼誠實、多麼出於善意，我們老是在誤導自己與他人，理由無他，因為人腦的存在是為了追求效率而非精準。不僅我們的記憶會短路（因此目擊者的證詞不見得會被法官重視），人腦的運作也嚴重偏頗。怎麼會這樣？因為人腦得設法理出頭緒，弄清楚我們目前的處境，過程中，根據的是我們既有的想法及過往的經驗。人腦每次接受新的資訊，都會根據我們既有的價值觀與結論加以評估與判斷，因此人腦會往當下我們覺得真實的想法靠攏。例如姊妹關係好的時候，有關妹妹的記憶就會偏向正面解讀。當姊妹關係變調時，同樣的記憶就會有不同的解讀結果，我們會重新調整角度，試著合理化現在何以對她怒火相向。去年耶誕節她送的貼心禮物，而今被視為高高在上的施恩之舉。上回她忘了邀請我去她的湖邊小屋，如今看來並非無心之過，而是刻意漠視的結果。至於梅瑞迪斯捏造父親性侵一事，只要我們瞭解她這性侵的想法出自什麼樣的價值觀，就會更明白她這麼做的理由。梅瑞迪斯自小與父親的關係緊繃、不睦。再者，梅瑞迪斯幾段和男性的戀情都以失敗收場，包括一次離婚。因此根據她的價值觀，「和男性建立親密關係」之路並不是很順暢。接著是在一九八○年代初期，梅瑞迪斯成了激進的女性主義分子，開始以兒童受虐為研究主題。連續幾年，她接觸一個又一個駭人的受虐故事，訪問亂倫的倖存者（多半是小女孩）。她也廣泛報導幾項同期間被揭發的不實研究；後來證明，這些報導誇大了兒童遭猥褻的案例（實際上，這類悲劇沒有那麼普遍。其中最廣為人知的一項研究指出，有三分之一的成人女性幼時曾被猥褻，後來證實這數字不實）。此外，梅瑞迪斯這時陷入熱戀，愛上另一名女子（亂倫的受害者）。梅瑞迪斯和她建立了互相依存的「有毒關係」。梅瑞迪斯想扮演「救世主」，幫助伴侶走出過去的創傷，對方則以自己過去的創傷為武器，博得梅瑞迪斯的關愛（關於這中間的界線，詳見第八章）。與此同時，梅瑞迪斯和父親的關係愈來愈惡化（其實獲悉女兒女女戀，他並不訝異），並持續接受心理治療，頻率之高已到了強迫症的地步。她有一個以上的治療師，每個人背後都有一套驅策自己行為的價值觀與想法，他們不約而同地堅稱，梅瑞迪斯之所以不開心，絕非只是壓力極大的記者工作或差勁的人際關係所致；一定有其他原因，其他更深層的原因。大約在同一時期，盛行一種名為「壓抑記憶」（repressed memory）的新形態治療。過程中，治療師會讓患者進入類催眠狀態，引導患者回到童年，重新體驗或恢復被遺忘的記憶。這些記憶多半無傷大雅，但至少包含一些創傷記憶。於是，梅瑞迪斯落得今天可憐的下場：每天的研究與報導內容都圍繞著亂倫與兒童性侵打轉，對父親埋怨不已，一輩子和男人的關係均以失敗收場，而唯一似乎瞭解她又愛她的人，是一個有亂倫遭遇的女子。每隔一天，她都躺在心理診所的沙發上，照治療師的要求，一遍遍哭著回憶她記不得的東西。瞧，這真是捏造記憶、指控曾遭到莫須有性虐待的絕佳素材。腦袋在處理、消化、解讀我們體驗的現實時，最優先要務是想辦法把這些經驗和之前的經驗、感覺、想法連結，讓前後達到一致與連貫。但是現實人生裡，過去與現在往往無法連貫。這時候，我們當下的體驗會抵觸我們之前視為真理與合理的一切。為了讓前後連貫與一致，我們人腦有時會捏造不實的假記憶。藉由連接現在的經驗和想像（捏造）的過去，我們的心智可以繼續保留之前建構的意義。一如之前所提，梅瑞迪斯的故事並非特例。實際上，從一九八○年代到九○年代初，有數百人背負性暴力的不實指控，其中許多人因此入獄。對那些不滿現狀的人而言，這些帶有暗示性的解釋，加上喜歡炒作的媒體（社會不乏已達流行病程度的性虐待及暴力事件，搞不好連你都是受害人），在在給了人們誘因，不自覺地對過往記憶稍稍加油添醋一番，或是在解釋受苦的現狀時，把自己塑造成受害人，藉此逃避責任。復原壓抑記憶療法是一種手段，可挖出一些深藏而沒有自覺的欲望，變成看似具體、鮮明的記憶。這個療法以及隨之而來的心態在當時非常普遍，因而出現「假記憶症候群」（false memory syndrome）一詞。這現象改變了法院的作業，數千名治療師挨告，被吊銷執業證照。復原壓抑記憶療法被淘汰，取而代之的是更務實的辦法。最新的研究只是進一步強化當年的痛苦教訓：信仰與看法可被塑造，記憶絕不可靠。坊間不乏經典名言，諸如「信任你自己」、「順著自己的直覺」等聽起來順耳的老調。不過實情可能是不要太過相信自己才對。畢竟我們的心與腦非常不可靠，也許我們應該多多質疑自己的意圖與動機。若我們都會犯錯，也老是犯錯，難道不該自我質疑、不假辭色地挑戰自己的想法與假說嗎？難道這不是求進步的合理之道嗎？這聽起來也許讓人惶恐害怕，形同自廢武功，但實情正好相反，避免過度相信自己，不僅是更安全的選項，也更能解放鬆綁自己。堅信不疑的風險在日本壽司餐廳，艾琳坐在我對面，努力解釋她為什麼不相信死亡這件事。我們兩人已經在這裡消磨了近三小時，她吃了四條黃瓜捲、一個人喝了一整瓶清酒（其實第二瓶也已經一半下肚），現在是週二下午四點鐘。我沒有約她。她是透過網路發現我人在這裡，飛奔過來找我的。這不是第一次了。她以前也不請自來過。艾琳深信她可以戰勝死亡，也深信需要我幫忙才辦得到。但是她要的不是類似向公關或顧問徵詢意見、公事公辦之類的協助。她要的不只這些：她要我做她男友。為什麼呢？經過了三個小時的溝通質詢，加上一瓶半的清酒，我還是一頭霧水。對了，我的未婚妻也在場。艾琳覺得我未婚妻必須出席，三人一起討論才有意義。艾琳希望讓我的女友知道，她很大方，「願意三人行」，也想讓我女友（現在已是我妻子）安心，「不要覺得受到她的威脅」。二○○八年我參加一場勵志座談會時，認識了艾琳。她是個不錯的人，只不過有點異想天開，響應新時代思潮（New Age）。怪歸怪，她是一名專業律師，畢業於常春藤名校，顯見頭腦一流。無論我講什麼笑話，她都很捧場，認為我挺迷人的──嗯，瞭解我的人都知道，我自然是跟她滾過床單了。一個月後，她邀我越過大半個國家搬去和她同居。在我看來，這可是個危險訊號，所以努力和她劃清界線。她卻說，若我拒絕和她同居，她就自殺。哇，這又是另一個警訊。我立刻重新設定電子郵件及所有電子設備，將她列進拒絕往來的名單。這招雖然減緩她的行動，卻無法制止她。我們還沒認識的前幾年，她出過嚴重的車禍，幾乎命喪輪下。實際上，她的確符合醫師定義的「死亡」（腦死了幾分鐘），但是最後奇蹟似地甦醒。她「恢復意識」時，表示一切都改變了。她變得非常講究靈性與精神生活，相信能量療法、天使、宇宙意識、塔羅牌。她也認為自己是個療癒者、通靈人，能夠看到未來。不管是基於什麼理由，她見到我的第一眼，就決定她和我注定要一起攜手解救世界。照她的說法，就是「治好死亡」。她被我封殺後，另外設了新的電子郵件帳號，有時一天可以寄來十多封憤怒信件。她也用假名在臉書與推特上註冊，不斷地騷擾我及我的好友。她架設了一個和我相似的網站，在上面發表十多篇文章，聲稱我是她前男友，說我騙過她、背著她偷腥，還說我答應娶她卻反悔，強調她和我是天生的一對。我聯絡上她，要她關了網站。她說，除非我飛到加州和她一起生活，否則免談。這是她所謂的妥協與讓步。從頭到尾，她的理由都是：我們倆注定要在一起，這是上帝的旨意。她說有天半夜，她聽到天使的聲音醒了過來，天使以不容置疑的口吻告訴她，「她和我的特殊關係」是地球邁向永世太平新時代的先兆（她的的確確是這麼跟我說的）。在壽司餐廳碰到她之前，她寄了數千封電子郵件給我，不管我有無回覆，回覆時態度有禮或是怒氣沖沖，完全改變不了現狀。她的心態不變，她的想法沒有一絲鬆動。這情形持續了七年多（至今仍是進行式）。小小的壽司餐廳裡，艾琳不斷地豪飲清酒，一邊叨絮她是如何靠能量療法治癒她家愛貓的腎結石，連講了幾小時還不停。這時，我腦海裡有了一個想法。艾琳是自我成長狂，花大把銀子買書、上課、參加研討會。最不可思議的是，她會把上課的心得完全具象化，所以一旦有了夢想與目標，她會堅持到底：畫出藍圖，採取行動，力抗反對聲浪與失敗打擊，愈挫愈勇。她是個無可救藥的樂觀主義者，自信心高得離譜。例如她說到治癒愛貓腎結石一事，口氣之得意，猶如耶穌治癒痲瘋病患者拉撒路（Lazarus）。真是有夠扯。但是她的價值觀簡直被搞得慘不忍睹，一文不值。她把每件事「都做對」，不代表她是對的。她對一切都是那麼有把握，那麼堅信不疑，自信與篤定的程度之強，毫無鬆動讓步的餘地。她用長篇大論告訴我她這個缺點，說她知道自己對我這麼窮追不捨，既不理智也不健康，還搞得她和我都不開心。但不知怎地，她覺得這感覺真不錯，因此無法不理會，也無法停止。一九九○年代中，心理學家羅伊・鮑梅斯特（Roy Baumeister）開始研究惡人與惡行。基本上，他分析做壞事的人，找出他們做壞事的原因。當時的社會普遍認為，人之所以行惡是因為他們非常看不起自己，亦即他們非常自卑，自我評價甚低。鮑梅斯特發表了一個驚人的發現，稱這個假說並不成立，更正確地說，研究結果與社會普遍的認知背道而馳。他說，有些犯下滔天大罪的惡人自我感覺超好，也正是這種罔顧現實的自戀心態，讓他們名正言順地傷害人、輕蔑人。一個人若覺得對他人惡形惡狀是合情合理、名正言順，勢必對自己的正義感、想法、應得的權益，有著不可撼動的自信與把握。種族主義分子篤信自己的基因優於其他人種，所以可以歧視、施暴其他種族。宗教狂熱分子引爆炸彈自殺，連帶奪走十多條人命，因為他們堅信自己可以烈士的身分在天堂占一席之地。男性性侵、虐待女性，因為他們堅信女性的身體歸他們所有。惡人絕不會認為自己是惡人，反而堅信其他每一個人才是壞蛋。以心理學家史坦利・米爾葛蘭（Stanley Milgram）命名的知名實驗（後來簡稱米爾葛蘭實驗〔Milgram Experiment〕）飽受爭議，在實驗的過程中，研究員要求充當裁判的「正常人」處罰打破規則的受訪者。有時處罰會加重到虐待身體的程度，但沒有一個充當裁判的受訪者提出異議，或者要求研究員給個解釋。反之，許多裁判頗享受被委以衛道重任的那種踏實感。問題是百分之百「就是如此」的那種確定感，不僅不可得，往往還會衍生更頻繁、更嚴重的不安全感。許多人毫不懷疑自己的工作能力，也十分確信自己該拿多少薪水。但是這種不可撼動的確定感並沒有讓他們更好受，反而更難過。看到其他人搶在他們之前獲得升遷，他們覺得自己被輕蔑、被小看，沒有得到應有的賞識與肯定。即便像偷看男友的手機簡訊，或是向朋友打聽其他人對自己有何看法等小事，都是不安全感作祟，以及死也要得到確定感之故。檢查男友的手機簡訊，也許未發現異狀，但事情鮮少會到此為止。接下來，你可能開始懷疑他是不是有另一支手機。在工作單位，你和升遷失之交臂，覺得自己被輕蔑、被踐踏，用這理由安慰自己。但這樣的解釋，只會讓你懷疑同仁，疑神疑鬼他們講得每一句話（也重新詮釋他們對你的感覺），這種心態只會進一步降低你升遷的機會。你可能繼續糾纏那個「理應」跟你是一對的特別男子，但是每被冷落一次，每當夜深人靜一個人獨處時，你只會愈來愈質疑自己是不是哪裡做錯了。在這樣充滿不安全感與強烈失落感的時刻，隱伏的「理所應當」心態就容易跑出來作祟，左右我們的思維：心想我們有權小小作弊一下，以遂我願；認為其他人都活該受罰；覺得我們要什麼就可以拿走什麼，有時甚至靠暴力硬取。這再一次應驗了逆向法則：你愈是努力想確定什麼，就愈沒有安全感，也愈沒有把握。但反之亦然：愈是不確定、愈是不知情，對於自己不知道的狀態愈是感到自在。保持不確定感，就不會一直批評或論斷別人；也可先行打預防針，不會每次在電視上、辦公室或街上看到什麼人，便出現沒必要的刻板印象與偏見。不確定感更讓我們擺脫愛批評、論斷自我的習慣。我們不知道自己是不是有人愛？不知道自己多有魅力？不知道自己能多成功？想知道答案的唯一辦法是保持不確定的心態，保持開放的心態，透過親身經歷找到答案。不確定感是進步與成長的基礎。有句古諺說，自認無所不知的人，什麼也學不了。除非所知不足，就無所學。我們愈是承認自己所知不多，求知的機會愈多。我們的價值觀一定有瑕疵、不足之處，所以自認價值觀完美無缺，會讓自己陷入危險、僵化、武斷的思維，不僅容易衍生理所當得的心態，也會諉過卸責。碰到問題時，唯一的解決辦法是先承認現階段我們的行為與想法有錯，而且行不通。這種願意敞開心房，接受自己有錯的心態，是改變與成長的必要條件。我們要時時檢討自己現有的價值觀與價值觀的優先順序，調整後，讓它們更好、更健全；不過在檢討與調整之前，首先要對目前的價值觀抱持不確定的態度。我們必須發揮智慧、仔細剖析，找出其中的瑕疵與偏見、和主流世界格格不入之處，最後正視並坦承自己的無知，因為無知比什麼都來得重要。曼森的迴避法則你可能聽過「帕金森定律」（Parkinson’s law）：「工作會愈變愈多，直到填滿完成工作可用的時間。」無疑地，你可能也聽過莫非定律（Murphy’s law）：「會出錯的事就是會出錯。」下次若參加時髦的雞尾酒派對，想要讓某人對你印象深刻，不妨拋出曼森的迴避法則（Law of Avoidance）：愈是威脅你認同感的東西，你愈是會迴避。換言之，若某件事愈是逼著你改變對自我的看法，挑戰你對成敗機率的想法，質疑你的言行和價值觀並不一致，你愈是會迴避做這件事。知道自己與這現實世界到底有多合拍，多少可讓我們安心些。任何會動搖這種安心狀態的事物（即便這事說不定能改善你的人生），你都會打心底覺得它恐怖並敬而遠之。曼森法則適用於人生的好事與壞事。賺了一百萬和輸光所有錢，對自我認同感的威脅程度不相上下。成為搖滾巨星對自我認同感的威脅，可能和丟了工作差不多。這也是為什麼大家害怕成功一如他們害怕失敗，因為道理都一樣：都會威脅他們對自我的認同。你遲遲不動筆編寫你嚮往已久的電影劇本，因為你害怕這麼做會抵觸自己身為保險理算師的身分。你不敢和丈夫討論閨房情趣，不敢說自己想要更刺激的探險，因為你擔心這樣的談話會挑戰你循規蹈矩的乖乖女形象。你不敢跟友人說你要跟他絕交，因為你擔心一講出來，會和你寬大和善的一面抵觸。這些都是絕佳的大好機會，我們卻一再任其溜走，因為我們對自己的看法與感受可能會因此改變，危及我們認定並努力實踐的價值觀。我有一個朋友，老說要把自己的藝術作品放到網上，希望成功轉型，成為專業藝術家（或至少半專業藝術家）。他說了好幾年，也存了錢，甚至架設了幾個網站，上傳了個人簡介。但至今一直停留在只聞樓梯響的階段。問他為什麼，他總是找得出理由：畫作的解析度不夠好，他又畫了更好的作品，他還沒準備好全心投入等等。幾年過去，他一直沒有放棄「真正的工作」。為什麼？因為即使他嚮往靠藝術創作賺錢維生，他最後可能變成「乏人喜歡的藝術家」，而這遠比繼續當個「沒沒無聞的藝術家」來得可怕。至少當個「沒沒無聞的藝術家」，他比較放心，也比較習慣。我的另一個朋友是派對常客，幾乎日日出門買醉、獵豔。過了多年「精彩的生活」，他發現自己非常孤單、沮喪，健康也不佳。他想要放棄跑趴的生活方式，每次提到我們這些有女友、「已收心過著比他安定的生活」的人，莫不露出強烈的嫉妒心。然而他依然故我，從未改變。多年來，他繼續夜夜落單、買醉。他總是有藉口，總是找得到理由不去放慢步調。放棄這樣的生活方式，會嚴重威脅他的認同感。畢竟派對咖是他唯一熟悉而習慣的角色，要他放棄等於要他命。我們每個人都有自己的價值觀，會努力保護、實踐、維護，也會以各種理由將之合理化。儘管我們並無此意，但人腦就是這麼連結與設定的。一如之前所提，我們會偏好已知、自認為確定無疑的事物，即使這有失公允。若覺得自己是好人，就會習慣避開可能與這個想法抵觸的情境。若自認是一流的廚師，會一遍又一遍爭取機會，證明自己實至名歸。想法總是優於一切，除非我們改變對自我的看法，改變我們對自己是什麼樣的人或不是什麼樣的人的想法，否則我們會繼續選擇逃避，無法克服焦躁不安。我們無法改變。照此看來，「認識自我」、「找到自我」說不定是危險的，因為這會讓你的角色定型，不容改變，也會強加一些不必要的期望在自己身上，反而故步自封，接觸不到內在的潛能與外在的機會。我主張不要找到自我，永遠不要確定自己是誰，因為這才能讓你繼續努力，繼續探索，逼迫你保持謙卑，接受別人和你之間的差異。殺掉自我佛教認為，人對「我」的看法其實是武斷的意識建構，必須放掉「我」存在的這個想法。那個你據以定義自己是誰的武斷標準會侷限你，讓你陷入困境，因此最好擺脫它。就某種意義而言，佛教鼓勵大家「管他的咧」。聽起來有點不靠譜，但「管他的」人生態度的確有益心理健康。只要放掉我們對自己的看法與說法，就能擺脫自己給自己的枷鎖與束縛，勇敢付諸行動（勇敢面對失敗），進而成長進步。當一個女子坦承：「的確，我可能不擅長處理關係。」踏出這一步，接下來她可能就自由了，勇於採取行動，結束糟糕的婚姻。她無須為了向自己證明什麼而繼續保住搖搖欲墜的可悲婚姻，反正她的身分已名存實亡，無須保護。當之前那個學生坦承：「的確，我應該不是異類；搞不好只是害怕而已。」有了這層認知，他就自由了，敢再次做夢。他不再害怕在學術上求表現，或是以失敗收場。那位保險理算師坦承：「的確，不管是我的夢想還是我的工作，一點也不獨特出眾。」然後他就自由了，開始心無旁騖撰寫電影劇本，看看會有什麼結果。以下提供好壞皆有的訊息：其實你的問題和大家差不多，鮮少是獨一無二的特例。所以放手「管他的」，是解放自己的重要一步。恐懼起因於不合理地要求百分之百肯定的答案，因為過於沉浸在恐懼裡，而退縮不前。搭機時，假定飛機會墜毀；假定專案的構想太蠢，一定會遭大家嘲笑；自認將成為大家嘲笑或漠視的對象。這些想法等於是明白告訴自己：「我是特例；我和大家不一樣；我是唯一，我與眾不同。」這是典型的水仙花情結，百分之百的自戀人格。你覺得自己的問題值得特殊待遇，自己的問題獨一無二，得用一套不符實體宇宙定律的特殊數學公式才能解決。我的建議是：不要當特例；遠離獨特。重新定義個人的標準，記得要符合平凡與通用的原則。評量自己時，切勿將自己視為明日之星，或是尚未被發掘的天才，也不要把自己歸類為可憐之至的受害人，或是讓人同情的失敗作品。要用更平凡的角色（如學生、夥伴、友人、創作者）來定義或評量自己。自選的身分愈是特別與少見，受到的威脅感愈大。因此定義自我時，角色愈簡單平凡愈好。換言之，放棄對自我一些浮誇不實的想法：諸如不世出的智者、天才，擁有讓人不敢逼視的魅力，或是受虐被害的程度超出大家想像。這意味著放棄理所當得的心態，擺脫這世界虧待你的想法，放棄多年來靠求痛快、飄飄然支撐自己的習慣。一如戒毒癮的男女，你也會在捨棄這些想法與習慣時，出現戒斷症狀。但是只要過了戒斷期，你將煥然一新，更上一層樓。對自己少一些確定感質疑自己的想法、懷疑自己的信念，是世上最難學的技能之一。難是難，還是辦得到。以下列出一些問題，有助於讓大家對自己少一些確定感。問題１：萬一我錯了怎麼辦？我有個女性朋友，最近訂了婚準備結婚成家。她的未婚夫實在又牢靠，不酗酒，不會對她動粗或惡待她，為人友善，有份不錯的工作。但是她訂婚後，她哥哥就不停告誡她：說她的選擇失之草率；警告她跟了這男的，日子不會好過；也嫌她不負責任；責怪她做錯了。我朋友每次都反問她哥哥：「你到底有什麼毛病？為什麼這件事這麼困擾你？」他的反應彷彿沒事似的，絲毫不覺得妹妹訂婚對他構成任何困擾，他只是想幫忙，為自己的妹妹把關。但顯然的確有事困擾他：也許是他自己對婚姻有著不安全感；也許是手足間愛較勁；也許是因為嫉妒；也許是他自己走不出被害者情結，不懂得替別人感到開心，反而酸言酸語讓對方難過。這是普遍存在的通病：我們每個人都是最差勁的自我觀察員。每次生氣、嫉妒、難過時，我們多半不知道自己為什麼會這樣，要找出深層原因，唯一可行的辦法是讓我們身上披的「確定感」盔甲多些裂縫，亦即不斷地質疑對自我的看法，質疑自己是不是想錯了或想偏了。「我嫉妒嗎？如果是，為什麼？」「我在生氣嗎？」「真如她所言，我是在保護自我尊嚴？」讓這類自我反省成為一種習慣。不乏例子顯示，反問自己這類問題，雖然只是簡單的動作，足以讓我們變得謙卑，也更具同理心，有利於解決諸多問題。但值得注意的是，反省自己是不是想錯了，不見得意味著你有錯在先。若丈夫把妳揍得死去活來，只因為妳把燉牛肉燒焦了，這時妳還自問是不是誤會他了，其實他並沒有施虐。的確，有時候不是妳的錯，錯的是對方。我的用意只是要大家拿這個問題來反問自己，然後咀嚼消化我提的這個想法，並非要大家嫌棄自己。謹記若要有所改變或突破，你一定是搞錯了某些事。若是整天枯坐，日日傷心難過，表示你對生活裡的某件大事一定有所誤解。直到你開始質疑自己，並找出問題所在，否則一切難以改變。問題２：若我真的錯了，為什麼會這樣？許多人會反問自己是不是錯了，但鮮少人會再進一步自問：若我真的錯了，為什麼會這樣？之所以裹足不前，是因為背後的潛在意義讓人痛苦。發現自己錯了，不僅會質疑自己的價值觀，也會強迫自己想想另一個與既有價值觀抵觸的見解。亞里斯多德說過：「受教育的目的在於能夠欣賞與包容他人的想法，但不見得要接受。」能夠欣賞、分析不同於自己的價值觀，但無須非接受不可，這可能是改變人生、活出人生意義的核心技能。至於我那位朋友的哥哥，他應該自問：「若我對妹妹婚禮的想法有誤，為什麼會這樣？」往往答案不言而喻（可能是自私心作祟╲沒有安全感╲自戀的渣男等）。若他妹妹訂婚後真的健康而幸福，那麼除了是他自己的不安全感以及糟糕之至的價值觀作祟，實在找不出其他理由可以解釋他的行為反應。他自以為是地認為，自己知道什麼對妹妹最好；自以為是地認為，她無法為自己的人生做出重大決定；自以為是地認為，他有權利與責任替她做決定；他確信自己才是對的，其他人都錯了。不論是朋友的哥哥或是我們自己，即便找到了問題所在，依舊難以承認這種自以為是、理所當得的價值觀。因為會痛，鮮少人會反問自己這麼難的問題，但是這類盤根錯節的問題，有助於我們揪出造成我朋友的哥哥以及我們行為走調的真正核心。問題３：相較於現在的困境，認錯是讓我們／他人的問題改善還是惡化？這問題有如石蕊試紙，一試結果立現，決定我們到底是在實踐堅實的價值觀，還是神經質地在找碴，將怨氣出在每個人身上，包括自己。我的目的是讓大家分析哪個問題（選項）比較好。因為誠如「掃興貓熊」所言，人生的問題沒完沒了。以下有兩個選項，我朋友的哥哥會選哪一個？Ａ：繼續和家人為敵，鬧得全家雞犬不寧，讓原本應該幸福快樂的時光變調，並破壞他和妹妹之間的互信與互重，只因為他直覺妹妹的未婚夫不夠格，配不上她。Ｂ：懷疑自己真有能耐決定妹妹的人生，決定什麼適合她、什麼不適合她，保持謙遜，相信她自己可以作主。就算他信不過，也會基於對妹妹的愛護與尊重，接受一切的結果。許多人會選擇Ａ，因為做起來比較簡單：不需要過多的思考，不用瞻前顧後，也不用容忍他人做出與自己相左的決定。但Ａ選項也會讓牽涉到的每一個人陷入不幸與痛苦。選項B有助於維繫健康而幸福的關係，因為關係是建立在互信與尊重之上。選項Ｂ會強迫我們保持謙遜，承認自己的無知與不足。也正是選項Ｂ能讓我們擺脫不安全感的枷鎖，認清自己現在冒出了衝動、偏心、自私等心態。但是選項Ｂ的過程痛苦，相當不容易，很多人會迴避。我朋友的哥哥不滿她和男友訂婚，陷入和自我的拔河戰。當然啦，他堅信自己是在保護妹妹。但是誠如我們所見，所謂的想法是武斷的心智建構；更糟的是，往往是事後編造的，用以合理化我們自選的價值觀與評斷標準。實情是，朋友的哥哥寧願搞砸他和妹妹的關係，也不認為他可能有錯，即使後者可能讓他擺脫不安全感（正因不安全感作祟，讓他一開始就有了偏見）。我奉行的常規少之又少，不過有一條我奉行了多年：若是我得決定，不是我完蛋，就是其他每一個人落得完蛋的下場，最後完蛋的大有可能（非常有可能）是我。這是過來人的經驗談。我曾是個混帳，因為不安全感驅策以及漏洞百出的確定感作祟，唧歪行為不勝枚舉。實在不甚光彩。我的意思是，世上仍有一些作法是會讓人完蛋的；有時候，你的確比其他大部分人來得正確。這是不爭的事實：若你覺得自己在對抗全世界，很可能你對抗的只是你自己。管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生第１章別硬撐，別勉強查爾斯・布考斯基（Charles Bukowski）酗酒、流連花叢、嗜賭、粗鄙、小氣、潦倒，在人生最落魄時，寫寫詩。這種人，你可能打死也不會找他指點迷津；勵志書大概也不太可能以他為榜樣。正因為如此，他是本書最理想的開場人物。布考斯基想當作家。可惜數十年來，求職路上處處碰壁，沒有一家雜誌、報社、期刊、經紀公司、出版商肯聘用他。據他們透露，布考斯基的作品糟透了：粗鄙、敗壞風俗、道德墮落。拒絕信愈堆愈高、打擊一個接一個，讓他掉入酗酒引發的憂鬱症深淵，久久走不出來，這輩子幾乎都被憂鬱症纏身。他白天在郵局擔任郵件分揀員，薪水微薄，一有錢幾乎都拿去買醉，若有剩，也全花在賭馬上。晚間，他孤零零一個人喝著酒，有時靈感來了，就在快掛掉的打字機上敲出幾行詩。但往往是醉得倒在地板上不省人事。他就這麼過了三十年，日子渾渾噩噩，離不開酒精、毒品、賭博、妓女。從小到大，一事無成，對自己嫌東嫌西，不過說也奇怪，在他五十歲時，一家小型獨立出版公司的編輯突然看上他。該編輯無法支付他大筆稿費，也不保證他的書會暢銷。但他對布考斯基這個魯蛇與酒鬼卻有說不出的奇怪感情，決定冒險放手一試。這是布考斯基生平第一次真正走運，他心裡很清楚，這可能是他這輩子的唯一，所以他回信給那位編輯：「我有兩個選擇。一，繼續在郵局工作，然後發瘋……；二，離開郵局，試著邁向作家之路，然後餓死。我決定寧願餓死。」他一簽完合約，短短三週便完成第一本小說，書名就叫《郵局》（ Post Office ）。在獻詞的部分，他寫道：「嘸人可獻啦。」布考斯基一炮而紅，成了小說家與詩人，陸續出版了六本小說與數百首詩，銷售量突破兩百萬本。他一夕爆紅跌破大家眼鏡，連布考斯基本人也覺得匪夷所思。像布考斯基這種大起大落的際遇，是我國文化表述與書寫的主要素材。布考斯基的人生體現了美國夢：為了理想奮鬥不懈，不輕言放棄，最後成功實現大夢。這樣的素材十之八九會被拍成電影。看到布考斯基這類故事，我們會說：「看到沒？他打死不放棄，屢敗屢試，相信自己一定辦得到，堅持到底，克服一個又一個難關，最後憑一己之力脫穎而出！」但奇怪的是，布考斯基死後，墓碑上刻著：「別試了。」（Don’t try，也有別硬撐、別勉強之意。）看到了沒？儘管著作大賣，讓布考斯基名利雙收，但他就是個魯蛇，他本人也有這個自知之明。他之所以成功並非因為一心想往上爬，而是因為他自知是人生輸家，坦然接受這個事實，然後如實地寫出自己的遭遇與心境。他絕不會違背自我，勉強自己扮演別人。布考斯基的過人之處並非他能克服難如登天的障礙，或是把吃苦當吃補，最後如願發光，成為文學界的一盞明燈；而是他反其道而行，發揚負能量。他最大的本事不過是敢赤裸裸地將真面目（尤其是最糟糕、最惡劣的一面）全攤在陽光下，義無反顧地公開他的失敗史。這是布考斯基成功發跡的真實故事：一點也不覺得身為人生失敗組有什麼丟臉。視成功為空氣，完全不把它當回事。就連成名了，他也依舊我行我素：在詩歌朗誦會上不客氣地對觀眾口出惡言；在公開場合露鳥；看到每個女人都想染指。名氣與成就沒有讓他改頭換面，變成更好的人；他也不想靠改邪歸正名利雙收。不斷砥礪自己進步，成功不遠矣，但不代表兩者是同一件事。今天的社會與文化過分強調不切實際的正向思考：要更開心、更健康、凡事爭第一（優於其他人）、更聰明、更敏捷、更富有、更性感、更受歡迎、更有生產力、更受人歆羨、更受人崇拜。此外，要十全十美、卓爾不群：早餐前清空肚裡的黃金，早飯後吻別隨時可自拍入鏡的另一半以及兩個半小孩（其中半個是毛小孩）。接著親駕直升機到辦公室，埋首於工作；這工作不僅能實現個人抱負，也極具意義，說不定將來能拯救地球。不過，當你停下腳步認真思考後會發現，傳統的人生忠告與寶訓（不外乎正向、快樂的勵志言論），其實是一種固著現象（fixation），一直圍繞你欠缺的東西與缺陷打轉。這些忠告像雷射光，讓你看見自己有哪些不足，看見自己對現狀有哪些不滿，然後不斷提醒你，對你洗腦。你認真學習最佳的賺錢術，因為你認為自己錢賺得不夠多。你站在鏡子前，不斷替自己打氣，告訴自己「我很美」，因為你覺得自己不夠美。你拿著約會以及人際關係教戰手冊，因為你覺得自己不討人喜歡。參加可笑的心像練習（visualization exercise），希望自己更成功，因為你覺得自己不夠成功。諷刺的是，固著於正向思考（要變得更好、更卓越）只不過一再提醒我們：自己不是什麼樣的人、自己缺了什麼、自己應該要做到卻做不到的事。畢竟，沒有一個真正開心的人需要站在鏡前，不斷催眠自己，說自己很開心，她本來就很開心啊。德州有句諺語：「最小的狗叫得最大聲。」有自信的人，不須向他人證明自己有自信。有錢人不須擺闊，向別人證明自己有錢。不管你是不是應驗了德州那句諺語，你若老是奢求某樣東西，其實是不自覺地一再強化某個現實（unconscious reality）：你不是那樣的人。周遭人以及電視廣告不斷對你洗腦，要你相信掌握快樂人生的關鍵，是有個更好的工作、有輛更拉風的車、有個更漂亮的女友，或是給孩子準備充氣式溫水泳池。社會不斷告訴你，通往美好人生之途就是不斷地增加，有一還要有二、有三……買了再買、有了再有、做了再做、上了再上、多還要更多。你沒有一秒鐘不飽受資訊轟炸，無論大小事，樣樣你都要在意、花心思。在意要不要買台電視機，在意度假有沒有比同事玩得更開心，在意要不要把那個草坪飾品買下來，在意哪支自拍棒適合自己。為什麼？依我猜測，因為消費者在意愈多，買得也愈多，自然有助於活絡市場。對店家而言，生意上門固然是好事，但是身為消費者的你，在意太多，對自己的心理健康可不是好事。久而久之，你會過度專注於表象與假象，將人生花在追求虛幻的快樂與滿足。美好人生的關鍵是放下，管他那麼多幹嘛。我們應該在意怎麼減少而非增加，只需在意真相、當下以及重要之事。周而復始的回饋迴路惡性循環人腦裡有個隱伏的怪咖，若放任它不管，會讓你完全抓狂。看看下面的例子，是否覺得似曾相識？想到要當面和某人對質，心情忐忑不已。忐忑焦慮讓你坐困愁城，啥事也做不了，然後你開始自問，怎麼會這麼焦慮？這下你因為探究焦慮而焦慮。喔，糟糕！雙倍焦慮！為焦慮而焦慮，焦慮有增無減。快，我的威士忌在哪兒？或者，我們來談談你的脾氣。你為了一件愚不可及的鳥事發火，而你並不知道為什麼自己這麼容易動怒，這下你更怒了。然後，在怒火未全熄下，你發現動不動就生氣把自己搞得膚淺又小氣，你不喜歡這樣。因為太討厭這樣的自己，你對自己也怒了。你看看自己：你怒自己為生氣而生氣。去你的，忍不住拳頭就往牆壁招呼。又或者，你老是擔心自己有沒有做對的事，擔心復擔心，久了質變成擔心自己擔太多的心。或是你每犯一次錯就心懷愧疚，繼而開始對自己心懷愧疚感到愧疚。抑或動不動就傷心、落寞，後來僅僅一想到這狀態，就更傷心、更落寞。歡迎進入周而復始的回饋迴路（feedback loop）惡性循環。很可能你已經歷過幾次，或者現在都還深陷其中。「天啊，我怎麼老在重複回饋迴路──我實在是再失敗不過的遜咖。我應該停止這樣下去。唉，連自稱是魯蛇，都讓我覺得是十足的失敗者。我應該停止看扁自己。喔，去他的！我這老毛病又犯了！看到了沒？我是魯蛇！啊，我受不了啦！」朋友，冷靜點。信或不信，這正是身為人類的精彩處。首先，地球上少之又少的動物具備深思熟慮的能力，但人類卻擁有這難得的資產，有能力思索探究自己的想法。於是我想起自己曾上影音網站YouTube觀看迪士尼小天后麥莉・希拉（Miley Cyrus）的影帶，事後覺得自己真是個神經病，竟會想看麥莉・希拉的演出。啊哈，多神奇的自覺力！這下問題來了：當今社會透過消費文化（標榜產品有多麼神通廣大）、社群媒體（不外乎炫耀自己過得比別人酷炫），讓世人漸漸相信，焦慮、恐懼、愧疚感等負面情緒毫不可取。我的意思是，若打開臉書動態功能，每個人似乎都過得洋洋得意。靠，本週就有八個朋友結婚！電視播出某個十六歲少女生日禮物竟是一輛法拉利。一個屁小孩發明了一個應用程式（衛生紙用完會自動到府補貨），二十億美元輕鬆入袋。反觀你，宅在家裡替愛貓剔牙，忍不住嫌自己，人生過得真遜。回饋迴路惡性循環與流行病幾乎只剩一線之隔，我們許多人已因它承受過大的壓力，過於神經質，也過於嫌棄自己。回到我祖父那個年代，他日子若過得不順遂，一樣會抱怨人生糟透了，但是他可能會說：「哇塞，我百分之兩百覺得自己今天過得跟牛屎一樣背。但是……唉，管他的，這就是人生，還是認命地乖乖回去鏟乾草吧。」時間轉到今天，大家會怎麼反應？假若你覺得今天真是他ㄨ的有夠背，儘管這情緒只有短短五分鐘，但已經有三百五十張炫耀人生何處不幸福、何處不風光的照片，朝著你窮追猛打，你不可能不自我懷疑，自己是不是哪裡不對勁。就是這懷疑自我、嫌棄自我，讓我們走不出自責的惡性循環。我們不爽自己感到不爽，愧疚自己心生愧疚，生氣自己發火，焦躁自己變得焦躁。唉，我到底怎麼了？這也是「管他的」何以這麼重要，甚至可以拯救世界，因為這世界就是這麼地該死，但那又怎樣，關我們啥事。學著放下，因為現實一直都是這樣，未來也不會改變。別在意你心情不好，學著放下，如此一來，你的回饋迴路就會短路斷線。你要跟自己說：「我覺得糟透了，但是管他的，誰在乎呢？」然後，恍若被撒上一層名為「管他的」魔法仙塵，不再因為心情不佳而嫌棄自己。喬治・歐威爾（George Orwell）說過，為了看清眼前的世界，需要抗爭、抗爭、再抗爭。其實釋放壓力與焦慮的辦法近在眼前，只是我們太忙，無暇注意，反而只顧著欣賞養眼照、成人電影，或是忙著研究健腹器材的廣告（其實這些器材根本沒用），埋怨自己怎麼沒練出線條分明的六塊肌與人魚線，順利泡上一個金髮妞。我們在網上嘲笑「第一世界種種無病呻吟的問題」（First World problems），但我們的確為成功付出了代價。過去三十年，壓力導致的健康問題、焦慮以及憂鬱症大幅飆高。家家戶戶裝了液晶電視，享有日用品宅配到家的服務；儘管走過吃不飽、穿不暖的危機，卻換成精神上、形而上的危機找上我們。現在有太多事情要煩心，有太多機會可選擇，以致不知該怎麼取捨，不知什麼該在意，什麼不該在意。我們可見、可知的事物多到數不清，同理，世上有數不清的辦法與方式讓我們知道自己不夠格、不夠好，讓我們認清事情並非我們想像的那樣，因此覺得糾結，甚至撕心裂肺。近年來，「追求快樂人生」之類老掉牙的文章，在臉書轉載分享了八百多萬次，但這些文章根本鬼話連篇，狗屁不通，以下才是真理，只不過大家都不明白：冀求正向思考、正向經驗，本身就是一種負向的生活經驗。說來弔詭，坦然接受自己負面思考與負面能量，反而是正向思維。這完全顛覆了慣有的思維（mind-fuck）。所以我給你一分鐘好好整理思緒，或者再讀一遍這句話：冀求正向思考、正向經驗，其實是負面作為。這也是已故英國哲學家艾倫・華茲（Alan Watts）所謂的「逆向法則」（backwards law），一個人愈是用力追尋快樂，愈不容易快樂滿足。因為愈去追求什麼，代表你愈缺什麼。一個人滿腦子愈想致富，不管賺再多的錢，愈是覺得自己很窮、一文不值。一個人愈是強烈地想變成讓大家心動的性感美女，每看一次自己，愈是覺得自己醜，儘管實際長相並沒有那麼不堪。愈是強烈地想過得開心、人見人愛，反而變得愈孤單、愈膽小害怕，儘管身邊有眾人圍繞。愈是強烈地想提升心靈層次，愈是變得自以為是與膚淺。這就像有次我嗑藥之後，想一步步靠近住家，房子反而離我愈來愈遠。是的，我剛剛借用吸食迷幻藥之後產生的飄飄然幻覺，點出追求幸福快樂背後的哲學思維：別他媽的管東管西、瞻前顧後，幹嘛在意那麼多。存在主義哲學家卡繆（Albert Camus）說過（我打包票他說這話時，絕沒有嗑藥）：「愈是追求與探索構成幸福的因素，愈是與快樂無緣。愈是追求生命的意義，愈不懂得生活。」換個更簡單、更直白的說法：別硬撐，別勉強。等等，我知道你想說什麼：「馬克，聽你這麼一說，我興奮地奶頭都變硬了，但我為了雪佛蘭卡馬龍跑車（Camaro，電影《變形金剛》裡的大黃蜂）辛苦存了這麼久的錢，就這麼放棄嗎？為了凹凸有致的火辣身材餓了這麼久，難道就這麼放棄嗎？畢竟，我已花了大錢添購健腹機！還有，我一直奢想的那棟湖邊大宅？若把這一切都放下，不再念念不忘，我可能一事無成過一輩子。你不希望我這樣吧？」很高興你提出這個問題。不知道你有沒有發現，當你對某件事愈不在意，你對那件事的表現與掌控其實愈好。最不在意某事成敗的人，最後卻插柳成蔭。當你停止在意，一切的問題似乎都迎刃而解了。到底這是怎麼回事？逆向法則講究「退一步」、「留餘地」，其實是有道理的：「管他的」之所以有用，發揮的是以退為進、欲擒故縱、以不變應萬變的逆向操作。若擁抱正向是負面思維，那麼接受負面思維其實會激發正向意識。在健身房忍受痠痛煎熬，有利健康與精力獲得全方位的改善。失敗是成功之母。勇於面對怯懦與不安全感，反而更自信、更有群眾魅力。誠實以對儘管痛苦，卻最能催生關係裡的互信與互重。經歷恐懼與焦慮之痛，反而讓你勇氣十足、堅持到底。說真格的，我可以繼續長篇大論下去，但你應該已抓到重點。人生裡值得的一切均得經歷一番波折等負面的生命經驗才可得，逃避、壓抑、消音只會招來反效果。逃避受苦會繼續受苦，逃避糾結會繼續糾結，否認失敗會繼續失敗，掩飾丟人現眼的一面才叫丟人現眼。人生恍若織布，少不了疼痛這條織線。硬把疼痛線從布疋上扯掉，不僅行不通，還會讓整塊布四分五裂。想方設法避開疼痛，意味太在意疼痛。反之，面對疼痛，若能一笑置之，你將銳不可擋、攻無不克。我這輩子在意太多事情，但是對很多事情也一笑置之。這種「管他的」態度，彷彿一條被大家忽視、沒人走的路徑，踏上後，一切將有所不同。你這一生可能遇過這種人，偶一為之的「管他去」發作，結果締造驚人的成就。你本人這輩子也可能有過「管他去」的經驗，沒想到一鳴驚人，登上讓人望塵莫及的高度。以我自己為例，不顧一切辭掉才做了六週的財務工作，另在網路創業，高居「管他的」名人榜前幾名。後來又「管他的」賣掉大部分資產移居南美洲。會瞻前顧後嗎？一點也不，想到就去做了。「管他的」想法一冒出來，人生藍圖就此峰迴路轉：職涯出現重大轉彎；一時衝動從大學退學加入搖滾樂團；終於下定決心，甩掉又渣又廢的男友（你頻頻逮到他偷穿你的絲襪）。「管他的」是一種人生態度，睥睨讓人惶恐不安以及難以克服的挑戰，並照常行動。「管他的」表面上看似簡單，其實不然，要掀開蓋子，才看到又一袋的墨西哥捲餅。不好意思，連我自己也不知道這句話是啥意思，但管他的呢！我只是覺得一袋墨西哥捲餅聽起來很屌，所以大家聽懂就好。我們多數人的生活裡充滿糾結與掙扎，因為過於在意不該在意的東西。我們太在意加油站服務員態度不佳，抱怨他們找錢時盡給零錢。太在意電視台突然停播我們喜歡的一檔節目。太在意同事沒好奇地問我們週末怎麼過。同時間，我們的信用卡刷爆了，養的狗討厭我們，念國三的小孩在浴室吸食甲基安非他命（甲安），而我們卻還在為對方只找零錢以及電視停播《大家都愛雷蒙》（ Everybody Loves Raymond ）氣得跳腳。聽好啦，人生就是這麼回事，你終將會死。這道理大家都明白，但我怕你忘了，所以再提醒你一次。你和大家一樣會步入死亡，只不過早晚罷了。短暫的人生，你能在意的事情有限，而且非常有限。若你沒有自覺，不知取捨地在意每件事、每個人，不久你就會掛了，還會被人嫌到不行。管他的、懶得鳥他，是一門高深工夫。儘管這說法聽起來有些荒謬可笑，搞不好還有人罵我是混蛋。其實我要說的是，我們必須學習聚焦、學習有條不紊地整理思緒。然後選出對自己重要的東西，捨掉不重要的，取捨標準是依據個人不斷琢磨與微調的價值觀。這工夫得之不易，需要花一輩子修練才行。期間你會一再失敗，但這可能是一個人一輩子最值得費神的糾結，也可能是這輩子唯一的糾結。你過於在意每個人、每件事。因為自覺付出很多，所以覺得自己理應時時刻刻都過得開心愜意，每件事理應照你要的方式進行，這是一種病，會活剝生吞你。你把每一次逆境或不順心視為不公不義、每一次挑戰視為挫敗、每一次不便視為在找你碴、每一次的意見不合視為背叛，結果走不出思維的死胡同，飽受自覺該得到卻得不到的煎熬，在自己惡性循環的回饋迴路裡兜圈子，動個不停卻哪裡也到不了。「管他的」是一門高深工夫多數人對「管他的」若有什麼想法，不外乎波瀾不驚、漠不關心、泰山崩於前面不改色等等。他們期許自己不受任何事情動搖，不向任何人低頭。一個人對每件事都不動感情，覺得任何事都沒有意義，這樣的人有個名字：精神變態（psychopath）。你怎麼會想和精神變態一樣？說實話，我還真想不通。那麼「管他的」到底是什麼意思？先研究以下三種「高深工夫」，應該有助於你釐清這個問題。高深工夫１：「管他的」不代表漠不關心；而是就算和別人不一樣，依舊愜意自在。我先說清楚。漠然、對啥都提不起勁，絕對不能和可敬或自信畫上等號。對什麼都無動於衷的人，既無能又膽小。他們是沙發上的馬鈴薯、網路上的酸民（Internet troll）。漠然的人往往擺出一副無動於衷的樣子，其實這反而欲蓋彌彰，顯示極在意別人怎麼看他們。他們他ㄨ的在意別人怎麼看他們的髮型，因此故意懶得洗頭與梳頭。他們他ㄨ的在意別人怎麼看他們的想法，因此故意酸言酸語、自以為是的批評東批評西。他們害怕與任何人走太近，因此自以為自己獨一無二，沒人能理解他們的問題與內心世界。冷漠的人害怕這個世界，也不敢面對選擇造成的衝擊與後果，因此遇上重大關卡，乾脆不做任何選擇。他們隱身在自己一手打造的地洞裡，在他們那個毫無喜怒哀樂的灰色世界中，眼裡只有自己，只會自怨自艾。他們一再和這個需要時間與精力關注的不幸人生（或生活）劃清界線。關於人生，有一條不成文的真理：世上沒有「不用在意」這回事。你這輩子勢必在意某樣東西或某個人。在意與關心是我們生理構造的一部分，因此我們一定會時時刻刻在意這或掛心那。這下問題來了。什麼是我們該在意的？我們該選擇什麼作為在意的對象？怎麼樣才能不在意那些不重要的鳥事？我母親最近被一位好友騙了一大筆錢。獲悉後，若我覺得事不關己，我會聳聳肩，喝著我的摩卡，一邊下載最新一季的電視劇《火線重案組》（ The Wire ），心不在焉地對母親說：「悲摧啊，媽。」但我並未無動於衷，反而氣炸了。我說：「去他的。媽，我們一定要告他告到底，一定要將這混蛋繩之以法。為什麼這麼激動？因為我什麼也不管啦（don’t give a fuck，亦有豁出去之意）。必要的話，我一定要搞砸這傢伙的人生，讓他生不如死。」以上說明了「管他的」的第一門高深工夫。當我們說：「要命，小心啊！馬克・曼森啥也不管了。」這話的意思不是馬克・曼森什麼也不在乎；相反地，這意味馬克・曼森不在乎會碰到多少障礙，目的未達前絕不罷休。只要他覺得正確、重要、高尚，他會不顧一切往前衝，就算惹誰不快也在所不惜。也就是說，馬克・曼森是以第三人稱的語氣敘述自己的行動，只因他認為這事是他該做的，下定決心，管他的，豁出去再說。所以這崇高得讓人敬佩。別誤會，不是要大家崇拜我這蠢蛋啊。我說的是克服障礙這回事，以及義無反顧，敢和別人唱反調、敢當異類、敢被社會唾棄，一切只為了捍衛自己的價值觀。他們敢直視失敗，敢對失敗比中指。他們不在乎打擊、挫折，不在乎當眾出洋相，不在乎一敗塗地。對於訕笑，他們一笑置之，然後繼續為理念與目標奮戰，因為他們知道這麼做才對，知道這事比他們重要，比他們的感覺、自尊、自我都來得重要。他們說「去他的」，並非針對生命中一切的人與事，而是針對生命中一切的無關緊要。他們把「操心」（fucks）留給真正重要的人與事，包括朋友、家人、存在目的、墨西哥捲餅，以及偶爾纏身的一、兩件官司。由於他們的操心只留給重要的大事，所以別人也會把心思與注意力保留給他們。人生還有一個不成文的真理。你對某人而言可能是個貴人、可能是他人生的轉捩點，但對其他人而言，你可能是個笑話或難堪的提醒。這兩種角色並存，不可能只有好、沒有壞，因為人生不可能一帆風順，碰不到逆境。有句古諺說：無論置身何處，隨遇而安（No matter where you go, there you are）。同理也適用於逆境與挫敗。無論走到哪兒，反正都躲不掉五百磅重的屎等著你。其實這完全不礙事，重點不是想方設法遠離屎，而是找到你樂於打交道的屎。高深工夫２：別在意逆境，首先應該操煩比逆境更重要的東西。想像你在一家生活用品店，看到一個上了年紀的婦女對著收銀員咆哮，怒罵他不接受她的三毛錢折價券。這婦女為什麼發飆？不過是區區三毛錢罷了。讓我告訴你原因吧：這婦女每天無所事事，最大的樂趣可能就是收集各種折價券。她上了年紀，又一個人生活，孩子不孝，從未回家探視她。她已經三十多年沒有性生活，健康不佳，每次放個屁，下背就疼得要命。她的年金花得快見底了，可能得包著尿布直到進棺材，兒時遊戲「糖果樂園」（Candy Land）已離她甚遠。所以她收集折價券，這是她人生僅剩的樂趣。她在意的東西只剩她自己以及該死的折價券，而那個臉上長滿痘痘的十七歲收銀員捍拒她的折價券，不讓折價券玷污收銀機的架式，恍若中世紀挺身捍衛淑女貞操的騎士，這下老奶奶不爆發才怪。在意了八十年的東西被人嫌，不爽如暴雨傾瀉而下，然後滔滔不絕端出「我那個年代……」、「以前的人多懂得敬老尊賢……」等等，沒完沒了地說教個不停。有人動不動就不爽爆粗口，連參加個該死的夏令營，都要對主辦單位選購的冰淇淋嫌棄一番，可見他們生活多無聊，找不到可讓他們操煩的大事。倘若發現自己沒完沒了地對雞毛蒜皮的事過於費心，諸如前男友在臉書換了新的大頭照，電視遙控器的電池一下子就沒電，又錯過了乾洗手液買一送一的特賣活動。若真是這樣，很可能是你的人生平順，沒發生什麼值得讓你理直氣壯操心的大事。但這才是問題的所在，而非沒買到乾洗手液，也不是電視遙控器惹你不快。我有次聽到一位藝術家這麼說，一個人若沒有問題，心思會自動想辦法製造一些問題。我想多數人（尤其是高學歷、受寵的白人中產階級）所謂的「人生問題」並非問題，說穿了不過是生活裡沒有可擔心掛慮的要事而無病呻吟。照此邏輯，花時間與心力找出重要、有意義的事情，也許是最有效益的投資與運用。因為找不到有意義的事情，你的在意與操心可能花在無聊、微不足道的鳥事上。高深工夫３：不管你明白與否，你一直在取捨什麼該在意、什麼不該在意。人並非天生就懂得不在意，其實，過於在意才是天性。看過小男孩為了帽子不是他要的藍色色調而哭得死去活來嗎？去他的小屁孩。我們年輕時，覺得一切都那麼新鮮刺激，一切都不容小覷。用放大鏡檢視一切，斤斤計較得不得了。我們在意每個人、每件事。在意別人對我們的評價，在意那個可愛的男生╲女生是否回我們電話，在意襪子是否和服飾相配，在意生日派對上的氣球是什麼顏色。年紀漸長，經驗多了（也目睹時間飛逝），我們漸漸意識到，這類事情不太會對我們的人生造成長久衝擊。我們之前甚為在意某些人的意見與看法，現在這些種種和我們的人生再無瓜葛。當年被人拒絕是多麼痛不欲生，而今看來卻是對我們最好的結果。我們明白他人鮮少注意到關於我們的表面細節，於是不再讓自己過於執著這些無足輕重的細節。久而久之，我們愈來愈知道什麼才是我們該在意的，這就是所謂的成熟。這樣不錯，你應該試試。一個人學會只操心真正值得操心的事，就叫作成熟。一如《火線重案組》的警官邦克・莫蘭德（Bunk Moreland）對搭檔吉米・麥克納提（Jimmy McNulty）說：「本來不是你該在意的，你卻雞婆多事，結果搞得自己被人嫌。」呿！沒錯，我還是下載了這齣電視劇。隨著年紀漸長，到了中年，一些東西開始出現變化：體力下降、自我認同感愈來愈根深柢固。我們清楚自己是怎樣的人，並且接受這樣的自己，包括不是十分光彩、傲人的一面。說來奇怪，這反而是一種解放，我們不再對大小事斤斤計較，看透人生就是如此，不管好壞，坦然接受。我們明白，不可能治癒所有的癌症，這輩子不可能登上月球，不可能摸到好萊塢女星珍妮佛・安妮斯頓（Jennifer Aniston）的美胸。但是沒關係，日子還是要過。我們保留日漸縮水的操心給人生真正值得關注的事：家人、密友、高爾夫等等。說來讓人驚訝，這樣也夠多了。將操心的事精簡之後，我們的生活可以該死地開心，而且開心得長長久久。我們不禁要想，布考斯基這個瘋癲的酒鬼搞不好在謀畫什麼。別硬撐，別勉強。馬克，這本書到底有什麼意義？本書有助於你進一步想清楚自己的選擇，從中判斷生活裡什麼重要、什麼不重要。我相信，現代人多少要面對一種日益流行的心理疾病：大家再也無法容忍，有時糟糕的事並非壞事。我知道這乍聽之下好像是懶得動腦的結論，但我向你保證，這是攸關生死的大事。因為我們相信，示弱不被允許，事情不容搞砸，所以真的把事情搞砸的時候，會不自覺地自責。我們開始懷疑自己是不是天生就有問題，這種不安全感逼得自己出現各種過度補償的行為（overcompensation），諸如一下子狂買四十雙襪子，週二晚上就著烈酒的酒後水吞服鎮靜劑贊安諾（Xanax），或是乾脆拿槍掃射滿載學童的校車。這都是因為堅信人不可以示弱、不可以有不足或缺陷，結果讓自己陷入惡性循環的回饋迴路，社會與文化也漸漸被這樣的心態與機制主宰。管他的、不在意、甭操心，這種態度是重新調整我們對生活與生命期許的簡易辦法，讓我們學會取捨，知道什麼重要、什麼不重要。有了這個能力，就擁有了我所謂的「實用性開竅」（practical enlightenment）。這類開竅並非虛無縹緲、無病無痛、整日開開心心之類的胡謅，而是務實、泰然地接受受苦乃人生常態，明白不管付出多少，人生就是存在挫敗、失去、遺憾，甚至死亡。一旦能泰然面對生活丟給你的各種磨難（相信我，磨難通常是接二連三不會停），你多少會在精神與心靈上所向無敵。總之，克服疼痛的第一步（其實也是唯一的辦法）便是學習忍受疼痛。本書完全不提怎麼做可以解決你的難題或緩解你的痛苦，本書不喜歡拐彎抹角，所以直白地說，本書並非助你邁向成功的工具書，也不可能成為這類的書籍，因為成功是我們腦袋憑空想像出來的幻影，是鞭策我們前進的虛構目標，是我們心靈的亞特蘭提斯（Atlantis，傳說中沉沒於大海的虛幻島嶼）。反之，本書意在幫你將痛苦化為勵志的工具，將創傷化為力量，將問題稍稍升級到正面的層次。這是非常實在的提升。本書有如指南，教導你如何把吃苦當吃補，如何更寬心、更謙卑地看待受苦。就算背負沉重的包袱，還能夠苦中作樂、輕鬆生活。面對恐懼，不驚不疑；淌淚時，淡然笑看一切。本書不是成功學書籍，不會教你求勝，而是教你怎麼放下，甚至怎麼求敗。教你盤點人生，去蕪存菁，只留下人生最重要的精華。教你閉上眼睛，放心地往後倒，無須擔心會受傷。教你少操點心，不要硬撐、勉強自己。管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生第９章人終將一死「你要為自己尋找真理，我會在那裡等你。」這是喬許對我說的最後一句話。他說這話時，語帶諷刺，既想讓人覺得有深度，又有意嘲弄那些故意裝得有深度的假文青。他當時喝得醉醺醺，神智有些渙散。他是我的好友。十九歲是我人生的重大轉折點。當時，好友喬許邀我參加在德州達拉斯北邊附近一個湖邊派對。派對在一棟公寓大樓裡舉辦，而該大樓蓋在山上，山下有座泳池，泳池下方是可俯瞰湖水的懸崖。懸崖雖不高，約九公尺，但足以讓人在跳下去前三思。只不過在酒精催化與同儕的鼓譟下，衝動很容易取代三思。到了派對現場，喬許和我跳入泳池，喝著啤酒，聊著一般年輕躁動男人愛聊的話題。我們聊到酒精、樂團、泡妞，以及喬許那年暑假從音樂學院休學後經歷的一切。我們還談到要組樂團，一起搬到紐約。唉，遙不可及的夢想啊。當時我們都還小。「從那裡跳下去安全嗎？」我用下巴遙指那懸崖。「安全啊，一直有人往那下面跳。」喬許說。「你會跳嗎？」他聳聳肩不置可否。「也許吧，再看看。」傍晚，喬許和我分道揚鑣，各自找樂子。我看上一個美麗的亞裔女孩，她也熱中電玩。對我這個十幾歲的怪胎來說，看到同好恍若中了樂透。她對我一點意思也沒有，但人很友善，願意聽我講話，於是我講個不停。幾罐啤酒下肚，我終於鼓起勇氣約她一起到屋裡拿些吃的。她欣然同意。我們爬坡走向屋子，碰到下坡的喬許，我問他要不要一些吃的，他說不用。我問他，待會兒在哪裡碰面。他笑說：「你要為自己尋找真理，我會在那裡等你！」我正經八百地點頭說：「好，我和你在那裡碰頭。」彷彿兩人都知道真理在哪裡，也知道怎麼去到那裡。喬許笑著走下坡，往懸崖走去。我笑著繼續爬坡往屋子走去。我不記得在屋裡待了多久，只知道我和女孩出來時，大家都不見了，還聽到救護車的聲音。泳池空無一人。大家都往山下跑，已經有人來到懸崖下的湖邊。我遠遠看到兩個男生在湖裡游泳。當時天色已黑，很難看清遠方的動靜。音樂持續播放，但大家無心聆聽。不知發生了什麼事，我匆匆下山往湖邊跑，嘴裡嚼著三明治，好奇大家到底在看什麼。跑到半途，亞裔女孩跟我說：「我想出大事了。」我來到山腳時，忙不迭詢問旁人喬許在哪兒。沒有人理會我，大家都看著湖面。我再問了一次，有個女孩開始號啕大哭。這時我才開始根據現況，慢慢釐清事情的真相。潛水員花了三小時，才在湖底找到喬許的屍體。法醫驗屍後表示，他的雙腿因酒精性脫水，以及從懸崖跳下的撞擊力道，抽筋彎曲。他跳到湖裡時天色已黑，湖水之下一層一層的，因為太黑，沒人分得清求救聲來自何方，只聽到水濺聲與求救聲。他的父母後來才跟我說，他的泳技很差。我之前根本不知道。事發整整十二小時後，我才哭出來。隔天早上，我開著自己的車返回奧斯汀，途中打電話給父親，告訴他我人還在達拉斯附近，沒法去上班（那年暑假我在他公司打工）。父親問我：「為什麼？出了什麼事？你沒事吧？」就在那時，我的情緒整個崩潰：眼淚、嗚咽、痛哭、鼻涕，一發不可收拾。我將車停在路邊，緊掐著手機，像個小孩對著父親號啕大哭。那年暑假，我得了重度憂鬱症。我想之前我就有憂鬱症，只不過現在病症到了覺得一切毫無意義的程度。因為過於悲傷，導致生理也出問題。親朋好友來看我，替我加油打氣。我坐著聽他們說得體的話，做得體的事；我感謝他們好心來看我，然後刻意露出笑容，謊稱我的病情已有起色，但是實際上，我毫無感覺。事發後，一連幾個月我都夢到喬許。夢中，他和我天南地北談論生死，也隨便聊一些沒意義的東西。在那之前，我一直是典型的中產階級小孩：抽大麻、懶散、不負責任、有社交障礙、強烈缺乏安全感。喬許在很多方面都是我崇拜、學習的對象。他年紀比我大，比我有自信，經驗也比我多，個性包容，樂於接納周遭的一切。有次我夢到喬許，我和他一起坐在按摩泳池裡（沒錯，很奇怪）。我對他說：「我真的很難過你死了。」他大笑。我無法一字不漏記得他說的話，但大意是：「你幹嘛在意我死了？反正你那麼害怕活著。」我醒來後痛哭不已。當時我坐在母親專用的沙發上，盯著不見底的深淵，直視看不到盡頭、無以名狀的虛無，想著那兒曾有喬許這個好友。就在這時我突然清醒，意識到若找不出任何理由不採取行動，那我也沒有任何理由不去行動。既然人免不了一死，就沒有理由屈服於恐懼、難堪、不光彩，反正這些到最後也會隨著死亡而消失。因此我在短暫的人生裡，花了這麼多時間逃避痛苦與不安，不過是不想繼續活著吧。那年夏天，我戒掉了大麻、香菸、電玩。我放棄可笑的搖滾明星夢，從音樂學院退學，到大學註冊上課。我開始上健身房，甩掉好幾磅肉。我認識一些新朋友，也交了第一個女友。生平首次認真上課學習，結果意外發現，只要用功，自己竟然也可以拿到好成績。次年夏天，我給自己下了戰帖：在五十天內讀完五十本非文學書籍。結果我辦到了。次年，我轉學到東岸的一流大學，首次擠入人生勝利組，不論是學業或社交都交出亮麗成績。喬許過世是我人生最重要的分水嶺。喬許溺斃前，我放不開也沒有抱負，老是在意外人的眼光，過得綁手綁腳。喬許過世之後，我洗心革面換了一個人：有責任感、充滿好奇心、認真勤奮。我至今仍有丟不開的包袱與不安全感（只要是人都有），但是我把心思擺在更重要的事情上，不安全感與包袱則擺在一邊，就此展開截然不同的人生。說來也奇怪，某人的死竟然幫助我活下去。我人生最低潮的時刻，也是有所轉折的關鍵時刻。誰不怕死？由於怕死，我們不思死亡、避談死亡、拒絕認識死亡。甚至周遭親友過世，我們也極力和死亡保持距離。然而若以逆向思考，死亡猶如一道光，可以照亮生命的意義這條幽暗甬道。沒有死亡，一切顯得沒有重量、沒有意義，一切經驗都是武斷而主觀的，所有價值觀與評斷標準一夕之間化為零。凌駕在自我之上恩斯特・貝克爾（Ernest Becker）是學術界的異類。一九六○年，他取得人類學博士學位，博士論文比較了佛教禪宗與精神分析這兩個看似不搭軋的領域。當時，禪宗受嬉皮與毒蟲簇擁，佛洛伊德的精神分析則是心理學領域的「旁門左道」。貝克爾的第一份工作是在大學擔任助理教授，他批評精神治療是一種變相的法西斯主義，不僅沒有科學根據，也是對弱勢族群與無助者的壓迫。偏偏貝克爾的上司就是精神科醫師。貝克爾這個初生之犢，就這麼高調地將上司比喻為希特勒。誠如大家所料，他被炒魷魚了。於是貝克爾帶著他的激進想法另謀出路，後來受聘於加州大學柏克萊分校，但這份工作也維持不久。貝克爾反主流、反當權派的作風讓他備受刁難，也因為他獨特的教學方式飽受抨擊。他會用莎士比亞作品教授心理學，用心理學教科書教授人類學，用人類學數據教授社會學。他上課會打扮成李爾王的模樣，或是拿著劍和人決鬥，也會長篇大論批評和教學無關的時政。他的學生崇拜他，其他教員討厭他。不到一年他又被解聘了。後來，他落腳在舊金山州立大學，工作了一年多。但因為學生爆發示威潮抗議越戰，校方請國民兵進入校園鎮壓，事情愈演愈烈。貝克爾站在學生這一邊，公開譴責院長的作為（沒錯，又將上司貼上希特勒的標籤），過沒多久，他再次捲鋪蓋走人。貝克爾六年內換了四次工作，第五次被解雇之前，他得了大腸癌，預後情況不太樂觀。接下來幾年，他都臥病在床，復元的機會渺茫。貝克爾決定撰寫一本探討死亡的書籍。貝克爾一九七四年過世，他的書籍《拒絕死亡》（ The Denial of Death ）得到普立茲獎的肯定，成為二十世紀最有影響力的哲理書之一，撼動了心理學與人類學，同時提出鞭辟入裡的哲學觀，至今讀來仍擲地有聲。該書基本上提出兩個論點：一、人類之所以獨特，在於我們是動物界唯一具備抽象思考與概念化能力的生物。狗不會枯坐著、擔心牠們的職涯。貓不會反省過去的錯誤，或是推敲換個作法會有什麼不同的結果。猴子不會為了未來的走向與可能性爭得面紅耳赤。魚也不會想東想西，心想若是自己的鰭長一點，其他的魚會不會更喜歡牠。身為人類，我們有幸有能力想像自己在一個假設性的情況裡，有能力思索過去與未來，有能力想像不同於現況的其他現實或處境。貝克爾說，由於這種獨一無二的心智能力，我們每個人早晚會意識到自己免不了一死。由於我們有能力把各種不同版本的現實概念化，也是唯一有能力想像少了自己的世界是什麼模樣的動物。有了這樣的認知與覺醒，便衍生出貝克爾所謂的「死亡恐懼」（death terror），這是一種來無影去無蹤的存在性恐懼，深藏在我們所思所做的每一件事背後。二、貝克爾的第二個論點有個前提：我們本質上有兩個「自我」。第一個自我是生理自我（physical self），這個我會吃、喝、拉、睡。第二個是概念性自我（conceptual self），是每個人對自己的看法，亦即我們對自己的認同（identity）。根據貝克爾的論點，我們遲早會認清生理自我終究會壽終正寢，認清死亡不可避免，也因為不可避免，我們恐懼得要命。身體終究會物化消失，為了平衡這個恐懼感，我們努力打造、建構永生不死的概念性自我。這也是何以人類會這麼拚命想將名字留在建築物、雕刻或書背上。或是不得不花很多時間照顧其他人（尤其是小孩），無非是希望身故後繼續發揮影響力（概念性自我）。即使身故多年，我們依舊會被緬懷、敬重、當成偶像崇拜。貝克爾稱這樣的努力為「不朽計畫」（immortality projects），讓概念性自我在身故後依舊流芳萬世。他說，所有的人類文明基本上都是不朽計畫：至今依舊存在的城市、政府、硬體建設、權貴，都是我們祖先留下的不朽計畫，是他們留下的概念性自我。耶穌、穆罕默德、拿破崙、莎士比亞等人，至今的影響力不輸他們在世時，甚至有過之而無不及。這就是不朽計畫的精神：不管是精通藝術、征服新天地、累積巨富，或只是有個可延續好幾代的龐大家族，都是不朽計畫的一部分。人有個與生俱來不想死的欲望，因此人生一切的意義都受到這個欲望的左右與影響。宗教、政治、運動、藝術、科技創新，都是不朽計畫的結果。貝克爾主張，當某一個族群的不朽計畫與另一個族群有所衝突時，戰爭、革命、大屠殺就會出現。長達幾百年的無情鎮壓，或是血腥殺害多達數百萬人之舉，已經被合理化為捍衛族群不朽計畫的手段。但若不朽計畫失敗，或是喪失其意義，亦即概念性自我活過生理性自我的可能性不再，死亡恐懼（人類最害怕又最深層的焦慮）會重新鑽進我們的腦袋。創傷、出糗、遭人群訕笑，也都會重燃死亡的恐懼。貝克爾還指出，精神疾病亦然。簡言之，我們的不朽計畫就是我們的價值觀，是衡量人生意義與價值的指標。若我們的價值觀禁不起考驗失敗了，就心理層面而言，我們本身也成了敗筆。貝克爾的論點主張，我們每個人莫不受到恐懼的驅策而過度在意一些事，因為在意與操煩某些事，足以轉移我們對現實與死亡的注意力。若想徹底放下，啥也不管，必須進化到準靈性狀態（quasi-spiritual state），接受人生無常的道理。在這樣的狀態下，人比較不會受困於形形色色的自以為是。貝克爾在病床上終於悟出一個道理：不朽計畫其實是製造問題，而非解決問題。人不該試著在全世界力推或建立概念化的自我（往往不惜透過致命性武力以遂此願），反而應該質疑概念化自我是否有問題，並安於人終將一死的這個事實。貝克爾稱這是「吞苦藥」（bitter antidote），他自己也在看著生命終將走上盡頭之際，試著和死亡和解。死亡讓人害怕，卻是必然。因此，我們不該迴避這樣的事實與覺知，應該盡己所能地接受它。一旦能泰然接受死亡（深層的恐懼與潛藏的焦慮，是激勵人生一切不怎麼遠大的抱負的動力），我們才能無拘無束決定自己的價值觀，不盲目追求不合邏輯的不朽，並且擺脫危險又教條式的看法。死亡的陽光面我攀著一塊石頭又一塊石頭，穩健地往上爬。這個一再重複的高強度體力活動，導致我腿部肌肉緊繃、疼痛，但眼見快到崖頂，我興奮地有些恍神、欲罷不能。到了上頭，仰望一望無際的天空，我一個人立在崖頂。朋友都在下面，對著海面拍照。最後我爬過一塊巨石，整片海景盡入眼簾。從這裡，可以清楚看見遠端海平面的弧線，彷彿那是地球的盡頭。海天一線的景致一藍如洗。嘶吼的強風颳過我的臉龐。我仰頭望天，陽光燦爛，美不勝收。我站在南非的好望角，以前人們以為這是非洲的最南端，也是世界的最南端。這裡海象險峻，常有暴風雨肆虐，海域危機四伏，險象環生。這裡見證了幾百年的貿易、商業史，也見證了人類的努力與奮進。諷刺的是，這裡雖叫好望角，卻也是失望角。葡萄牙有句諺語Ele dobra o Cabo da Boa Esperança。字面意思是：「他環繞好望角而行。」意思是這個人已日薄西山，無法再有任何成績或成就。我跨過石塊，朝崖邊走去，想更貼近大海，讓廣闊的海面吞噬我。我淌著汗，卻覺得冷；興奮卻緊張萬分。這就是盡頭嗎？強風灌耳，我聽不到任何聲音，但是我看到了盡頭：懸崖和虛無只有一線之隔。我站著不動，離懸崖邊緣只有幾碼，可以清楚看見腳底下的怒潮拍擊著峭壁。海浪以排山倒海之勢撲向堅不可摧的崖壁。再往前一點，就是至少近五十公尺高的斷崖，下面怒濤滾滾。我的右邊是觀光客，散見在下面的風景區拍照，或是像螞蟻般列隊而行。左邊是隔著印度洋的亞洲。眼前是漫無邊際的天空，後面幾步是萬丈深淵，是我一直念念不忘的目的地。如果這就是盡頭呢？如果盡頭就是這樣呢？我環顧四周，發現只剩我一個人。我往崖邊跨出第一步。人體似乎生來就有一個雷達，一旦發現危及生命的情況會立刻示警。例如，站在沒有護欄的懸崖邊、離崖邊僅僅三公尺，身體會立馬緊繃、背部僵硬、皮膚腫脹，雙眼目不轉睛，不放過周遭任何一個細節。雙腳猶如岩石固定不動。這時彷彿有個看不見的大磁鐵，將你的身體緩緩拖回到安全範圍內。但是我拒絕磁鐵的吸力。拖著重如石塊的雙腿，繼續往崖邊靠近。現在距離崖邊僅一・五公尺，這時腦袋也加入熱鬧的派對。現在我不僅看得到懸崖的邊緣，低頭還看得到底下的崖壁，腦袋出現各種跌倒、失足、滾下崖，撲通一聲掉入大海的恐怖畫面。你的腦袋提醒你，還遠得很呢。另一個聲音說，笨蛋，你在幹什麼？別再往前走了，停下來。我叫腦袋閉嘴，然後繼續蹣跚往前。到了崖邊一公尺處，身體進入最高的紅色警戒狀態。現在只差一個不小心、踩到鞋帶跌倒，就可見到死神。要不然，強風也會把你捲到天人兩隔的大海裡。你雙腿顫抖，蔓延到雙手。若想出聲勸自己別做傻事，會發現連聲音都是抖的。一公尺的距離是多數人的絕對極限。因為近到彎身就能看到讓人粉身碎骨的深淵，但又安全到不會一個不小心就有奪命的危險。站在靠近絕壁的邊緣，還是會讓人感到一陣暈眩，忍不住反胃，即使這絕壁是風景如畫、美得令人陶醉的好望角。這就是盡頭了嗎？盡頭就是這樣嗎？我已經搞懂所有我該知道的嗎？我又小小前進了一步，然後再一步。現在距離崖邊只剩半公尺了。支撐我全身重量的前腿一直發抖，但我還是拖著軟腿往前走。對抗磁鐵的吸力，對抗腦袋的勸說，對抗所有求生的本能。現在只剩三十公分了。低頭就看得見崖壁。我突然忍不住想放聲大哭。身體本能地蜷曲，藉此對抗一些難以名狀或無中生有的威脅。強風無情地肆虐，思緒朝你伸出右勾拳，打得你鼻青臉腫。在距離崖邊三十公分的地方，感覺整個人飄了起來，彷彿飛上了天，成了天際的一分子（只要不直視下方）。這時你的確有點想縱身跳下去。我蹲伏蜷縮著身子，喘著氣，整理思緒，強迫自己俯瞰高崖下的白浪拍擊著巨岩。然後轉頭再次看向右邊，望著底下螞蟻般的人群在景點說明牌四周打轉拍照，有些人追著遊覽巴士，我心想運氣好的話會不會有人抬頭看到我。這時還想得到別人關注，非常荒謬，但整件事從頭到尾都很荒謬。當然啦，我離他們那麼遠，要看到我實在不太可能。即使看到了，因為距離過遠，他們能說或能做的也有限。除了風聲，我什麼也聽不見。這就是盡頭嗎？我的身體一直打顫，恐懼感已漸漸被盲目的幸福感取代。我集中心神，整理思緒，讓自己進入近乎冥想的狀態。沒有什麼能讓人這麼有存在感、這麼有覺察力，除非你站在離死亡僅只幾吋之遠。我直起身，再次看向遠方，禁不住露出微笑。我告訴自己，死亡沒什麼可怕。人主動就死、甚至興奮地直接面對死亡，自古以來就被熱烈探討。古希臘的斯多葛學派呼籲大眾隨時將死亡放在心上，才會更珍惜生命，面臨逆境也才更謙卑。在佛教諸多宗派裡，冥想與打坐其實是一邊為死預作準備，同時又保有知覺地活著。將自我消融在廣袤的虛無裡，進入所謂開悟的狀態，彷彿試著讓自己跨越到另一個世界。就連一頭亂髮的神經病馬克・吐溫（據悉他出生與死亡時剛好有哈雷彗星出現）都說過：「恐懼死亡來自於恐懼活著。生活充實的人已隨時準備好死亡。」回到懸崖邊，我彎身蹲下，微微後傾，用雙手扶著背後的地上坐下來。我慢慢伸出一隻腳，超過懸崖的邊緣，一塊小岩石突出於崖壁，我便將腳放了上去。然後伸出另一隻腳，放在同一塊石頭上。我坐了一會兒，重心往後，用雙掌撐著，強風吹亂我的頭髮。只要我專心注視遠方的地平線，焦慮感已沒那麼難以忍受。我再度坐直身子，俯瞰底下的懸崖峭壁。恐懼感再度升起，從脊柱一路往上竄，攫住四肢，心思如雷射般精準地協調身體的每一吋，只怕牽一髮而動全身，一個不小心就會粉身碎骨。恐懼感掐住全身，讓人幾乎窒息。每被掐住一次，我就放空，專心注視著崖底，逼自己直視可能的葬身之所，逼自己承認死亡的存在。我坐在世界的邊緣，好望角的最南端、進入東方的門戶，心情激動振奮，腎上腺素加速分泌。我的身體靜止不動，思緒與意識卻極度活躍，從來沒有這麼振奮過。我聽著風聲、看著怒濤、眺望地球的盡頭，然後開心地笑了。陽光燦爛，感覺如此美好。正視生命有盡很重要，因為有助於棄捨蹩腳、脆弱、膚淺的價值觀。多數人拚了命追逐名、利、關愛，或是需要他人一再肯定自己沒錯，肯定自己有人愛。但是死亡會逼著我們正視更痛苦卻也更重要的問題：你能留給世人什麼？當你走了，這個世界會有什麼不同？這世界會更好嗎？你留下什麼印記？你帶給後人什麼影響？人云非洲一隻蝴蝶動一下翅膀，遠在美國的佛羅里達州可能出現颶風。所以，你走後會掀起什麼樣的颶風？貝克爾指出，這搞不好是我們人生唯一真正重要的問題，但是我們一直迴避。一、因為這問題很難回答。二、因為這問題讓人害怕。三、因為我們根本不知道自己在幹啥。若我們迴避這個問題，瑣碎、讓人生厭的價值觀會綁架我們的大腦，控制我們的欲望與抱負。迴避無所不在的死亡凝視，膚淺的事物會變得重要，重要的事物反而顯得膚淺。人終將一死是我們唯一能確信的事。正因為如此，死亡是我們人生的指南針，為我們指引價值觀與抉擇的方向。死亡正確解答所有我們該問（卻從不問）的問題。若想泰然接受死亡，唯一的辦法是瞭解自己，把自己看得再大一點。也就是說，我們選擇的價值觀不只要服務自己，也要延伸於他人；要簡單且有立竿見影的效果，在自己的能力控制範圍內，且能包容外在嘈雜紛亂的世界。正確的價值觀是所有快樂的基礎與根本。不論是亞里斯多德、哈佛大學心理學家、耶穌基督或披頭四，他們一致認為，快樂來自於同一件事：關心比自己更重要的人或事；相信自己是更大整體的一分子，能對這個整體有所貢獻。相信自己的人生不過是更偉大、但難以理解的成品的副產品。這種感受正是我們為什麼要上教堂、披上戰袍、養兒育女、儲存退休年金、興建橋梁、發明手機的主因：不外乎覺得自己是更重要、更不可知世界的一分子。不過自以為是、理所當得的心態會剝奪這樣的感受。自以為是猶如黑洞，吸光我們所有的注意力，由外而內，只專注在自我身上，讓我們覺得自己彷彿是宇宙所有問題的重心，以為自己是所有不公不義的受害者，以為自己的成就應該在所有人之上。人容易犯自以為是的毛病，畢竟自以為是讓人感覺良好，但也會讓我們被孤立。對世界的好奇心、興奮感，最後反照出我們自己的偏見，而這偏見會投射於我們接觸的每一個人與每一起事件。自我感覺良好一開始也許讓人樂陶陶，也賣出不錯的票房，卻是靈性與精神的毒藥。就是這些動能毒害了我們。我們現在享有富裕的物質生活，精神與心理卻飽受低層次以及膚淺生活方式的折磨與摧殘。不少人擺爛，拋棄責任感，要求社會滿足與呵護他們的感受與感情。他們受不了不確定性，並將獨斷式的確定感強加於他人身上。端出自以為是的理由，粗暴地要他人接受。他們自我感覺良好，誤以為自己高人一等，卻拿不出任何行動。他們意興闌珊，恐懼嘗試，害怕失敗。現代人的心靈受盡寵溺，因而出現一批人，理所當然覺得自己可以不勞而獲。還有一批人，覺得自己有權享用、但無須犧牲。更有一群人自稱是專家、實業家、發明家、創新者、異數、教練，卻沒有真正的相關經驗。他們之所以敢這麼做，並非因為他們真的覺得自己比其他人厲害，而是覺得自己必須很厲害，才能被這個只標榜不凡的社會接納。我們的文化把矚目與成就混為一談，覺得兩者是同一回事。其實不然。不管你明白與否，或不管其他人明白與否，你真的已經夠棒了。這麼說，並非因為你發明了iPhone的應用程式，提早一年完成學業，或是大手筆替自己買了一艘美到沒天良的船。這些不會讓你變得偉大或不凡。你之所以夠棒了，因為面對無窮無盡的困惑、人終將一死的不變事實，你依舊負責任地活著，認真選擇什麼該在意、什麼該管他的。單憑願意取捨自己人生價值觀這麼個簡單的動作，就足以讓你活得漂亮，足以讓你被愛。即便你不曉得你這麼厲害，即便你現在活得貧病交迫，亦無損你很棒的事實。人當然早晚都會死，但我們能夠來世上走一遭，應該覺得自己夠幸運了。你可能不這麼認為，但是不妨挑個時間站在懸崖邊，也許你就會明白了。布考斯基曾經寫道：「我們都將一死，沒有任何人例外。這是個多精彩的馬戲團啊！光是這點，就應該讓我們彼此相愛，但事實不然。我們被生活瑣事搞得如驚弓之鳥，俯首稱臣。我們被虛無吞噬。」回顧那天晚上，站在湖邊，看著好友喬許的屍體被救護人員撈上來，我記得自己當時注視著德州黑漆漆的天空，看著自我漸漸融入黑暗。喬許過世後，我學到很多，遠遠超出預期。是的，我學會要把握每一天，學會為自己的選擇負責，學會放膽追求夢想，不要怕丟臉，不要被障礙所限。但這些只是小菜，還有更深層、更核心的課題：世上沒有什麼好害怕的，一點也沒有。這些年，不論是透過冥想、閱讀哲學書籍、幹些瘋狂事（例如站在好望角的懸崖上），我都時時提醒自己生命有其止境，這是唯一能讓我將無所懼這個認知擺在腦袋最顯眼位置的方式。接受自己會死，瞭解自己脆弱不堪一擊，一切就變得簡單多了。不管是戒掉毒癮、電玩癮，認清並對抗自以為是，接受自己的問題自己扛，忍受恐懼與不確定性，或是接受失敗與拒絕，這些全因為想到自己會死而變得更輕鬆簡單。我愈是深入凝視黑暗，人生愈是光明，心境愈顯平和，愈能避免不自覺地抗拒任何事。我花了幾分鐘坐在好望角的懸崖邊，飽覽一切。當我終於決定起身時，我用雙手撐著背後，慢慢站起身。我仔細檢查四周的地面，確定沒有一個不安分的石頭會釀成我的不幸。確定自己安全後，我開始退回到現實，一・五公尺、三公尺，每退後一步，身體就恢復一點。腳步愈來愈輕，我讓生命的磁石再度吸住了我。我往後退，跨過幾個石塊，回到主要的小路上，抬頭看到一名男子盯著我瞧。我停下腳步，和他交換眼神。「我看到你坐在那一頭的懸崖邊。」他說。他說的英文帶著澳洲腔。「那一頭」這個字不自然地從他口裡冒出來。他指著南極的方向。「沒錯。那裡的風景棒透了，你說是吧？」我笑答。他沒有笑，反而露出嚴肅的表情。我在短褲上搓掉手上的土，身體因為從緊繃到放鬆，還有些顫抖。兩人尷尬地沒說話。對方站了一會兒，露出不解的表情看著我，顯然想對我說些什麼。過了一分鐘，他小心翼翼地問我：「一切都還好吧？你沒事吧？」我沉默了片刻，但依然面帶笑容。「活著，非常有精神地活著。」他疑惑的表情一掃而空，終於露出笑容。他微微點了一下頭，然後沿著小徑下山。我則留在上頭，飽覽風景，等著朋友爬上山頂。管他的：愈在意愈不開心！停止被洗腦，活出瀟灑自在的快意人生第３章你並非特例我認識一個小夥子，叫吉米。吉米一直忙個不停，手上總有兩個以上的工作要忙。任何一天找他聊聊，問到他在做什麼，他會沒完沒了巴拉巴拉告訴你，他正在替一家公司提供諮詢服務；他研發了一個極具潛力的醫藥應用軟體，正在尋找天使投資人出資贊助；或是他受邀擔任某公益活動的主講人；還透露他有個新構想，可改善加油站加油機的性能，搞不好可讓他一夕致富，變成億萬富豪。這小子老是像陀螺轉個不停，只要給他開口的機會，他就會用口水淹沒你，大談他的工作可以如何翻轉世界，他最新的點子有多了不起，還頻頻提到與名人的關係來自抬身價，讓我感覺彷彿在和八卦小報記者哈拉。吉米百分之百正向、樂觀，把自己逼得很緊，絕不原地踏步，隨時調整心態和作法，是個道地的拚命三郎，不達目的絕不罷休。蹊蹺的是，吉米也是個天花亂墜的無賴，只會空口說大話，毫無行動力。大部分時間，他都像嗑了藥或酗了酒，一副飄飄然的樣子。大把鈔票花在酒店或高檔餐廳，吃吃喝喝行銷他的「生意經」。吉米是專業的寄生蟲，不僅花父母的辛苦錢，也靠吹噓未來科技的榮景，騙別人掏錢。當然他偶爾也會裝出勤奮的樣子，拿起電話，殷勤地向大人物或名人推銷東西，只是從頭到尾沒做成一筆生意。他的「事業」沒有一個開花結果。他繼續這麼渾渾噩噩地過了多年，靠著一個又一個女友，以及從近親到八竿子打不著的遠親接濟他，直到快三十歲。最糟糕的是，他還自我感覺良好，對自己有股莫名的自信。有人嘲笑他或掛他電話，他只覺得這些人「錯過人生的機會」；有人對他浮誇不實的生意點子潑冷水，他則說這些人「過於無知、欠缺經驗」，不懂他的天分。有人點出他遊手好閒的生活形態，他則說這些人「嫉妒他」，是一群羨慕他成功的「懷恨者」。吉米的確賺了些錢，多半是透過不正當、也不入流的手段，諸如將別人的點子挪為己用賣給他人，靠欺騙借到錢，甚至憑著三寸不爛之舌，哄著合夥人將新創公司的股權讓給他，偶爾還真的說服別人，付錢邀他公開演講（難以想像他能講些什麼）。最糟糕的是，吉米相信他那一套鬼扯，莫名的自戀已到刀槍不入的地步。老實說真難對他發火，只能說他實在是個奇葩。一九六○年代有段時間，如何培養「高自視」（high self-esteem）成為心理學的風潮與顯學。高自視是對自己有正面的想法與感覺。研究顯示，自視高的人通常表現較佳，也較少惹麻煩。當時許多研究員與決策人士漸漸相信，提高人民的自視可帶給社會具體的好處，包括降低犯罪率、提高學業成績、增加就業機會、減少預算赤字。因此自一九七○年代初期，家長開始參加高自視訓練班，加上治療師、政治人物、教師的鼓吹與強調，提高自視正式編入教育政策。舉例而言，將成績灌水（grade inflation），讓成績落後的學生不要對自己不盡如人意的表現過於自芋C各式各樣平凡無奇、早已預知結果的活動，設計了一堆參賽獎跟假獎盃。小孩的家庭作業也流於空洞，諸如列出自己比別人特別的理由，最喜歡自己的五件事。神職人員告訴教區信徒，在上帝眼中，他們每個人莫不獨一無二、頂尖出色，絕非泛泛之輩。企業座談會、提升動機研討會變得熱門而搶手，一個接著一個開，大家吹的調大同小異：我們每一個個體都可以卓爾不凡、成就斐然。但是過了一個世代，數據與研究顯示，我們並非都是不凡之人，僅僅自我感覺良好不具任何實質意義，除非自我感覺良好背後有十足的理由。研究也發現，逆境與挫敗其實利多於弊，是鍛鍊堅強人格與長大後功成名就的必要歷程。研究也印證，自小被灌輸自己獨一無二，對自我老是感覺良好，長大了，社會不會出現一群比爾・蓋茲（Bill Gates）、馬丁・路德・金恩（Martin Luther King）之流的人才，而是一堆的吉米。吉米，異想天開的創業家。吉米，每天抽大麻，只會吹噓自己多麼厲害，卻缺少在市場立足的一技之長。吉米，只會大聲抱怨事業夥伴「不成熟」；吉米，為了討好某個俄羅斯女模，刷爆公司的信用卡，請她在紐約的米其林餐廳伯納丁（Le Bernardin）用餐；吉米，很快就花光從叔伯姨嬸那兒借來的錢。吉米的確充滿自信、自視甚高。這樣的吉米，花太多時間吹噓自己多麼不凡	103,502
Alone Time Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude (Stephanie Rosenbloom) (Z-Library).epub	Cover, Alone Time The Rainbow Stairs of Beyoğlu: Appreciation, Alone Time The Rainbow Stairs of Beyoğlu Appreciation Some day in the future we will remember the here and now. —Orhan Pamuk, The Innocence of Objects On the tumbledown stairs between the Bosporus and Cihangir were two black crows and a pack of skeletal cats. The cats looked pitifully hungry. The crows, on the contrary, were plump, their feathers as shiny and black as an oil slick. Their sharp beaks held berries plucked from the plastic tub they had gathered around like a bar cart, making them seem partly human, like the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington’s Crow Catcher . The stairs, or what was left of them, had their own strangeness. They were painted rainbow colors that had long since faded. Weeds poked through the cracks. In some places, entire chunks of the steps had disintegrated, so that all that remained was a patch of the hill on which they were built. Later, I would learn that these faded rainbow steps are known as the Findikli stairs. In 2013, a retired forestry engineer named Huseyin Cetinel spent four days painting them in what the New York Times described as “an act of guerrilla beautification.” The project cost him about $800 in paint. Asked why he did it, he said, “To make people smile.” It worked. Istanbullis from other neighborhoods flocked to the steps. They sat on them. They climbed them. They took pictures in front of them as if posing in front of the Taj Mahal. But before long, government workers came and painted the stairs back to battleship gray, sparking protests across Turkey, and on Twitter. A hashtag was born: #DirenMerdiven, or #ResistStairs. Other neighborhoods painted their own staircases rainbow colors in solidarity. There was such a ruckus that the government eventually relented, and the Findikli stairs were returned to their rainbow state. Faded now, they had all the frightful beauty of a fairy tale as I began to climb them, eyes averted, hoping not to draw the attention of the crows. I slipped by, past a wall topped with barbed wire, toward the muffled sounds of domestic life, unseen, from open windows. “Who knows what web of gossip and intrigue you have momentarily disturbed?” De Amicis wrote in the nineteenth century about walking streets like this. “You see no one, but a thousand eyes see you.” Halfway up the steep hill, I stopped to slow my heart, thumping from the climb in the heat. Young men were perched on the next flight of stairs as if they were spectators in an amphitheater, looking down upon the city. Beyond them were even more stairs, leading where I couldn’t see. But somewhere at the top, wherever that might be, was my destination: Cihangir, a neighborhood that’s home to writers and artists. I rounded a bend, past a playground with a young man asleep on a slide in the sun, and entered a maze of gray staircases and empty passageways, everything cracked and blooming. Now and then I’d be hemmed in between apartment buildings with the inevitable satellite dishes beside their windows, wires dangling like Rapunzel’s hair. Some buildings looked as if a creature had come in the night and nibbled their corners. From a distance, these backstreets and alleys in the valleys between towers and minarets are invisible. But up close and inside, they have a certain poetry that seems to exemplify the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi, of seeing beauty in simple, earthy things that are imperfect and fleeting: the remains of a graffitied wall revealing large old stones beneath it; green tendrils peeking over walls. “ Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete,” writes the designer and writer Leonard Koren in his meditation on the subject. Wabi-sabi, he says, can spring from “a sad-beautiful feeling,” a kind of melancholy: “The mournful quarks and caws of seagulls and crows. The forlorn bellowing of foghorns.” Orhan Pamuk used the Turkish word huzun to describe his city’s communal melancholy in his novel Istanbul, just as his fellow countryman Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar did more than half a century earlier in A Mind at Peace . Huzun is a feeling, a heartache, as Pamuk puts it; something he said could be seen in Istanbul in an ancient clock tower, an old postcard seller, a fisherman heading out to sea, neglected mosques, “everything being broken, worn out, past its prime.” I made my way up ever more stairs, with ever more walls rising on either side of me. At the top of yet another hill—or was it the same one?—I stepped out expecting another alleyway but instead found myself next to a large potted oleander on a wide, tree-lined boulevard. There were restaurants and sidewalk tables with checkered cloths and café chairs. Coffee shops had clapboard menus on the curb. It was as if I had emerged from another dimension, another time, like a character in a Haruki Murakami novel. It was afternoon in Cihangir. Stores were selling takeaway affogato and smoothies, antiques, used books, and home accessories. Workers and owners sat outside their shops on chairs and benches. The doors and windows to the cafés were open wide, inviting in the last weeks of summer. Inside, young people typed on laptops while listening to music. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” trailed me up the street. Near a mosque with a slim white minaret was a sign with an arrow pointing toward the “Museum of Innocence.” I followed it. The sloping brick streets meandered through the neighborhood, past storefronts, some covered with ivy, others that seemed to have displayed more of their wares on the sidewalk—postcards, books, hats—than on their shelves. On one brick street a jumble of antique furniture was lined up along the curb. Painted canvasses, presumably for sale, leaned and hung on the wall of a building and then, just past an alley sprouting weeds, rose a slim, burnt-red townhouse with a red banner—I’d arrived at the museum. Despite the sign, the place looked as if it would have preferred not to have been found, for it was clapped down like a ship in a storm. The windows were shuttered, and there wasn’t so much as a sign on the door on Çukurcuma Caddesi. It took a moment for me to realize the ticket window was around the corner. I stepped up to the counter, paid the 25 lira (about $7 dollars) entry fee, and opened a door into the dark. The Museum of Innocence is a place, but it’s also the title of a novel by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. In it, the protagonist, Kemal, creates a museum to house the artifacts he has spent years collecting from and about his beloved, Fusun, who, as these things sometimes go in epic love stories, ended up marrying another man. Pamuk conceived of both the museum and the novel at the same time, though the book appeared first, in 2008. The museum opened four years later. It was a dormitory for local workers when Pamuk bought the building, with garbage in its doorway and even along the edge of the house, under a sign that warned “No trashing.” When I showed up that summer afternoon more than fifteen years later, it was immaculate. Visitors are told that the townhouse is Fusun’s former home. In eighty-three vitrines on the walls are everyday sundries from Istanbul life in the latter half of the twentieth century (a dress, a watch) grouped in accordance with the chapters in Pamuk’s book. These objects, a museum booklet tells visitors, were “used, worn, heard, seen, collected and dreamt of by the characters in the novel.” The centerpiece of the entrance hall is a black-and-white spiral on the floor, meant to signify Time. It can be seen from each floor of the townhouse if you lean ever so slightly over the central stairwell. Yet even if the spiral weren’t there, it would be hard to forget time in this place. The museum has many beautiful timepieces: a grandfather clock, an alarm clock, a pocket watch; clocks with pendulums, clocks with chimes. In certain corners you could hear a soft ticking, each second, each breath, noted, and gone. Between transparent panes were all kinds of old keys, as if they had rained from the sky and froze when time suddenly stopped. In the novel, Kemal suggests that remembering Time is often painful, because it’s linear and eventually comes to an end. And so he proposes that we try to stop thinking of that Aristotelian notion of Time and instead cherish it for each of its deepest moments. Every object in the museum, for instance, is meant to preserve and celebrate a happy moment with Fusun. No item is too insignificant. Consider box 68: an almost entomological display of 4,213 cigarette butts, each inhaled and snuffed out by Fusun, pinned to a wall like butterflies in a natural history museum. A faint glow from the vitrines offers little light on each floor so that visitors are aware that it’s daytime only from the sunlight seeping in through gaps around the shuttered windows. The top floor is an exception. Hanging on the walls are pages from Pamuk’s original manuscript, handwritten in Turkish with strikethroughs, stains, drawings, and doodles. On one of these pages is the first line of the novel: “It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it” was written in 2002 while Pamuk was visiting the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. Wandering the dark floors of Pamuk’s imagination, you can’t help but feel nostalgic. And perhaps a little sorrowful. Every relic, every object, got me thinking about what the theorist Roland Barthes said about photographs in “Camera Lucida”: You can look at them and say, “ That is dead and that is going to die.” Like the plaster cast of Chopin’s hand in the Musée de la Vie Romantique, what good is it without the man? Even though the objects in the Museum of Innocence were meant to commemorate happy moments, I felt blue behind the shuttered windows with the remnants of a life. It didn’t matter that Fusun and Kemal weren’t real. Kemal feels like a proxy for all of us, for what we try to keep; for what we eventually lose. It’s not hard, standing in the townhouse, to picture yourself growing older, losing people you love, feeling betrayed by solitude. By the time I had finished looking at the marked-up manuscript, I was itching to rejoin the world. I followed the stairs back down to the Time spiral in the entryway and out into the late afternoon sun, grateful to feel it on my face, to leave the shadow boxes, to be walking (downhill!) to the glittering Bosporus, to the streets alive with people, to everything I hadn’t lost. La Vie est Trop Courte Pour Boire du Mauvais Vin ~ Life Is Too Short to Drink Bad Wine: On Eating Alone, Alone Time La Vie est Trop Courte Pour Boire du Mauvais Vin ~ Life Is Too Short to Drink Bad Wine On Eating Alone There’s only one very good life, and that’s the life that you know you want, and you make it yourself. — Diana Vreeland Comptoir Turenne is on the ground floor of a nineteenth-century building with battered shutters in the Haut-Marais, on the less fashionable end of rue de Turenne. On the more fashionable end, Glow on the Go! serves concoctions like the Lolita with organic cherries and “superfoods adaptogens,” Baby Beluga sells bikinis and matching sunglasses for Capri-bound toddlers, and the windows of Delphine Pariente’s jewelry shop advise: Soyez heureux, be happy. Comptoir Turenne has no such panache. Its sidewalk views are mainly of a real estate agency and a men’s suit shop. It is not on “must-eat” lists. Visitors are not burdened by the ghosts of Hemingway and Sartre to have an indelible experience. All of this makes Turenne a laid-back spot for breakfast pour un . You can sit under its cheerful red awnings, mere blocks from the action, and fancy yourself Parisian. Portions, however, appear to be measured with Americans in mind. A croque madame arrived at the table looking as if it had been flown in from the Cheesecake Factory. A sunny-side-up egg was as big as a pancake. Beneath it, thick, crusty bread was covered in toasted cheese. Beside it, french fries were piled in a little deep-fryer basket. A salad was already beginning to migrate off the plate. There was barely room on the table for my café crème and the speculoos tucked between the cup and saucer. I eyed the speculoos. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story about being a child and taking half an hour, sometimes forty-five minutes, to finish a cookie that his mother bought him. “I would take a small bite and look up at the sky,” he wrote. “Then I would touch the dog with my feet and take another small bite. I just enjoyed being there, with the sky, the earth, the bamboo thickets, the cat, the dog, the flowers.” I can polish off a speculoos in less time than it takes to say “speculoos.” Nonetheless, Nhat Hanh’s story resonates in an age when it’s not unusual for a meal to be eaten with one hand while the other is posting a photo of it to Instagram. Men in suits stopped for coffee and cigarettes. Children were being walked to school. For the solo diner, no view is better than the one from the sidewalk, even the one from Comptoir Turenne. When you’re not sitting across from someone, you’re sitting across from the world. I’ve eaten by myself in France more than anywhere else, with the exception of my own country where, more than half the time when we’re eating, we’re eating alone. That’s more often than in any previous generation. Pressed for time at work or school, Americans frequently eat by themselves at breakfast and when snacking, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. More than half of lunch meals are solitary. And more than 30 percent of Americans have dinner alone because they’re single or on a different schedule from their partner. The trend is being seen in other countries, too. In South Korea, for instance, it’s largely being driven by long work hours. And while many may not be dining alone by choice, the fact that more people are doing it is changing perceptions. “Dining alone has not only become socially acceptable in South Korea,” Euromonitor reported, noting that Seoul is an incubator for trends that resonate throughout East Asia and beyond, “ it is almost fashionable.” Be that as it may, all too often the meals we have alone are rushed and forgotten, as if they didn’t matter. In the United States, for instance, dining alone has led to what the Hartman Group, a food and beverage consultancy, has called the “ snackification of meals.” Certainly, we all have times when we have to eat and run, but what about the rest of the time? Why should a meal on our own be uninspired or scarfed down as if consumed on the shoulder of an interstate highway? Why shouldn’t the saying la vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin —life is too short to drink bad wine—apply, even when we sip alone? France has its share of fast-food chains. (McDonald’s, McDo as it’s known, is popular.) Still, the French have historically spent more time eating than the people of other nations—more than two hours a day, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even when time is of the essence, culinary innovators in cities like Paris offer modern twists on international street food and sandwiches with wholesome ingredients that make a quick bite still feel nourishing and laid-back. As the writer Alice B. Toklas said, the French bring to the table “the same appreciation, respect, intelligence and lively interest that they have for the other arts, for painting, for literature and for the theatre.” This history of thoughtfully prepared meals and passion for terroir, the combination of earth and climate that distinguishes a wine, has made Paris an ideal place to practice the art of savoring. Eating alone, however, in Paris and beyond, has soured plenty of appetites. Nathaniel Hawthorne cherished his solitude—“It is so sweet to be alone,” he wrote to his wife in 1844 while he was in Concord, Massachusetts—but not at mealtime. “I am ashamed to eat alone,” he noted in his diary. “It becomes the mere gratification of animal appetite . . . these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my present experience.” Solo dining even prompted the pope to look for company. Vatican tradition had called for the pontiff to eat by himself. But in 1959, during Pope John XXIII’s first year as the spiritual ruler, the Boston Daily Globe published the headline: “He Shatters Tradition, Refuses to Dine Alone.” “I tried it for one week, and I was not comfortable,” the pontiff explained. “Then I searched through sacred scripture for something saying I had to eat alone. I found nothing, so I gave it up, and it’s much better now.” Through the years, the only thing considered worse than eating alone has been eating alone in public. To borrow a term from the sociologist Erving Goffman, you’re a “single,” not a “with.” In public, a “with,” Goffman said, has more protection, choice, and freedom than a “single.” When Steve Martin enters a bustling restaurant in the 1984 film The Lonely Guy and tells the captain, “I’m alone,” the captain replies, “Alone?” and the entire restaurant—the music, the clattering of cutlery, the blithe chatter—stops. Everyone turns and stares. After a prolonged silence the captain finally says, “Follow me, sir,” and a cold spotlight appears on Martin, pursuing him to a table in the center of the crowd, which continues to gawk. The supposed horror of solo dining was fresh as ever in the 2015 film The Lobster . In a world where humans who don’t find mates are turned into animals, single people are gathered in a hotel ballroom and made to watch propaganda skits including one called “Man eats alone.” The man gets something caught in his throat, chokes, and dies. In a subsequent skit, “Man eats with woman,” the man again begins to choke—but this time there’s a woman across the table who performs the Heimlich maneuver and saves his life. The audience applauds. Anxiety about how others perceive us is apparently so outsized that a group of researchers devised a name for it, inspired by the table-for-one ordeal in The Lonely Guy: the Spotlight Effect. “People overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others,” Thomas D. Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They reached that conclusion following a series of studies about appearance and behavior, one of which asked participants to wear a T-shirt with either a flattering or a potentially embarrassing image and predict how much attention they might attract. In another study, participants were asked to take part in a group discussion and estimate how prominent their positive and negative comments were to others in the group. In one T-shirt study, subjects wore a shirt showing someone with whom they were happy to be associated, such as Bob Marley or Martin Luther King, Jr. In a different study, participants wore a shirt they felt had a potentially embarrassing image on it: a close-up of Barry Manilow’s head. Setting aside the question of whether Mr. Manilow was unjustly categorized, researchers found that the participants in both studies allowed their own focus on the shirt to distort their predictions of how much attention it would garner. Similar results were found in a study involving subjects taking part in a group discussion: When evaluating their contributions to the discussion, they overestimated the prominence of their own statements to the rest of the group. “An ‘obvious’ social gaffe on a first date, an awkward stumble at the front of a line, or the misreading of a crucial passage of a prepared speech—each may seem shameful and unforgettable to us,” the researchers said, “but they often pass without notice by others.” Does this same principle apply to dining solo? Bella DePaulo, a social scientist and academic affiliate with the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had already gone in search of answers. To evaluate perceptions of solo diners she and colleagues at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville had four twentysomethings (two men and two women) and four fortysomethings (two men and two women) visit a restaurant and be photographed. The pictures were then Photoshopped to create a variety of situations: Each participant was made to look as if he or she was dining alone, or with a person of the other sex, or with a person of the same sex. The researchers used Photoshop, instead of simply having the diners rearrange themselves in different scenarios, so that each person’s facial expression and posture would remain the same in each photo, regardless of whether that person appeared to be eating alone or with others. This was important, DePaulo explained, to ensure that the diners would not be judged differently because of shifting postures or expressions. She and her colleagues then took the photos to an area shopping mall and asked hundreds of adults there to look at a particular person in one of the photos and tell them why they thought that person was out to dinner. If the photo featured someone dining solo, the researchers asked the shoppers why they thought the person was having dinner alone. Some of the respondents said things like, “He is lonely” and “She looks depressed.” Others said positive, even wistful, things such as, “Enjoying a few good peaceful moments” and “He is secure.” When respondents observed the photos of the pairs, there were negative interpretations (the couple went to dinner “to have a talk because their relationship needs some mending” or they wanted to “get away from the children”) and positive ones (the man was having “dinner with his wife for fun” and “they enjoy spending time together”). DePaulo, a leading researcher and author about single life, didn’t publish the findings in a scientific journal. Why? Because what people thought of the solo diners proved to be no different than what they thought of the diners who had company, a null result as DePaulo called it, which she felt wouldn’t be of interest to journals. Age, the number of diners, and whether they were of the same or opposite sex made no difference. “We never in a million years thought that we would not find any differences,” she explained. When she began her research she figured that people considering dining alone would worry that others might view them as “losers.” “It’s not that solo diners are never dissed,” she said. “But when people look at couples in restaurants, they’re also saying equally dismissive things.” So why dismiss yourself? A sidewalk brasserie like Comptoir Turenne is an easy place to begin. Anything goes; sneakers, T-shirts, pinstripe suits. You don’t have to be escorted to a table. Pick one you like and take a seat. Café tables are small; you never feel as if someone is missing. Look around and you’ll notice that others are also eating alone, taking the morning at their own pace. Years ago, when I began dining out solo, I often ate fast food. The price was right, and I didn’t fret about the court of public opinion in a McDonald’s, where it’s common for people to eat by themselves. (Besides, I happen to like McDonald’s; you can learn a thing or two about a city by observing the goings-on there.) Yet that generally meant forgoing better nutrition and opportunities to experience homemade regional cuisine, hospitality, and ambience. And so I began eating alone at cheerful local places instead, often at brunch, lunch, or at around 6:30, before prime dinnertime. For my entire life I’ve been hungry for dinner at an hour people said was befitting octogenarians. Alone, I could be the eighty-year-old I always wanted to be. (Mind you, in the early nineteenth century, dinner traditionally began at 5 p.m. It wasn’t until the end of the century that 8 p.m. became the norm, and then only for galas.) Meal by meal, I began to try better restaurants. I made a point of learning how to ask, “ Avez-vous une table pour une? ” (“Do you have a table for one?”), which seemed to win points with hosts and hostesses alike. Meals at museum restaurants were also an easy introduction. Today, a number of them offer food so good it’s tempting to visit the museum just to dine there. (Le Frank at the Fondation Louis Vuitton is an example. Jean-Louis Nomicos, the Michelin-starred chef there, offers terrific contemporary French lunchtime fare in a bright glass corner near a path through the Bois de Boulogne.) These lunches and early dinners are not only a genuine pleasure but are also practical: Ordering from lunch or all-day menus at nicer restaurants typically costs less. And eating earlier makes it easier to get a table at popular places whose evening time slots may be booked months in advance. I’m shy, and while I was mildly concerned about what people might think of me when I began dining alone, I was more concerned about what I might think of me if I didn’t try. I didn’t want to be someone who experienced less of a city, less of life, because I was afraid. So I went. By dining out, even at less than stellar places, I experienced more of whatever city I was in—practicing my terrible French on patient waiters and cashiers, sampling unfamiliar dishes, observing locals, figuring out where I was in relation to everything else. On rue de Turenne, for example, is the Saint-Claude bus stop, from which the hit song “Saint-Claude” by the French pop star Christine and the Queens gets its name. People step off the bus; lounge on the grass in the Place des Vosges; walk through the garden of the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Sully with its tidy box shrubs to the sound of birds and a nearby harpist. Beyond it are the gates of the oldest covered food market in Paris, the Marché des Enfants Rouges, where locals buy apricots and cheese, baguettes and butter, sunflowers and roses. Some stop by Le Traiteur Marocain, where a man with a couple of whisks tends to a pyramid of couscous; others stand in line for galettes and sandwiches that smell like heaven. To eat out alone is to partake of such experiences. And if you happen to be a woman dining alone, you also happen to be exercising a hard-won right, one that still doesn’t exist everywhere. “It was impossible for a woman to go about alone,” Virginia Woolf wrote of Jane Austen in A Room of One’s Own . “She never travelled; she never drove through London in an omnibus or had luncheon in a shop by herself.” Indeed, generations of women simply weren’t allowed to dine alone in restaurants and bars. As late as the beginning of the twentieth century, New Yorkers were debating legislative bills about whether women should be allowed to eat out without a male escort. And it wasn’t just men who wanted to keep the status quo. “I believe it is a protection to all decent women that women alone should not be allowed to eat in public restaurants,” said a member of the Women’s Republican Club in 1908, according to the New York Times . Despite the objection, the club passed a resolution favoring a bill that would allow women to dine in public places without a male escort. Doing so, however, continued to be difficult, not for a little while, but for decades. As one restaurateur told the Times in 1964: If a “good-looking lady without a partner asks for a table, you wonder why she is alone and I’ve had my experience with that situation!” It wasn’t uncommon for women alone to be presumed to be like the women in paintings by Van Gogh and Manet—prostitutes. Things weren’t much better in 1970. A New York magazine article that year began: “In this most liberal of cities, a woman has no legally guaranteed right to enter a restaurant.” When Mother Courage, the country’s first feminist restaurant (according to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation), opened two years later, it provided a place for solo female diners to tuck in. “A woman coming to eat here alone knows she won’t feel like a freak and won’t get hassled by men,” Dolores Alexander, who founded the restaurant with her partner, Jill Ward, told People magazine in 1975. Even today women are still reporting the same problems experienced by Alexander’s generation. Yet despite decades of unwanted attention and articles depicting eating alone as some frightful activity, women have long cherished a solitary meal. M.F.K. Fisher, who wasn’t immune to feeling self-conscious when dining out by herself, could wax poetic about its pleasures. Fellow food writer Marion Cunningham, a champion of family mealtime, also appreciated solo dining: “Sometimes eating supper alone feels private, quiet, and blessedly liberating,” she wrote in her popular Supper Book, where she devoted a page to “Supper Alone.” There she briefly extolls the sorts of unconventional meals that can be enjoyed alone (she liked a baked potato with olive oil and coarse pepper and salt, followed by vanilla ice cream) as well as the opportunity to cook something restorative (for her, it was split pea soup). In 2017, the New York Times asked the humorist Fran Lebowitz which three writers she would invite to a literary dinner party. “None,” she replied. “My idea of a great literary dinner party is Fran, eating alone, reading a book.” Now and then people decry reading at the table as “cheating,” as if it’s somehow not truly dining alone. Obviously we don’t want to be mindlessly putting food into our mouths while focusing on our reading, but as anyone who has ever lingered over a meal knows, both are experiences that can be savored together. For those just beginning to travel solo or dine solo, a book is a terrific companion. And for those who simply love to read, alone time at the table may be their only opportunity to do so in the course of a day. I get pleasure just from watching others alone with their books, be it at Comptoir Turenne or KB CaféShop on Avenue Trudaine, where you can sit at a communal wood table or, as I did, on a stool facing the street in the open shopfront. Here, a man escorts his poodle past a newsstand. There, a handful of people with cameras and tripods arrive for a fashion shoot beside an unloved merry-go-round. Once considered the purview of business travelers, dining solo has become a significant part of leisure travel, as well as of everyday life. In the United States reservations for parties of one grew by more than 60 percent in 2015 over the previous two years, according to OpenTable, the online restaurant reservations company. Solo dining has increased across Europe and in parts of Asia, too. The atmosphere of cities is beginning to change as more people who live alone eat out and gravitate to solo-friendly concepts like “groceraunts” (in-store dining in places like Whole Foods and Cojean), Euromonitor has found. At Ichiran, the Japanese ramen chain, solo diners can seat themselves in private “flavor concentration booths” with dividers and bamboo shades that separate them from the waiters, enabling guests to focus on the taste and smell of the food. “Our goal is for diners to understand and appreciate solo dining, dining without speaking a word to the employees, dining just between you, yourself, and the food in front of you,” says Hana Isoda, Ichiran’s former director of marketing and business development, in a video for Zagat.com. Andy Warhol, who said he liked eating alone and wrote about wanting to start a restaurant chain where people could sit in booths and watch television, would have been tickled by the concept. Today, some restaurants are aiming to attract solo diners by giving them the screen time Warhol craved, offering free wi-fi, charging outlets, and tablets for use during a meal, which is convenient for travelers who need to charge their phones or look up directions, though it’s not particularly conducive to savoring. On the other end of the spectrum is Eenmaal, a temporary restaurant that was opened by Marina van Goor in Amsterdam in 2013. Each table sat only one, and there was no wi-fi. Guests came alone, ate alone, and were encouraged to disconnect: read magazines and books, sketch, write, or simply enjoy the food and music. “At Eenmaal,” van Goor said in a talk for the lecture series CreativeMornings Amsterdam, “you are your own company.” Her words echoed those uttered more than two centuries ago by the composer Haydn, who once told a hotel waiter to serve him a dinner that some contended could have fed five. The waiter, according to the Boston Daily Globe in 1889, said, “But, sir, the company is not come.” Haydn replied: “Pooh! de gompany! I am de gompany!” Paris is among the most appealing places to be your own company. It was there that the New Yorker food writer A.J. Liebling said he learned the art of eating. “I was often alone, but seldom lonely,” he wrote in Between Meals, his memoir of his days in Paris. “I enjoyed the newspapers and books that were my usual companions at the table.” Under the red awnings of Comptoir Turenne, the men on either side of me—one in skinny jeans and baby-blue Converse sneakers; the other in a suit and tie—lit after-breakfast cigarettes. Tourists wandered by in the direction of the Picasso Museum, area art galleries, and Merci, where shoppers line up in an industrial warehouse to buy necessities of modern life, like Bluetooth headsets, pink computer glasses, and soap made from tomato leaves. To sit outside a Paris café at breakfast is to observe the city as it wipes the sleep from its eyes: the soft clink of a cup and saucer, the turning of newspaper pages, the passerby with a cigarette who asks for a light, and me at my little round table, nibbling a speculoos, sipping my café crème. Of Oysters and Chablis: Servings of Delight and Disappointment, Alone Time Of Oysters and Chablis Servings of Delight and Disappointment Perfectionism never quite works out. —Julia Child On warm spring evenings the sidewalks of Odéon brim with people at tables under awnings and café lights, around a grassy triangle formed by three streets that share a name: Carrefour de l’Odéon. Over here are the pink and black awnings of Le Comptoir du Relais Saint-Germain. Over there, the red café tables of Les Éditeurs. Black umbrellas sprout from the shortest street, outside Le Hibou, where diners can order sardines from Spain and grilled bread with Bordier butter. Almost all the rattan chairs face the grassy island, like seats at a theater in the round. Everyone can see and be seen, and the flâneur can watch “the river of life flow past him in all its splendour and majesty,” as Baudelaire put it. I dashed across the island to an empty chair outside Les Éditeurs beside a man with an espresso and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. Les Éditeurs isn’t known for its food, which was just fine. I was planning to have a light dinner at Le Comptoir, or at the newer spot next door serving small plates at a stand-up bar. But first, some Chablis. And for that, Les Éditeurs was a delightful spot to roost. The waiter brought over little bowls of peanuts and green and black olives that I speared with a toothpick as bicycles and motorcycles whizzed by. Across the island at Le Comptoir, people were already elbow-to-elbow at round black tables; eating, gesticulating, clinking glasses, tilting their heads back in laughter. A silent movie. I fingered the throat of my wineglass, and the night descended, gentle and mild. When I was on the assignment for the New York Times, I had a salmon and wasabi dish at Le Comptoir that was so good I considered breaking a personal travel rule about never eating in the same place twice. From my chair across the street, I relived that meal, this time with omniscience, knowing all that would come to pass: that I would return to Paris, that I would begin dating the man who is now my husband, that I would see the tulips again. Before I left for that assignment, I had gone around to various friends and colleagues and assembled a makeshift guide to the city based on the places, bistros, and brasseries they enjoyed most. More than one had said to stop by Le Comptoir. Those conversations didn’t just offer ideas and boost my anticipation—they were so warm and wide-ranging that it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d never ended up boarding a plane. As my friends spoke, I could see in their eyes that they were doing their own time-traveling, returning to Paris—walking some street, standing on the doorstep of some café, Oh now, what was the name? Later, thousands of miles away in some brasserie where they had once dined, I thought of them. And thus they were, despite appearances to the contrary, at the table with me. Among the friends who have shared tables and advice are David and Susan Liederman. For them, eating alone was never fraught. David, a chef, restaurateur, and the founder of David’s Cookies, frequently dined by himself in France in the 1960s, the golden age of three-star Michelin dining. “I decided I was going to go to every three-star restaurant I could go to, with or without companionship,” he explained. “I didn’t care. Most of the time it was without anybody. When I used to tell people I did this stuff, they didn’t believe it, because who would go to France by themselves, eat by themselves in three-star restaurants?” But he knew that fine dining with others could get in the way of the experience. You had to listen and talk instead of watch what was going on in the dining room, which he described as nothing short of a finely tuned theatrical production. He would sit at Troisgros in Roanne, France, observing as other customers paid no attention to the scene unfolding in front of them, from the choreography of serving the food, to what was on the plate itself. They would take a bite and then light a cigarette. “It made me insane,” Liederman said. “I wanted to say, ‘Open your eyes!’” For him, eating at Troisgros was, as he once put it, “a sort of spiritual revolution.” He recalled a meal there in 1969 after which the waiters brought around trays of pastries, cookies, puddings, and an ice cream cart. “My eyeballs were just spinning in my head watching this whole scene,” he said. When the waiters reached his table, he told the captain that he wanted to try a little bit of everything. The captain smiled, moved another table next to Liederman’s, and proceeded to set out some thirty desserts. “To this day,” Liederman said, “that’s one of the high points of my life.” He was in his twenties at the time but had, as the New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne wrote of him, “a notably keen sense of perception,” and went from being an appreciator to an apprentice to chef de partie at Troisgros. Things have changed. Notably prices. But the tricks to having a good time on your own still apply. “You don’t plop down in one of these good restaurants and whip out your computer and start playing and being oblivious to what’s going on around you,” Liederman said. “They will respect you if you seem to be taking in the act unfolding in front of you.” Even better: Ask to see the kitchen. “Because that means you’re really interested in the food,” Liederman explained, “and the chef will a) know you’re alive, and b) look out for you when you go eat in the restaurant and probably send you something even though he doesn’t have to.” “It’s different than just coming in, dropping your coat off at the coat check, ordering a martini, and putting your face into a bowl,” he continued. “It’s showing interest in what the restaurant’s doing. And that breaks down a lot of barriers.” “I don’t know any chef that wouldn’t welcome you into the kitchen. It’s almost a given that they’re going to be receptive to your asking.” And if you like wine, he said, “ask to see the wine cellar. They love showing off their dusty bottles.” Susan Liederman, who has some thirty years of experience owning, running, and buying wine for restaurants in New York (plus years of eating out all over the world), also traveled alone in France, dining in two- and three-star restaurants, “so I know just how well a lone female diner can be treated!” she said. “It was love of food, love of travel, and I wasn’t afraid,” she explained of her choice to travel and eat solo. When making a reservation to dine alone at nicer restaurants, she advises telling the person on the phone how much you’re looking forward to dining there and thank them for the reservation. When you arrive for your meal, show your enthusiasm, saying something as simple as, “I’ve looked forward to being here,” particularly because a lot of chefs consider it a compliment when someone decides to dine alone at a fine restaurant. For something more casual, she recommends restaurants with bars or communal tables—like La Régalade or Willi’s Wine Bar in the 1st arrondissement. All kinds of restaurants today have counter seating around open kitchens, be it Le Pain Quotidien or L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon Saint-Germain. Another option, she said, is a cooking class. (See the Tips and Tools guide at the back of this book.) And while she’s not opposed to “le room service,” as a hotel I once stayed in put it, for vegging out and movie watching, she doesn’t like to think of travelers routinely grabbing fast food and eating in their rooms out of hesitation to venture out alone. “There’s an element of punishing yourself in that,” she said, “like ‘I’m not worth sitting and having a nice meal.’” The evening was warm, and as I finished the last of the wine at Les Éditeurs, so was I. I put a few euros on the red table and crossed the street back to the grassy island and the stand-up bar at L’Avant Comptoir de la Mer, which was new since I was last in Paris. There was a food counter along the sidewalk and inside, a bar that faced polished wine refrigerators. Guests ordered from small boards, each with a plate and a price, that hung from S-hooks on the ceiling. Adorable! you think when you see them, though you must then contemplate dinner with your neck in a position better suited for an evening at the planetarium. I ordered by pointing skyward at a photo of what appeared to be fried shrimp balls. The place was appealing: bright and open to the street. And it was created by the chef behind Le Comptoir, Yves Camdeborde, and where the salmon had been transcendent. Alas, the shrimp balls, which turned out to be sea urchins, were not. Standing at a bar for dinner ought to make for solo-friendly dining. It’s casual, you’re facing bartenders, and there are other people beside you, all of which seem conducive to conversation. But I didn’t speak enough French to engage anyone, and in any case, the other patrons were occupied with partners or children. At Les Éditeurs, I had had a cold Chablis and a view. Yet I had been so intent on sticking to my plan and trying the latest place that I went and left a good thing behind. I could feel my mood dampening. Happily, there are other advantages to standing while eating: It’s easy to leave. I paid the bill and went next door to the crêperie stand at L’Avant Comptoir, yet another spot owned by Yves Camdeborde. Inside, a chalkboard menu listed sweet offerings like chocolate, banana, and Grand Marnier, for 2 to 3.50 euros. Supplements like honey, orange blossom, and whipped cream were another 50 euro cents each. I ordered a sugar and butter crepe. The cook smiled and nodded, gently swirling batter on a griddle until the pancake was ready. He folded it into a neat triangle, tucked it in paper, and passed it over the counter. Out on the sidewalk, I bit in and began a slow walk back toward my hotel, past the shop selling flat-caps and straw hats with sashes, and the florist with pots and baskets of cherry tomatoes, lavender, and purple mophead hydrangeas on tables beside the door. And as I walked I felt happy again, high on a mixture of sugar and butter, and the gaiety of Paris on a spring evening. As I neared the hotel, my balcony came into view with its pink café chairs, as pale as cotton candy. I retrieved the tasseled key from the desk, passed the blue sitting room where in the evenings wine bottles replaced the pastries, and walked up the corkscrew stairs to room 61. I took a wineglass from the closet and swung open the door to the balcony. Long after my drink at Les Éditeurs, I came across an old review in Time Out Paris . The magazine had described the restaurant as relaxed and down-to-earth, “with a mixed clientele tending to solo Americans of a certain age reading novels over a glass of wine.” And to think I had had a delightful time! Had someone told me that I would be one of those wine-drinking solo Americans, I would have responded with appropriate chagrin. I might never have slid into a chair at Les Éditeurs or thought about the meal at Le Comptoir and marveled at all that had transpired in the months since. I wouldn’t have enjoyed my Chablis. In my ignorance, I had a wonderful time. If only life were always like that. If only we didn’t know what we were supposed to be embarrassed by. Out on the balcony I poured some cheap Sauvignon Blanc that I had picked up at a neighborhood grocery, sat down in the fading light, and took a sip. It was terrible. But I had the sky. I had the soft sounds of French conversations drifting up from tables outside the fondue restaurant below. I had the breeze on the back of my neck, and the sweep of gray and orange rooftops as the lights of the Eiffel Tower came on. Rue Montorgueil is a wide pedestrian thoroughfare in the 2nd arrondissement lined with cheese, fish, and flower shops. Crates of peaches, apples, grapes, cantaloupes, watermelons, asparagus, and tomatoes are interspersed with restaurant supply stores and café chairs as colorful as the produce. At Maison Collet, pink pastries in cupcake papers were fashioned to look like little pigs with squiggly tails, with a few erudite piglets wearing chocolate-rimmed glasses. At L’Éclair de Génie, one of several shops to specialize in a single product, éclairs were decorated with polka dots, swirls, leaves, and berries, like 1960s frocks. Some had glossy electric hues and flavors like Cassis, Ananas, and Passion Framboise. At Stohrer, one of the oldest pastry shops in Paris, I stopped in to try the puits d’amour, which I’d read somewhere was enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth II (Stohrer’s website features a video of her in a blue, wide-brimmed hat climbing out of a Bentley on rue Montorgueil). This, alas, seemed to have made them popular. “ A demain, ” said the man behind the counter. They were sold out until tomorrow. Just north of all this temptation is Frenchie to Go, a tiny restaurant and takeout joint. Tall, hinged panes of glass open onto a quiet street paved with setts. Customers can eat on sidewalk stools facing a narrow counter into the restaurant, or inside looking out onto rue du Nil. The menu is on blackboards above the register: hot dog, lobster roll, Reuben sandwich, pastrami on rye, fish and chips, to name a few. Tomato-red business cards at the counter that read “Who the fuck is Reuben?!” explain the popular choice to visitors, but I just couldn’t get excited about corned beef. “Fish and chips, to go,” I said to the tattooed man with the shaved head behind the register. He asked if I really wanted the order to go—a peculiar question, given the name of the place. But he could see that I wanted to stay. Not that it mattered. There wasn’t an empty chair. I looked around at the people at communal tables and counters eating meat sandwiches and fish from Poissonnerie Terroirs d’Avenir across the street, and then back at the tattooed man. Behind him, men in blue aprons were moving about the open kitchen. He leaned over the counter, surveyed the room, and then pointed at a customer standing against a nearby table. “That man’s just waiting on his to-go order,” he said in English. It was a tall round table with a couple of stools, off to the side of the register, beside a box of magazines and a stack of napkins. The end of it was practically touching a dessert box, making it a potentially awkward place to tuck into fish and chips. But the tattooed man was so welcoming, and outside, the sky was threatening to rain. “I’ll take it,” I said. He came out from behind the counter, asked my name, and ushered me to the high-top. I was seated at the edge of the open kitchen, with a view of the front door and the street, which turned out to be a terrific spot for people watching. Not unlike sitting at a bar. What makes a table for one feel good? I’ve eaten alone in other big cities, including Tokyo, where at the Moomin Bakery & Cafe in Tokyo Dome City solo diners are offered company in the form of large plush trolls known as Moomins (characters in the books by Tove Jansson). For a while, a Hello Kitty character called Keroppi also had its own theme café, where a solo diner could sit across from a frog. The tattooed man placed silverware and a carafe of water on my high-top, explaining, “In case you are thirsty.” The more I dined alone in Paris, the more it seemed that I was treated not only well, but sometimes better than when I was accompanied. When my order was ready, he returned, all but singing my name as he sailed over with a golden fillet in a cardboard boat. “Fish and chips,” he announced, lowering the plate. The fillet was nestled on a bed of crisp, browned fries and what appeared to be some sort of green tartar sauce, but was in fact a sublime-tasting (if not looking) green pea hash, so good I used it in lieu of ketchup. I picked up a fry as the rain began and the dry, gray stones on rue du Nil became wet and silver. The staff carried in the stools from the sidewalk and closed the tall windows, cocooning us inside. I had the right meal for a rainy afternoon: warm, crispy, a touch spicy, extremely comforting. The rain didn’t last. Neither did the fries. I was equally well looked after at the Minipalais, the hidden-in-plain-sight restau	397,468
How to Be Alone (Sara Maitland) (Z-Library).epub	How to Be Alone 2. Do Something Enjoyable Alone The most commonly offered reason for not doing something like regular exercise is ‘I don’t have the time …’ Often this is a pretty transparent excuse (‘I don’t have time to go to the doctor, but I do have time to play computer games’). But in fact many of us do live extremely busy and pressured lives, and, particularly if we share a home with others, find it difficult to see where yet another clump of hours can be fitted into a life which feels, and perhaps is, already short of them. This is a genuine difficulty in relation to solitude, because it is too easy to think of it as a ‘new’ sort of time, which will have to be carved out of other activities. Usually we cannot choose whether we are alone at work, so if we want to experiment with solitude it seems as though it will have to be in our ‘spare’ or leisure time. But as a society we have constructed leisure as predominantly a communal activity. People who indulge in solitary hobbies are treated as ‘odd’, if not contemptible: ‘geeks’, ‘nerds’, ‘anoraks’ – trainee ‘loners’, in all likelihood! There are some popular leisure activities which cannot be enjoyed alone – team sports are an obvious example, as are Scottish reel dancing, board games and gossip. The activities that can only be enjoyed alone form a smaller but significant group – reading being perhaps the most obvious one. But there are a very large number that can be, and often are, done either in a group or alone, like listening to or making music, walking, gardening and watching TV. It is interesting, occasionally, to look in detail at how one does actually spend one’s leisure time – within the working week, during non-working days like weekends and on holiday. Such a list, made honestly, usually shows us just how much time we waste doing nothing in particular at all – ‘neither what we want nor what we ought,’ as C. S. Lewis described it. But more importantly it reveals that most of us have a pretty clear division between ‘work’ and ‘leisure’. This distinction is a strong feature of post-industrial societies and simply did not exist before that. It is a common belief that so-called ‘advanced societies’ have more leisure than people used to have – but anthropologists now recognize that hunter-gatherer societies have the most leisure and that ‘downtime’ is one of the biggest losses of modernity. Even in mediaeval Europe the peasant had far more holidays than a middle-class salaried worker has now. As well as reducing our leisure hours, modern societies have also massively increased the amount of ‘maintenance’ time we feel is essential for all that washing and cleaning and grooming and decorating – ourselves and our homes. This is partly because we have separated ‘work’ and ‘maintenance’: a great deal of necessary maintenance now takes double the time to perform, because first we have to work to earn the money that enables us to do the task. If you are living by subsistence agriculture you might barter to some extent, but you never need to go shopping. It is also partly because over the last couple of centuries we have raised and elaborated our ideas of necessary maintenance: far from providing more leisure time, labour-saving domestic devices have made a higher standard of cleanliness obligatory – a daily bath or shower, daily clean underwear, regular changes of bedding, frequent hair-washing and so on – unknown to even prosperous households a century ago. Even in mediaeval Europe the peasant had far more holidays than a middle-class salaried worker has now. But the real reason why maintenance takes more time is because we own so many more things, all of which need maintaining. We work longer hours to buy the things, and then we spend more hours managing and looking after them, and so as we become money-richer we also become leisure-poorer. We are leisure-poor, then, because the combined burden of work and maintenance takes up so much of our time and because we have compartmentalized the three activities. Moreover, in addition to compartmentalizing them in time, we have also divided them in space – we use an increasing amount of our day to move between the locations where the three things take place. There are other ways to be. I live on a high moor in southwest Scotland. Not much flourishes here except blackface ‘freerange’ sheep. Like many infertile upland areas it got left behind in the years after WWII. There was no electricity until 1972; the thirteen miles of unmetalled single-track road between one village and the next had thirteen gates which had to be opened and closed. Each farm was isolated from its neighbours – and most people worked alone. Every summer, though, they had Common Shearing: five or six farms would get together and shear all the sheep, farm by farm; the shearers sitting in a circle on shearing stools, chatting and singing as they worked. The whole family from each farm would come, and whosever farm the shearing was at that day fed everyone. All the older people in this glen remember Common Shearing as a social activity, even though hand shearing is hard work and an economic necessity. Electricity, as well as a sharply declining population, ended Common Shearing – power shears are too fast and also too noisy for sociability. Work and leisure are no longer seamless. Life patterns like this have had a long-term influence on our ideas about ‘leisure’. When people worked alone, or with a tiny and unchanging group like the family, and leisure and work were more closely entwined than they now are – markets (work) were also fairs (leisure) – hours spent not alone were social occasions in predominantly solitary lives. So leisure became associated with group activities and with sociability. Most of our team and competitive sports evolved from local and traditional games; much of our preferred music (the orchestra, the group, the choir) likewise emerged from communal activity. Even the word ‘holiday’ is derived from the concept of Holy Days, when mediaeval peasants did not have to perform work duties but did have to go to church – a profoundly corporate event. Common Shearing was a social activity, even though hand shearing was hard work and an economic necessity. Now most of us do not work alone. We do not even work in the noisy, dangerous places that so isolated individual workers in nineteenth-century factories. But still when we think about ‘leisure’ in our time-stressed, noisy lives, we tend to think of social rather than solitary activities; and think there is simply no space, once we have built in work, maintenance and ‘leisure’, for time to be alone. This is why it is worth rethinking the leisure you already enjoy and seeing if there are ways of increasing your time alone within that framework. This has the additional advantage of relieving some of the anxiety about solitude by associating it with an activity you already know you enjoy. Running alone can allow you to hit the mute button on the world […] and take full advantage of exercise’s stress-busting benefits. ‘Running alone can be a meditative experience where you get to really think and concentrate or completely clear your mind and zone out,’ [psychotherapist Michelle] Maidenberg says. […] ‘You have to practise letting go of the inner chatter that can get in the way of what you want to accomplish,’ [sports psychologist Cindra Kamphoff says]. ‘And that’s something you have to do on your own.’ ( Runner’s World, March 2013) Jogging as a physical discipline was really only established in the 1960s. (The first use of the noun ‘jogger’ occurred in 1968, in New Zealand.) This may explain why it is one of the few leisure activities that it is normal to see people doing alone: it was a response to the symptoms of modernity I have been describing, and so free of the residual ‘leisure as social’ culture that preceded it. But in fact it is perfectly possible to do many other activities – outdoors and in – alone: go to the cinema, an art gallery or up a mountain; fishing, gardening. Reading and listening to music (or even playing an instrument) are obvious leisure activities which people do alone; but they do present an odd question. When you read, are you alone? When you listen to music – particularly vocal music – is that a solitary activity? Or is it something you are doing in the company of the writer, the composer or the singers? Sara, coming home. And above all, walking. For me, solitary walking, especially but by no means exclusively in wilder places, feels like a necessity as well as a joy. Solitary walking is a profound image of independence and personal integrity. This makes it a good way to start exploring solitude; it is hard, when walking, not to feel good about yourself and about your capacity to be alone. In addition, it is available to almost everyone (you just walk a shorter distance if you are less fit), extremely cheap and embellished with happy associations with creativity, health and pleasure. There is a good deal of anecdotal evidence that doing things alone intensifies the emotional experience; sharing an experience immediately appears to dissipate our emotional responses, as though communicating it drained away the visceral sensation. I walk a good deal alone and my own experience is that this is very different from walking – even the same walks – in company. I see and notice more and experience both the environment and my physical response to it in a very clear, direct way. I also like walking with other people and do that too. The freedom to walk alone, to eat alone, to travel alone gives at the very least a wider potential pleasure. I would feel deprived if both were not possible for me. How to Be Alone Explore All of the “Maintenance Manuals for the Mind” from the School of Life Library How to Be Alone Sara Maitland ISBN 978-1-250-05902-4 / E-ISBN 978-1-250-05903-1 www.picadorusa.com/howtobealone-maitland How to Think About Exercise Damon Young ISBN 978-1-250-05904-8 / E-ISBN 978-1-250-05905-5 www.picadorusa.com/howtothinkaboutexercise How to Deal with Adversity Christopher Hamilton ISBN 978-1-250-05900-0 / E-ISBN 978-1-250-05901-7 www.picadorusa.com/howtodealwithadversity How to Age Anne Karpf ISBN 978-1-250-05898-0 / E-ISBN 978-1-250-05899-7 www.picadorusa.com/howtoage PICADOR www.picadorusa.com Available wherever books and e-books are sold. How to Be Alone 7. Train the Children There is a strong – and I think well-founded – sense that solitude is a learned skill. We know that sociability is culturally acquired: think of all the hours we put into teaching children to ‘share’, not to bite each other, to be grateful, to moderate and manage anger and, as they get older, to dress appropriately, not to steal or lie and to consider other people’s feelings. No one expects this to come ‘naturally’ to children, even though we also believe that human beings are genetically programmed for group interaction, are inherently social and need, for true flourishing, both to achieve intimate one-to-one relationships and to ‘win friends and influence people’. But far from putting similar efforts into encouraging children to develop a healthy capacity to be alone, or to explore what being alone means to them, and to enjoy solitude, we go to extraordinary lengths to ‘protect’ them from any such practice and experience. I believe that this disables them, or at the very least does not equip them for life events which at some time or another they are extremely likely to encounter. If you are scared of being alone yourself it can be challenging to allow your children to experience aloneness. We know that being alone is extremely important to some people – and may happen to anyone. We know that solitude is almost a necessity for creativity and the development of a genuinely and richly autonomous sense of identity. We seek out a wide range of experiences for our children – and want their schools to provide these too. We want young people to develop useful internal risk-assessment abilities, resilience and the capacity to remain strong and well in future difficult situations. We want them to have rich imaginations, physical competence, freedom and as much joy as possible. All these things are enhanced by solitude and by the ability to enjoy being alone sometimes. There are some strategies for developing these skills in the young. Unfortunately, many child psychologists, and particularly the authors of popular childrearing ‘textbooks’, have taken the view that a child’s psyche is immensely fragile and must be cherished almost obsessively; that any fear is damaging and that children must be protected at all costs from any moment of alarm, even if this means losing out on positive and enriching experiences on the other side of that moment of fear. I feel that we, as a society, have allowed our own fear of solitude to affect our judgement and encourage us to advocate ever greater levels of intervention, overprotection, stimulation and social interaction. Some childcare experts, however, have courageously stood out against the tide of fashion: Anthony Storr and more recently Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods (2005), are examples worth exploring. However, the following list of ways to give our children safe experience of and practice in solitude, though drawn from their and others’ writing, are my own: 1. Allow your newborn time for the infantile reverie I discussed earlier in the book. Let him or her just lie in your arms; do not seek emotional engagement, like eye contact, immediately. Enjoy for yourself the peace and warmth of being gazed at by your baby. If you cannot refrain from trying to engage with the child, sing – best of all, wordlessly – rather than talk. 2. Let your toddler play alone sometimes. Do not interfere or make reactive play obligatory. In my experience woods are a very good place to practise elementary solitude. This is because the child can experience herself as unsupervised while you are actually very near. She can vanish behind a tree and believe she is alone, even though she is only a couple of metres away and you can hear every move. Woods are very beautiful and fascinating to small people, while in fact being remarkably safe – there are no real predators, you can hear other people approaching; unlike water, where children really can and do drown, not many bad things actually happen in a wood. 3. Read them stories about children alone, who face real dangers and overcome them. This is the central moral message of classic fairy stories where the hero or heroine, alone and in serious difficulties, turns things to their own advantage by courage and cunning. Many of these stories have endured for hundreds (if not thousands) of years; they must be getting something right. Adults are often scared of frightening their children, but watch a child – they like to be a little frightened, so long as it ends up all right. 4. Remember that it is good for children to be bored sometimes. Children who are not continually provided with stimuli develop more active imaginations, a stronger sense of self-sufficiency and, probably, higher self-esteem. 5. Delay as long as possible giving them their own mobile phone. If there is a practical need on specific occasions, or they are doing something that makes you anxious, then lend them one. 6. Never use isolation (‘go to your room’) as a punishment. They will not be in a mood to use their solitude positively and they will associate being alone with being bad and unhappy. Instead, if you are able to provide them with space of their own, offer them ‘time out’ as a reward. 7. Only interrupt a child engaged in a solitary activity (reading, solitary hobbies, loafing about outside) if you have a clear and specific reason which you can articulate. (‘You have to come in now because it is suppertime’ vs ‘Darling, are you all right out there alone?’) Our children are not happy. I believe this is because over the last half century we have increasingly monitored, supervised and attended to them, and pampered their supposedly frail egos. The original motivation for this was deeply benign, but the sorry fact is that it is not working. We have an increasing number of children with diagnosable mental-health issues (10 per cent of children between one and sixteen is suffering from a diagnosable mental ‘disorder’ at any given time); we have too many children with pathetically short attention spans; we have profoundly alienated youths, who seem to have remarkably poor judgement and serious issues with personal risk assessment, who do not trust adults and do not choose to engage with them. In 2007, a report from UNICEF ranked the UK bottom in childhood well-being compared to other industrialized nations. In 2009, a survey of sixteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds by the Prince’s Trust found 1 in 10 believed that ‘life was not worth living’. Woods are a very good place to practise elementary solitude. These figures are terribly sad. We are doing something wrong. I am not, of course, suggesting that more solitude for young people would solve all these serious, and indeed tragic, problems instantly, but given the known, beneficial effects of solitude already discussed in this book, it might be worth giving them a chance to try it. For me, two important issues are that solitude in childhood appears to be an almost universal experience of creative people and that children love being frightened in a generally safe context (that is why fairgrounds remain in business). Children, like grown-ups, need different amounts of direct stimulus, company, social engagement and time alone. Neither you nor they can know which sort of person they are if they cannot ever try out solitude. How to Be Alone Also by Sara Maitland From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of Our Fairy Tales A Book of Silence How to Be Alone The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: http://us.macmillanusa.com/piracy . How to Be Alone HOW TO BE ALONE. Copyright © 2014 by Sara Maitland. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.picadorusa.com www.twitter.com/picadorusa • www.facebook.com/picadorusa • picadorbookroom.tumblr.com Picador ® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by St. Martin’s Press under license from Pan Books Limited. For book club information, please visit www.facebook.com/picadorbookclub or e-mail marketing@picadorusa.com. The photographic credits constitute an extension of this copyright page. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. eISBN 978-1-250-05903-1 eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com . Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. First U.S. Edition: September 2014 How to Be Alone II. Being Alone in the Twenty-first Century How to Be Alone 2. How We Got Here I am convinced that we need to explore how we have arrived in this odd situation where we are so frightened of being alone that we aggress, or even apparently hate, those who want to be alone. We refuse, as a society, to extend to them the normal tolerance of difference on which we pride ourselves elsewhere. We stigmatize them. We deny their capacity to identify their own emotions. We fret if we do not have 24/7 social connection with others; we go to bizarre lengths to acquire partners (even though we then get rid of them with increasing frequency). I have already said that I believe that fear is at the root of many people’s deep unease about, or even terror of, being alone. I want to go further now, and argue that the roots of this fear lie in a very deep cultural confusion. For two millennia, at least, we have been trying to live with two radically contrasting and opposed models of what the good life would or should be. Culturally, there is a slightly slick tendency to blame all our woes, and especially our social difficulties, either on a crude social Darwinism or on an ill-defined package called the ‘Judaeo-Christian paradigm’ or ‘tradition’. Apparently this is why, among other things, we have so much difficulty with sex (both other people’s and our own); why women remain unequal; why we are committed to world domination and ecological destruction; and why we are not as perfectly happy as we deserve. I, for one, do not believe this – but I do believe that we suffer from trying to hold together the values of Judaeo-Christianity (inasmuch as we understand them) and the values of classical civilization, and they really do not fit. The Roman Empire reached its largest territorial extent under the Emperor Trajan, who reigned from AD 98–117. At this point it comprised most of what is now Western Europe and some of Eastern Europe and the whole Mediterranean basin. It was a highly efficient state which spread its cultural and technological influence, as well as its military organization, to its conquered territories. One of the reasons for its success was its unusually cohesive culture, which was based in its original republican ethos of patriotism, citizenship and civic responsibility. Even after the Republic collapsed in 27 BC, when Augustus Caesar became Emperor, these values remained central. This value system was underpinned by laws which forbade the patricians (the upper classes) to be involved in commerce – this meant that little of their energy could go into ‘business’ or the accumulation of personal wealth through private or entrepreneurial activities. The young male Roman patrician was educated almost entirely for public office, with a curriculum consisting of rhetoric (public speaking), Roman traditions and public affairs. Such a youth grew up believing that the route to personal ‘fulfilment’ lay in public life, structured through the cursus honorum (literally ‘the course of offices’), a sequence of elected roles or ‘jobs’, which began with serving as an officer in the army and went on through a variety of legal and ceremonial duties up to provincial governor. Although (a bit like the President of the USA) having a lot of money helped you to get elected, you still had to charm the voters. The successful Roman was therefore a public and social figure: that was the ideal. (The word honorum originally meant simply ‘public office’, but you can easily see the connection with the concept of honour. This crossover is still apparent in contemporary Britain in phrases like ‘the New Year’s honours list’: where public recognition and status is given to people who are deemed to have performed public services.) Private morality, interiority and personal ‘fulfilment’ score rather low in such a culture. Honour meant service to the state, the holding of elected public offices. An honourable person – though in Roman society this exclusively applied to men – was judged through his standing in the eyes of other people. His first moral duty was the appropriate ‘performance’ of the self in public – generosity, self-control, being law-abiding and a good public speaker were among the necessary qualities. The judgement of your fellow citizens was the measure of your worth. Even bathing was a social event. You were not privately clean, you had to be seen to be clean by your fellow citizens; perhaps unsurprisingly, nudity seems to have carried unusually little shame or embarrassment in Roman culture. ‘In men of the highest character and noblest genius there is to be found an insatiable desire for honour, command, power and glory,’ wrote Cicero – a man who himself represented and articulated these highest Roman ideals. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC ) was a statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He was also a major intellectual, and introduced Romans to Greek philosophy, which further emphasized the social virtues. Although we now think of Greek philosophy as highly abstract, disembodied and rarefied, it concluded that human nature was essentially social and communal. Aristotle wrote: ‘It is strange to make the supremely happy man a solitary, since man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others.’ The very word ‘civilization’ comes from the Latin word civis which meant a citizen, just as the words ‘polite’ and ‘political’ come from polis, the Greek word for ‘city’. But even as this culture reached its greatest height, the Mediterranean world saw the extremely fast rise of a ‘new’ religion, Christianity, which broke out from its Jewish roots and expanded across the Empire. Christianity proposed a set of values almost directly in opposition to the Roman one. They were distinctly unimpressed by Cicero’s ‘insatiable desire for honour, command, power and glory’. In fact they were initially sublimely indifferent to politics altogether, since they believed the world was going to end soon and that what mattered was preparing oneself for the immediate return of the Lord Jesus and an apocalyptic final judgement. Their core values focused around a personal (interior) relationship with God and holiness, humility, obedience and poverty. They had a sense of personal integrity which was very unlike the public morality of the Roman world. For example, they refused to perform the required traditional sacrifice. Actually many Romans did not have any personal belief in their national divinities, but they saw the performance of religious rituals as part of their public duty to the State. What concerned them was good public order. The problem with the Christians was persistent civil disobedience and a deep-rooted culture clash. It is hard to imagine two sets of values – the silent, unworldly (even anti-worldly) Christians and the social, public and political virtues of the Roman world – more radically different. The meteoric success of this innovative cult must have felt extremely threatening to traditional Romans. Before these tensions could work themselves through and find accommodation with each other, the situation changed totally. In AD 410 the city of Rome fell to Alaric’s Visigoth army. The sacking and looting of Rome was a terrible shock to the whole Mediterranean world. There was a deep sense that something had changed forever. Historians still tend to treat 410 as the end of the Classical era and beginning of the Middle Ages. With the collapse and breakup of the Empire an odd and confusing thing happened. In a highly turbulent and unsettled Europe, broken up into small fragmentary kingdoms and dealing with the constant inflow of new groups of territorially aggressive cultures from the northeast, the Church and particularly the monks – the heirs to the solitary traditions of the desert – became one of the principal forces of social cohesion, continuity and culture. It would be fair to say that of the two competing ideologies of the late Roman period (the public vs the private; the social vs the solitary) the Christian model won, but only by giving up its core values – accepting the ‘world’, embracing politics, power and even militarism. Western Europe moved into the early modern period with a profound confusion between the values of the social and the solitary; and an unacknowledged but profound belief that people on the ‘opposite side’ were threatening civilization itself and were therefore very frightening. The situation was inherently unstable. For the last thousand years, social history has seen a continual seesaw between these two sets of values – and therefore a constant worry and restlessness about how to balance the social communal good against solitary interior freedom. Until the fourteenth century, solitude was highly valued. The great ‘media celebrities’ of the period were the saints – and a remarkable number of them were solitary: ascetic monks or hermits; people going into self-imposed exile and rejecting the civilized world; women choosing not to participate in marriage, their only socially conventional lifestyle choice. The greatest virtue was to ‘save your own soul’ and develop an intimate relationship with the transcendent. Those with more political ambitions (usually kings and would-be kings) could buy themselves out by endowing monasteries and building churches – so that their souls could be prayed for by someone else. In the fourteenth century the Renaissance, and in the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation, challenged this dominant paradigm in rather different ways. But the eighteenth century saw a seismic shift. The Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) quite consciously generated a radical shift back towards a more Roman understanding of human society. The Enlightenment deliberately sought to reestablish the ethics and moral paradigm of the Classical era. This was reflected in many more ways than purely intellectual ones: an aesthetic style evolved which was happily called neoclassicism and affected literature (especially poetry), fashion (men started to wear plain dark clothes and spotless linen neckcloths to demonstrate how chaste and clean they were; women wore simpler, plainer frocks in fragile cottons and fine silks) and particularly architecture, gardening and ‘town planning’. Edinburgh, which self-consciously referred to itself as ‘the Athens of the North’, built the New Town quite deliberately and knowingly to reflect this understanding of the city as a model of civilization, using classical architecture to represent their rational, civilized, democratic and free society. Inevitably these changes also affected private morality. The citizen was to be judged by social deportment rather than inner holiness. In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen has her heroine, Catherine Morland, weigh the correctness of her actions after a quarrel with her closest friends against such Enlightenment standards: Edinburgh New Town employed classical architecture to represent the city’s rational, civilized, democratic and free society. She had not been withstanding them on selfish principles alone, she had not consulted merely her own gratification … no, she had attended to what was due to others, and to her own character in their opinion. (Chapter 13, my italics) For all the era’s emphasis on civility, tolerance and liberty, most Enlightenment writers despised solitude, finding it both repellent and immoral. Edward Gibbon, author of the famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), wrote: There is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, distorted and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, spending his life in a routine of useless and atrocious self-torture … had become the ideal of nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates and Cato. James Wilson was even blunter: An ascetic monk or ‘self-secluded man’, possibly a sulky egotistical fellow, who could not accommodate himself to the customs of his fellow creatures. Such beings do very well to write sonnets about now that they are (as we sincerely trust) all dead and buried, but the reader may depend upon it, they were a vile pack. Sad, mad and bad, in fact! By the very end of the eighteenth century, however, a new mood began to cut across the refined elegance of neoclassical enlightenment. Ideas of freedom and ‘rights’ began to conflict with the civic-and social-minded atmosphere; the careful public performance of mannerliness felt restrictive and a sort of anti-Enlightenment developed surprisingly fast into the Romantic movement. Like neoclassicism, it came with both philosophical and aesthetic baggage. Some of the principle ideas included: The elevation of emotion over reason and of the senses over the intellect. Introspection and the legitimate engagement with the self; a sort of heightened awareness of one’s own moods and thoughts. A construction of the artist as a free creative spirit. An emphasis on imagination and spontaneity as a way to spiritual truth. A heightened appreciation of the beauty of nature, particularly in its most sublime and awe-inspiring aspects. With such a set of concepts it is not surprising that would-be artists had somehow to escape from the coils of social convention and slip back into primal innocence so that they could access their deepest emotions and find their own individual ‘voice’. Suddenly there was a plethora of writers praising the value of being alone. William Wordsworth articulated this more explicitly than most in his poem ‘The Prelude’: When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude. In a way, this Romantic vision could almost be seen as a return to the early Christian paradigm: the authentic inner self, or true soul, is obscured and weakened by too much worldliness and corrupting materialism. The person desiring perfection must flee into the desert and nurture the inner life in solitude. The difference is, of course, that the idea of God has been replaced by the idea of the ego as quasi-divine. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this idea extended its reach. Originally it had been understood as a route for ‘geniuses’, for especially endowed talents, but gradually, as this set of ideas met with wider ideas of equality and human rights, everyone became a genius. This might well have led to a renewal of the values of solitude, but in fact it had, as we know, the opposite effect. This was partly because the concept of freedom and rights had other important dimensions – and many of those required collective actions; among them widening the vote, the trade-union movement, the various campaigns for national freedom (Byron, the great Romantic hero, died in the war to liberate Greece), the struggle against slavery and the two activist phases of the women’s liberation movement. These necessarily pulled people into social association and demonstrated the power and effectiveness of collective engagement. At the same time a general improvement in health, the enormous stresses of increasingly alienated labour and a lowering of inhibition about sex made personal relationships a more important source of pleasure and personal fulfilment. The theme of sexual and emotional satisfaction was picked up as a central issue in the early psychoanalytic movement, so that solitude began to seem not only impossibly difficult but also unhealthy. Throughout the twentieth century the conflict in values continued. In one sense you could argue that the present model – which emphasizes ‘fulfilment’ as a ‘human right’, by widening (but thinning) one’s social environment, while seeking the individual good (rather than the communal good) within it – was a clever compromise. But because this model is so brittle, it is inevitably defensive and particularly punitive towards anything that tries to challenge it. This almost absurdly brisk canter through some elementary history of European cultural paradigms reveals, I hope, a sort of pendulum swinging between various options for understanding the good life; and in all them the question of solitude – both of our psychological capacity and of our ethical obligations to be alone – has been key to the understanding of society and identity. As we came to the beginning of a new millennium, the pendulum was reaching an extreme outer limit of its range, in favour of relationality and social life. This has perhaps been obscured by the cult of individualism, which has, rather oddly, developed simultaneously. This situation is increasingly fragile. The global financial crisis has raised massive questions about the sustainability of consumerist capitalism based on perpetual economic growth; the language of human rights appears to have delivered just about all the benefits (and they were real and substantial) that it can; people, at least in the developed world, are losing commitment to participatory democracy and to liberal religious faith; and the eco-scientists are showing us with increasing clarity just how tenuous the whole life-as-we-know-it project is becoming. To go back to Rome, the barbarians are at the gate. In these circumstances solitude is threatening – without a common and embedded religious faith to give shared meaning to the choice, being alone is a challenge to the security of those clinging desperately to a sinking raft. People who pull out and ‘go solo’ are exposing the danger while apparently escaping the engagement. No wonder we are frightened of those who desire and aspire to be alone, if only a little more than has been acceptable in recent social forms. No wonder we want to establish solitude as ‘sad, mad and bad’ – consciously or unconsciously, those of us who want to do something so markedly countercultural are exposing, and even widening, the rift lines. But the truth is, the present paradigm is not really working. Despite the intense care and attention lavished on the individual ego; despite over a century of trying to ‘raise self-esteem’ in the peculiar belief that it will simultaneously enhance individuality and create good citizens; despite valiant attempts to consolidate relationships and lower inhibitions; despite intimidating efforts to dragoon the more independent-minded and creative to become ‘team players’; despite the promises of personal freedom made to us by neoliberalism and the cult of individualism and rights – despite all this, the well seems to be running dry. We are living in a society marked by unhappy children, alienated youth, politically disengaged adults, stultifying consumerism, escalating inequality, deeply scary wobbles in the whole economic system, soaring rates of mental ill-health and a planet so damaged that we may well end up destroying the whole enterprise. Of course we also live in a world of great beauty, sacrificial and passionate love, tenderness, prosperity, courage and joy. But quite a lot of all that seems to happen regardless of the paradigm and the high thoughts of philosophy. It has always happened. It is precisely because it has always happened that we go on wrestling with these issues in the hope that it can happen more often and for more people. How to Be Alone 1. Sad, Mad and Bad There is a problem, a serious cultural problem, about solitude. Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being. In the first place, and rather urgently, the question needs to be asked. And then – possibly, tentatively, over a longer period of time – we need to try and answer it. The question itself is a little slippery – any question to which no one quite knows the answer is necessarily slippery. But I think, inasmuch as it can be pinned down, it looks something like this: How have we arrived, in the relatively prosperous developed world, at least, at a cultural moment which values autonomy, personal freedom, fulfilment and human rights, and above all individualism, more highly than they have ever been valued before in human history, but at the same time these autonomous, free, self-fulfilling individuals are terrified of being alone with themselves? Think about it for a moment. It is truly very odd. We apparently believe that we own our own bodies as possessions and should be allowed to do with them more or less anything we choose, from euthanasia to a boob job, but we do not want to be on our own with these precious possessions. We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person. We see moral and social conventions as inhibitions on our personal freedoms, and yet we are frightened of anyone who goes away from the crowd and develops ‘eccentric’ habits. We believe that everyone has a singular personal ‘voice’ and is, moreover, unquestionably creative, but we treat with dark suspicion (at best) anyone who uses one of the most clearly established methods of developing that creativity – solitude. We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone. We declare that personal freedom and autonomy is both a right and good, but we think anyone who exercises that freedom autonomously is ‘sad, mad or bad’. Or all three at once. In 1980, US census figures showed 6 per cent of men over forty never married; now 16 per cent are in that position … ‘male spinsters’ – a moniker that implies at best that these men have ‘issues’ and at worst that they are sociopaths. One fears for these men, just as society has traditionally feared for the single woman. They cannot see how lonely they will be. But in time to ease my anxiety, a British friend came through town … ‘I want to get married,’ he said. Finally. A worthwhile man. (Vicky Ward, London Evening Standard, 2008) In the Middle Ages the word ‘spinster’ was a compliment. A spinster was someone, usually a woman, who could spin well: a woman who could spin well was financially self-sufficient – it was one of the very few ways that mediaeval women could achieve economic independence. The word was generously applied to all women at the point of marriage as a way of saying they came into the relationship freely, from personal choice, not financial desperation. Now it is an insult, because we fear ‘for’ such women – and now men as well – who are probably ‘sociopaths’. A woman who could spin well was financially self-sufficient. Being single, being alone – together with smoking – is one of the few things that complete strangers feel free to comment on rudely: it is so dreadful a state (and probably, like smoking, your own fault) that the normal social requirements of manners and tolerance are superseded. No one is supposed to be single. In the course of my life, I have loved and lost and sometimes won, and always strangers have been kind. But I have, it appears, been set on a life of single blessedness. I haven’t minded enough. But now I kind of do. Take dinner parties. There comes a moment, and that question: ‘Why don’t you have a partner?’ It is usually asked by one of a couple, with always a swivel of the eye to his or her other half, so really two people are asking this question. And I struggle to answer: ‘I have never found the right person … I am a sad and sorry manchild … I am incapable of love … I am a deviant, and prefer giraffes.’ Any answer will fail to satisfy. The questioner expects no happy answer. I am only covering up my bone-deep, life-corroding loneliness. The questioners know this, and the insight they believe it affords comforts them. They are safe. They look down from the high castle of coupledom, protected from such a fate. But if I were to ask: ‘Why have you settled for him? Why are you stuck with her? Were you so afraid of being alone?’ such questions would be thought rude, intrusive … Single people can also feel this way about other single people, and about themselves. You see, no one is supposed to be single. If we are, we must account for our deficiencies. (Jim Friel, BBC online magazine, November 2012) In both these examples it is clear that thinking the single person ‘sad’ is not enough for society. Normally we are delicate, even over-delicate, about mentioning things that we think are sad. We do not allow ourselves to comment at all on many sad events. Mostly we go to great lengths to avoid talking about death, childlessness, deformity and terminal illness. It would not be acceptable to ask someone at a dinner party why they were disabled or scarred. It is conceivable, I suppose, that a person happy in their own coupled relationship really has so little imagination that they think anyone who is alone must be suffering tragically. But it is more complicated than that: Vicky Ward’s tone is not simply compassionate. Her ‘fears for these men’ might at first glance seem caring and kind, but she disassociates herself from her own concern: she does not fear herself, ‘one fears for them’. Her superficial sympathy quickly slips into judgement: a ‘worthwhile’ man will be looking for marriage; if someone is not, then they have mental-health ‘issues’ and are very possibly ‘sociopaths’. Here is a list of the traits of a sociopath, based on the psychopathy checklists of H. Cleckley and R. Hare: Glibness and Superficial Charm Manipulative and Cunning Grandiose Sense of Self Pathological Lying Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt Shallow Emotions; Incapable of real human attachment to another Incapacity for Love Need for Stimulation Callousness/Lack of Empathy Poor Behavioural Controls/Impulsive Nature Early Behaviour Problems/Juvenile Delinquency Irresponsibility/Unreliability Promiscuous Sexual Behaviour Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility Does Vicky Ward honestly believe that every uncoupled man over thirty-five is suffering from this serious mental illness? It seems that she does. Why? Could it be that she is frightened? In her article she comments that, in New York, where she is based, there is an excessive number of single women to men, so if she feels that a committed partner is necessary to a woman’s sense of well-being then she might well feel threatened by men who want something different. Projecting psychopathology onto people who do not agree with you, especially about values, is a very old strategy. ‘They are sad and therefore they are mad’ is a good cover for fear. There is an alternative, though: ‘They are not sad and therefore they are bad.’ My mother was widowed shortly after she turned sixty. She lived alone for the remaining twenty-five years of her life. I do not think she was ever reconciled to her single status. She was very much loved by a great many, often rather unexpected, people. But I think she felt profoundly lonely after my father died, and she could not bear the fact that I was enjoying solitude. I had abandoned marriage, in her view, and was now happy as a pig in clover. It appalled her – and she launched a part-time but sustained attack on my moral status: I was selfish. It was ‘selfish’ to live on my own and enjoy it. Interestingly, this is a very old charge. In the fourth century AD, when enthusiastic young Christians were leaving Alexandria in droves to become hermits in the Egyptian desert, their Bishop Basil, infuriated, demanded of one of them, ‘And whose feet will you wash in the desert?’ The implication was that in seeking their own salvation outwith the community, they were neither spreading the faith nor ministering to the poor; they were being selfish. This is a theme that has cropped up repeatedly ever since, particularly in the eighteenth century, but it has a new edge in contemporary society, because we do not have the same high ethic of ‘civil’ or public duty. We are supposed now to seek our own fulfilment, to act on our feelings, to achieve authenticity and personal happiness – but mysteriously not do it on our own. Today, more than ever, the charge carries both moral judgement and weak logic. I write a monthly column for The Tablet (a Catholic weekly magazine) partly about living on my own. One month I wrote about the way a conflict of duties can arise: how ‘charitable’ is the would-be hermit meant to be about the needs and demands of her friends? One might anticipate that a broadly Catholic readership would be more sympathetic to the solitary life because it has such a long (and respected) tradition behind it. But I got some poisonous letters, including one from someone who had never met me, but who nonetheless felt free to pen a long vitriolic note which said, among other things: Given that you are obviously a person without natural affections and a grudging attitude towards others it is probably good for the rest of us that you should withdraw into your own egocentric and selfish little world; but you should at least be honest about it. And yet it is not clear why it is so morally reprehensible to choose to live alone. It seems at first sight a great deal less offensive than the blatant aggression which the choice seems to provoke in so many people. It is very hard to pin down exactly what people mean by the various charges they make, probably because they do not know themselves. For example, the ‘sad’ charge is irrefutable – not because it is true but because it is always based on the assumption that the person announcing that you are, in fact, deeply unhappy has some insider knowledge of your emotional state greater than your own. If you say, ‘Well, no actually; I am very happy’, the denial is held to prove the case. Recently someone trying to condole with me in my misery said, when I assured them I was in fact happy, ‘You may think you are.’ But happiness is a feeling. I do not think it – I feel it. I may, of course, be living in a fool’s paradise and the whole edifice of joy and contentment is going to crash around my ears sometime soon, but at the moment I am either lying or reporting the truth. My happiness cannot, by the very nature of happiness, be something I think I feel but don’t really feel. There is no possible response that does not descend almost immediately to the school-playground level of ‘Did, didn’t; did, didn’t.’ But the charges of being mad or bad have	200,616
Solitude In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World (Michael Harris) (Z-Library).epub	Solitude 11 The Failing Body Death Death is, of course, the final and inviolate solitude. The obliteration it promises we view with horror, if we look on it at all. It is a final separation so unthinkable—literally unthinkable—that most of us manage to live our entire lives without wholly contemplating it. Indeed, as Freud pointed out, we can never truly comprehend our own death since, when we try to imagine it, we remain spectators instead—like Huckleberry Finn attending his own funeral. For this reason, Freud writes, “in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his immortality.” 174 We know of death but don’t plan on becoming acquainted. And yet, despite this horror and incomprehension, we of course owe death everything. Things have been dying for about as long as they’ve been living. Here on Earth, that accounts for four and a half billion years. Generation after generation lives, reproduces, and expires. Each generation passes on the best of itself to those that follow. But the process of evolution—which carried us from base elements to primordial goop to you—works only so long as previous generations die off. For this reason, we, like all animals, have a senescence program built into our genes that ensures our aging and collapse after we pass our prime reproductive years. (This involves the progressive shortening of telomeres, the genetic “bumper” system that protects the start and end of each chromosome. As cells divide, this fraying eventually triggers DNA damage.) In the simplest of terms: the very metabolism that keeps us alive has side effects that accumulate and eventually produce pathology and death. It turns out that Samuel Beckett was more on the ball than he knew when he wrote, “Birth was the death of him.” Life, indeed, kills us. Everything we have accomplished—all our art and poetry and science—is the direct product of these deaths, since it’s all the product of evolution. And so the International Space Station spins 249 miles over your head thanks to death; the Star Wars franchise is worth $30 billion thanks to death; our Hadron Collider and reality TV and United Nations and strawberry sorbet and Paradise Lost and Cristiano Ronaldo’s legs, and on and on and on, all exist thanks to the trillions of deaths that carried us forward. Far from being senseless or horrible, death is the fuel that runs this planet-sized engine. A world without the final solitude of death would be a disaster. And yet the immortal state, denial of Darwinian progress, is exactly the state we clamour toward. I began this chapter by calling death an inviolate solitude, one there is no getting around. But plenty are now working to prove me wrong. * * * Our foraging ancestors managed a life expectancy of only thirty or forty years. Infant mortality was the major stumbling block, and it remained incredibly common until quite recently. For example, right up until the twentieth century, death claimed a quarter to a third of children in agricultural societies. Smallpox, measles, and diphtheria made the business of growing up a deadly game of odds. But eventually things looked up—and quickly. In 1960, an American’s life expectancy at birth was seventy, and it rose to seventy-nine by 2014; in Afghanistan it rose from thirty-two to sixty during that span of years. 175 These numbers are of course markedly unfair, and yet—across the globe—they are still rising. Meanwhile, genetic engineers have managed to double or treble the life expectancy of the Caenorhabditis elegans worm by modifying its genes. 176 It is presumed that—whether by arresting our senescence programs or by flooding our bloodstreams with janitorial nanobots that can clean up the cellular mess—medical breakthroughs will eventually lead to even further, perhaps enormous, advances in our life expectancies, carrying us far past the presumed barrier of 120 years. 177 Such life-extending advances would fit neatly into an emergent belief that death is unnatural and something we ought to conquer—or at least cover up. As scientific advances extend our lives, they also seem to hack away our interest in (and respect for) the central role that death plays. We sweep it, tuck it, hide it away. I am thirty-six years old and I have never seen a dead person. Modernity itself encourages new, less death-centric approaches to life. “Beginning in the eighteenth century,” Yuval Noah Harari points out, ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, and feminism lost all interest in the afterlife. What, exactly, happens to a Communist after he or she dies? What happens to a capitalist? What happens to a feminist? It is pointless to look for the answer in the writings of Marx, Adam Smith, or Simone de Beauvoir. 178 A big part of the project of modernity has been to focus on the quantifiable reality that surrounds us. But modernity has also had its casualties, and an acquaintance with death is one of them. And so death’s insistence on an everlasting solitude, an everlasting separation from the world we live in, has become something to either “cure” or ignore. This fuzzy dream of ours, the dream where we conquer death, played out for centuries in the work of our science fiction writers. But those fantasies have been replaced by bona fide efforts today. And it is perhaps no surprise that the quest for immortality is being led by the eternally optimistic denizens of Silicon Valley. In 2013, for example, Google announced the formation of Calico (the California Life Company), which means to hack the biology that determines our aging. Then, in 2014, the Palo Alto Longevity Prize was launched; it offers $1 million to those who can “hack the code of life” and “solve aging.” Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey, a member of the prize’s advisory board, summed up their philosophy nicely when he called aging a “medical problem” as opposed to a natural process. Since we are machines, goes the thinking, aging and age-related death must be flaws in our hardware or programming, flaws we should be able to fix. What’s more, de Grey believes that denying future generations an indefinite lifespan is “immoral.” 179 The technology historian Patrick McCray has called this desire to hack death an ideological one for Silicon Valley, where “disruptive technologies” can inspire a religious fervour. As McCray told the Guardian, “If you have made your billions in an industrial sector that is based on precise careful control of zeroes and ones, why not imagine you could extend this to the control of atoms and molecules?” 180 De Grey could have a point, though. Don’t we have a moral imperative to make life as healthy as possible? To minimize suffering? Then again, more than one moral imperative can sway us at the same time; and they can sway us in different directions. Isn’t it also immoral to set future generations up for perpetual economic failure? And what else would we call a situation where young adults compete for jobs and resources with their great-great-grandparents? Folk in my own generation already complain bitterly about baby boomers who refuse to retire. It is difficult to imagine any cohort calmly handing over the reins to industry and governance and real estate because people two hundred years younger think it’s their turn. An even worse scenario would be the possibility that our great-great-grandparents do not remain competitive and instead descend into dementia en masse. Longer lifespans have not, thus far, saved us from such ravages. Roughly 36 million people were living with dementia in 2012, and the World Health Organization predicts that number will double by 2030 (to 65.7 million) and triple by 2050 (to 115.4 million). 181 For a number of reasons, physical immortality may simply be untenable. We can buck against it all we like, but entropy has a stubbornness. I’m reminded of Leonid Andreyev’s short story depicting the afterlife of Lazarus: he escapes his own death only to become a rotting zombie full of “sinister oddities” without the peace of a proper end. His face is blemished by a “deep and cadaverous blueness,” his lips are swollen and bursting, his body is puffed with gaseous waste. Lazarus weeps bitterly and tears his hair. His family and friends forsake him, so changed is he; he’s shunned like a leper. Ultimately, carbon-based life may be too frail for immortality. And so our urge to escape the Final Farewell pushes us toward the ultimate in technological solutionism: we dream of doing away with our awkward bodies altogether. Who needs these corruptible bags of bone and blood? We could instead live in the cloud.… * * * In the picturesque town of Iaşi, in northeastern Romania, the tech entrepreneur Marius Ursache—handsome and confident—sits in his glass-walled office and tells me about death. “There are, of course, three deaths we each experience. There is the moment you lose control of yourself, there is the moment the body actually passes away, and there is the last time anyone speaks your name.” It is this third death, the moment we disappear from human memory, that Ursache’s startup Eterni.me is tackling. For about $10 a month, the service will collect your personal data in order to build an avatar that can stand in for you after your demise. This avatar will know everything about you worth knowing, and your friends/admirers/ancestors will be able to grill it for details. It will look like you, too, and will converse with users so they may feel connected—if not exactly to you then to the embodiment of your digital slime. (“We decided to bring the avatar to life, despite the creepiness criticism.”) In a sense, what Eterni.me offers is a Skype from the beyond. “Every day, for one to three minutes,” Ursache tells me, “the avatar will ask you questions about yourself.” The avatar’s questions are well directed because it has full access to your social media; it might, for example, ask how you feel about that new friend you made on Facebook. The avatar will also ask for big-picture information. What are your first memories? How did you feel about your father? “The avatar will replace diaries,” says Ursache, with a quiet smile. “It’s going to transform what it means to be human because you’ll become more reflective during your life.” The site is partly inspired by science fiction: Ursache is a fan of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Philip K. Dick’s Ubik. He’s also into films about artificial intelligence like Her —in which a man falls in love with his operating system—and avatar-run platforms such as Second Life, where millions of users design an online world for their avatars to enjoy. What all these pop references share is an expectation of the digital beyond—a place where human experience is expanded and protected by a technological foster system. But Ursache has more personal motives, too. As his grandmother died of Alzheimer’s, he saw how the disease stripped her of memories. This seemed intolerable to a man who had spent his life building clean solutions to life’s messiness. His grandmother’s loves, her beliefs, her travels and readings and jokes—all stripped and lost, forever. If only there were a way to safeguard the treasure trove of her mind. As we spoke, in the spring of 2016, Ursache’s compact staff of five worked nearby; a dog cruised the hallway; it seemed like any other ambitious little startup. The team was busily prepping for their public launch. What had begun as a thought experiment at MIT’s Entrepreneurship Development Program was about to become a reality. Thirty thousand people had signed up for Eterni.me’s services, and it didn’t even exist yet. Hundreds more were writing in every day. Ursache had tapped into something real. Eterni.me has joined the ranks of an expanding e-death industry that includes Deathswitch (which, if you like, will release your passwords and take-to-the-grave secrets after you are, in fact, taken to a grave) and If I Die (which allows you to record a farewell message that will be posted, post-mortem, to your Facebook wall). Social media’s soft insistence on perma-connectivity thus makes a Ouija board of the Internet, one that provides nearly mystical relationships with spirits. How fantastic, to enjoy such a communion with the dead! * * * Of course, real memories of people, as experienced by survivors, are nothing like the so-called memories dished out by computers. Computers cannot remember at all; they can only recall. It’s strange this distinction isn’t made more often. Real memories divide, mutate, live. Scientists now agree with Jorge Luis Borges, who said, “Every time we remember something, after the first time, we’re not remembering the event, but the first memory of the event. Then the experience of the second memory and so on.” Through a brain process called reconsolidation, every retrieval of a given memory actually changes it. As one expert, Nelson Cowan, told me: “We edit the past in light of what we know now. But we remain utterly unaware that we’ve changed it.” Our memories of lost loved ones, then, are morphing things—not static files. The promise of something like Eterni.me is that we can circumvent our minds’ failings to bridge the separation death imposes. But to circumvent in that way is to miss the point of mourning and human memory. The Talmudic maxim claims, “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” And I think we can similarly say, “We don’t remember people as they were; we remember them as we are.” To deny the fallible, shifting approach with which we remember the dead is to deny the fallible, shifting nature of our relationships. Then again, even if future mourners pass up the digital Lazarus on offer, the dying themselves may find it impossible to give up on a tech company’s promise of eternal connection. As global birth rates plummet, I imagine we’ll count less on the old idea of “living through our children” and more on a new idea of “living through our avatars.” The futurist and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil has been arguing for years that we’ll soon be able to merge our minds into computers. By 2029, he tells us, computers will boast emotional lives as convincing as any human’s. By 2030, we’ll be flooding the body with millions of nanobots that will rebuild immune systems, essentially wiping out disease and allowing us to add more than a year of life expectancy for each year of real time (thus, Kurzweil himself intends to stay ahead of the game and never die at all). By 2050, these fleets of nanobots will grow so numerous and skilful they’ll be able to assemble an entire bionic body for the human mind to inhabit. 182 One that neither rots nor rusts. It was noticed early on that computers improve at a nearly exponential rate while we humans dodder along, barely improving ourselves at all. Such growth, it is imagined, almost necessitates a “singularity”—a moment in the near future when our technology becomes so advanced that it either propels us or drags us to a higher state of being. Kurzweil’s ideas do sound like science fiction, but he is hardly a crank—he has been feted with numerous honours, including the National Medal of Technology and a position at Google as their director of engineering. Silicon Valley has always nurtured those who trade in the fantastic. Kurzweil is joined by many less qualified futurists who share his dream. In 2016, a “transhumanist philosopher” called Zoltan Istvan argued that artificial intelligence should replace the American president (along with other world leaders) since the AI would be less “selfish.” (To be sure, this is one advantage of not having a self.) Then, once artificial intelligence reaches a certain threshold, human beings, says Istvan, will be invited into its intelligence. We will be merged, basically directly. I see it in terms of: The world will take 100 of its best scientists—maybe even some preachers, religious people, some politicians, people from all different walks of society—and everybody will plug-in and mind upload at one time into this machine. 183 The guest list to end all guest lists. These euphoric visions amount to something that one friend of mine termed “a silicon rapture.” 184 Like the Christian rapture, this one promises to shuttle a select group up into an eternal and happy holding pen. And this imagined end point for the biological body would be the final triumph over death’s solitude, a final exit from the clunky, carbon-based contraptions we’ve been saddled with by Darwinian evolution. Good riddance. All “evolution” cares about is the perpetuation of genes, little amino acids all in a row; the singularity promises that individuals, whole minds, can live on—we save souls instead of code. The singularity theory can be traced back to the ruminations of the prodigal mathematician John von Neumann. His vision was described this way in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society: “The ever-accelerating progress of technology … gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” 185 Since then, the idea of computers operating at a thousand, a million, a billion times the capacity of a human brain has been one of the animating forces of both science fiction and the vanguard of the tech industry. It’s a dream that’s gaining shape. In Silicon Valley there is even a well-respected Singularity University, founded in 2008. Naturally, a serious conundrum pops up before we get too far down this road. Any effort to produce these digital, immortal selves relies on the assumption that we are computational entities in the first place, that the self can be reduced to that which our machines may process. As John Searle pointed out (back in chapter 6), it is no stretch to imagine that machines can harbour life and consciousness (we are, after all, a kind of machine ourselves), but to suggest that life and consciousness can be prolonged via the perfect recall of a mere computer of data, a number-cruncher flickering its ones and zeroes, is another matter. Still, the emergent e-death industry (including Eterni.me and the other harbingers of the singularity) seeks to save a portion of our humanity by preserving our data in the silicon forever. Believers in the singularity suggest that all of humanity will later live on in the cloud. It’s in this way that death—the grand solitude that made us what we are—is slaughtered. The Body’s Kind Betrayal In the end, our belief in the singularity, the silicon rapture, or even just the e-death industry signals a rejection of the lonely limits built into our frail, mortal bodies. Year by year, we spend more time projecting ourselves beyond our bodies with avatars and social media. And still we’re trapped by the narrow facts of bodily life; this proper number of calories in, this tiny wedge of atmospheric comfort between freezing and broiling. The brutal limits of the flesh. Some solitudes cannot be outrun. And yet it’s so often in the failings of our solitary bodies that we come to know our humanity. It can seem absurd, at times, to admit that we are bound inside envelopes of water and genetic hand-me-downs. But the fact of our mortal bodies can also be the thing that shakes us awake. * * * I was first paralyzed at sixteen. I’d been dreaming my usual dream, in which a shadow-man shoots me in the back of the head, and I woke at the usual spot—as the black heat spread across my crown. But this time I did not scramble up from the pillow. I could not. It took a moment to realize that I’d failed to sit up, and another moment to discover my eyes would not open, either. Nothing moved at all but my heart and lungs, and now they were nervously thrumming like caught animals. For two swollen minutes I commanded my body to move, then began conceding little parts of me—could I at least move my head? No. My arms? No. Could I turn my palm or raise a finger? And, with each failure, a panic crawled across my body. The panic, in turn, brought a message, something that’s whispered only to the paralyzed: You are only a spark inside this four-limbed apparatus. You are alone in the cave of your mind. The “I” of you is just a story in a robot’s head. Everyone’s brain takes care to paralyze its robot at night; otherwise our bodies would act out our dreams—we’d run from imagined monsters, howling and naked, into the street. This temporary paralysis saves our bodies from ourselves. And, for a small percentage of people, the little limbic switch managed by our two amygdala, that hormonal alarm that snaps the body back to life each morning, can go rusty. We wake to find ourselves trapped in a warm-dead body. This rust seems to first accumulate in the teenage years, perhaps brought on by the advent of anxiety, or the discovery of alcohol. Or perhaps it’s just a symptom of the brain’s laziness, a shrugging disavowal of our failing bodies. That morning, when I first woke paralyzed, I did not wonder why, any more than a fox in a leghold trap wonders why. I only raged against the hold. In my little bed, within my little body, I was hurling myself away from metal teeth, ‘til at last the switch gave way and I was expelled back into the world. I arrived voice-first, gulping with choky, can’t-breathe cries that woke my mother down the hall. She appeared, silhouetted in the doorway, her sleepy face a mixture of worry and complaint, arms crossed over a cotton sleep shirt. She squinted as I tried to describe it: “Like I was dead, or frozen, or going crazy.…” “That’s weird,” she said as I sputtered to a stop. There was nothing to be done, though; biting her lip, she flicked off the hall light and padded back to her own dark room. I sat on that bed a long time, propped up and knocking my head against the wall whenever sleep tugged me down. I waited hours for the first permissive touches of daylight. On some unacknowledged level I may have expected this collapse, or at least I wasn’t wholly surprised. The idea that the flesh will betray us is no news to a sixteen-year-old boy. Even my pores were indecent, either turning inward with cystic acne or spinning out wiry leg hairs long before the other boys became hairy. My limbs were out of order, too: Osgood-Schlatter disease made the bones, ligaments, and muscles in my legs grow at different speeds, pricking out tears of pain whenever I climbed or descended stairs. It felt as though my true legs had been skinned and crammed into a smaller metal set. The disease meant I had to watch from grassy sidelines while my PE class swooped around the field like flocking birds. Mr. Pearson did not believe in doctor’s notes and considered my ailment a personality issue. It was true, at any rate, that I was glad to be free of those games—I could not throw or catch, much less understand the screaming instructions of abler boys. I sat in overgrown weeds, patiently breaking twigs into smaller and smaller pieces, and looking up to watch the boys crash into each other on the field. I remained set apart—pretentious and unwilling. And lonely. Loneliness seemed to be what my body meant. It was another decade before I learned to stop myself from using the bawling cure for my monthly bouts of sleep paralysis; eventually I learned to come out of it more quietly. It coincided with meeting Kenny. That first week we slept together, he sat cross-legged on the bed and reported, “It’s like a dog growl.” In fact, the growl has become my antidote: if I growl enough, it will wake my limbs; if I manage to produce something that rings in the external world, it will bring me back to life. I need signals from beyond my body, something outside myself. The dog growl works, or else Kenny, seeing my clenched distress, can shake me out of limbo. The panicky trap is always escaped after a few minutes. But I see, in those moments, the concrete limits of my body and how very lonely I am always in danger of becoming. I see the limits of my brain—this hive of eighty-six billion neurons, terribly complex yet still incapable of merging with anything outside itself. And this book is perhaps proof I’ve become obsessed by the limits of this confederacy of cells. I stood one night in our apartment, pressing my hands on the walls and going on about an article I’d read that said nothing ever touches anything else. The electrons orbiting each atom keep us hovering away from things at an unfathomably small distance. I pushed on the wall and focused on the minute pores in the paint; someone had done a hasty job during the last renovation and you could see a haze of blond underneath the white. I said, “So not even now, not anything.” Kenny laughed and said, “Did you just realize that?” Later, I’m asleep beside Kenny and he’s begun to shudder; it’s so violent it wakes me. Kenny suffers from sleep paralysis, too. We’ve each learned to recognize the difference between a bad dream and our disorder. I shake him back to life. Kenny pushes himself up on his elbows, stares forward into the half-light, and then over at me. Wordless, he burrows into his pillow, flops onto his back; he’s searching for a position that will keep him safe from the trap. I settle down and move my hand in circles on his chest to be sure of him. This is the trauma we keep seeing in each other. It makes a long, sparse pattern across our days so that we stumble, move on, stumble, through the year. But it’s always almost there: the shaking, the growling, the haunted coffin of a single body. Then this violent wrenching back to the larger world; the startled intake of breath. And, finally, the fact of someone else’s body; this nearly connecting company in the dark. * * * Just a final example … One day my grandmother told my mother, “I don’t feel right. Something is wrong.” In the emergency room she was asked to locate the discomfort and she waved her hand with an incantatory gesture over half her body. She hoped to be in and out of hospital in a few days; she was not. Her bowel had twisted and her oxygen levels were dangerously low. Several links in her spinal column had crumbled, compressing her back into a human-sized question mark. After surgery for the twisted bowel, her time in the hospital led to pneumonia and decreased kidney function—either one of which is often fatal for the elderly. Meanwhile, shoals of blood clots had collected in her lungs, threatening to suffocate her. Months passed in the hospital. My grandmother became confused, paranoid, and disoriented. And bit by bit it came to pass that her body was no longer her own. She couldn’t even swallow but was hydrated by one of the thirteen tubes the nurses had threaded into her. She lay there, immobile, disgraced by sponge baths and fed so many drugs she lost her mind. “Get me out of here!” she rasped to any family member who came to visit. “I need you to help me escape!” The doctors, the nurses, the room were all trying to kill her. “Why won’t you help me?” she wept. “Bring David in here. Bring Suzanne. Bring Noel. They’ll get me out.” Meanwhile, beyond the room’s narrow window, a few sparrows had become trapped behind some wire netting. Or so she kept insisting. Perhaps they were only nesting there; I don’t know. My grandmother fretted over the birds obsessively. “They’re trapped! Go and help them!” At three one morning the phone rang at my parents’ home. “You’d better come in. This may be it.” And the family convened. The aunts who weep wept, and the other aunts who prefer to gather coffee orders did their dogged rounds. And yet my grandmother remained lodged in her failing body. There were several conferences with doctors, who didn’t believe she’d survive, but, slightly bewildered, they were then proven wrong. Four months after her arrival my grandmother was released. She now lives with a rotation of caretakers who are summoned with a bell when it is time to rise from bed. Her body shudders awake each morning, pushes off the faded sheets. I visit her at home and when she hugs me hello it is bold and lasts longer than our WASPy roots would normally dictate. I take a recorder, determined to capture her childhood stories. I could play them to my children one day, I tell myself. But I can’t look her in the eyes and ask for permission; it would mean giving something away, somehow. When we say goodbye she holds me tighter still. It shocks me how tight. In my grandmother’s embrace, and in the way Kenny shakes me awake from paralysis (or I shake him), I see that the body’s solitude forces us to reach out. After all, it is the inevitable fact of our body’s isolation, its hard limits—along with the fact of our death—that makes us love one another so well in the brief, bewildering chance that we have. Solitude 9. Social Stories 132. Marcel Proust, “On Reading Ruskin,” ed. and trans. Jean Autret, William Burford, and Philip J. Wolfe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 113. 133. Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, July 29, 1934, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 5, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), 319. 134. In August 2014, Mar gave a lecture titled “Fiction and Its Relation to Real-World Empathy, Cognition, and Behavior,” at the American Psychological Association’s 122nd Annual Convention. 135. Natalie Jarvey, “Victorious Launches App for Fan Fiction Author Anna Todd,” Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 25, 2016. 136. Kathryn Zickuhr and Lee Rainie, “E-reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, Jan. 16, 2014). 137. Dartmouth College, “Digital Media May Be Changing How You Think: New Study Finds Users Focus on Concrete Details Rather Than the Big Picture,” ScienceDaily, May 8, 2016, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160508151944.htm . 138. Jennifer Maloney, “The Rise of Phone Reading,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2015. 139. Kevin Kelly, “Scan This Book!” New York Times Magazine, May 14, 2006. 140. Clay Shirky, “Why Abundance Is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr” Encyclopaedia Britannica Blog, July 17, 2008, blogs.britannica.com/2008/07/why-abundance-is-good-a-reply-to-nick-carr/ . 141. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 47. 142. John Brockman, ed., Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 271. 143. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 168. 144. Susan Greenfield, Mind Change (New York: Random House, 2015), 13. 145. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 54. 146. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 12. 147. Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1998), 42. 148. Dan Kois, “How One Direction Super Fan Anna Tod Went From Waffle House Waitress To Next-Big-Author With Erotic Fanfic Series ‘After,’” Billboard, July 17, 2015, http://www.billboard.com/articles/magazine/6634431/anna-todd-after-one-direction-fan-fiction-book-deal-movie-rights-profile . 149. Bob Stein, “Original Invite Letter,” Sidebar, Institute for the Future of the Book, http://www.futureofthebook.org/sidebar/invite.html . 150. Jakob Nielsen, “How Users Read on the Web,” Nielsen Norman Group, Oct. 1, 1997, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web . 151. Jakob Nielsen, “E-Mail Newsletters: Increasing Usability,” Nielsen Norman Group, Nov. 29, 2010, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/e-mail-newsletters-usability . 152. Kenneth Goldsmith, “Why I Am Teaching a Course Called ‘Wasting Time on the Internet,’” New Yorker, Nov. 13, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/wasting-time-on-the-internet . 153. “The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home” has done well, with 1.2 million reads at time of writing. Solitude * Between n nodes there are ( n -1) n /2 connections. * This distinction is, of course, a kind of lie. We perceive a difference between the hard analogue world and the ethereal cloud-based world, but online things still live somewhere—in hard and real and energy-sucking servers. * The very DNA of the Internet appears to be one long extension of our social instincts—strung with electric ones and zeros. The Internet’s godfather, the ARPANET, was built by academics who believed the sharing of information would be an enormous boon, precipitating a second enlightenment. The project was funded by a U.S. Congress that believed in its military necessity (you can’t blow up a dispersed communication system with a single bomb), but the academics at work touted a less brutal philosophy—they championed the open exchange of information and the decentralization of authority. It was an ethic they inherited, in fact, from the original Enlightenment. And always, always there was the expectation that conversation (not content) would be king. “On the Internet,” writes Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow, “every medium is first a medium for social conversation and secondarily a specialized forum for some other purpose.” In other words, whatever we are doing, we’re sharing it. * Paradoxically, such perpetual social grooming can lead to deep loneliness later in life, when that level of attention is found wanting and the grown child suffers what psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg called “egotistic desolation.” * I originally wondered whether a text message could count as “indirect engagement,” but I think it cannot. Text messages, despite the absence of the interlocutor, are direct engagements. A memory of a loved one, by contrast, remains indirect because it is contained, felt by the solitary person alone; the experience must be independent. * Eric Klinenberg, in Going Solo, argues that our ability to be happily alone is actually a sign of strong social ties, not a lack thereof. He notes, for example, that the countries with the highest rates of solo living—Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark—are all countries famed for their communal support. * I am using a heterosexual accent here. * The original telegraphy (“distance writing”) was achieved by the semaphore system in Napoleonic France. This was a series of towers built at high elevations that were each topped with three hinged wooden blades; these blades could be rearranged into ninety-eight different positions—plenty for a complete sign language. Superintendents at the next tower in the line could read the message with a telescope and then reproduce it at their own tower, thus passing news to the next station, and so on. Messages could quickly be sent from one end of France to the other by this means, vastly increasing the efficiency and potency of Napoleon’s army. It was a half century before the system was outmoded by the electronic telegraph. * Lobben is no Luddite, though: she is working on an app that produces personalized routes for people with disabilities. She considers it “almost shameful” that such an app—filtering out or highlighting things that hinder accessibility to an environment—has not been developed. * The rooms at Wattpad HQ are each named after popular Wattpad stories. “My Wattpad Love” is a romance by Ariana Godoy about a girl who finds a sense of community by publishing stories on Wattpad, but then encounters a cocky Wattpad user who smokes and is mean to her. She is drawn to his damaged soul and they fall in love. Solitude 5. Style 60. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 61. 61. Penny Arcade, “Quentin Crisp and Penny Arcade in Vienna,” YouTube video, March 13, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTttQs-UhgA . 62. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, x. 63. Ibid. 64. Quentin Crisp, Doing It with Style (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), 50. 65. Ibid., 119 66. Ibid., 127 67. Ibid., 145 68. Richard Alleyne, “English Language Has Doubled in Size in the Last Century,” Telegraph, Dec. 10, 2010. 69. Mike Isaac, “For Mobile Messaging, GIFS Prove to Be Worth at Least a Thousand Words,” New York Times, Aug. 3, 2015. 70. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 70. 71. Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 182. 72. Janet Echelman, “Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks,” http://www.echelman.com/project/skies-painted-with-unnumbered-sparks . 73. Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah, and Mike Tyka, “Inceptionism: Google Deeper into Neural Networks,” Google Research Blog, June 17, 2015, http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html . 74. Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (Toronto: House of Anansi, 1991), 49. 75. John Snell, The Nazi Revolution (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1959), 7. 76. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, 142. 77. Rian Keating, “Quentin Crisp Interviewed by Rian Keating, May 1983,” YouTube video, Jan. 27, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBPwWrFWHAc . Solitude Index The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below. Abelard, Pierre abstract thinking Activision Blizzard After (Todd) Agricultural Revolution “aha moments” and daydreaming and rush of pleasure and solitude allocentric perspective Amazon Amazon Mechanical Turk Amazon Prime Air Analytical Engine analytical thought Andreyev, Leonid Apple Archimedes Aristotle ARPANET artificial intelligence capacity for beliefs merging with human consciousness “on LSD,” Asch, Solomon Atchity, Matt Atwood, Margaret Augustine, Saint Austen, Jane Babbage, Charles Baron, Naomi Bauer, Felice Beckett, Samuel Benenson, Fred Berry, Wendell Besteman, Catherine BlackBerry Blackmore, Susan Bone, Edith Borges, Jorge Luis Bowling Alone (Putnam) brain activity while daydreaming and “aha moments,” default mode network effect of communication technologies effect of social grooming size and social complexity Brave New World (Huxley) Brotton, Jerry Buchholz, Ester Bush, Vannevar Byrd, Richard Byron, Lord George Gordon Caenorhabditis elegans Calico (California Life Company) Candy Crush Capote, Truman Carroll, Lewis Cervantes, Miguel de Chaplin, Charlie Charles I (king of England) Christoff, Kalina The Circle (Eggers) cities anonymity platform C.K., Louis Clarke, Arthur C. Clay, Henry Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory collaboration, See also crowd-sourcing effect on creativity and personal style collaborative style communism computers ability to think capacity for beliefs capacity for consciousness Confessions (St. Augustine) conformity “conversational thinking,” Coupland, Douglas Courtin, Antoine de Cowan, Nelson Crawford, Matthew creativity and daydreaming and dissatisfaction and solitude Crisp, Quentin crowd-sourcing of opinion of writing Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly “culture-load,” Dalton School dating websites and apps The Day Dream (Rossetti) daydreaming allowing self to start and problem-solving technologies that encroach upon “deadly wandering,” death e-death industry and evolution familiarity with Deathswitch de Botton, Alain DeepDream deep reading default mode network de Grazia, Sebastian de Grey, Aubrey dementia depression “designated texters,” de Vries, Egbert Dickens, Charles Dick Tracy digital feudalism digital slime Dixon, Matt Doctorow, Cory Don Quixote (Cervantes) Dunbar, Robin Duvall, Bill e-books Echelman, Janet Echo economic inequality e-death industry Egan, Jennifer Eggers, Dave “egotistic desolation” Einstein, Albert Emoji Dick emojis emoticons “enchanted objects,” eremia Eterni.me eureka moments. See “aha moments” eusociality evolution and death and reading and singularity theory and wayfinding “extinction of experience,” Facebook Fahlman, Scott fan fiction fear of missing out Fedoruk, Brandy “filter bubbles,” Fitch, W. Tecumseh Ford, Henry “forest bathing,” Francis Crick Institute freelancing Freud, Sigmund Frind, Marcus Frost, Robert Fulbert, Canon Gaitán, Sol Gardner, Ashleigh Gibson, William GIFs Gift from the Sea (Lindbergh) gig economy Gleick, James Godoy, Ariana “going-on-being,” Going Solo (Klinenberg) Goldsmith, Kenneth Google Calico (California Life Company) campus Deep Dream and oracular searches Play Music platform Google Cultural Institute Google Earth Google Image Labeler Google Maps Google Now Google Translate Gopnik, Alison Gould, Glenn Gray, Matt Great Expectations (Dickens) Greenfield, Susan Gusterson, Hugh Harari, Yuval Noah Hazlitt, William Heloise Higgs, Peter Himba tribe Hitchcock, Alfred Hitler, Adolf Hobbes, Thomas Holroyd, Michael human body, limitations of Hungary, under communism Huxley, Aldous “i am lonely will anyone speak to me” (message board thread) idleness devalutation of fear of “wise use of,” If I Die image recognition software imagines (fan fiction) Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen “individuation,” Industrial Revolution infants “going-on-being,” monitoring of and self-regulation “information-load paradigm,” innovation, and solitude “In Praise of Idleness” (Russell) The Insecure American (Gusterson and Besteman) “insight problems,” Instagram Institute for the Future of the Book Internet birth of capacity for miscommunication effect on thinking of Everything and social grooming Into the Wild (Krakauer) Istvan, Zoltan Jericho Johnson, Samuel Jung, Carl Kaczynski, Ted Kafka, Franz Kelly, Kevin Kerouac, Jack King Digital Entertainment Kline, Charley Kleinrock, Leonard Klinenberg, Eric Krakauer, Jon Kurzweil, Ray labour free and implementation of clocks Lang, Fritz language and social grooming underuse of Larson, Reed W Lau, Allen Lessing, Doris letter writing life expectancy Lindbergh, Anne Morrow Linnell, Karina Lobben, Amy Logan, Alan loneliness growing prevalence of and social grooming vs. solitude Louv, Richard Lovelace, Ada love letters ludic loops machine zone Major, Anya “manufactured certainties,” mapping systems biases effect on wayfinding skills and “extinction of experience” false sense of clarity personalization of Mar, Raymond Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab Senseable City Lab mass media, effect on personal style McCandless, Chris McCarthy, John McCray, Patrick McLuhan, Marshall mCouple Mellor, Felicity Memex memory, fallibility of mental health mental maps Mercator, Gerardus Metropolis (Lang) Microsoft Word mind wandering. See daydreaming Moby-Dick (Melville) Monet, Claude MonkeyParking Morozov, Evgeny Morris, Jane Morse, Samuel Moss, Stephen National Science Foundation nature alienation from benefits of contact with fear of and reduction of ego walking in “nature deficit disorder,” Newton, Isaac New York Times Nicholson, Simon Nielsen, Jakob “1984” (TV commercial) non-verbal communication Oatley, Keith OkCupid online games online sharing addictiveness of volume of On the Road (Kerouac) opinion crowd-sourcing of malleability oracular searches Oregon Health and Science University Palo Alto Longevity Prize paradox of choice paralysis Pariser, Eli peer pressure personal style dulling of replacement by collaborative style Peters, Arno pharmaceuticals Picasso, Pablo “platform cities,” platform companies dismantling of solitude free labour PlentyOfFish Pope, Alexander postal services Postman, Neil Potter, Beatrix “precariat,” Pride and Prejudice (Austen) printing press, and letter writing problem-solving Proust, Marcel Putnam, Robert Pyle, Robert Michael reading and abstract thinking and empathy online vs. print silent social rebus puzzles Regional Assembly of Text Research In Motion Richtel, Matt Rilke, Rainer Maria Roman, Elias A Room of One’s Own (Woolf) Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rotten Tomatoes Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rudder, Christian Russell, Bertrand Salon Samples, Bob Schmidt, Eric Schüll, Natasha Dow Schwartz, Barry scientific management Scott, Ridley Scott, Tom scriptura continua Search (Coupland) Searle, John self-consciousness self-expression. See also writing and non-verbal communication as political act on social media self-knowledge “self-plagiarism,” self-regulation self-sacrifice self-tracking Selhub, Eva Seneca Seven Years Solitary (Bone) sexuality “sharing economy,” Shirky, Clay “silent sessions,” “silicon rapture,” Simon & Schuster singularity theory “Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks” (Echelman) Smarter Than You Think (Thompson) smartphones development of games on proximity of text-base use of social anxiety social bonding SocialBook “social brain” theory social contact difficulty avoiding and loneliness re-establishing The Social Contract (Rousseau) social grooming and infants social media addiction and dulling of self-expression social reading Socrates solitary confinement solitude benefits of and creativity devaluation of experience of fear of glimpses of in morning and infants vs. loneliness as resource and self-knowledge and social bonding and strength of social ties Solnit, Rebecca Songza Speer, Albert Standage, Tom Stein, Bob Storr, Anthony style, personal StyleFactory Styles, Harry Sun Microsystems Surowiecki, James Sylvie and Bruno (Carroll) taste, crowd-sourcing of Taylor, Astra Taylor, Frederick telegraph text messaging “designated texters,” vs. letter writing non-verbal while driving theory of loose parts thinking abstract analytical “conversational,” Thompson, Clive Thoreau, Henry David timekeeping devices Todd, Anna travel, and wayfinding Turing, Alan Turing test Twitter typewriters Unabomber Unilever University of British Columbia (UBC). See Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory urbanization Ursache, Marius Van Alstyne, Marshall Visser, Margaret Viswanathan, Murali von Neumann, John Walden (Thoreau) walking “Wasting Time on the Internet” (course) Waterman, Elizabeth Wattpad Wattpad Presents Wells, H.G “We’re Breaking Up” (Solnit) What Are People For? (Berry) WhatsApp Wilson, E.O. Wilson, Timothy D. Winnicott, Donald The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki) Wolf, Maryanne Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, William The World Beyond Your Head (Crawford) World Brain (Wells) World Health Organization writing dependence on solitude on digital platforms as disruptive technology and dissatisfaction letters literary vs. spontaneous sponsored xenophobia Yelp Yo (app) YouTube Zilboorg, Gregory Solitude 6 You Have to Taste This John McCarthy, the American computer scientist who coined the term artificial intelligence, had the gall to insist that pieces of technology could hold opinions and beliefs. This was 1979, and he was one of the middle-aged wizards of the computer boom; at the time many exaggerated claims were bouncing down the halls of MIT and Stanford (McCarthy taught at both). In a paper, he wrote: “Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs.” 78 John Searle, the American philosopher, was less of an optimist and found the notion hard to swallow. One day he asked McCarthy to be precise: “What beliefs does your thermostat have?” And he was surprised by the ready answer: “My thermostat has three beliefs,” said McCarthy. “It’s too hot in here, it’s too cold in here, and it’s just right in here.” 79 Can a piece of technology have a preference for one thing or another? The distinction between human and computer intentions is growing hazy. That much was obvious when my friend showed off his new Nest thermostat, which was patched into Google’s cloud and had been tracking his whereabouts in order to optimize his house’s energy consumption. “Nest doesn’t like it when I come home early,” said my friend, tapping at the glowing black puck on his living room wall. “It really likes me to have a pattern. That way it can make better decisions.” This tiny slip— it can make better decisions —is crucial, because if we begin by allowing a thermostat to have a belief, we start to allow more complex technologies to have more complex beliefs, and just as my friend feels swayed to regulate his patterns because a trumped-up thermostat has a certain preference, we can find ourselves swayed in all sorts of places where we once made more personal choices. Nowhere is this creepier than the arena of taste. If we think that a computer program—so much more rational, so much better informed— believes one thing to be better than another, then the choices we make online about what books to read, what songs to listen to, what movies to watch become less independent and more manipulated. Suggestions on Netflix and iTunes and Amazon—all crowd-sourced and data-crunched—start to feel natural and neutral. If you believe a piece of technology can have a belief, then it’s only a tiny step before you start to believe its belief is more important than your own. We’ve all acquiesced at some point to the “you’d like this” suggestion of an algorithm. So. Why do we like to invest our technologies with beliefs in the first place? To try to understand, I went to John Searle (the detractor in that old thermostat debate). I wanted to know if, four decades later, his position had changed. After all, we aren’t just talking about thermostats anymore: artificial intelligence programs now tackle scientific mysteries; they write novels; they paint portraits; they even mark undergrad essays. Could they now be said to have beliefs after all? “No, I still think those views are idiotic.” The eighty-three-year-old Professor Searle is clean-shaven and straight talking. He sits in his Moses	372,007
The Art of Solitude (Stephen Batchelor) (Z-Library).epub	Chapter 18 18 One who takes no issue with things sees what’s before his eyes, is open to what is said, acts in tune with what he senses. Who can judge him here? By what measure? FOUR EIGHTS , 3:6 In 1554, King Henry II commanded a fleet to establish a settlement for French Protestants in Brazil, a land discovered and claimed by Portugal in the first year of the century. On November 10, 1555, the French landed on an island in Guanabara Bay and proceeded to build a fort. This was to serve as the base for a colony called “French Antarctica.” Five years later, the Portuguese evicted them. On returning to France, one of them—possibly a sailor from Bordeaux—went into service at Michel de Montaigne’s estate. Montaigne describes him as “a simple and rough man—good qualities for telling the truth.” He learns from him that sickness is rare among the people of Brazil and one never sees a person “trembling, bleary, toothless, or bent over with age.” The Indians attribute their good health and longevity to the serenity and tranquility of the air. Montaigne thinks it has to do with “the tranquility and serenity of their souls.” These people are “barbarous,” he says, only in that they have been “little influenced by the human intellect and are still very close to their original simplicity.” Montaigne imagines telling Plato that “this is a nation with no commerce of any kind, no knowledge of writing, no understanding of numbers, no idea of magistrates or political rank, no use of servants, no wealth or poverty, no contracts, no inheritances, no divisions of property, only leisurely occupations, no concern for any kinship except mutual respect for one another, no clothes, no agriculture, no metals, no use of wine or corn. How far from such perfection would Plato find the Republic he imagined.” He depicts here a Garden of Eden inhabited by people Seneca describes as “fresh from the hands of the gods.” They naturally enjoy the ease and leisure Montaigne values in his solitude. These unclothed Indians are already empty of the presumption and opinion that plague us. Montaigne yearns for such innocence: “I want to be seen,” he says, “in my simple, natural, and ordinary guise, unstudied and without artifice. . . . Had I found myself among those people who are said still to live under the sweet liberty of nature’s first laws, I can assure you that I would most willingly have depicted myself whole, and wholly naked.” Montaigne’s admiration of the natural intelligence of dogs, cats, and horses, his respect for the innate wisdom of peasants, and his love of bathing naked with strangers at spas are vindicated by what he learns of these Indians. He collects their artifacts. “In several places, including my own home, you can see the style of their beds and ropework as well as their wooden swords and the wooden bracelets with which they protect their wrists in battle, and the tall open-ended canes to the sound of which they beat the time of their dances.” He tastes their staple food, which resembles “coriander cakes.” It is “sweetish and rather bland.” Such was the curiosity about these unknown people that some were shipped to France and paraded around the country. As part of the royal army that retook Rouen from the Protestants in 1562, Montaigne had the opportunity to meet three Indians who were then in the city. He asked them their impressions of France. One of them explained that in their language they call all men “halves” of one another. Here, by contrast, they saw “men filled and gorged with all sorts of good things while their halves were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty.” They found it strange that “those destitute halves would suffer such injustice, and did not take the others by the throat or set their houses on fire.” On learning of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru, Montaigne is horrified at the “trickery and sleight of hand,” the brutality and unbridled greed of the conquistadores. “It was an infant world,” he says, “and we whipped it into submission to our doctrines and disciplines.” Uninvited, the Spaniards burst into its solitude and shattered it. Yet the way these people conducted themselves in negotiations revealed them to be “in no way inferior to us in their natural clarity of mind and sense of justice.” As for “piety, observance of laws, goodness, generosity, loyalty, and sincerity, it served us well not to have had as much as they. By surpassing us in these virtues, they ruined, sold, and betrayed themselves.” On reading of the magnificence of the cities of Cuzco and Mexico, the great highway from Quito to Cuzco, the outstanding workmanship in precious stones and painting, Montaigne deplores the destruction of those civilizations. “So many towns razed to the ground, so many nations exterminated, so many millions of people put to the sword, the most beautiful and richest part of the world turned upside down: all for the sake of trading in pearls and pepper.” It shocks him how the Spaniards “not merely confess to these deeds, they boast of them far and wide.” And this genocide was justified because “the Pope, God’s representative on earth, had granted dominion over all the Indies.” Montaigne recounts that the king of Peru “was condemned to be publicly hanged and strangled, after first being compelled to buy off the agony of being burned alive by accepting baptism.” “Oh why,” he asks himself, “did it not fall to Alexander or those ancient Greeks and Romans to make of this a most noble conquest?” Such men “would have gently refined those peoples, clearing away whatever savagery there was, while encouraging and cultivating the good seeds that nature had sown in them. . . . What a renewal that would have been, what an improvement of the world, if the first examples of our behavior presented there had inspired those peoples to admire virtue and to imitate it, and established between them and us a brotherly fellowship and understanding.” Chapter 02 2 Embrace what you perceive and cross the flood. The sage is untied to possessions— having extracted the arrow, take care— Don’t long for this world or the next. FOUR EIGHTS , 1:8 In 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne sold his counselorship in the Parliament of Bordeaux, a post he had held for thirteen years, in order to devote himself to a life of solitude. He converted a three-story fortified tower on his manorial estate into a retreat. The ground floor served as a chapel, the middle floor as his living quarters, and the top floor as the library. The attic space above the library housed the estate bell. “Every day, at daybreak and sundown,” he wrote, “a great big bell sounds the Ave Maria. This racket makes my very tower shake.” On one wall, Montaigne inscribed his intention: “to withdraw and lie my head on the bosom of the Wise Virgins, where, in calm and serenity, I will pass the rest of my days.” Relieved of the pressures of public service, he would devote himself to liberty, tranquility, and leisure. This was easier said than done. “The greatest service I could do for my mind,” he had thought, “would be to leave it in complete idleness to care for itself, bring itself to a stop, and settle down.” Instead, like a runaway horse galloping all over the place, it gave birth to weird, fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or design. Unable to cope with this turmoil, he fell into depression. He lifted himself out by conducting a close observation and analysis of his inner life, which he wrote down in the hope of “making my mind ashamed of itself.” So began his career as a philosopher and essayist. Turmoil was not confined just to his mind. It raged all around him. Eight years earlier, in 1562, a bloody civil conflict between Catholics and Protestants erupted throughout France. The province of Guyenne, where he lived, was a major center of these religious wars, which would rage intermittently for the rest of his life. In the first year of violence, the nearby church of Montcaret was destroyed by Catholic troops in the battle to recover it from Protestants. The church of Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, only a five-minute walk from his home, was burned to the ground. “The place where I dwell,” he writes, “is always the first and last to be bombarded by our troubles.” He recounts that he has frequently gone to bed imagining that he would be “betrayed and bludgeoned to death that very night.” During Montaigne’s first summer in his tower, King Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de Medici, triggered the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Fearing an uprising to avenge the attempted murder of the Protestant Admiral de Coligny, they ordered the assassination of all leading Protestants in Paris. Mob violence erupted, and Catholics rampaged through the streets attacking Protestants. The carnage spread through twelve other cities in France, including Bordeaux. Around ten thousand Protestants were slaughtered. Montaigne admitted that when younger he could have been tempted to “share in the risks and challenges” of the Reformation. Inspired by figures like the Christian humanist Erasmus, he embraced the resurgence of reason and classical philosophy that characterized the Renaissance. His closest friend, Étienne de la Boétie, was the author of Voluntary Servitude , a discourse on the tyrannical nature of governments. At the request of his father, Montaigne had translated Natural Theology , a Latin work of the fifteenth-century Catalan doctor and philosopher Raimond Sebond. Sebond argued for an understanding of God inferred from observations of the natural world, thereby reconciling the demands of faith and reason, religion and science. A year after the outbreak of civil war, Étienne de la Boétie died of dysentery at the age of thirty-two. Montaigne was devastated. His love for Étienne was an intellectual and emotional cornerstone of his life. He describes their friendship as one where “souls are blended and merged with each other in so perfect a union that the seam which joins them is effaced and can no longer be found.” La Boétie bequeathed his books to Montaigne, and they became the core of the library in the tower. He remained forever, I imagine, the implied reader of the Essays . To honor the memory of his friend, Montaigne intended to include Voluntary Servitude in the first volume of his essays. He abandoned this idea on discovering that it had already been published “to an evil end by those who seek to upset and change the state of our political system without caring whether it will be an improvement.” A similar fate befell his translation of Raimond Sebond’s Natural Theology , which had also found favor among Protestant thinkers. This resulted in Montaigne’s longest essay, a book-length mea culpa entitled An Apology for Raimond Sebond , in which he rejects Sebond’s belief in the redemptive power of reason and replaces it with a philosophy of radical ignorance and unconditional faith. For ten years he studied, thought, and wrote in his tower. The first edition of the Essays , in two volumes, was published in 1580 in Bordeaux. Montaigne was forty-seven. As befitted a loyal seigneur , he immediately left for Paris to present a copy to the new king, Henry III. Having made a favorable impression at court, he set off on a journey that took him through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and much of Italy. He arrived in Rome at the end of November. Montaigne went to Rome in order to make himself available to replace the outgoing French ambassador to the court of Pope Gregory XIII. As a gentleman of the Chamber of the King of France, a devout Catholic, a scholar fluent in Latin, and now a philosopher and man of letters, he was well suited for this position. Since he was also a gentleman of the Chamber of the young Protestant King Henry of Navarre (who was also governor of Guyenne and second in line to the French throne), Montaigne would be an invaluable negotiator between the two sides in the wars of religion. He rented spacious lodgings, visited the historical sites, had an audience with the pope, and submitted the Essays to the papal authorities for approval. Then he waited patiently for the letter from Paris that would decide his fate. “Ambition,” he had written in his essay “On Solitude,” included in the book now under scrutiny in the Apostolic Palace, “is the humor most at odds with retreat. Fame and repose cannot share the same lodgings.” He criticized the Roman statesmen Pliny and Cicero for treating solitude as a judicious career move, a way to impress others with their learning and philosophical refinement. Those gentlemen, he observed, “just have their arms and legs outside society: their souls and thoughts remain more engaged with it than ever. They have stepped back only in order to make a better leap.” Worldly renown, he declared, “is far removed from my calculations.” Chapter 03 3 Three months after becoming a monk, I took off into the Himalayan foothills behind Dharamsala. I was twenty-one years old. My backpack contained a sleeping bag, groundsheet, towel, kettle, bowl, mug, two books, some apples, dried food, and a five-liter container of water. Monsoon had just ended: the sky was crystalline, the air cleansed, the foliage luxuriant. After three or four hours, I left the well-trodden footpath and followed animal trails up the steep, sparsely forested slope until I reached the grassy ledge hidden by boulders and sheltered by branches that I had identified on an earlier foray. Inspired by stories of Indian and Tibetan hermits, I wanted to know what it was like to be cut off from all human contact, alone and unprotected. I would stay here as long as my meager supply of food and water permitted. No one knew where I was. If I fell and broke a leg, was bitten by a cobra or mauled by a bear, it was unlikely I would be found. High in this aerie, I could still hear the distant horn blasts and grinding gears of buses and trucks below, which I regarded as an affront. I would wake with my sleeping bag covered in dew. After peeing and meditating, I would light a fire, boil water, make tea, then mix it with roasted barley flour and milk powder to form a lump of dough. This was breakfast and lunch—following the monastic rule, I did not eat in the evening. My meditations included the sādhanā s into which I had been initiated, where I visualized myself either as the furious bull-headed, priapic Yamāntaka or the naked, menstruating red goddess Vajrayoginī. I alternated these tantric practices with an hour of mindfully “sweeping” my body from head to foot, noticing with precision the transient sensations and feelings that suffused it. When not eating or meditating, I intoned a translation of Śāntideva’s Compendium of Training , an eighth-century Sanskrit anthology of Mahāyāna Buddhist discourses, which I had vowed to recite in its entirety while up here. “There never was a Buddha aforetime,” declared the text in its Victorian English, “nor shall be in the future, nor is there now, who could attain that highest wisdom whilst he remained in the household life. Renouncing kingship like a snot of phlegm, one should live in the woodland in love with solitude. . . . As the herbs and bushes, the plants and trees fear not nor are afraid or terrified, so the Bodhisattva dwelling in the forest must regard his body as like to the herbs and bushes, plants and trees, like wood, like plaster on a wall, like an apparition . . .” The Compendium of Training provides instructions on its own use. Once settled in the forest, the monk should “recite what he has read before thrice in the night and thrice in the day in a tone not too high and not too low, not with senses agitated, not with wandering thought, in all tranquility, putting away indolence.” Without inhibition I let these words ring out into the silence of the ravines and the wind. I still have my copy of this faded brown hardback. By the smudged purple stamp of the Piccadilly Book Stall, I assume I bought it in Delhi in the early 1970s. It lies open before me now. The musty, peppery smell I associate with Indian books of that time invades my nostrils. I am returned to the forest, to my red-robed younger self cross-legged on the ground, earnestly reciting Śāntideva’s words in a place “overshadowed with trees, with flowers, fruit, and leaves, with no danger from rabid dogs, where caves are and mountain slopes, easy to traverse, peaceful, incomparable.” What remains of that solitude now is my memory of the sweeping panorama of the plains of the Punjab, the immense arc of the heavens, and the embrace of the mountains that harbored this fragile dot of self-awareness. Once, a fabulous multicolored bird launched itself from the cliffs beneath, floated for an instant in the air, then disappeared from view. A herdsman and his goats came close to discovering me one afternoon. I peeked at them through a lattice of leaves as the animals grazed and the wiry, sun-blackened man in a coarse wool tunic lay on a rock. Supplies exhausted and text recited, I trekked back to my room in the village of McLeod-ganj below. During my five days on the mountain I had acquired a taste for solitude that has been with me ever since. Preamble preamble Solitude is a fluid concept, ranging from the depths of loneliness to the saint’s mystic rapture. In his poem La Fin de Satan the novelist Victor Hugo declared that “the entirety of hell is contained in one word: solitude .” He later conceded: “Solitude is good for great minds but bad for small ones. It troubles brains that it does not illuminate.” Yet Hugo was unable to go as far as his older English contemporary William Wordsworth, for whom solitude was a “bliss” that filled the heart with joy. Largely avoiding its extremes of hell and bliss, here I will explore the middle ground of solitude, which I consider a site of autonomy, wonder, contemplation, imagination, inspiration, and care. I will treat solitude as a practice, a way of life—as understood by the Buddha and Montaigne alike—rather than seeking to analyze it as a discrete psychological state. I recognize isolation and alienation as the dark, tragic sides of solitude. Woven into our mortal condition, they are equally part of what it means to be alone, whether in a monastic cell, an artist’s studio, or a troubled marriage. Solitude, like love, is too complex and primal a dimension of human life ever to be captured in a single definition. I don’t intend to “explain” solitude. I seek to disclose its extent and depth by telling stories of its practitioners. This book is a multifaceted, paratactic exploration of what has supported my own practice of solitude over the past forty years. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training myself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to my ability to be alone and at ease with myself. In 2013, I turned sixty. I took a sabbatical from my work as a teacher of meditation and philosophy, and spent much of the year traveling, studying, and making collages. In January I went by bus from Mumbai to Bhopal to visit the ancient rock-cut temples of India; in March, I attended a colloquium at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts on the emerging field of Secular Buddhism; in October I made a pilgrimage to South Korea to honor the thirtieth anniversary of the death of my Zen teacher Kusan Sunim; and in November I flew to Mexico to participate in a medicine circle with Don Toño, a shaman of the Huichol tribe. At the Barre colloquium, the dharma teacher and scholar Gil Fronsdal presented his work on an early Buddhist scripture in the Pali language called the Chapter of Eights ( Aṭṭhakavagga ). In their directness, simplicity, and austerity, the 209 verses of the Chapter of Eights capture the pithy utterances of the Buddha as he “wandered alone like a rhinoceros” in the years before he established a community. Largely devoid of Buddhist terminology, the verses advocate a life liberated from opinions and dogmatism. The Chapter of Eights made a deep impression on me. Intrigued by the possibility that the four eight-verse poems near the beginning of the text might be the earliest record of the Buddha’s teaching, I decided to translate them into English. Inspired by their rhythm and metaphors, I treated them as poetry rather than scripture. I titled my translation the Four Eights . The Four Eights opens by raising the question of solitude itself: The creature concealed inside its cell— a man sunk in dark passions is a long, long way from solitude. FOUR EIGHTS , 1:1 I translated the Pali term guhā as “cell,” though it could have been rendered as “cave” or “hiding place.” Guhā is also linked to the word guyha , which means “secret.” We can hide away and feel safe within the dark, silent interior of a cave. We can likewise retreat to those intimate places within ourselves that seem to afford comparable protection, where we can pursue our secret lives, alone and undisturbed. In a letter to her friend Monna Alessa dei Saracini, the fourteenth-century scholar and mystic Catherine of Siena wrote: Make two homes for thyself, my daughter. One actual home in thy cell, that thou go not running about into many places, unless for necessity, or for obedience to the prioress, or for charity’s sake; and another spiritual home, which thou art to carry with thee always—the cell of true self-knowledge, where thou shalt find within thyself knowledge of the goodness of God. The “creature concealed inside its cell” need not be a nun meditating in a convent. It could be anyone who feels herself isolated and lonely in a bustling, noisy city. Yet either of these solitary people, remaining consumed and paralyzed by private anxieties, would, for the author of the Four Eights , be “a long, long way from solitude.” There is more to solitude than just being alone. True solitude is a way of being that needs to be cultivated. You cannot switch it on or off at will. Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it. When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul. For those who have rejected religion in favor of secular humanism, the notion of solitude may imply self-indulgence, navel-gazing, or solipsism. Inevitably, some may be drawn to solitude as a way of escaping responsibility and avoiding relationships. But for many it provides the time and space to develop the inner calm and autonomy needed to engage effectively and creatively with the world. Moments of quiet contemplation, whether before a work of art or while observing your breath, allow you to rethink what your life is about and reflect on what matters most for you. Solitude is not a luxury for the leisured few. It is an inescapable dimension of being human. Whether we are devout believers or devout atheists, in solitude we confront and explore the same existential questions. My accounts in this book of ingesting psychedelics in shamanic ceremonies should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of their use. I am describing a journey rooted in my own personal and cultural history that may or may not be pertinent to the reader. Most Buddhists, moreover, would regard taking peyote and ayahuasca as an infraction of the moral precept against intoxicants and thus incompatible with the practice of the dharma. A principal motive in writing The Art of Solitude has been to try to find a more constructive way of talking about the contentious issue of drugs in our highly medicated society. As the current opioid epidemic in the United States illustrates, both secular and religious institutions struggle to find ways to respond intelligently and compassionately to this crisis. Rather than basing a response on the binary opposition between indulgence (bad) and abstinence (good), we need a more informed and nuanced understanding of how to use substances that modify human awareness, feeling, and behavior. By framing the use of psychedelics within the practice of solitude, I seek to integrate it into a broader cultural discourse that includes meditation, therapy, philosophy, religion, and art. This book grew out of my wanderings, explorations, and studies but was shaped by my twenty-year practice of making collages from found materials. Wherever I go, I collect discarded scraps of paper, cloth, and plastic, which I glue onto card stock, then cut up and organize into square mosaics. This process transforms random bits of rubbish into artworks structured by formal rules decided on in advance, making each collage a combination of chance and order. The Art of Solitude has been conceived and executed in a similar way. While writing I have borne in mind the strict metric structure of the Four Eights as well as the chaotic organization of Montaigne’s Essays , both of which have inspired the form of this book. Montaigne observed that in painting “sometimes the work breaks free from the painter’s hand, surpassing his ideas and understanding, leading him to be astonished and profoundly moved.” The grace and beauty of such works is achieved “not only without the artist’s intention but without his knowledge.” Likewise, “a good reader often finds in others’ writings gems other than those placed there or even noticed by the author, endowing those texts with richer meaning and character.” In composing this book as a collage, I have sought to reduce my authorial control, thereby freeing the text to find a voice of its own. My collages are exercises in composition and differentiation. As this process has evolved, I have become absorbed by the question of how different things go together . One of my guiding principles is that of noncontiguity. This means that no two pieces I cut from the same material can be adjacent to each other in the final composition, thus ensuring that each piece of the collage is maximally differentiated from the pieces around it. This enables every piece to stand out vividly in its own “solitude” from the matrix of which it is also an integral part. I have employed the same principle to write this book. None of its thirty-two chapters is ever preceded or followed by a chapter that treats the same theme. And since the sequence of chapters is partly decided by random selection, this meant that I had no idea when writing a particular chapter what other chapter would precede or follow it in the final work. Each chapter, therefore, had to be written as a piece that would be able to stand alone. By abandoning any logical or narrative continuity between successive chapters, I allow the disparate themes and topics of the book to bounce off one another in surprising and illuminating ways. This project has returned me to my own beginnings as a writer. My first book, published in 1983, was called Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism . As I put it then, I was intrigued by the paradox of “always finding ourselves inescapably alone and at the same time inescapably together with others .” I recognize now that a comparable aesthetic tension has informed my collage work. Drawing upon Western phenomenology and existentialism, Alone with Others presented a Buddhist understanding of human fulfillment (“awakening”) as the integration of wisdom ( alone ) and compassion ( with others ). My interest in solitude is still driven by the same desire to make sense of this basic paradox of human existence. While this book recounts—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly—the inner story of my own struggle with Buddhism, and while I continue to draw on sources and themes from that tradition, I do not consider The Art of Solitude to be a Buddhist book. I am not interested in presenting a Buddhist interpretation of solitude. I want to share with you what practitioners of solitude, from varied backgrounds, disciplines, and traditions, have reported back from the coalface of their practice. For the Chinese, to turn sixty means to have completed five twelve-year cycles of the zodiac. Each additional year of life is regarded as a bonus, a gift. In Korea, the strict behavioral conventions of Confucian society are relaxed at sixty. You often encounter groups of seniors tramping through the hills, singing songs, drinking soju , and making fools of themselves. I consider the five-year period it has taken me to write this book as a gift. I hope I have not squandered it. My translation of the Four Eights is included as an appendix. All material originally in French, Pali, and Tibetan has been newly translated for this book by the author. Stephen Batchelor Aquitaine, France JUNE 2019 Chapter 22 22 In 2016, I participated in two seven-day jhāna retreats with the American meditation teacher Leigh Brasington: the first in August in England, the second in December in Portugal. The word jhāna in Pali simply means meditation. To distinguish it from other meditations, it is often translated as “absorption.” The jhānas describe an arc of four phases of collectedness ( samādhi ), starting with a focused state of rapture and well-being accompanied by reflection and analysis, and culminating in a state of stillness and well-being characterized by lucidity and equanimity. They are presented as ways to stabilize and sharpen the mind in order to see more clearly into the nature of things. After rejecting the traditional forms of meditation and asceticism current in India at his time, Gotama recalled an experience he’d had as a child. Seated alone beneath a tree, he had suddenly found himself in what he would come to call the “first jhāna.” His memory of this ecstatic state led him to regain trust in his own innocent intuition rather than rely on the authority of meditation teachers or established ascetic practices. “Yes,” he said to himself, “this is the way.” He realized there was nothing wrong with such bliss that arose entirely from within himself. So he resumed the practice of the jhānas until he arrived at an awakening. Given the centrality of this episode in the life story of the Buddha, it is odd how few Buddhist teachers encourage their students to practice the jhānas. Some will even tell their students to avoid the jhānas because of the risk of getting attached to the pleasurable feelings associated with them. Others present them as such advanced and subtle states of mind that they are effectively unattainable for all but specialists. In my own training, I was never once advised to practice the jhānas. This traditional reticence did not deter the German-born nun Ayya Khema (1923–97), who rediscovered them for herself and then taught them to her students, among whom was the self-styled “ex-hippy computer programmer” Leigh Brasington. Leigh’s instructions for entering the jhānas are simple. You start by focusing on the breath as when practicing mindfulness. You then turn your attention to the sensations on your upper lip created by the passage of inhalations and exhalations. Over time, these sensations coalesce into what feels like a solid, fixed point. Once you can sustain attention on this point for several minutes, you gently smile to yourself and shift your focus to the pleasurable feeling that accompanies the smile. As you dwell on this pleasure in a relaxed and disinterested way, then, as Leigh puts it: “the jhāna will find you.” Almost as soon as I began following Leigh’s instructions on the first day of the first retreat, I entered into a calm and steady meditative state. That first night I lay awake with perfect contentment saturating my body. Over the course of the next day, the practice led me to a deep, calm contemplation of the tragic and ephemeral nature of my life, which was sobering and moving. I experienced little distraction while sitting but also no rapture. The pleasant, even blissful feelings that permeated my body/mind were more pronounced when I walked outside, drank tea, or lay down after the sessions of seated meditation than during the sessions themselves. Doing samādhi practice, I realized, is like gently putting on the brakes and stopping, which allows a whole new perspective to open up with regard to life, based on still, focused bodily joy. At 11:00 AM on the fourth day, Leigh gave a talk on the tonality of feeling. Seated on a chair, I listened politely. Then I noticed a buildup of sensations in the center of my chest, which started radiating out as an ecstatic flow. I became completely immersed in this as it came forth, sometimes in surges that made me lean forward and sway from side to side. It dawned on me that this must be rapture. In ordinary concentration, I have to hold my attention on the object, but now it was the rapture, centered in the middle of the chest but also suffusing the body, that held my attention. I didn’t have to do anything. At the same time, I was fully conscious of everything else going on around me. This continued uninterrupted until the bell at 12:30 and carried on all through lunch, after which I went to my room to lie down. I lay on my back, took a few deep breaths, as Leigh had advised, and relaxed, which resulted in the rapture’s diminishing, leaving me with a suffused, bright contentment, also extending through the entire body. I went out for a walk in the hamlet of West Ogwell, quietly and beatifically aware of all that I encountered. As I passed by a cottage, I noticed a dog in the yard and went up to stroke it through the bars of the gate. In catching its mournful eye, I was overwhelmed by an upsurge of rapture from the center of my chest, which made me gasp for breath and nearly lose my balance. I stumbled over to a log, on which I sat down to collect myself. The rapture was not as sustained as in the morning but continued as a physical presence that remained with me as I slowly continued my walk. But as soon as I returned to the hall and sat in meditation, it vanished. If this is jhāna, then jhāna is not (as I had assumed until then) just an intensification of the concentration one develops during Vipassanā or Zen meditation. It is of another order. It shifts one into a different body-mindset altogether. It is a gift. And it is not just a precursor to further insight later but affords another perspective on—and consolidation of—the understanding one has already developed. That night I slept badly and the next day struggled with the expectation of rapture, which, I suspect, prevented it from happening. I cannot deny that I enjoyed the nonordinary and ecstatic experience of the day before in a way that made me crave to have it again. To provoke it I started smiling more forcefully until, in my mind’s eye, the smile turned into a mocking skull’s rictus. My low mood made it very difficult to generate any sense of joy—everything I did seemed shallow and artificial. The second jhāna retreat that winter in Portugal was not as dramatic or eventful as the first. It consolidated my practice of collectedness, making my meditation more grounded, embodied, and still. I settled more and more into an undistractability that remained whatever was going on around me. At times the meditation became very quiet and I felt myself shifting gears, so to speak, as a “vibrating space” of pristine concentration took over. Occasionally, a diffuse white light permeated my awareness. Once I was convinced that I was floating about six feet above the ground. Again, the effects of the meditation were often more apparent outside the formal sessions of sitting. Wandering slowly through the fruit groves around the retreat, I would find myself at rest in a spacious clarity of mind that was more palpable than any of the thoughts and emotions going on within it. The classical definition of the first jhāna describes it as “born from solitude.” To train the mind to dwell in sustained collectedness clearly requires removing oneself from the distractions and pressures of daily life. But this is not enough. The solitude that gives birth to the first jhāna is primarily a state of mind. Such inner solitude is characterized by the delight, ease, and freedom that come from no longer being the puppet of one’s desires, aversions, low and high energy levels, doubts, and anxieties. The jhānas, therefore, are a natural consequence of disentangling oneself from the habitual patterns and mood swings that bedevil us. In one of his talks, Leigh quoted the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, who said: There is no walking without walkers And no walkers without walking. Likewise, there can be no meditation without a meditator, no jhāna without a jhāna practitioner and no jhāna practitioner without a jhāna. And since each jhāna practitioner is a different person, the jhāna experienced by me may be quite different from the jhāna experienced by you. A jhāna has no independent existence apart from the person doing the practice. It will mean something different depending on the experience, outlook, beliefs, and so on of the meditator. The mutually interdependent relationship between the jhāna and the meditator will give rise to something unpredictable in its specificity. The texts, therefore, can only give us a rough guide, a rule of thumb, as to what the experience of jhāna will be “like.” Rapture and well-being suffuse the body independently of any external sensory input. They may well vary in intensity and kind for each person. The widely differing opinions as to what a jhāna is could simply reflect the different ways and levels at which it resonates for different meditators. Jhāna practice enabled me to recognize and attune myself to the optimal affective and somatic pitch for my contemplative practice. Nor do scholars agree on what the jhānas are. Toward the end of the retreat in Portugal, I read Israeli scholar Keren Arbel’s Ph.D. thesis on the four jhānas. She says: “One attains the jhānas not by fixating the mind or being absorbed into a meditation object but by releasing and letting go of the foothold of unwholesome mind. . . . The four jhānas should not be perceived as a narrow field of awareness, directed on a single point but as an undirected broad field of awareness.” For Keren, the jhānas are not trancelike absorptions but the actualization and embodiment of understanding itself. Chapter 06 6 Without noticing how or when, I find myself in an altered state of mind. My awareness is subtly but acutely heightened. Ecstatic, I feel electric ripples course through my body, making me want to stretch and moan. My spine straightens, as though to optimize the contemplation that is taking hold of me. I no longer have to concentrate; it happens by itself. Distraction is not an option; all random thoughts have ceased. I am intensely, silently conscious as I gaze into the breathing orange heart of the fire. Andrés gently shakes the mara’akame awake. Don Toño sits up, puts on the wide-brimmed hat whose tassels swing in front of his eyes, picks up a hand drum, and begins to intone a haunting chant to the rhythm of its beat. There is a hypnotic beauty and poignancy to whatever he sings in his nasal voice. Something ancient and mournful resonates through his words in the Huichol tongue. Andrés lights a cigarette and places it between Don Toño’s lips. The mara’akame draws on it deeply and keeps drumming. Then he lies down again and goes back to sleep. This ritual is to be repeated several times during the course of the night. Nacho the younger whispers in my ear: “What is the name of your grandfather?” I say: “Alfred.” He says: “The fire is your grandfather. The Madonna is your grandmother.” I sense that this is a cue for me to do something. I do not know what he means and feel no need to ask further. Immersed in my solitude, I am beatifically detached from everyone else while acutely aware of their presence and how it sustains me. Raúl, a young workingman with dense black stubble, rises to his feet. He braces himself, spits into the fire several times, glares intently at the blaze, and launches into an impassioned confession. He wraps his arms around his body, rocks about unsteadily, wails and weeps as a torrent of words pours forth. At one point he makes as though to vomit into the flames, but without success. Andrés comes over and brushes Raúl’s body from head to foot with feathers tied to a short stick that he then shakes at the fire as though dispelling droplets of water from them. I am unmoved by but not dissociated from this unexpected demonstration of emotion. I feel utterly transparent and pure inside, yet entirely at one with Raúl’s confession. “Go talk to your grandfather,” urges Nacho the younger. I ignore him. A chipped enamel mug appears on the embers at the edge of the fire. We take it in turns to sip a hot brown beverage that warms and soothes the stomach. The taste is familiar but strange. I learn that it is chocolate blended with dried peyote. Whether or not this additional dose has any effect I cannot tell. Such questions no longer hold any interest. All that matters is the undiluted intensity of the moment, the keen lucidity of the senses, the ecstatic silence. There is drumming, more coordinated now, accompanied by dance. Andrés takes off his shirt, writhes and twists beside the fire, the sweat-dampened skin of his lean torso shining in the flames. He sits down beside me. In a mixture of English and French I ask him: “If peyote is the medicine, then what is the sickness it cures?” He says: “A closed heart.” By the time we are back in Tepoztlán later that morning, the night around the fire has assumed a dreamlike quality. A heightened lucidity and stillness of mind remain with me. The world continues to appear luminous and bright. I feel as if my senses, nervous system, and brain cells have been washed clean. It will be several weeks before the effect of the medicine fades away. Did the mescaline in the peyote alone produce this? Would I have had the same experience had I taken exactly the same dose alone in my living room listening to Bach? Did the past forty years of practicing the dharma make a difference? I suspect that the crushing of the cacti, Grandfather Fire, the chants, the confessions, offering a poem to the Madonna, sitting cross-legged in meditation, the silence I observed, fasting the day before, my motives for participating in the ceremony all played a part. I slowly come to understand that the ceremony served as an existential affirmation of what I had done and was doing with my life. For a few hours, in the language of Carlos Castaneda, it had “stopped the world” and allowed me to “see.” In Buddhist terms, it had let me “behold” the “stopping of reactivity” and dwell in the “deathless.” Without any need to be formulated in concepts or words, it confirmed that the life I had chosen as a writer, artist, and teacher was an appropriate one. I realized that were I to die, I would leave this world with no regrets. Eighteen months later, I receive an email from Nacho the elder. “During a meditation session two days ago,” he begins, “I realized for the first time how beautiful silence is. And I must say I learned a lot from you in this issue, especially when we were at Tepoztlán and you began to keep silent, more and more, it was even uncomfortable, until we almost all remained in silence and I understood.” During all this time I had taken Andrés’s comment about “a closed heart” to be a mild rebuke for my having failed to participate more actively in the ceremony. Now I am not so sure. Chapter 21 21 Among the work in Vermeer’s studio at his death in 1675 was an allegorical painting titled Schilderkonst ( The Art of Painting ). A painter, his back turned to the viewer, sits on a stool in front of a canvas that rests on an easel. A young woman in a blue satin dress, clutching a book to her bosom and holding a trumpet in her right hand, poses for him. He has just begun depicting the blue-tinted leaves of her tiara. One post of the easel stands on the tiled floor of alternating black and white squares. The easel’s other post is clearly visible above the painter’s beret, but where it should emerge onto the floor beside his foot there is nothing. By the laws of physics the easel should not be standing. It troubles me that the word “art” is the same as in “artifice” and “artificial.” I value art as a way of truth-telling. I refuse to think of Agnes Martin’s Faraway Love as somehow fake. But as I scrutinize the woman in the blue dress in The Art of Painting , I feel she is making fun of me. Her fluttering eyelids and the impish slant of her lips suggest she is not taking any of it seriously. This, she seems to say, is just a painting of a painting being painted, an attempt to say something truthful about the manufacture of illusions. The more I look at Vermeer’s paintings, the more theatrical they become. A wealthy merchant’s daughter trying on a pearl necklace turns into one of the artist’s friends or family members dressed up in fancy clothes and playing a role in a charade. Vermeer makes no attempt to conceal what he is doing. The same props—tables, carpets, chairs, costumes, and wall hangings—are rearranged in what often looks like the same room. As I consider these actors, I detect their complicity with the artist. Some scholars have identified Vermeer with the grinning, rakish figure holding a glass of wine in his early painting The Procuress . This reinforces my sense of him as a trickster, a jester, a clown. Johannes Vermeer and Agnes Martin both painted with their backs to the world. Whether surrounded by noisy children in a townhouse in Delft or alone on a mesa in the high desert of New Mexico, they pursued the same solitary vocation. Both have left behind pigment-coated canvases secured to wooden supports that have achieved iconic if not transcendent significance. Painters and writers need solitude to forge and refine the vision of their art. They pass long stretches of time alone with their work, anonymous, ignored, haunted by the prospect of ridicule or failure. Solitude is a necessary condition for developing their imagination and their craft. To be alone at your desk or in your studio is not enough. You have to free yourself from the phantoms and inner critics who pursue you wherever you go. “When you start working,” said the composer John Cage, “everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.” Solitude is considered an aberration. The person who keeps herself apart is labeled “antisocial,” a “loner,” even a “misanthrope.” Solitary confinement is regarded as the worst kind of punishment short of execution. “We have been very strenuously conditioned against solitude,” observed Agnes Martin. “To be alone is considered to be a grievous and dangerous condition.” She encourages artists to recall times when they were alone and examine carefully their responses to aloneness. She advises them to create opportunities for being by themselves, to avoid unnecessary company, even that of cats and dogs. She suggests that those who enjoy being alone could become “serious workers in the art field.” Having shut the door, you find yourself alone before a canvas, a sheet of paper, a lump of clay, a computer screen. Other tools and materials lie around, close at hand, waiting to be used. You resume your silent conversation with the work. This is a two-way process: you create the work and then you respond to it. The work can inspire, surprise, and shock you. For Martin it is crucial to understand the response you have to your own work, to know how it makes you feel. In this way, “you discover your direction and truth about yourself.” The solitary act of making art involves intense, wordless dialogue. Bibliography bibliography Preamble Batchelor, Stephen. Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism . New York: Grove, 1983. Catherine of Siena. Letter (no. 49) to Monna Alessa dei Saracini . http://www.drawnbylove.com/Scudder%20letters.htm#2MAlessa . Fronsdal, Gil. The Buddha before Buddhism: Wisdom from the Early Teachings . Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 2016. Hugo, Victor. La fin de Satan . 1886; Paris: Gallimard, 1984. ———. Choses vues. Nouvelle série . Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1900. Wordsworth, William. Selected Poems . Ed. Stephen Gill. London: Penguin, 2004. Art and Solitude [ Y E L L O W ] (Chapters 3 , 7 , 11 , 14 , 17 , 21 , 25 , 32 ) Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New York: Modern Library, 2007. Avigdor, Leon d’. Agnes Martin: Between the Lines . Documentary film, 2016. Batchelor, David. Chromophobia . London: Reaktion, 2000. ———. The Luminous and the Grey . London: Reaktion, 2014. Buddhist Television Network. Revering the Memory of Master Kusan Sunim 01 . Korean language video, available on YouTube. The section on Baekun Am starts at 11:04. Buswell, Robert. The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul . Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983. Cioran, E. M. The Trouble with Being Born . Trans. Richard Howard. London: Quartet, 1993. Dehejia, Vidya. Early Buddhist Rock Temples: A Chronological Study. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self Reliance and Other Essays . 1841; New York: Dover, 1993. Fergusson, James. History of Indian and Eastern Architecture . London: John Murray, 1910. Gruen, John. “ ‘What We Make, Is What We Feel’: Agnes Martin on Her Meditative Practice.” 1976; ARTnews, 2015. Hutchinson, John, et al. Antony Gormley . London: Phaidon, 1995, expanded ed. 2000. Jelley, Jane. Traces of Vermeer . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Keats, John. Letters of John Keats. Ed. Robert Gittings. Oxford: Oxford University Pre	231,787
The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love Committed The Last American Man Stern Men Pilgrims (Elizabeth Gilbert) (Z-Library).epub	PILGRIMS ELIZABETH GILBERT Pilgrims PILGRIMS THE COMPLETE ELIZABETH GILBERT eat pray love ALSO INCLUDING: Committed The Last American Man Stern Men & Pilgrims BLOOMSBURY PILGRIMS Contents Title Dedication Praise Pilgrims Elk Talk Alice to the East Bird Shot Tall Folks Landing Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids The Many Things That Denny Brown did not Know (Age Fifteen) The Names of Flowers and Girls At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick Finest Wife PILGRIMS FOR MOM AND DAD WITH MUCH LOVE PILGRIMS Praise for Pilgrims ‘Gilbert is keen on seeing as many of her characters achieve redemption as possible–in the most creative ways possible … She achieves the enviable feat of telling her characters’ stories in their own words, on their own terms, without pomp or superciliousness’ New York Times Book Review ‘Rendered with care and airtight precision. And her sentences are built solid as a brick shithouse’ Time Out New York ‘An imaginative range, assured comic touch, and dead-on ear for dialogue that’s truly exceptional … A gifted fiction writer’s sympathy for an amusing, believable array of resolute searchers and a reporter’s thoroughness that never gets bogged down in detail … her nimble, sharp prose is like the finger of a gifted illusionist’ Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Each story is full of humour, strength, and strange experiences … Gilbert has taken her encounters with people of every past and place, and infused them with the light and longevity of her own imagination’ Chicago Tribune ‘Gilbert draws her characters beautifully, and her sentences are sharp and bright’ Los Angeles Times ‘Hopeful, deluded, intoxicated, amazed, Gilbert’s characters shoot across the sky, and she catches them like a skilled photographer just as they pop, before they crash, drown or grow dull and fade away…Her fiction, like the best reporting, bristles with sharp, startling details’ The Cleveland Plain Dealer ‘Reading this talented trickster is like watching an acrobat. The risks are cruel. The light-as-a-feather endings can charm. One waits with interest for more of this fabulist’ Hortense Calisher ‘This is a killer collection, a run in the bad part of town, a sideshow of the heart. Elizabeth Gilbert writes with fierce grace about people who are all wised up, beaten down, and still manage to hope and love and get on with it’ Frederick Barthelme, author of Moon Deluxe PILGRIMS Whan that April with his showres soote The drought of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every vein in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flowr; Whan Zephyrus, eek, with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tender croppes, and the yonge sunne Hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne, And smalle fowles maken melodye That sleepen all the night with open ye (So pricketh hem Nature in hir corages), Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages … ––G EOFFREY C HAUCER PILGRIMS Pilgrims W HEN MY OLD MAN said he’d hired her, I said, “A girl?” A girl, when it wasn’t that long ago women couldn’t work on this ranch even as cooks, because the wranglers got shot over them too much. They got shot even over the ugly cooks. Even over the old ones. I said, “A girl?” “She’s from Pennsylvania,” my old man said. “She’ll be good at this.” “She’s from what?” When my brother Crosby found out, he said, “Time for me to find new work when a girl starts doing mine.” My old man looked at him. “I heard you haven’t come over Dutch Oven Pass once this season you haven’t been asleep on your horse or reading a goddamn book. Maybe it’s time for you to find new work anyhow.” He told us that she showed up somehow from Pennsylvania in the sorriest piece of shit car he’d ever seen in his life. She asked him for five minutes to ask for a job, but it didn’t take that long. She flexed her arm for him to feel, but he didn’t feel it. He liked her, he said, right away. He trusted his eye for that, he said, after all these years. “You’ll like her, too,” he said. “She’s sexy like a horse is sexy. Nice and big. Strong.” “Eighty-five of your own horses to feed, and you still think horse is sexy,” I said, and my brother Crosby said, “I think we got enough of that kind of sexy around here already.” She was Martha Knox, nineteen years old and tall as me, thick-legged but not fat, with cowboy boots that anyone could see were new that week, the cheapest in the store and the first pair she’d ever owned. She had a big chin that worked only because her forehead and nose worked, too, and she had the kind of teeth that take over a face even when the mouth is closed. She had, most of all, a dark brown braid that hung down the center of her back, thick as a girl’s arm. I danced with Martha Knox one night early in the season. It was a day off to go down the mountain, get drunk, make phone calls, do laundry, fight. Martha Knox was no dancer. She didn’t want to dance with me. She let me know this by saying a few times that she wasn’t going to dance with me, and then, when she finally agreed, she wouldn’t let go of her cigarette. She held it in one hand and let that hand fall and not be available. So I kept my beer bottle in one hand, to balance her out, and we held each other with one arm each. She was no dancer and she didn’t want to dance with me, but we found a good slow sway anyway, each of us with an arm hanging down, like a rodeo cowboy’s right arm, like the right arm of a bull rider, not reaching for anything. She wouldn’t look anywhere but over my left shoulder, like that part of her that was a good dancer with me was some part she had not ever met and didn’t feel like being introduced to. My old man also said this about Martha Knox: “She’s not beautiful, but I think she knows how to sell it.” Well, it’s true that I wanted to hold her braid. I always had wanted to from first seeing it and mostly I wanted to in that dance, but I didn’t reach for it and I didn’t set down my beer bottle. Martha Knox wasn’t selling anything. We didn’t dance again that night or again at all, because it was a long season and my old man worked all of us too hard. There were no more full days off for dancing or fighting. And when we would sometimes get an afternoon off in the middle of a hard week, we would all go to the bunkhouse and sleep; fast, dead tired sleep, in our own bunks, in our own boots, like firemen or soldiers. Martha Knox asked me about rodeo. “Crosby says it’s a good way to get made dead,” she said. “It’s the best way I know.” We were facing each other across the short pine fire, just us, drinking. In the tent behind Martha Knox were five hunters from Chicago, asleep or tired, mad at me for not being able to make them good enough shots to kill any of the elk we’d seen that week. In the tent behind me were the cook stoves and the food and two foam pads with a sleeping bag for each of us. She slept under horse blankets to be warmer, and we both slept on the jeans we’d be wearing the next day, to keep them from freezing. It was the middle of October, the last hunt of the season, and ice hung in long needles off the muzzles of the horses every morning when we saddled. “Are you drunk?” I asked her. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “That’s a pretty damn good question.” She was looking at her hands. They were clean, with all the expected cuts and burns, but they were clean hands. “You rode rodeo, right?” she asked. “One time too many,” I said. “Bulls?” “Broncs.” “Is that why you get called Buck?” “I get called Buck because I stabbed myself in the leg with my buck knife when I was a kid.” “Ever get nailed in rodeo?” “I got on this bronc one night and knew right away, right in the chute, that it wasn’t going to have me. It wanted me gone and dead for trying. Never was so scared on a horse as on that son of a bitch.” “You think it knew?” “Knew? How could it know?” “Crosby says the first job of a horse is to figure out who’s riding it and who’s in charge.” “That’s my old man’s line. He says it to scare dudes. If horses were that smart, they’d be riding us.” “That’s Crosby’s line.” “No.” I took another drink. “That’s my old man’s line, too.” “So you got thrown.” “But my wrist got caught in the rigging and I got dragged around the ring three times under the son of a bitch’s belly. Crowd loved it. Horse loved it. Put me in the hospital almost a year.” “Give me that?” She reached for the bottle. “I want to ride broncs,” she said. “I want to ride rodeo.” “That’s what I meant to do,” I said. “I meant to talk you into it with that story.” “Was your dad mad?” I didn’t answer that. I stood up and walked over to the tree where all the pack gear was hung up in the branches, like food hung away from bears. I unzipped my fly and said, “Shield your eyes, Martha Knox, I’m about to unleash the biggest thing in the Wyoming Rockies.” She didn’t say anything while I pissed, but when I got back to the fire she said, “That’s Crosby’s line.” I found a can of tobacco in my pocket. “No, it’s not,” I said. “That’s my old man’s line, too.” I tapped the can against my leg to pack the chew, then took some. It was my last can of tobacco, almost empty. “My old man bought that bronc,” I said. “He found the owner and gave him twice what the bastard was worth. Then he took it out back of the cook shack, shot it in the head, and buried it in the compost pile.” “You’re kidding me,” Martha Knox said. “Don’t bring it up with him.” “Hell no. No way.” “He came to see me every day in the hospital. We never even talked because he was so goddamn beat. He just smoked. He’d flick the cigarette butts over my head and they’d land in the toilet and hiss out. I was in a neck brace for a bunch of months and I couldn’t even turn my head and see him. So damn bored. Just about the only thing I lived for was seeing those butts go flying over my face to the toilet.” “That’s bored,” Martha Knox said. “My brother Crosby showed up sometimes, too, with pictures of girls.” “Sure.” “Well, that was okay to look at, too.” “Sure. Everyone had a butt for you to look at.” She drank. I took the bottle, passed it back, and she drank more. There was snow around us. There’d been hail on the day we rode in and snow almost every night. In the afternoons big patches of it would melt off in the meadow and leave small white piles like laundry, and the horses would walk through these. The grass was almost gone, and the horses had started leaving at night, looking for better food. We hung cowbells around their necks, and these rang flat and loud while they grazed. It was a good noise. I was used to it, and I only noticed it when it was gone. That quiet of no bells meant no horses, and it could wake me up in the middle of the night. We’d have to go out after the horses then, but I knew where they usually went, and we’d head that way. Martha Knox was figuring them out, too, and she didn’t complain about having to get dressed in the middle of the night in the cold and go listen for bells in the dark. She liked it. She was getting it. “You know something about your brother Crosby?” Martha Knox asked. “He really thinks he knows his way around a girl.” I didn’t say anything, and she went on. “Now how can that be, Buck, when there aren’t any girls around?” “Crosby knows girls,” I said. “He lived in towns.” “What towns? Casper? Cheyenne?” “Denver. Crosby lived in Denver.” “Okay, Denver.” “Well, there’s a girl or two in Denver.” “Sure.” She yawned. “So he could have learned his way around girls in Denver.” “I see that, Buck.” “Girls love Crosby.” “I bet.” “They do. Me and Crosby are going down to Florida one of these winters and wreck every marriage we can. There’s a lot of rich women down there. A lot of rich, bored women.” “They’d have to be pretty bored,” Martha Knox said, and laughed. “They’d have to be bored to goddamn tears.” “You don’t like my brother Crosby?” “I love your brother Crosby. Why wouldn’t I like Crosby? I think Crosby’s the greatest.” “Good for you.” “But he thinks he knows his way around a girl, and that’s a pain in the ass.” “Girls love Crosby.” “I showed him a picture of my sister one time. He told me she looked like she’d been on the wrong side of a lot of bad dick. What kind of a thing to say is that?” “You have a sister?” “Agnes. She works in Missoula.” “On a ranch?” “Not on a ranch, no. She’s a stripper, actually. She hates it because it’s a college town. She says college boys don’t tip, no matter what you stick in their faces.” “Did you ever fool around with my brother Crosby?” I asked. “Hey, Buck,” she said. “Don’t be shy. Ask whatever’s on your mind.” “Oh, shit. Never mind.” “You know what they called me in high school? Fort Knox. You know why? Because I wouldn’t let anyone in my pants.” “Why not?” “Why not?” Martha Knox poked at the fire with a twig, then threw the twig in. She moved the coffee pot away from the flames and tapped the side of it with a spoon to settle the grounds that were boiling. “Why not? Because I didn’t think it was a very good idea.” “That’s a hell of a nickname.” “Buck’s a better one.” “Taken,” I said. Martha Knox got up and went into the tent, and when she came out she had an armful of wood. I asked, “What are you doing?” “The fire is almost dead.” “So let it die. It’s late.” She didn’t answer me. “I have to get up at three-thirty tomorrow morning,” I said. “So good night.” “And so do you have to get up.” Martha Knox put a stick on the fire and sat down. “Buck,” she said, “don’t be a baby.” She took a long drink and she sang, “Mama, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies . . .” “That’s a Crosby line,” I said. “Let me ask you something, Buck. When we’re done up here, let me go hunting with you and Crosby.” “I don’t think my old man would be crazy about that.” “I didn’t ask to go hunting with your old man.” “He won’t like it.” “Why?” “You ever even shoot a gun?” “Sure. When I was a little kid my parents sent me out to Montana to stay with my dad’s uncle for the summer. I called my folks after a few weeks and said, ‘Uncle Earl set up a coffee can on a log and let me shoot at it and I hit the goddamn thing six times.’ They made me come home early. Didn’t like the sound of that.” “Doesn’t sound like your old man’s going to be too crazy about it either, then.” “We do not not have to worry about my father,” she said. “Not anymore.” “That so?” She took her hat off and set it on her leg. It was an old hat. It belonged once to my cousin Rich. My old man gave it to Martha Knox. He steamed a new shape into it over a coffee pot one morning, put a neat crease in the top. The hat fit her. It suited her. “Now listen, Buck,” she said. “This is a good story, and you’ll like it. My dad grew Christmas trees. Not a lot of them. He grew exactly fifty Christmas trees and he grew them for ten years. In our front yard. Trimmed them all the time with kitchen scissors, so they were pretty, but only about this tall.” Martha Knox held her hand about three feet off the ground. “Problem is we lived in the country,” she went on. “Everybody had woods in their back yards. Nobody ever bought a Christmas tree in that place. So this wasn’t a good business idea, fifty perfect trees. No big money there. But that’s what he did, and my mom worked.” She took her hat off her leg and put it back on. “Anyway. He opened up for business last December and nobody showed up and he thought that was pretty damn weird, because they were such nice trees. He went out drinking. Me and my sister, we cut down maybe twenty of the fuckers. Threw them in the station wagon. Drove an hour to the highway, started flagging down cars and giving trees away. Anyone who stops gets a free tree. It was like . . . Well, hell. It was like Christmas.” Martha Knox found a cigarette in her coat pocket and lit it. “Now,” she said. “We drive home. There’s my dad. He pushes Agnes down and hauls off and punches me in the face.” “He ever hit you before?” I asked, and she shook her head. “And he never will again, either.” She looked at me, cool and even. I looked at her smoking her cigarette two thousand miles from home, and I thought about her shooting the goddamn coffee can six times, and we were quiet for a long time before I said, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” She didn’t look away and she didn’t answer fast, but she said, “Yeah. I killed him.” “Jesus Christ,” I said finally. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.” Martha Knox handed the bottle to me, but I didn’t take it. She came over beside me and sat down. She put her hand on my leg. “Jesus Christ,” I said again. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.” She sighed. “Buck,” she said. “Honey.” She patted my leg and then she nudged me. “You are the most gullible man I know on this planet.” “Fuck you.” “I shot my dad and buried him in the compost pile. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” “Fuck you, Martha Knox.” She got up and sat down on the other side of the fire again. “It was a great night, though. Lying in the driveway on my back with a bloody nose. I knew I was out of there.” She handed me the bottle again, and this time I drank. We did not talk for a long time, but we finished off the bottle, and when the fire got low, Martha Knox put more wood on it. I had my feet so close to the flames that the soles of my boots started to smoke, so I moved back, but not much. In October up there it isn’t easy to be warm and I would not pull away from that kind of heat too fast. There were bells from the meadow of horses moving but not leaving, grazing bells ringing, good bells. I could have named every horse out there and guessed who every horse was standing next to because of the way they liked to pair, and I could have told how each horse rode and how its mother and father rode, too. There were elk out there, still, but they were moving lower, like the horses wanted to move, for better food. Bighorn sheep and bear and moose were out there, too, all of them moving down, and I was listening for all of them. This night was clear. No clouds, except the fast clouds of our own breath, gone by the next breath, and it was bright from an almost finished moon. “Listen,” I said, “I was thinking of going for a ride.” “Now?” Martha Knox asked, and I nodded, but she had already known that I meant now, yes, now. Before she’d even asked, she was already looking at me and weighing things, mostly the big rule of my old man, which was this: no joyriding during work, not ever. No play-riding, no night-riding, no dare-riding, no dumb-riding, no risk-riding, not ever, not, most of all, during hunting camp. Before she’d even asked, “Now?” she’d thought of that, and she’d thought also that we were tired and drunk. There were hunters asleep in the tent behind her, and she thought of that, too. And I had also thought of all that. “Okay,” she said. “Listen,” I said, and I leaned in closer to the fire which was between us. “I was thinking of going up Washakee Pass tonight.” I watched her. I knew she’d never been out that far, but she knew what it was, because Washakee was the only way for miles in any direction to get over the Continental Divide and into the middle of the Rockies. My brother Crosby called it the Spine. It was narrow and iced, and it pushed thirteen thousand feet, but it went over and in, and Martha Knox had not ever gone that far. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.” “Well, listen. I was thinking of not stopping there.” She didn’t stop looking at me, and she didn’t change her expression, which was the expression of a good hunter watching for a good shot coming. Then I told her. “We take a pack horse each and whatever food and gear fits on them. I ride Stetson, you ride Jake, and we don’t come back.” “I’ll ride Handy.” “Not that spotted-ass cocksucker.” “I’ll ride Handy,” she said again, and I had forgotten that she had talked my old man into selling her that crazy horse. “Okay. But he’s all wrong for this.” “What about the hunters?” “They’ll be fine, if they don’t freak out.” “They’ll freak out.” “They’ll be fine.” “Talk about a bunch of pilgrims, Buck,” she said. “These guys have never even been in a back yard.” “If they’re smart, they’ll hike out tomorrow as soon as they figure we’re gone. The trail’s marked like a goddamn freeway. They’ll be fine. The soonest they’ll get to the ranch is tomorrow night, late. The soonest the forest service could come after us is the next day. If we ride straight, we could be ninety miles south by then.” “Tell me you’re dead serious,” Martha Knox said. “Because I’ll do this.” “I figure four or five days until we get to the Uinta range, and if they don’t catch us before then, they’ll never catch us.” “Okay. Let’s do this.” “Then we head south. And we’ll have to, because of winter. There’s no reason in the world we shouldn’t be in Mexico in a few months.” “Let’s do it.” “Jesus Christ. I’ve got it all figured out. Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ. We’ll steal cattle and sheep and sell them at all those puny mountain outfits where nobody ever asks any questions.” “Buck,” she said. “And we’ll ride into all those puny foothill towns in Utah and Wyoming and we’ll hold up their banks. On horseback.” “Buck,” she said again. “It must be a hundred years since anyone held up a bank on goddamn horseback. They won’t know how to deal with us. They’ll be chasing us in cars, and there we go, over the guard-rails, back up the mountains with all that cash. Gone.” “Buck,” she said, and I still didn’t answer, but this time I stopped talking. “Buck,” she said. “You’re just full of shit, aren’t you?” “I figure we can last four or five months before we finally get gunned down.” “You’re just full of shit. You’re not going anywhere.” “You think I wouldn’t do something like that?” “I don’t even want to talk about it.” “You think I wouldn’t do that?” “You want to take off with some horses and see if we get made dead out there? Fine, I’m all for that. But don’t waste my time with this outlaw bullshit.” “Come on,” I said. “Come on, Martha Knox.” “You’re just limited. Limited.” “You wouldn’t just take off like that anyway.” She looked at me like she was going to say something mean and mad, but instead she got up and poured the coffee over what was left of the fire to put it out. “Come on, Martha Knox,” I said. She sat down again, but I couldn’t see her well in the new dark, over the wet ash. “Don’t waste my time like that again,” she said. “Come on. You can’t just take off like that.” “The hell I can’t.” “You would’ve just stolen my old man’s horses?” “Handy is my goddamn horse.” “Come on, Martha Knox,” I said, but she stood up and went into the tent behind me. Then the tent was lit from inside, the way it was on mornings before the sun was up, when she would make day packs for the hunt, and from the meadow where I was starting to saddle I would see the tent glowing, but barely, because it was just one lantern she used. I waited, and she came out of the tent with that lantern. She also had a bridle, taken from the hook by the cook stoves where we hung all the bridles, so that the bits would not be frozen with dew, so the bits would not be ice in the horses’ mouths in the mornings. She walked past me toward the meadow. She walked fast like always, and, like always, she walked like a boy. I went after her. I stumbled on a loose rock, and I caught her arm. “You’re not taking off by yourself,” I said. “Yes, I am. I’m going to Mexico. In the middle of the night. Just me and this bridle.” Then she said, “I’m kidding, Buck,” even though I hadn’t answered her. I held her arm and we walked. The ground was rough, wet in some parts and in other parts covered with thin snow. We tripped ourselves up on rocks and fell into each other but didn’t fall over, and the lantern helped some. We followed bells until we were with the horses. Martha Knox set the lantern on a stump. We looked at the horses and they looked at us. Some of them moved away, moved sideways or back from us. But Stetson came over to me. I put my hand out and he sniffed at it and set his chin on it. He moved off and bent to graze again, and the bell around his neck rang like that move had been important, but the bells rang always, and it was nothing. Martha Knox was in the horses, saying the things we always say to horses, saying, “Hey, there, steady now, easy buddy,” like the words get understood, when really it’s only the voice that matters, and the words could be any words. She found Handy and I watched her bridle him. I watched him let her bridle him, and the spots over his back and rump in the almost dark were ugly, like accidental spots, like mistakes. I went over and she was talking to Handy and buckling the bridle by his ear. I said, “You know my old man got this horse from its owner for a hundred dollars, the guy hated it so bad.” “Handy’s the best. Look at those pretty legs.” “My old man says they should’ve named him Handful.” “Should’ve named him Handsome,” she said, and I laughed, but I laughed too loud, and Handy jerked his head back. “Easy there,” she told him. “Steady now; easy boy.” “You know why Indians rode appaloosas into battle?” I asked. “Yes. I do.” “So they’d be good and pissed off when they got there.” Martha Knox said, “You want to take a guess how many times I’ve heard that joke this summer?” “I hate an appaloosa. I hate them all.” She stood next to Handy and ran her palm down his spine. She took the reins and a bunch of mane and pushed herself up on him, fast, just like I’d taught her in June. He danced back a few steps, but she reined him, she touched his neck, she stopped him. “You coming or not?” she asked. “You couldn’t pay me enough to ride that spotted-ass cocksucker.” “Get up here.” “He won’t take two bareback.” “He’ll take two. Get up here.” “Steady boy,” I said, and got myself up on him, behind Martha Knox. He danced sideways before I was settled, but this time she let him dance and then she kicked him and he was in a loose trot already while I was reaching around her waist with both arms, reaching for handfuls of mane. She let him trot and then he slowed and walked. She let him walk where he wanted to, and he circled the lantern twice and lazy. He sniffed at a mare, who moved fast from him. He walked to a tree and stood under it, still. “Hell of a ride,” I said. She kicked him, not a nudging kick this time, but a serious one, and he took off from the kick and in two more kicks was running wide open. We were too drunk for it, and it was too dark for it, and there were too many things in that meadow for a horse to trip over, but we were running wide open. His bell and hooves were loud, and they were a surprise to the other horses, who scattered behind us. I heard a few of them follow us, belled and fast. Martha Knox had reins, but she wasn’t using them, and my hat was gone, and so was hers, blown off. Handy might have stumbled or he might have kicked funny the way horses who love to run sometimes kick, or we might have been settled wrong, but we fell. With my arms still around her, we went over together, so who could say who fell first, or whose fault? That meadow was the best place for horses on long trips, but by this hunt it was spent. The next spring it would be different, with new grass wet from runoff, but that night it was packed dirt and frozen, and we hit it hard. We took the same fall, both of us. We took the fall in our hips and our shoulders. I knew I wasn’t hurt and guessed she wasn’t, but before I could ask, she was laughing. “Oh, man,” she said. “Goddamn.” I pulled my arm out from under her and rolled off my hip onto my back, and she rolled onto her back, too. We were far from any lantern, but the moon was big and lit. I turned my head to see Martha Knox’s face by my face. Her hat was gone, and she was rubbing her arm, but she wasn’t looking anywhere but right up at the sky, the kind of sky we don’t see too much of, because of trees or bad weather, or because we sleep or stare at fires instead. Handy came back—first his bell, then his huge face over our faces, hot and close. He smelled at us like we were plants or maybe something he would want. “You’re a good horse, Handy,” Martha Knox said, not with the voice we always use for horses, but with her normal voice, and she meant it. I didn’t think she wanted me to kiss her, although it was true that I wanted to kiss her then. She looked great. On that frozen dead ground, she looked as good and important as new grass or berries. “You’re a good horse,” she told Handy again, and she sounded very sure of that. He smelled her again, carefully. I looked up, too, at the sky, and the stars were no stars I hadn’t seen before, but they seemed closer and unfamiliar. I watched long enough to see one of them drop above us, long and low. That’s common to see in a good sky out here. This one star, though, left a slow thin arc, like a cigarette still burning flung over our heads. If Martha Knox saw this, it was only as she was reaching up already with one hand for her horse’s reins, and it wasn’t something she mentioned. PILGRIMS Elk Talk B ENNY had been living with Ed and Jean for over a year. His mother was Jean’s sister, and she was still in a hospital bed in Cheyenne, comatose, because she had driven her car into a snowplow on her way home from an art class one night. Jean had offered to take in her eight-year-old nephew as soon as she’d been told about the accident, and the whole family had agreed that such an arrangement would be best for Benny. When people asked Jean where Benny’s father was, she said simply, “He’s not available at this time,” as if he were a businessman unable to come to the telephone. Ed and Jean had a daughter of their own, married and living in Ohio, and when they moved from town into the mountain cabin, they were not expecting to share it someday with a child. Yet Benny was there now, and every morning Jean drove five miles down the dirt road so that he could meet his school bus. Every afternoon she met him at the same place. It was more difficult in the winter, on account of the heavy, inevitable snow, but they’d managed. Ed worked for the Fish and Game Department, and had a large green truck with the state emblem on its doors. He was semiretired, and in recent months had developed something of a belly, round and firm as a pregnant teenager’s. When he was home, he cut and stacked firewood or worked on the cabin. They were always insulating it more, always discovering and fixing flaws to make themselves more resistant to winter. Jean canned and froze vegetables from her garden in July and August, and when she went for walks she picked up small dry sticks along the path to bring home and save for kindling. The cabin was only a small place, with a short back porch facing the woods. Jean had converted the living room into a bedroom for Benny, and he slept on the couch under a down quilt. It was the end of October, and Ed was gone for the weekend, giving a speech about poaching at some convention in Jackson. Jean was driving to pick up Benny at the bus stop when a station wagon approached her, speeding, pulling behind it a large camper. She swerved quickly, barely avoiding an accident, wincing as the side of her car scraped the underbrush to her right. Safely past, she glanced in the rearview mirror and tried to make out the receding tail end of the camper through the thick dust just lifted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a car on that road. Ed and Jean had the only house for miles, and traffic consisted of the occasional truckload of hunters, or perhaps a teenage couple looking for a secluded parking spot. There was no reason for a station wagon with a camper to come out here. She imagined that it was a vacationing family, lost on their way to Yellowstone, miserable children in the back and a father driving, refusing to stop for directions. At such a speed, he would kill them all. Benny’s bus was early that day, and when Jean reached the highway, he was waiting for her, holding his lunch box close to his chest, standing scarcely taller than the mailbox beside him. “I changed my mind,” he said when he got into the car. “I want to be a karate man.” “But we already have your costume ready, Benny.” “It’s not a real costume. It’s just my Little League uniform, that’s all.” “Ben. You wanted to wear it. That’s what you told me you wanted to be for Halloween.” “I want to be a karate man,” he repeated. He didn’t whine, but spoke slowly and loudly, the way he always did, as if everyone in his life was hard of hearing or a beginning student of the English language. “Well, I’m sorry. You can’t be one,” Jean said. “It’s too late to make a new costume now.” Benny looked out the window and crossed his arms. After a few minutes, he said, “I sure wish I could be a karate man.” “Help me out, Ben? Don’t make things so hard, okay?” He didn’t answer, but sighed resignedly, like somebody’s mother. Jean drove in silence, more slowly than usual, keeping the speeding station wagon in mind at each curve. About halfway home, she asked, “Did you have art class today, Benny?” He shook his head. “No? Did you have gym class, then?” “No,” Benny said. “We had music.” “Music? Did you learn any new songs?” He shrugged. “Why don’t you sing me what you learned today?” Benny said nothing, and Jean repeated, “Why don’t you sing me what you learned today? I’d like to hear your new songs.” After another silence, Benny pulled a blue-gray wad of chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it on the handle of his lunch box. Then, gazing solidly at the windshield, he recited in a low monotone, “There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name oh. B - I - N - G - O ,” he spelled, carefully enunciating each letter. “ B - I - N - G - O . B - I - N - G - O . And Bingo,” Benny said, “was his name. Oh.” He peeled the gum off his lunch box and returned it to its place in his mouth. That night after dinner, Jean helped Benny into his Little League uniform and cut strips of reflecting tape to lay over the numbers on the back of his jersey. “Do you have to do that?” he asked. “I want cars to see you as well as you see them,” she said. He accepted this without further protest. Having won an earlier dispute about the wearing of a hat and gloves, he let her have this one. Jean found the old Polaroid camera in her desk drawer and brought it into the living room. “We’ll take a picture to show Uncle Ed when he gets home,” she said. “You look so nice. He’ll want to see.” She found him in the tiny square of the viewfinder, and backed up until he was completely framed. “Smile,” she said. “Here we go.” He did not blink, not even during the flash, but stood in place and smiled at the last moment, as a favor to her. They both watched as the camera slowly pushed out the cloudy, damp photograph. “Hold this by the edges carefully,” Jean instructed, handing it to Benny, “and see what turns up.” There was a knock at the door. Jean stood up quickly, startled. She glanced at Benny, who was holding the developing picture between his thumb and forefinger, looking at her in anxious surprise. “Stay there,” she told him, and walked to the window at the back of the cabin. It was dark already, and she had to press her face close against the cold glass to see the vague figures on the porch. There was another knock, and a high voice, muffled through the thick oak, called, “Trick or treat!” Jean opened the door and saw two adults and a small child, all in brown snowsuits, all with long branches masking-taped to their stocking caps. The woman stepped forward and extended her hand. “We’re the Donaldsons,” she said. “We’re your neighbors.” “We’re elks,” the child added, touching the two branches on her hat. “These are our horns.” “They’re antlers, sweetie,” her mother corrected. “Bison and goats have horns. Elk have antlers.” Jean looked from the girl to her mother to the man beside them, who was calmly taking off his gloves. “You’re losing heat with the door open,” he said, in a voice that was not deep so much as low and even. “You should probably let us in.” “Oh,” Jean said, and she stepped aside so that they could pass. Then she shut the door behind her and leaned her back flat against it, touching it with her palms. “Well, what’s this?” the woman asked, kneeling next to Benny and picking up the photograph he’d dropped. “Is this a picture of you?” “I’m sorry,” Jean interrupted. “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t know who you are.” The family in her cabin turned as one and looked at her. “We’re the Donaldsons,” the woman said, frowning slightly, as if Jean’s statement confused her. “We’re your neighbors.” “We haven’t got any neighbors,” Jean said. “Not all the way out here.” “We just moved here today.” The man spoke again in the odd low voice. The little girl was standing beside him, holding on to his leg, and he rested his hand on the top of her head, between her antlers. “Moved where?” Jean asked. “We bought an acre of land a half-mile from here.” His tone suggested that he found her rude for pursuing the issue. “We’re staying in our camper.” “Your camper?” Jean repeated. “I saw you today, didn’t I? On the road?” “Yes,” the man said. “You were driving awfully fast, don’t you think?” “Yes,” he said. “We were in a hurry to get here before dark,” his wife added. “You really have to be careful on these roads,” Jean said. “It was very dangerous of you to drive that way.” There was no response; the three of them looked at Jean with politely empty faces, as if waiting for her to say something else, something perhaps more appropriate. “I wasn’t aware that there was land for sale at the end of our road,” Jean said, and she was met with the same uniform expressions. Even Benny was watching her with a look of mild curiosity. “We were not expecting to have neighbors,” Jean continued. “Not all the way out here.” Again, silence. There was nothing overtly unfriendly in their collective gaze, but it felt foreign to her, and she found it unsettling. The little girl, who could not have been four years old, turned to Benny and asked, “What are you, anyway?” He looked up quickly at Jean for an answer, and then back at the girl. Her mother smiled. “I think she wants to know what your costume is, dear.” “I’m a baseball player,” Benny said. “We’re elks,” the girl told him. “These are our antlers.” She pronounced it antlows . The woman turned her smile on Jean. Her teeth were wide and even, set close to her gums, like the teeth of those old Eskimo women who spend their lives chewing on leather. “My name is Audrey,” she said. “This is my husband, Lance, but he’d prefer it if you called him L.D. He doesn’t like his real name. He thinks it sounds like a medical procedure. This is our daughter, Sophia. We threw these costumes together at the last minute, but she’s very excited about them. She insisted that we trick-or-treat when she saw your cabin this afternoon.” “We were just on our way out,” Jean said. “I’m taking Benny to his school’s Halloween party.” “Isn’t that fun?” Audrey beamed. “Are the little ones allowed to go?” “No,” Jean answered quickly, although she had no idea what the rules actually were. “This will be our only stop tonight, then,” Audrey said. “Though we may go for a walk later, to talk to the elk.” “Have you heard them?” L.D. asked. “Excuse me?” Jean frowned. “I say, have you heard the elk?” “We hear elk all the time. I guess I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.” L.D. and Audrey exchanged a brief look of shared triumph. “L.D. is a musician,” Audrey explained. “We vacationed here in Wyoming last summer, and he was very taken with the elk bugle. It’s a wonderful noise, really.” Jean knew it well. Almost every night in the autumn, elk bugled across the woods to each other. It was impossible to tell how close they came to the cabin, but the sound was forceful and compelling: a long, almost primate screech, followed by a series of deep grunts. It was something she had known since childhood. She’d seen horses stop in the middle of a trail at the sound and stand there, heads pulled up high, breathing sharply out of their nostrils, ears tensed, listening, preparing to run. “L.D. made several recordings. He found it very inspiring for his own music,” Audrey went on. “Have you ever lived in a city?” “No,” Jean said. “Well.” Audrey rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you, there’s a limit, an absolute limit, to what you can endure there. Just three months ago, I was getting ready to go out on some errands and I suddenly realized I’d taken all my credit cards out of my purse so that, if I was mugged, I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of replacing them. Without even thinking, I’d done this, as if it was perfectly normal to live that way. And that night I told L.D., ‘We’re leaving; we have got to get out of this crazy city.’ Of course, he was more than happy to comply.” Jean looked over to Benny, who had been standing quietly through all this, listening. She’d forgotten for a moment that he was there, and she felt the same quick guilt that came when, during dinner, she’d glance around the table and be surprised to see Benny eating with them, sitting between Ed and herself. “Well.” Jean pushed her glasses back farther on her nose. “We’ve got to get going.” “Listen,” L.D. said, and he took a flat black disk from his pocket. He slid it into his mouth and made the full screech of an elk bugle ring through the small, heavily insulated living room of Jean’s cabin. She saw Benny jump at the suddenness of the sound. L.D. took the disk out of his mouth and smiled. “Oh, honey.” Audrey winced. “That’s so loud inside. You really shouldn’t bugle in people’s homes. Don’t be scared,” she told Benny. “It’s just his elk talker.” Jean had heard one before. A friend of Ed’s was a hunting guide who used one to call in bull elk. He’d demonstrated it for Jean once, and she’d laughed at how fake it had sounded. “You might as well stand in a clearing and call, ‘Here elky, elky, elky,’” she’d said. L.D. had the same device, but his sound was full and alarmingly real. Benny grinned at Jean. “Did you hear that?” She nodded. “You do know that you can only hunt elk in season and with a license, don’t you?” she asked L.D. “We don’t want to hunt them,” Audrey said. “We just want to talk to them.” “Did it sound real to you?” L.D. asked. “I’ve been practicing.” “How’d you do that?” Benny asked. L.D. handed him the disk. “They call this a diaphragm,” L.D. explained, as Benny turned the object over in his hand and held it up to the light. “It’s made of rubber, and you put it in the back of your mouth and blow air through it. It’s not easy, and you have to be careful or you’ll swallow it. There’s different sizes for different sounds. This one is a mature bull, a mating call.” “Can I try it?” “No,” Jean said. “Don’t put that in your mouth. It doesn’t belong to you.” Benny reluctantly handed it back to L.D., who said, “Get your dad to buy you one of your own.” Jean cringed at the reference, but Benny only nodded, considering the suggestion. “Okay,” he said. “Sure.” Jean took her coat off the hook by the door and put it on. “Come on, Ben,” she said. “Time to go.” L.D. lifted Sophia from where she’d been sitting on his boots. One of her antlers had slipped from its masking-tape base and hung like a braid down her back. “Doesn’t she look precious?” Audrey asked. Jean opened the door and held it so the Donaldsons could file out onto the porch. Benny followed behind them, small, antlerless. She turned the lights off and left, closing the door. She pulled a skeleton key from the bottom of her pocketbook, and, for the first time since she’d lived in the cabin, locked up. It was a clear night, with a nearly full moon. There had been no snow yet, none that had lasted, but Jean suspected from the sharp smell of the cold air that there might be some by the next day. She remembered reading that bears wait until the first drifting snowfall to hibernate so that the tracks to their winter dens will be covered immediately. It was getting late in the year, she thought, and the local bears must be getting tired of waiting around for proper snow. The Donaldsons were standing on the porch, looking past Jean’s small back yard to the edge of the woods. “Last summer I got the elk to answer,” L.D. said. “That was a wild experience, communicating like that.” He slid the diaphragm into his mouth and called again, louder than he had in the cabin, a more powerful sound, Jean thought, than a human had a right to make around there, and disturbingly realistic. Then there was silence, and they all stared across the yard, as if expecting the trees themselves to answer. Jean had forgotten her gloves. Her hands were cold, and she was anxious to get to the car, and warmth. She reached forward and touched Benny’s shoulder. “Let’s go, honey,” she said, but he laid his hand over hers in a surprisingly adult manner and whispered, “Wait,” and then, “Listen.” She heard nothing. L.D. had set Sophia down, and now the whole family stood on the edge of the porch, their antlers outlined against the night sky. They’d best not make their costumes too authentic, Jean thought, or they’d get themselves shot. She pushed her fists down into the pockets of her coat and shivered. After some time, L.D. repeated the call, a long high squeal, followed by several grunts. They all listened in the ensuing quiet, leaning forward slightly, heads tilted, as if they were afraid the answer might be faint enough to miss, although it was unnecessary to listen so carefully: if a bull elk was going to bugle back, they wouldn’t have to strain to hear it. L.D. sounded the call again, and immediately once more, and as the last grunt vanished into silence, Jean heard it. She heard it first. By the time the others tensed in realization, she’d already been thinking that it must be a bear making all that noise in the underbrush. And then she’d guessed what it was, just before the elk broke out of the woods. The ground was hard with cold, and his hooves beat in a light fast rhythm as he circled. He stopped in the black frozen soil of Jean’s garden. “Oh my God,” she said under her breath, and quickly counted the points of his antlers, which spread in dark silhouette, blending with the branches and forms of the trees behind him. He had approached them fast and without warning, making himself fully visible to confront or to be confronted. Clearly, this elk did not want to talk to the Donaldsons. He wanted to know who was in his territory, calling for a mate. And now he stood, exposed, looking right at them. But the cabin was dark and shaded by the porch roof, so there was no way the elk could have picked out their figures. There was no breeze to carry a scent either, so he stared blindly at the precise spot from where the challenge had come. Jean saw Sophia reach her hand up slowly and touch her father’s leg, but, aside from that, there was no movement. After a moment, the elk stepped slowly to his left. He stopped, paused, returned to where he’d been standing, and stepped a few feet to his right. He showed both his sides in the process, keeping himself in full view, his gaze fixed on the porch. He did not toss his head as a horse might, nor did he strike a more aggressive, intimidating stance. Again he paced, to one side and to the other, slowly, deliberately. Jean saw L.D. raise his hand to his mouth and adjust the diaphragm. She leaned forward and placed her hand on his forearm. He turned to look at her, and she mouthed the word no . He frowned and turned away. She saw him begin to inhale, and she tightened her hold on his arm and said, so softly that someone standing even three feet away would not have heard her, “Don’t.” L.D. slipped the diaphragm out of his mouth. Jean relaxed. Out of the woods came two females, one fully mature, the other a lean yearling. They looked first at the male, then at the cabin, and slowly, almost self-consciously, walked the length of the yard to the garden. All three elk stood together for some time in what Jean felt was the most penetrating silence she had ever experienced. Under their sightless gaze, she felt as if she were involved in a séance that had been held in jest but had accidentally summoned a real ghost. Eventually, the elk began their retreat. The older two appeared decisive, but the yearling twice looked back at the cabin, two long looks that Jean had no way of reading. The elk stepped into the woods and were immediately out of view. On the porch, no one moved until Sophia said very quietly, “Daddy.” Audrey turned and smiled at Jean, shaking her head slowly. “Have you ever,” she asked, “in your entire life felt so incredibly privileged?” Jean did not answer but took Benny by the hand and led him briskly to the car. She didn’t look at the Donaldsons standing at the threshold of her home, not even as she waited for some time in the driveway for the engine to warm up. “Did you see that?” Benny asked, his voice tight with wonder, but Jean did not answer him either. She drove with only the low beams of her headlights on, recklessly, veering to the other side of the road, heedless of the possibility of oncoming traffic or other obstacles. She drove the road faster than she ever had before, venting a fury that took her four dangerous miles to isolate, and she did not begin to slow down until she realized that not only had she been manipulated, but she had been a participant in a manipulation. They had no right, she thought over and over, they had no right to do such a thing simply because they could. She remembered, then, that Benny was still with her, beside her, that he was entirely h	2,801,541
The Lonely City Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Olivia Laing) (Z-Library).epub	The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ONE MIGHT EXPECT WRITING A book about loneliness to be an isolating experience, but on the contrary it has been astonishingly connecting. I’ve been amazed at how many people have gone out of their way to support this project, and it underscores my sense that loneliness is something we share. The first person I want to thank is my friend Matt Wolf, who introduced me to David Wojnarowicz’s work, thereby setting this book in motion, and who has been an endless source of ideas and contacts ever since. Huge thanks are due to those who made The Lonely City possible, a list that must start with my beloved agents at Janklow & Nesbit, the wonderful Rebecca Carter and P. J. Mark, dream readers both, as well as Claire Conrad and Kirsty Gordon. I also want to thank my terrific editors, Jenny Lord at Canongate and Stephen Morrison at Picador, for their insightful and considered feedback and support. I’m indebted to the Arts Council, who funded a research trip to various American archives, and to the Corporation of Yaddo, who provided me with the ideal place to work. I’m also very grateful to the MacDowell Colony: this book really arose from friendships I made there. Thanks too to all the teams at Canongate and Picador, especially Jamie Byng, Natasha Hodgson, Anna Frame, Annie Lee and Lorraine McCann on one side of the Atlantic, and P. J. Horoszko, Declan Taintor and James Meader on the other. And Nick Davies, too, who started it all rolling. I’ve spent much of the last few years in artists’ archives. I’m very grateful to all at Fales Library at New York University, home of the Downtown Collection and the David Wojnarowicz Papers and an intensely inspiring place in its own right. Particular thanks to Lisa Darms, Marvin Taylor, Nicholas Martin and Brent Phillips, and also to Tom Rauffenbart, the exceptionally generous executor of the estate of David Wojnarowicz. The staff at the American Folk Art Museum, home of the Henry Darger Papers, likewise provided very generous support. Thanks to Valérie Rousseau, Karl Miller, Ann-Marie Reilly and Mimi Lester. I’m also grateful to INTUIT in Chicago for letting me view the Darger room. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, I’d like to thank curator Carter Foster and Carol Rusk, Librarian at the Edward and Josephine Hopper Research Collection. And I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the staff at the Warhol Museum, whose kindness, generosity and help went well beyond the call of duty, particularly Matt Wrbican, Cindy Lisica, Geralyn Huxley, Greg Pierce and Greg Burchard. While I was working on this book, I was lucky enough to be awarded a year’s residency at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. I’d like to express my deep gratitude to Philip Davies, Catherine Eccles, Cara Rodway, Matthew Shaw and especially Carole Holden – it’s every writer’s dream to work with a curator who shares their interests and sensibilities and it was a joy to get such a passionate and knowledgeable guide to the BL’s contents. People who generously gave up their time to be interviewed or answer queries include John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago, Cynthia Carr, Stephen Koch at the Peter Hujar Archive (who also generously provided the beautiful Hujar portrait of Wojnarowicz on p. 94), and Donald Warhola. Thank you all. I’m also deeply grateful to Sarah Schulman, whose own work is such a constant source of education and inspiration. Thank you to my exceptionally lovely writerly support team of Elizabeth Day and Francesca Segal, without whom it would take a lot longer and be much less fun. To Elizabeth Tinsley, whose thinking has been stimulating mine for decades now. To the artists, too: Sarah Wood and Sherri Wasserman, thank you. And a very special thanks to the magnificent Ian Patterson, who read and commented on a multitude of early drafts with vast intelligence and patience. Then there are the friends and colleagues who’ve discussed, read, edited, encouraged, fed and housed me. In the UK: Nick Blackburn, Stuart Croll, Clare Davies, Jon Day, Robert Dickinson, John Gallagher, Tony Gammidge, John Griffiths, Tom de Grunwald, Christina McLeish, Helen Macdonald, Leo Mellor, Tricia Murphy, James Purdon, Sigrid Rausing and Jordan Savage. In the USA: David Adjmi, Liz Duffy Adams, Kyle de Camp, Deb Chachra, Jean Hannah Edelstein, Andrew Ginzel, Scott Guild, Alex Halberstadt, Amber Hawk Swanson, Joseph Keckler, Larry Krone, Dan Levenson, Elizabeth McCracken, Jonathan Monaghan, John Pittman, the late Alastair Reid, Andrew Sempere, Daniel Smith, Schulyer Towne, Benjamen Walker and Carl Williamson. For support with research materials: Brad Daly, Harko Kejzer, Heather Mallick, John Pittman, Cerys Matthews and Steven Abbott, Kio Stark and Eileen Storey, as well as several unknown but much appreciated benefactors. Elements of this book first appeared in Granta , Aeon , The Junket , Guardian and New Statesman . Thanks too to all my editors there. My deepest thanks go, as ever, to my family. My brilliant sister, Kitty Laing, who was on to some of the scenes on these pages long before me; my beloved father, Peter Laing; and my mother, Denise Laing, who has been reading since the beginning, and whose support I could not do without. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Also by Olivia Laing To the River The Trip to Echo Spring The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone BIBLIOGRAPHY Als, Hilton, White Girls (McSweeney’s, 2013) — with Jonathan Lethem and Jeanette Winterson, Andy Warhol at Christie’s (Christie’s, 2012) Angell, Callie, Andy Warhol Screen Tests: the Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonn é , Volume 1 (Abrams, in association with Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006) Arbus, Diane, Diane Arbus (Aperture, 2011) Arcade, Penny, Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (Semiotex(e)/MIT Press, 2009) Aviv, Rachel, ‘Netherland’, The New Yorker, 10 December 2012 Barthes, Roland, Roland Barthes (University of California Press, 1977) — Mourning Diary (Hill & Wang, 2010) Bender,Thomas, The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea (The New Press, 2002) Benderson, Bruce, Sex and Isolation (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007) Benjamin,Walter, One-way Street and Other Writings (Penguin, 2009) Berman, Marshall, On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (Verso, 2006) Bisenbach, Klaus, ed., Henry Darger (Prestel, 2009) — Henry Darger: Disasters of War (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2003) Bockris,Victor, Warhol:The Biography (Da Capo Press, 2003 [1989]) Bonesteel, Michael, Henry Darger:Art and Selected Writings (Rizzoli, 2000) Bowlby, John, Separation (Basic Books, 1973) Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (Basic Books, 2001) Brown, Bill, ‘Things’, Critical Inquiry , Vol. 28, No. 1 Beaumont, Matthew and Gregory Dart, eds., Restless Cities (Verso, 2010) Cacioppo, John T. and Patrick William, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (W. 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You can see them, but you can‘t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people. One might think this state was antithetical to urban living, to the massed presence of other human beings, and yet mere physical proximity is not enough to dispel a sense of internal isolation. It’s possible – easy, even – to feel desolate and unfrequented in oneself while living cheek by jowl with others. Cities can be lonely places, and in admitting this we see that loneliness doesn’t necessarily require physical solitude, but rather an absence or paucity of connection, closeness, kinship: an inability, for one reason or another, to find as much intimacy as is desired. Unhappy, as the dictionary has it, as a result of being without the companionship of others . Hardly any wonder, then, that it can reach its apotheosis in a crowd. Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorise. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair. Then again, it can be transient, lapping in and out in reaction to external circumstance, like the loneliness that follows on the heels of a bereavement, break-up or change in social circles. Like depression, like melancholy or restlessness, it is subject too to pathologisation, to being considered a disease. It has been said emphatically that loneliness serves no purpose, that it is, as Robert Weiss puts it in his seminal work on the subject, ‘a chronic disease without redeeming features’. Statements like this have a more than casual link with the belief that our whole purpose is as coupled creatures, or that happiness can or should be a permanent possession. But not everyone shares that fate. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think any experience so much a part of our common shared lives can be entirely devoid of meaning, without a richness and a value of some kind. In her diary of 1929, Virginia Woolf described a sense of inner loneliness that she thought might be illuminating to analyse, adding: ‘If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.’ Interesting, the idea that loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality. Not so long ago, I spent a period in New York City, that teeming island of gneiss and concrete and glass, inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Though it wasn’t by any means a comfortable experience, I began to wonder if Woolf wasn’t right, if there wasn’t more to the experience than meets the eye – if, in fact, it didn’t drive one to consider some of the larger questions of what it is to be alive. There were things that burned away at me, not only as a private individual, but also as a citizen of our century, our pixelated age. What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we’re not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if we don’t find speaking easy? Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty? And is technology helping with these things? Does it draw us closer together, or trap us behind screens? I was by no means the only person who’d puzzled over these questions. All kinds of writers, artists, filmmakers and songwriters have explored the subject of loneliness in one way or another, attempting to gain purchase on it, to tackle the issues that it provokes. But I was at the time beginning to fall in love with images, to find a solace in them that I didn’t find elsewhere, and so I conducted the majority of my investigations within the realm of visual art. I was possessed with a desire to find correlates, physical evidence that other people had inhabited my state, and during my time in Manhattan I began to gather up works of art that seemed to articulate or be troubled by loneliness, particularly as it manifests in the modern city and even more particularly as it has manifested in the city of New York over the past seventy or so years. Initially it was the images themselves that drew me, but as I burrowed in, I began to encounter the people behind them: people who had grappled in their lives as well as work with loneliness and its attendant issues. Of all the many documenters of the lonely city whose work educated or moved me, and who I consider in the pages ahead – among them Alfred Hitchcock, Valerie Solanas, Nan Goldin, Klaus Nomi, Peter Hujar, Billie Holiday, Zoe Leonard and Jean-Michel Basquiat – I became most closely interested in four artists: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger and David Wojnarowicz. Not all of them were permanent inhabitants of loneliness, by any means, suggesting instead a diversity of positions and angles of attack. All, however, were hyper-alert to the gulfs between people, to how it can feel to be islanded amid a crowd. This seems particularly unlikely in the case of Andy Warhol, who was after all famous for his relentless sociability. He was almost never without a glittering entourage and yet his work is surprisingly eloquent on isolation and the problems of attachment, issues he struggled with lifelong. Warhol’s art patrols the space between people, conducting a grand philosophical investigation into closeness and distance, intimacy and estrangement. Like many lonely people, he was an inveterate hoarder, making and surrounding himself with objects, barriers against the demands of human intimacy. Terrified of physical contact, he rarely left the house without an armoury of cameras and tape recorders, using them to broker and buffer interactions: behaviour that has light to shed on how we deploy technology in our own century of so-called connectivity. The janitor and outsider artist Henry Darger inhabited the opposite extreme. He lived alone in a boarding house in the city of Chicago, creating in a near-total void of companionship or audience a fictional universe populated by wonderful and frightening beings. When he gave up his room unwillingly at the age of eighty to die in a Catholic mission home, it was found to be stuffed with hundreds of exquisite and disturbing paintings, work he’d apparently never shown to another human being. Darger’s life illuminates the social forces that drive isolation – and the way the imagination can work to resist it. Just as these artists’ lives varied in sociability, so their work handled or moved around the subject of loneliness in a multitude of ways, sometimes tackling it directly and sometimes dealing with subjects – sex, illness, abuse – that were themselves sources of stigma or isolation. Edward Hopper, that rangy, taciturn man, was occupied, though he sometimes denied it, with the expression of urban loneliness in visual terms, its translation into paint. Almost a century on, his images of solitary men and women glimpsed behind glass in deserted cafés, offices and hotel lobbies remain the signature images of isolation in the city. You can show what loneliness looks like, and you can also take up arms against it, making things that serve explicitly as communication devices, resisting censorship and silence. This was the driving motivation of David Wojnarowicz, a still under-known American artist, photographer, writer and activist, whose courageous, extraordinary body of work did more than anything to release me from the burden of feeling that in my solitude I was shamefully alone. Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place: a city in itself. And when one inhabits a city, even a city as rigorously and logically constructed as Manhattan, one starts by getting lost. Over time, you begin to develop a mental map, a collection of favoured destinations and preferred routes: a labyrinth no other person could ever precisely duplicate or reproduce. What I was building in those years, and what now follows, is a map of loneliness, built out of both need and interest, pieced together from my own experiences and those of others. I wanted to understand what it means to be lonely, and how it has functioned in people’s lives, to attempt to chart the complex relationship between loneliness and art. A long time back, I used to listen to a song by Dennis Wilson. It was from Pacific Ocean Blue, the album he made after The Beach Boys fell apart. There was a line in it I loved: Loneliness is a very special place. As a teenager, sitting on my bed on autumn evenings, I used to imagine that place as a city, perhaps at dusk, when everyone turns homeward and the neon flickers into life. I recognised myself even then as one of its citizens and I liked how Wilson claimed it; how he made it sound fertile as well as frightening. Loneliness is a very special place. It isn’t always easy to see the truth of Wilson’s statement, but over the course of my travels I’ve come to believe that he was right, that loneliness is by no means a wholly worthless experience, but rather one that cuts right to the heart of what we value and what we need. Many marvellous things have emerged from the lonely city: things forged in loneliness, but also things that function to redeem it. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone 2 WALLS OF GLASS I NEVER WENT SWIMMING IN New York. I came and went, but never stuck a summer, and so all the outdoor pools I coveted remained empty, their water spirited away for the duration of the long off-season. Mostly, I stayed on the eastern edges of the island, downtown, taking cheap sublets in East Village tenements or in co-ops built for garment workers, where day and night you could hear the hum of traffic crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Walking home from whatever temporary office I’d found that day, I’d sometimes take a detour by Hamilton Fish Park, where there was a library and a twelve-lane pool, painted a pale flaking blue. I was lonely at the time, lonely and adrift, and this spectral blue space, filling at its corners with blown brown leaves, never failed to tug my heart. What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing. Most of the time, I sublet a friend’s apartment on East 2nd Street, in a neighbourhood full of community gardens. It was an unreconstructed tenement, painted arsenic green, with a clawfooted bathtub in the kitchen, concealed behind a moulding curtain. The first night I arrived there, jet-lagged and bleary, I caught a smell of gas that grew increasingly pronounced as I lay unsleeping on the high platform bed. In the end I called 911 and a few minutes later three firemen trooped in, relit the pilot light and then hung about in their big boots, admiring the wooden floor. There was a framed poster above the oven from a 1980s Martha Clarke performance called Miracolo d’Amore. It showed two actors dressed in the white suits and pointed hats of the Commedia dell’Arte. One was moving towards a lit doorway, and the other had flung both hands up in a gesture of horrified alarm. Miracolo d’Amore. I was in the city because I’d fallen in love, headlong and too precipitously, and had tumbled and found myself unexpectedly unhinged. During the false spring of desire, the man and I had cooked up a hare-brained plan in which I would leave England and join him permanently in New York. When he changed his mind, very suddenly, expressing increasingly grave reservations into a series of hotel phones, I found myself adrift, stunned by the swift arrival and even swifter departure of everything I thought I lacked. In the absence of love, I found myself clinging hopelessly to the city itself: the repeating tapestry of psychics and bodegas, the bump and grind of traffic, the live lobsters on the corner of Ninth Avenue, the steam drifting up from beneath the streets. I didn’t want to lose the flat I’d rented in England for almost a decade, but I also had no ties, no work or family commitments to tether me in place. I found a lodger and scrimped the money for a plane ticket, not knowing then that I was entering a maze, a walled city within the island of Manhattan itself. But already this isn’t quite right. The first apartment I had wasn’t on the island at all. It was in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks away from where I would have been living in the alternate reality of accomplished love, the ghostly other life that haunted me for almost two full years. I arrived in September, and at immigration the guard said to me without a trace of friendliness why are your hands shaking? The Van Wyck Expressway was the same as ever, bleak, unpromising, and it took several attempts to open the big door with the keys my friend had FedExed me weeks back. I’d only seen the apartment once before. It was a studio, with a kitchenette and an elegantly masculine bathroom tiled all in black. There was another ironic, unsettling poster on the wall, a vintage advert for some kind of bottled drink. A beaming woman, her lower half a glowing lemon, spritzing a tree hung liberally with fruit. It seemed to epitomise sunny abundance, but the light never really made it past the brownstones opposite, and it was clear that I was tucked up on the wrong side of the house. There was a laundry room downstairs, but I was too new to New York to know what a luxury that was, and went down unwillingly, scared the basement door would slam, trapping me in the dripping, Tide-smelling dark. Most days I did the same things. Go out for eggs and coffee, walk aimlessly through the exquisite cobbled streets or down to the promenade to gaze at the East River, pushing each day a little further until I reached the park at Dumbo, where on Sundays you’d see the Puerto Rican wedding couples come to have their photos taken, the girls in enormous sculptural lime-green and fuchsia dresses that made everything else look tired and staid. Manhattan across the water, the glittering towers. I was working, but I didn’t have anything like enough to do, and the bad times came in the evenings, when I went back to my room, sat on the couch and watched the world outside me going on through glass, a light bulb at a time. I wanted very much not to be where I was. In fact part of the trouble seemed to be that where I was wasn’t anywhere at all. My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about wearing a stained or threadbare piece of clothing. I felt like I was in danger of vanishing, though at the same time the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often wished I could find a way of losing myself altogether, perhaps for a few months, until the intensity diminished. If I could have put what I was feeling into words, the words would have been an infant’s wail: I don’t want to be alone. I want someone to want me. I’m lonely. I’m scared. I need to be loved, to be touched, to be held. It was the sensation of need that frightened me the most, as if I’d lifted the lid on an unappeasable abyss. I stopped eating very much and my hair fell out and lay noticeably on the wooden floor, adding to my disquiet. I’d been lonely before, but never like this. Loneliness had waxed in childhood, and waned in the more social years that followed. I’d lived by myself since my mid-twenties, often in relationships but sometimes not. Mostly I liked the solitude, or, when I didn’t, felt fairly certain I’d sooner or later drift into another liaison, another love. The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn’t have what people were supposed to, and that this was down to some grave and no doubt externally unmistakable failing in my person: all this had quickened lately, the unwelcome consequence of being so summarily dismissed. I don’t suppose it was unrelated, either, to the fact that I was keeling towards the midpoint of my thirties, an age at which female aloneness is no longer socially sanctioned and carries with it a persistent whiff of strangeness, deviance and failure. Outside the window, people threw dinner parties. The man upstairs listened to jazz and show tunes at full blast, and filled the hallways with pot smoke, snaking fragrantly down the stairs. Sometimes I spoke to the waiter in my morning café, and once he gave me a poem, typed neatly on thick white paper. But mostly I didn’t speak. Mostly I was walled up inside myself, and certainly a very long way from anyone else. I didn’t cry often, but once I couldn’t get the blinds closed and then I did. It seemed too awful, I suppose, the idea that anyone could peer over and get a glimpse of me, eating cereal standing up or combing over emails, my face illuminated by the laptop’s glare. I knew what I looked like. I looked like a woman in a Hopper painting. The girl in Automat, maybe, in a cloche hat and green coat, gazing into a cup of coffee, the window behind her reflecting two rows of lights, swimming into blackness. Or the one in Morning Sun, who sits on her bed, hair twisted into a messy bun, gazing through her window at the city beyond. A pretty morning, light washing the walls, but nonetheless something desolate about her eyes and jaw, her slim wrists crossed over her legs. I often sat just like that, adrift in rumpled sheets, trying not to feel, trying simply to take consecutive breaths. The one I found most disturbing was Hotel Window. Looking at it was like gazing into a fortune teller’s mirror, through which you glimpse the future, its spoiled contours, its deficit of promise. This woman is older, tense and unapproachable, sitting on a navy couch in an empty drawing room or lobby. She’s dressed to go out, in a smart ruby-coloured hat and cape, and is twisting to look down into the darkening street below, though there’s nothing out there save a gleaming portico and the stubborn black window of the building opposite. Asked about the origins of this painting, Hopper once said in his evasive way: ‘It’s nothing accurate at all, just an improvisation of things I’ve seen. It’s no particular hotel lobby, but many times I’ve walked through the Thirties from Broadway to Fifth Avenue and there are a lot of cheesy hotels there. That probably suggested it. Lonely? Yes, I guess it’s lonelier than I planned it really.’ What is it about Hopper? Every once in a while an artist comes along who articulates an experience, not necessarily consciously or willingly, but with such prescience and intensity that the association becomes indelible. He never much liked the idea that his paintings could be pinned down, or that loneliness was his metier, his central theme. ‘The loneliness thing is overdone,’ he once told his friend Brian O’Doherty, in one of the very few long interviews to which he submitted. And again, in the documentary Hopper’s Silence, when O’Doherty asks: ‘Are your paintings reflective of the isolation of modern life?’ A pause, then Hopper says tersely: ‘It may be true. It may not be true.’ Later, asked what draws him to the dark scenes he favours, he replies opaquely: ‘I suppose it’s just me.’ Why, then, do we persist in ascribing loneliness to his work? The obvious answer is that his paintings tend to be populated by people alone, or in uneasy, uncommunicative groupings of twos and threes, fastened into poses that seem indicative of distress. But there’s something else too; something about the way he contrives his city streets. As the Whitney curator Carter Foster observes in Hopper’s Drawings, Hopper routinely reproduces in his paintings ‘certain kinds of spaces and spatial experiences common in New York that result from being physically close to others but separated from them by a variety of factors, including movement, structures, windows, walls and light or darkness’. This viewpoint is often described as voyeuristic, but what Hopper’s urban scenes also replicate is one of the central experiences of being lonely: the way a feeling of separation, of being walled off or penned in, combines with a sense of near-unbearable exposure. This tension is present in even the most benign of his New York paintings, the ones that testify to a more pleasurable, more equanimous kind of solitude. Morning in a City, say, in which a naked woman stands at a window, holding just a towel, relaxed and at ease with herself, her body composed of lovely flecks of lavender and rose and pale green. The mood is peaceful, and yet the faintest tremor of unease is discernible at the far left of the painting, where the open casement gives way to the buildings beyond, lit by the flannel-pink of a morning sky. In the tenement opposite there are three more windows, their green blinds half-drawn, their interiors rough squares of total black. If windows are to be thought analogous to eyes, as both etymology, wind-eye, and function suggests, then there exists around this blockage, this plug of paint, an uncertainty about being seen – looked over, maybe; but maybe also overlooked, as in ignored, unseen, unregarded, undesired. In the sinister Night Windows, these worries bloom into acute disquiet. The painting centres on the upper portion of a building, with three apertures, three slits, giving into a lighted chamber. At the first window a curtain billows outward, and in the second a woman in a pinkish slip bends over a green carpet, her haunches taut. In the third, a lamp is glowing through a layer of fabric, though what it actually looks like is a wall of flames. There’s something odd, too, about the vantage point. It’s clearly from above – we see the floor, not the ceiling – but the windows are on at least the second storey, making it seem as if whoever’s doing the looking is hanging suspended in the air. The more likely answer is that they’re stealing a glimpse from the window of the ‘El’, the elevator train, which Hopper liked to ride at night, armed with his pads, his fabricated chalk, gazing avidly through the glass for instances of brightness, moments that fix, unfinished, in the mind’s eye. Either way, the viewer – me, I mean, or you – has been co-opted into an estranging act. Privacy has been breached, but it doesn’t make the woman any less alone, exposed in her burning chamber. This is the thing about cities, the way that even indoors you’re always at the mercy of a stranger’s gaze. Wherever I went – pacing back and forth between the bed and couch; roaming into the kitchen to regard the abandoned boxes of ice cream in the freezer – I could be seen by the people who lived in the Arlington, the vast Queen Anne co-op that dominated the view, its ten brick storeys lagged in scaffolding. At the same time, I could also play the watcher, Rear Window-style, peering in on dozens of people with whom I’d never exchange a word, all of them engrossed in the small intimacies of the day. Loading a dishwasher naked; tapping in on heels to cook the children’s supper. Under normal circumstances, I don’t suppose any of this would have provoked more than idle curiosity, but that autumn wasn’t normal. Almost as soon as I arrived, I was aware of a gathering anxiety around the question of visibility. I wanted to be seen, taken in and accepted, the way one is by a lover’s approving gaze. At the same time I felt dangerously exposed, wary of judgement, particularly in situations where being alone felt awkward or wrong, where I was surrounded by couples or groups. While these feelings were undoubtedly heightened by the fact that I was living in New York for the first time – that city of glass, of roving eyes – they arose out of loneliness, which agitates always in two directions, towards intimacy and away from threat. That autumn, I kept coming back to Hopper’s images, drawn to them as if they were blueprints and I was a prisoner; as if they contained some vital clue about my state. Though I went with my eyes over dozens of rooms, I always returned to the same place: to the New York diner of Nighthawks, a painting that Joyce Carol Oates once described as ‘our most poignant, ceaselessly replicated romantic image of American loneliness’. I don’t suppose there are many people in the western world who haven’t peered into the cool green icebox of that painting, who haven’t seen a grimy reproduction hanging in a doctor’s waiting room or office hallway. It’s been disseminated with such profligacy that it has long since acquired the patina that afflicts all too-familiar objects, like dirt over a lens, and yet it retains its eerie power, its potency. I’d been looking at it on laptop screens for years before I finally saw it in person, at the Whitney one sweltering October afternoon. It was hanging at the very back of the gallery, hidden behind a shoal of people. The colours are amazing, a girl said, and then I was drawn to the front of the crowd. Up close, the painting rearranged itself, decomposing into snags and anomalies I’d never seen before. The bright triangle of the diner’s ceiling was cracking. A long drip of yellow ran between the coffee urns. The paint was applied very thinly, not quite covering the linen ground, so that the surface was breached by a profusion of barely visible white pinpricks and tiny white threads. I took a step back. Green shadows were falling in spikes and diamonds on the sidewalk. There is no colour in existence that so powerfully communicates urban alienation, the atomisation of human beings inside the edifices they create, as this noxious pallid green, which only came into being with the advent of electricity, and which is inextricably associated with the nocturnal city, the city of glass towers, of empty illuminated offices and neon signs. A tour guide came in then, her dark hair piled on her head, a group of visitors trailing in her wake. She pointed to the painting, saying do you see, there isn’t a door? and they crowded round, making small noises of exclamation. She was right. The diner was a place of refuge, absolutely, but there was no visible entrance, no way to get in or out. There was a cartoonish, ochre-coloured door at the back of the painting, leading perhaps into a grimy kitchen. But from the street, the room was sealed: an urban aquarium, a glass cell. Inside, in their livid yellow prison, were the four famous figures. A spivvy couple, a counter-boy in a white uniform, his blond hair raked into a cap, and a man sitting with his back to the window, the open crescent of his jacket pocket the darkest point on the canvas. No one was talking. No one was looking at anyone else. Was the diner a refuge for the isolated, a place of succour, or did it serve to illustrate the disconnection that proliferates in cities? The painting’s brilliance derived from its instability, its refusal to commit. Look, for instance, at the counter-boy, his face maybe affable, maybe cold. He stands at the centre of a series of triangles, presiding over the nocturnal sacrament of coffee. But isn’t he also trapped? One of the vertices is cut off by the edge of the canvas, but surely it’s narrowing too sharply, leaving no room for the expected hatch or gangway. This is the kind of subtle geometric disturbance that Hopper was so skilled at, and which he used to kindle emotion in the viewer, to produce feelings of entrapment and wariness, of profound unease. What else? I leant against the wall, sweaty in my sandals, itemising the diner’s contents. Three white coffee cups, two empty glasses rimmed in blue, two napkin dispensers, three salt shakers, one pepper shaker, maybe sugar, maybe ketchup. Yellow light flaring on the ceiling. Livid green tiles (brilliant streak of jade green , Hopper’s wife Jo had written in the notebook she used to log his paintings), triangular shadows dropping lightly everywhere, the colour of a dollar bill. A hoarding above the diner for Phillies American cigars, Only 5cs, illustrated with a crude brown doodle. A green till in the window of the store across the street, not that there was any stock on show. Green on green, glass on glass, a mood that expanded the longer I lingered, breeding disquiet. The window was the weirdest thing: a bubble of glass that separated the diner from the street, curving sinuously back against itself. This window is unique in Hopper’s work. Though he painted hundreds, maybe thousands, in his life, the rest are simply openings, apertures for the eye to gaze through. Some catch reflections, but this was the only time he ever painted glass itself, in all its ambiguous physicality. Simultaneously solid and transparent, material and ephemeral, it brings together what he elsewhere did in parts, fusing in one devastating symbol the twin mechanisms of confinement and exposure. It was impossible to gaze through into the diner’s luminous interior without experiencing a swift apprehension of loneliness, of how it mi	493,380
The Year Of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) (Z-Library).epub	The Year of Magical Thinking Acclaim for Joan Didion’s THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING “Achingly beautiful…. We have come to admire and love Didion for her preternatural poise, unrivaled eye for absurdity, and Orwellian distaste for cant. It is thus a difficult, moving and extraordinarily poignant experience to watch her direct such scrutiny inward.” — Los Angeles Times “ The Year of Magical Thinking …[is] told in some of the plainest, yet most eloquent prose you’ll ever encounter. Everyone who has ever lost anyone, or will ever lose anyone, would do well to read it.” — The Seattle Times “[ The Year of Magical Thinking ] is a work of surpassing clarity and honesty.” — The Washington Post Book World “This book is about getting a grip and getting on; it’s also a tribute to an extraordinary marriage.” — The New Yorker “Unforgettable…. Both personal and universal. She has given the reader an eloquent starting point in which to navigate through the wilderness of grief.” — Chicago Sun-Times “Stark and engrossing.” — San Francisco Chronicle “It’s a work that touches on surprisingly uncharted territory….[ The Year of Magical Thinking ] is a work of much majesty.” — The Christian Science Monitor “An exacting self-examination…also a heartbreaking…love letter, engrossing in its candor…. Didion illuminates the bond between husband and wife.” — The Boston Globe The Year of Magical Thinking 13. I used to tell John my dreams, not to understand them but to get rid of them, clear my mind for the day. “Don’t tell me your dream,” he would say when I woke in the morning, but in the end he would listen. When he died I stopped having dreams. In the early summer I began to dream again, for the first time since it happened. Since I can no longer pass them off to John I find myself thinking about them. I remember a passage from a novel I wrote in the mid-1990s, The Last Thing He Wanted: Of course we would not need those last six notes to know what Elena’s dreams were about. Elena’s dreams were about dying. Elena’s dreams were about getting old. Nobody here has not had (will not have) Elena’s dreams. We all know that. The point is that Elena didn’t. The point is that Elena remained remote most of all to herself, a clandestine agent who had so successfully compartmentalized her operation as to have lost access to her own cutouts. I realize that Elena’s situation is my own. In one dream I am hanging a braided belt in a closet when it breaks. About a third of the belt just drops off in my hands. I show the two pieces to John. I say (or he says, who knows in dreams) that this was his favorite belt. I determine (again, I think I determine, I should have determined, my half-waking mind tells me to do the right thing) to find him an identical braided belt. In other words to fix what I broke, bring him back. The similarity of this broken braided belt to the one I found in the plastic bag I was given at New York Hospital does not escape my attention. Nor does the fact that I am still thinking I broke it, I did it, I am responsible. In another dream John and I are flying to Honolulu. Many other people are going, we have assembled at Santa Monica Airport. Paramount has arranged planes. Production assistants are distributing boarding passes. I board. There is confusion. Others are boarding but there is no sign of John. I worry that there is a problem with his boarding pass. I decide that I should leave the plane, wait for him in the car. While I am waiting in the car I realize that the planes are taking off, one by one. Finally there is no one but me on the tarmac. My first thought in the dream is anger: John has boarded a plane without me. My second thought transfers the anger: Paramount has not cared enough about us to put us on the same plane. What “Paramount” was doing in this dream would require another discussion, not relevant. As I think about the dream I remember Tenko. Tenko, as the series progresses, takes its imprisoned Englishwomen through their liberation from the Japanese camp and their reunions in Singapore with their husbands, which do not go uniformly well. There seemed for some a level at which the husband was held responsible for the ordeal of imprisonment. There seemed a sense, however irrational, of having been abandoned. Did I feel abandoned, left behind on the tarmac, did I feel anger at John for leaving me? Was it possible to feel anger and simultaneously to feel responsible? I know the answer a psychiatrist would give to that question. The answer would have to do with the well-known way in which anger creates guilt and vice versa. I do not disbelieve this answer but it remains less suggestive to me than the unexamined image, the mystery of being left alone on the tarmac at Santa Monica Airport watching the planes take off one by one. We all know that. The point is that Elena didn’t. I wake at what seems to be three-thirty in the morning and find a television set on, MSNBC. Either Joe Scarborough or Keith Olbermann is talking to a husband and wife, passengers on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, “Northwest 327” (I actually write this down, to tell to John), on which “a terrorist tryout” is said to have occurred. The incident seems to have involved fourteen men said to be “Arabs” who, at some point after takeoff from Detroit, began gathering outside the coach lavatory, entering one by one. The couple now being interviewed on-screen reports having exchanged signals with the crew. The plane landed in Los Angeles. The “Arabs,” all fourteen of whom had “expired visas” (this seemed to strike MSNBC as more unusual than it struck me), were detained, then released. Everyone, including the couple on-screen, had gone about their day. It was not, then, “a terrorist attack,” which seemed to be what made it “a terrorist tryout.” I need in the dream to discuss this with John. Or was it even a dream? Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? W hen the twilights got long in June I forced myself to eat dinner in the living room, where the light was. After John died I had begun eating by myself in the kitchen (the dining room was too big and the table in the living room was where he had died), but when the long twilights came I had a strong sense that he would want me to see the light. As the twilights began to shorten I retreated again to the kitchen. I began spending more evenings alone at home. I was working, I would say. By the time August came I was in fact working, or trying to work, but I also wanted not to be out, exposed. One night I found myself taking from the cupboard not one of the plates I normally used but a crackled and worn Spode plate, from a set mostly broken or chipped, in a pattern no longer made, “Wickerdale.” This had been a set of dishes, cream with a garland of small rose and blue flowers and ecru leaves, that John’s mother had given him for the apartment he rented on East Seventy-third Street before we were married. John’s mother was dead. John was dead. And I still had, of the “Wickerdale” Spode, four dinner plates, five salad plates, three butter plates, a single coffee cup, and nine saucers. I came to prefer these dishes to all others. By the end of the summer I was running the dishwasher a quarter full just to make sure that at least one of the four “Wickerdale” dinner plates would be clean when I needed it. At a point during the summer it occurred to me that I had no letters from John, not one. We had only rarely been far or long apart. There had been the week or two or three here and there when one of us was doing a piece. There had been a month in 1975 when I taught at Berkeley during the week and flew home to Los Angeles on PSA every weekend. There had been a few weeks in 1988 when John was in Ireland doing research for Harp and I was in California covering the presidential primary. On all such occasions we had spoken on the telephone several times a day. We counted high telephone bills as part of our deal with each other, the same way we counted high bills for the hotels that enabled us to take Quintana out of school and fly somewhere and both work at the same time in the same suite. What I had instead of letters was a souvenir of one such hotel suite: a small black wafer-thin alarm clock he gave me one Christmas in Honolulu when we were doing a crash rewrite on a picture that never got made. It was one of those many Christmases on which we exchanged not “presents” but small practical things to make a tree. This alarm clock had stopped working during the year before he died, could not be repaired, and, after he died, could not be thrown out. It could not even be removed from the table by my bed. I also had a set of colored Buffalo pens, given to me the same Christmas, in the same spirit. I did many sketches of palm trees that Christmas, palm trees moving in the wind, palm trees dropping fronds, palm trees bent by the December kona storms. The colored Buffalo pens had long since gone dry, but, again, could not be thrown out. I remember having had on that particular New Year’s Eve in Honolulu a sense of well-being so profound that I did not want to go to sleep. We had ordered mahimahi and Manoa lettuce vinaigrette for the three of us from room service. We had tried for a festive effect by arranging leis over the printers and computers we were using for the rewrite. We had found candles and lit them and played the tapes Quintana had wrapped up to put under the tree. John had been reading on the bed and had fallen asleep about eleven-thirty. Quintana had gone downstairs to see what was happening. I could see John sleeping. I knew Quintana was safe, she had been going downstairs to see what was happening in this hotel (sometimes alone, sometimes with Susan Traylor, who often came along with Quintana when we were working in Honolulu) since she was six or seven years old. I sat on a balcony overlooking the Waialae Country Club golf course and finished the bottle of wine we had drunk with dinner and watched the neighborhood fireworks all over Honolulu. I remember one last present from John. It was my birthday, December 5, 2003. Snow had begun falling in New York around ten that morning and by evening seven inches had accumulated, with another six due. I remember snow avalanching off the slate roof at St. James’ Church across the street. A plan to meet Quintana and Gerry at a restaurant was canceled. Before dinner John sat by the fire in the living room and read to me out loud. The book from which he read was a novel of my own, A Book of Common Prayer, which he happened to have in the living room because he was rereading it to see how something worked technically. The sequence he read out loud was one in which Charlotte Douglas’s husband Leonard pays a visit to the narrator, Grace Strasser-Mendana, and lets her know that what is happening in the country her family runs will not end well. The sequence is complicated (this was in fact the sequence John had meant to reread to see how it worked technically), broken by other action and requiring the reader to pick up the undertext in what Leonard Douglas and Grace Strasser-Mendana say to each other. “Goddamn,” John said to me when he closed the book. “Don’t ever tell me again you can’t write. That’s my birthday present to you.” I remember tears coming to my eyes. I feel them now. In retrospect this had been my omen, my message, the early snowfall, the birthday present no one else could give me. He had twenty-five nights left to live. The Year of Magical Thinking 1. Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. T hose were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file (“Notes on change.doc”) reads “May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.,” but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two or three after the fact. For a long time I wrote nothing else. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. At some point, in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened, I considered adding those words, “the ordinary instant.” I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word “ordinary,” because there would be no forgetting it: the word never left my mind. It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. “He was on his way home from work—happy, successful, healthy—and then, gone,” I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an “ordinary Sunday morning” it had been. “It was just an ordinary beautiful September day,” people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: “Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” “And then—gone.” In the midst of life we are in death, Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks, all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time, all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our (I could not yet think my ) otherwise empty house even after I had gone into the bedroom (our bedroom, the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills) and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details, but I must have done so, because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another, but immediately rejected it: the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me. Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face, for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until José came in the next morning and cleaned it up. José. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day, December 31, but never went. José was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story, something about my version had been at once too offhand and too elliptical, something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation (I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana), but by the time José saw the blood he understood. I had picked up the abandoned syringes and ECG electrodes before he came in that morning but I could not face the blood. I n outline. It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004. Nine months and five days ago, at approximately nine o’clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. Our only child, Quintana, had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Singer Division, at that time a hospital on East End Avenue (it closed in August 2004) more commonly known as “Beth Israel North” or “the old Doctors’ Hospital,” where what had seemed a case of December flu sufficiently severe to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and septic shock. This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself. Navigation Cover Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Permissions Acknowledgments About Joan Didion Copyright Cover Table of Contents The Year of Magical Thinking 3. T he power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted. The act of grieving, Freud told us in his 1917 “Mourning and Melancholia,” “involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life.” Yet, he pointed out, grief remains peculiar among derangements: “It never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment.” We rely instead on “its being overcome after a certain lapse of time.” We view “any interference with it as useless and even harmful.” Melanie Klein, in her 1940 “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States,” made a similar assessment: “The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness…. To put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it.” Notice the stress on “overcoming” it. It was deep into the summer, some months after the night when I needed to be alone so that he could come back, before I recognized that through the winter and spring there had been occasions on which I was incapable of thinking rationally. I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome. In my case this disordered thinking had been covert, noticed I think by no one else, hidden even from me, but it had also been, in retrospect, both urgent and constant. In retrospect there had been signs, warning flags I should have noticed. There had been for example the matter of the obituaries. I could not read them. This continued from December 31, when the first obituaries appeared, until February 29, the night of the 2004 Academy Awards, when I saw a photograph of John in the Academy’s “In Memoriam” montage. When I saw the photograph I realized for the first time why the obituaries had so disturbed me. I had allowed other people to think he was dead. I had allowed him to be buried alive. Another such flag: there had come a point (late February, early March, after Quintana had left the hospital but before the funeral that had waited on her recovery) when it had occurred to me that I was supposed to give John’s clothes away. Many people had mentioned the necessity for giving the clothes away, usually in the well-intentioned but (as it turns out) misguided form of offering to help me do this. I had resisted. I had no idea why. I myself remembered, after my father died, helping my mother separate his clothes into stacks for Goodwill and “better” stacks for the charity thrift shop where my sister-in-law Gloria volunteered. After my mother died Gloria and I and Quintana and Gloria and Jim’s daughters had done the same with her clothes. It was part of what people did after a death, part of the ritual, some kind of duty. I began. I cleared a shelf on which John had stacked sweatshirts, T-shirts, the clothes he wore when we walked in Central Park in the early morning. We walked every morning. We did not always walk together because we liked different routes but we would keep the other’s route in mind and intersect before we left the park. The clothes on this shelf were as familiar to me as my own. I closed my mind to this. I set aside certain things (a faded sweatshirt I particularly remembered him wearing, a Canyon Ranch T-shirt Quintana had brought him from Arizona), but I put most of what was on this shelf into bags and took the bags across the street to St. James’ Episcopal Church. Emboldened, I opened a closet and filled more bags: New Balance sneakers, all-weather shoes, Brooks Brothers shorts, bag after bag of socks. I took the bags to St. James’. One day a few weeks later I gathered up more bags and took them to John’s office, where he had kept his clothes. I was not yet prepared to address the suits and shirts and jackets but I thought I could handle what remained of the shoes, a start. I stopped at the door to the room. I could not give away the rest of his shoes. I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return. The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought. I have still not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power. O n reflection I see the autopsy itself as the first example of this kind of thinking. Whatever else had been in my mind when I so determinedly authorized an autopsy, there was also a level of derangement on which I reasoned that an autopsy could show that what had gone wrong was something simple. It could have been no more than a transitory blockage or arrhythmia. It could have required only a minor adjustment—a change in medication, say, or the resetting of a pacemaker. In this case, the reasoning went, they might still be able to fix it. I recall being struck by an interview, during the 2004 campaign, in which Teresa Heinz Kerry talked about the sudden death of her first husband. After the plane crash that killed John Heinz, she said in the interview, she had felt very strongly that she “needed” to leave Washington and go back to Pittsburgh. Of course she “needed” to go back to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, not Washington, was the place to which he might come back. The autopsy did not in fact take place the night John was declared dead. The autopsy did not take place until eleven the next morning. I realize now that the autopsy could have taken place only after the man I did not know at New York Hospital made the phone call to me, on the morning of December 31. The man who made the call was not “my social worker,” not “my husband’s doctor,” not, as John and I might have said to each other, our friend from the bridge. “Not our friend from the bridge” was family shorthand, having to do with how his Aunt Harriet Burns described subsequent sightings of recently encountered strangers, for example seeing outside the Friendly’s in West Hartford the same Cadillac Seville that had earlier cut her off on the Bulkeley Bridge. “Our friend from the bridge,” she would say. I was thinking about John saying “not our friend from the bridge” as I listened to the man on the telephone. I recall expressions of sympathy. I recall offers of assistance. He seemed to be avoiding some point. He was calling, he said then, to ask if I would donate my husband’s organs. Many things went through my mind at this instant. The first word that went through my mind was “no.” Simultaneously I remembered Quintana mentioning at dinner one night that she had identified herself as an organ donor when she renewed her driver’s license. She had asked John if he had. He had said no. They had discussed it. I had changed the subject. I had been unable to think of either of them dead. The man on the telephone was still talking. I was thinking: If she were to die today in the ICU at Beth Israel North, would this come up? What would I do? What would I do now? I heard myself saying to the man on the telephone that my husband’s and my daughter was unconscious. I heard myself saying that I did not feel capable of making such a decision before our daughter even knew he was dead. This seemed to me at the time a reasonable response. Only after I hung up did it occur to me that nothing about it was reasonable. This thought was immediately (and usefully—notice the instant mobilization of cognitive white cells) supplanted by another: there had been in this call something that did not add up. There had been a contradiction in it. This man had been talking about donating organs, but there was no way at this point to do a productive organ harvest: John had not been on life support. He had not been on life support when I saw him in the curtained cubicle in the emergency room. He had not been on life support when the priest came. All organs would have shut down. Then I remembered: the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office. John and I had been there together one morning in 1985 or 1986. There had been someone from the eye bank tagging bodies for cornea removal. Those bodies in the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office had not been on life support. This man from New York Hospital, then, was talking about taking only the corneas, the eyes. Then why not say so? Why misrepresent this to me? Why make this call and not just say “his eyes”? I took the silver clip the social worker had given me the night before from the box in the bedroom and looked at the driver’s license. Eyes: BL, the license read. Restrictions: Corrective Lenses. Why make this call and not just say what you wanted? His eyes. His blue eyes. His blue imperfect eyes. and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death I could not that morning remember who wrote those lines. I thought it was E. E. Cummings but I could not be sure. I did not have a volume of Cummings but found an anthology on a poetry shelf in the bedroom, an old textbook of John’s, published in 1949, when he would have been at Portsmouth Priory, the Benedictine boarding school near Newport to which he was sent after his father died. (His father’s death: sudden, cardiac, in his early fifties, I should have taken that warning.) If we happened to be anywhere around Newport John would take me to Portsmouth to hear the Gregorian chant at vespers. It was something that moved him. On the flyleaf of the anthology there was written the name Dunne, in small careful handwriting, and then, in the same handwriting, blue ink, fountain-pen blue ink, these guides to study: 1) What is the meaning of the poem and what is the experience? 2) What thought or reflection does the experience lead us to? 3) What mood, feeling, emotion is stirred or created by the poem as a whole? I put the book back on the shelf. It would be some months before I remembered to confirm that the lines were in fact E. E. Cummings. It would also be some months before it occurred to me that my anger at this unknown caller from New York Hospital reflected another version of the primitive dread that had not for me been awakened by the autopsy question. What was the meaning and what the experience? To what thought or reflection did the experience lead us? How could he come back if they took his organs, how could he come back if he had no shoes? The Year of Magical Thinking Contents Cover Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Permissions Acknowledgments Joan Didion the Year of Magical Thinking Also by Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking 11. S ometime in June, after she had left UCLA and was in the sixth of what would be fifteen weeks as an inpatient at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center in New York, Quintana told me that her memory not only of UCLA but of her arrival at Rusk was “all mudgy.” She could remember some things about UCLA, yes, as she could not yet remember anything else since before Christmas (she did not for example remember speaking about her father at St. John the Divine, nor, when she first woke at UCLA, did she remember that he had died), but it was still “mudgy.” Later she corrected this to “smudgy,” but she did not need to: I knew exactly what she meant. On the neuro floors at UCLA they had called it “spotty,” as in “her orientation is improving but still spotty.” When I try to reconstruct those weeks at UCLA I recognize the mudginess in my own memory. There are parts of days that seem very clear and parts of days that do not. I clearly remember arguing with a doctor the day they decided to do the tracheostomy. She had by then been intubated for almost a week, the doctor said. UCLA did not leave tubes in for more than a week. I said that she had been intubated for three weeks at Beth Israel in New York. The doctor had looked away. “The rule at Duke was also a week,” he said, as if under the impression that mention of Duke would settle the question. Instead it enraged me: What is Duke to me, I wanted to say but did not. What is Duke to UCLA. Duke is North Carolina. UCLA is California. If I wanted the opinion of somebody in North Carolina I would call somebody in North Carolina. Her husband is right now on a flight to New York, I said instead. Surely this can wait until he lands. Not really, the doctor said. Since it’s already on the schedule. The day they decided to do the tracheostomy was also the day they turned off the EEG. “Everything’s looking good,” they kept saying. “She’s going to get better sooner once we do the trach. She’s already off the EEG, maybe you didn’t notice that.” Maybe I didn’t notice that? My only child? My unconscious child? Maybe I didn’t notice when I walked into the ICU that morning that her brain waves were gone? That the monitor above her bed was dark, dead? This was now being presented as progress but it had not seemed so when I first saw it. I remembered reading in Intensive Care that the ICU nurses at San Francisco General turned off the monitors when a patient was near death, because their experience was that family members would focus on the screens rather than on the dying patient. I wondered if such a determination had been made in this case. Even after I was assured that this was not the case, I found myself averting my eyes from the blank EEG screen. I had grown used to watching her brain waves. It was a way of hearing her talk. I did not see why, since the equipment was sitting there unused, they could not keep the EEG on. Just in case. I had asked. I do not remember getting an answer. It was a period when I asked many questions that did not get answered. What answers I did get tended to the unsatisfactory, as in, “It’s already on the schedule.” Everyone in the neuro units got a trach, they had kept saying to me that day. Everyone in the neuro units had muscular weaknesses that rendered the removal of the breathing tube problematic. A trach involved less risk of windpipe damage. A trach involved less risk of pneumonia. Look to your right, look to your left, both sides have trachs. A trach could be done with fentanyl and a muscle relaxant, she would be under anesthesia no more than an hour. A trach would leave no cosmetic effect to speak of, “only a little dimple scar,” “as time goes by maybe no scar at all.” They kept mentioning this last point, as if the basis for my resistance to the trach was the scar. They were doctors, however freshly minted. I was not. Ergo, any concerns I had must be cosmetic, frivolous. In fact I had no idea why I so resisted the trach. I think now that my resistance came from the same fund of superstition from which I had been drawing since John died. If she did not have a trach she could be fine in the morning, ready to eat, talk, go home. If she did not have a trach we could be on a plane by the weekend. Even if they did not want her to fly, I could take her with me to the Beverly Wilshire, we could have our nails done, sit by the pool. If they still did not want her to fly we could drive out to Malibu, spend a few restorative days with Jean Moore. If she did not have a trach. This was demented, but so was I. Through the printed blue cotton curtains that separated the beds I could hear people talking to their functionally absent husbands, fathers, uncles, co-workers. In the bed to Quintana’s right was a man injured in a construction accident. The men who had been on the site at the time of the accident had come to see him. They stood around his bed and tried to explain what had happened. The rig, the cab, the crane, I heard a noise, I called out to Vinny. Each man gave his version. Each version differed slightly from the others. This was understandable, since each witness proceeded from a different point of view, but I recall wanting to intercede, help them coordinate their stories; it had seemed too much conflicting data to lay on someone with a traumatic brain injury. “Everything’s going along as usual and then all shit breaks loose,” one said. The injured man made no response, nor could he, since he had a trach. To Quintana’s left lay a man from Massachusetts who had been in the hospital for several months. He and his wife had been in Los Angeles visiting their children, there had been a fall from a ladder, he had seemed all right. One more perfectly ordinary day. Then he had trouble speaking. Everything’s going along as usual and then all shit breaks loose. Now he had pneumonia. The children came and went. The wife was always there, pleading with him in a low mournful voice. The husband made no response: he too had a trach. They did the trach for Quintana on the first of April, a Thursday afternoon. By Friday morning enough of the sedation for the breathing tube had been metabolized out that she could open her eyes and squeeze my hand. On Saturday I was told that the next day or Monday she would be moved from the ICU into a step-down neuro-observational unit on the seventh floor. The sixth and seventh floors at UCLA were all neuro. I have no memory of when she was moved but I think it was some days after that. One afternoon after she had been moved to the step-down unit I ran into the woman from Massachusetts in the Café Med courtyard. Her husband too had left the ICU, and was moving now to what she called a “subacute rehab facility.” We each knew that “subacute rehab facilities” were what medical insurance carriers and hospital discharge coordinators called nursing homes but this went unmentioned. She had wanted him moved to the eleven-bed acute rehab unit at UCLA Neuropsychiatric but he had not been accepted. That was the phrase she used, “not been accepted.” She was concerned about how she would get to the subacute facility—one of the two with an available bed was near LAX, the other in Chinatown—because she did not drive. The children had jobs, important jobs, they could not always be driving her. We sat in the sun. I listened. She asked about my daughter. I did not want to tell her that my daughter would be moving to the eleven-bed acute rehab unit at Neuropsychiatric. At some point I noticed that I was trying like a sheepdog to herd the doctors, pointing out edema to one intern, reminding another to obtain a urine culture to check out the blood in the Foley catheter line, insisting on a Doppler ultrasound to see if the reason for the leg pain could be emboli, doggedly repeating—when the ultrasound indicated that she was in fact again throwing clots—that I wanted a specialist on coagulation called in to consult. I wrote down the name of the specialist I wanted. I offered to call him myself. These efforts did not endear me to the young men and women who made up the house staff (“If you want to manage this case I’m signing off,” one finally said) but they made me feel less helpless. I remember learning at UCLA the names of many tests and scales. The Kimura Box Test. The Two-Point Discrimination Test. The Glasgow Coma Scale, the Glasgow Outcome Scale. My comprehension of the meaning of these tests and scales remained obscure. I also remember learning, both at UCLA and before, at Beth Israel and Columbia-Presbyterian, the names of many resistant hospital bacteria. At Beth Israel there had been Acinetobacter baumannii, which was resistant to vancomycin. “That’s how you know it’s a hospital infection,” I recall being told by a doctor I asked at Columbia-Presbyterian. “If it’s resistant to vanc it’s hospital. Because vanc only gets used in hospital settings.” At UCLA there had been MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, as opposed to MRSE, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis, which was what they first thought they had cultured and which had seemed to more visibly alarm the staff. “I can’t say why but since you’re pregnant you may want to transfer off,” one therapist advised another during the MRSE scare, glancing at me as if I might not understand. There were many other names of hospital bacteria, but those were the big hitters. Whatever bacteria was shown to be the source of the new fever or urinary tract infection, it would mandate gowns, gloves, masks. It would provoke heavy sighing among the aides who were required to suit up before entering the room to empty a wastebasket. The methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus at UCLA was an infection in the bloodstream, a bacteremia. When I heard this I expressed concern to the doctor who was examining Quintana that an infection in her bloodstream might again lead to sepsis. “Well, you know, sepsis, it’s a clinical term,” the doctor said, then continued examining her. I had pressed him. “She’s already in some degree of sepsis.” He had seemed cheerful. “But we’re continuing vanc. And so far her blood pressure is holding.” So. We were back to waiting to see if she lost blood pressure. We were back to watching for septic shock. Next we would be watching for ice floes on the East River. In point of fact what I watched from the windows at UCLA was a swimming pool. I never once saw anyone swim in this swimming pool, although it was filled, filtered (I could see the little swirl where the water entered the filter and the bubbling where it reemerged), sparkling in the sun, and surrounded by patio tables, with parasols. One day when I was watching it I had a sharp memory of having gotten the idea to float candles and gardenias in the pool behind the house in Brentwood Park. We were having a party. It was an hour before the party but I was already dressed when the gardenia idea presented itself. I knelt on the coping and lit the candles and used the pool skimmer to guide the gardenias and candles into a random pattern. I stood up, pleased with the result. I put the pool skimmer away. When I glanced back at the pool, the gardenias had vanished and the candles were out, tiny drenched hulks bobbing furiously around the filter intake. They could not be sucked in because the filter was already clogged with gardenias. I spent the remaining forty-five minutes before the party cleaning the sodden gardenias from the filter and scooping out the candles and drying my dress with a hair dryer. So far so good. A memory of the house in Brentwood Park that involved neither John nor Quintana. Unfortunately I thought of another. I had been alone in the kitchen of that house, late twilight, early evening, feeding the Bouvier we then had. Quintana was at Barnard. John was spending a few days at the apartment we had in New York. This would have been late 1987, the period during which he had begun talking about wanting us to spend more time in New York. I had discouraged this idea. Suddenly a red flashing light had filled the kitchen. I had gone to the window. There was an ambulance in front of a house across Marlboro Street, visible beyond the coral tree and two cords of stacked wood in our side yard. This was a neighborhood in which many houses, including the one across Marlboro Street, had side yards in which there were two cords of stacked wood. I had watched the house until the last light was gone and the ambulance left. The next morning when I was walking the Bouvier a neighbor told me what had happened. Two cords of stacked wood had not kept the woman in the house across Marlboro Street from becoming a widow at dinner. I had called John in New York. The red flashing light had by then seemed an urgent warning. I said maybe he was right, we should spend more time in New York. Watching the empty swimming pool from the window at UCLA I could see the vortex coming but could not deflect it. The vortex in this instance would be the memory’s insistent appointment-in-Samarra aspect. Had I not made that call would Quintana have moved back to Los Angeles when she graduated from Barnard? Had she been living in Los Angeles would Beth Israel North have happened, would Presbyterian have happened, would she be in UCLA today? Had I not misread the meaning of the red flashing light in late 1987 would I be able to get in my car today and drive west on San Vicente and find John at the house in Brentwood Park? Standing in the pool? Rereading Sophie’s Choice ? W ould I need to relive every mistake? If by accident I remembered the morning we drove down to St.-Tropez from Tony Richardson’s house in the hills and had coffee on the street and bought the fish for dinner would I also need to remember the night I refused to swim in the moonlight because the Mediterranean was polluted and I had a cut on my leg? If I remembered the gamecock at Portuguese Bend would I also need to remember the long drive home from dinner to that house, and how many nights as we passed the refineries on the San Diego Freeway one or the other of us had said the wrong thing? Or stopped speaking? Or imagined that the other had stopped speaking? “Each single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it…. It is remarkable that this painful unpleasure is taken as a matter of course by us.” So Freud explained what he saw as the “work” of grief, which as described sounded suspiciously like the vortex. I n point of fact the house in Brentwood Park from which I had seen the red flashing light and thought to evade it by moving to New York no longer existed. It was torn down to the ground and replaced (by a house marginally larger) a year after we sold it. The day we happened to be in Los Angeles and drove past the corner of Chadbourne and Marlboro and saw nothing left standing except the one chimney that allowed a tax advantage, I remembered the real estate agent telling me how meaningful it would be to the buyers were we to give them suitably inscribed copies of the books we had written in the house. We had done this. Quintana and Friends, Dutch Shea, Jr., and The Red White and Blue for John, Salvador, Democracy, and Miami for me. When we saw the flattened lot from the car, Quintana, in the back seat, burst into tears. My first reaction was fury. I wanted the books back. Did this corrective line of thinking stop the vortex? Not hardly. One morning when Quintana was still in the step-down unit because the persistence of her fever necessitated an echocardiogram to rule out endocarditis she lifted her right hand for the first time. This was significant because it was on the right side of her body that the effects of the trauma could be seen. Movement meant that the traumatized nerves remained alive. Later that day she kept wanting to get out of bed, and fell into a sulk like a child when I said I would not help her. My memory of that day is not at all mudgy. I t was decided in late April that sufficient time had passed since the surgery to allow her to fly to New York. The issue until then had been pressurization and the potential it presented for swelling. She would need trained personnel to accompany her. A commercial flight was ruled out. Arrangements were made to medevac her: an ambulance from UCLA to an airport, an air ambulance to Teterboro, and an ambulance from Teterboro to New York University Hospital, where she would do neuro-rehab at the Rusk Institute. Many conversations were held between UCLA and Rusk. Many records were faxed. A CDROM of CT scans was prepared. A date was set for what even I was now calling “the transfer”: Thursday, April 29. Early that Thursday morning as I was about to check out of the Beverly Wilshire I got a call from somewhere in Colorado. The flight had been delayed. The plane was in Tucson, where it had landed with “mechanical difficulties.” The mechanics in Tucson would look at it when they came in, at ten mountain time. By early afternoon Pacific time it was clear that the plane would not be flying. Another plane would be available the next morning, but the next morning was a Friday, and UCLA did not like to transfer on Fridays. At the hospital I pressed the discharge coordinator to agree to the Friday transfer. To delay the transfer into the following week could only dispirit and confuse Quintana, I said, sure of my ground. Rusk had no problem with a Friday night admission, I said, less sure. There was nowhere I could stay over the weekend, I lied. By the time the discharge coordinator had agreed to the Friday transfer Quintana was asleep. I sat for a while in the sun on the plaza outside the hospital and watched a helicopter circling to land on the roof. Helicopters were always landing on the roof at UCLA, suggesting trauma all over Southern California, remote scenes of highway carnage, distant falling cranes, bad days ahead for the husband or wife or mother or father who had not yet (even as the helicopter landed and the trauma team rushed the stretcher into triage) gotten the call. I remembered a summer day in 1970 when John and I stopped for a red light on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and noticed the driver of the next car suddenly slump over his steering wheel. His horn sounded. Several pedestrians ran up. A police officer materialized. The light changed, we drove on. John had been unable to get this image out of his mind. There he was, he had kept saying later. He was alive and then he was dead and we were watching. We saw him at the instant it happened. We knew he was dead before his family did. Just an ordinary day. “And then—gone.” The day of the flight, when it came, had seemed to unfold with the nonsequential inexorability of a dream. When I turned on the news in the early morning there was a guerrilla action on the freeways, truckers protesting the price of gasoline. Huge semi trucks had been deliberately jackknifed and abandoned on Interstate 5. Witnesses reported that the first semis to stop had carried the TV crews. SUVs had been waiting to take the truckers themselves from the blocked freeway. The video as I watched it had seemed dislocatingly French, 1968. “Avoid the 5 if you can,” the newscaster advised, then warned that according to “sources” (presumably the same TV crews who were traveling with the truckers) the truckers would also block other freeways, specifically the 710, the 60, and the 10. In the normal course of this kind of disruption it would have seemed unlikely that we could get from UCLA to the plane, but by the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital the entire French event seemed to have dematerialized, that phase of the dream forgotten. There were other phases to come. I had been told the plane would be at Santa Monica Airport. The ambulance crew had been told Burbank. Someone made a call and was told Van Nuys. When we reached Van Nuys there were no planes in sight, only helicopters. That must be because you’re going by helicopter, one of the ambulance attendants said, clearly ready to hand us off and get on with his day. I don’t think so, I said, it’s three thousand miles. The ambulance attendant shrugged and disappeared. The plane was located, a jet Cessna with room for the two pilots, the two paramedics, the stretcher to wh	286,178
Tiny Beautiful Things (10th Anniversary Edition) (Cheryl Strayed) (Z-Library).epub	Tiny Beautiful Things Contents Cover About the Author Also by Cheryl Strayed Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Preface to the Vintage Books Tenth Anniversary Edition (2022) Introduction by Steve Almond Part One: It Was Always Only Us Like an Iron Bell How You Get Unstuck That Ecstatic Parade A Motorcycle with No One On It The Reckoning There’s a Bundle on Your Head Write like a Motherfucker A New, More Fractured Light Dudes in the Woods Icky Thoughts Turn Me On Reach Part Two: Whatever Mysterious Starlight That Guided You This Far The Baby Bird Go! Go! Go! The Black Arc of It Hell Is Other People’s Boyfriends Thwack, Thwack, Thwack The Woman Hanging on the End of the Line No Mystery About Sperm The Mad Sex Confessor The Future Has an Ancient Heart Faux Friendship Footsie The Human Scale Part Three: Carry the Water Yourself Beauty and the Beast I Chose van Gogh The Other Side of the Pool The Truth That Lives There Too Much Paint Tiny Revolutions Not Enough No Is Golden Romantic Love Is Not a Competitive Sport A Big Life The Known Unknowns On Your Island Part Four: You Don’t Have to Be Broken for Me The Magic of Wanting to Be A Glorious Something Else A Tunnel That Wakes You How the Real Work Is Done The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us Your Invisible Inner Terrible Someone Waiting by the Phone We Are All Savages Inside The Lusty Broad The Bad Things You Did Bend The Obliterated Place Part Five: Put It in a Box and Wait A Bit of Sully in Your Sweet We Are Here to Build the House The Empty Bowl Transcend A Shimmering Slice of Your Mysterious Destiny The Ordinary Miraculous We Call This a Clusterfuck Are You My Mother? Ten Angry Boys Tiny Beautiful Things Part Six: We Are the Solid Vespers Trust Yourself Wildly We Are the Solid Heartbreak Hellspace The Truest Story Is Always the Widest One Good Medicine Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Start Table of Contents Copyright Print Page List i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 A Big Life, Tiny Beautiful Things A Big Life Dear Sugar, My question is not about love or sex, but rather one of identity and striving for the best quality of life possible. I, as many other Americans, am struggling financially. Student loans are continuously on my mind and are the cause of almost every stress in my life. My parents graciously co-signed for my student loans, however, I am being forced to consolidate in order to relieve them of this duty. I realize this is more out of necessity than spite, yet the situation greatly impacts my already poor financial situation and also my dream of attending graduate school. I’m so angry with my parents for putting me in this circumstance instead of supporting me to get a graduate degree for my dream job, and I feel selfish about that. My relationship with my parents has always been rocky to the point that I’ve come to realize I’ll never get any emotional support from them. I am grateful they were able to help me with an undergraduate degree. However, I have never been close to them, and am often wary of their intentions. Our phone conversations are 100 percent concerning student loans rather than me as a person. I struggle with student loans often defining me. I know my education, student loans, and occupation will define me to an extent. However, I am more than my job and these items combined. I am a twenty-five-year-old woman who strives for the greatest possible quality of life and to be the best person she can be. But more often than not, I am defined by my “student loan” identity. It is on my mind when I grab a beer, buy new clothes, and in general live my life. I do not spend excessively and have always had careful money management. Yet this situation extends beyond any careful money management. I have always reached to have a positive spin on life. I fell into a deep, dark hole a few years ago, and have crawled out slowly myself. I purposely changed what I didn’t like about my life. It wasn’t an easy process by any means, but I am finally in a place where I can breathe. Yet the stresses of student loans bear greatly, and I am having trouble keeping up any positive outlook. Sugar, I would love your perspective on this situation. I wish my parents would see me for the vibrant woman I am. I wish I could see myself as the vibrant young woman I strive to be and would like to be in the future. Sincerely, Wearing Thin Dear Wearing Thin, I received zero funding from my parents for my undergraduate education (or from relatives of any sort, for that matter). It wasn’t that my mother and stepfather didn’t want to help me financially; it was that they couldn’t. There was never any question about whether I’d need to fend for myself financially once I was able to. I had to. So I did. I got a job when I was fourteen and kept one all through high school. The money I earned went to things like clothes, school activity fees, a junked-out car, gas, car insurance, movie tickets, mascara, and so on. My parents were incredibly generous people. Everything they had they shared with my siblings and me. They housed me, they fed me, and they went to great lengths to create wonderful Christmases, but, from a very young age, if I wanted something I usually had to buy it myself. My parents were strapped. Most winters there would be a couple of months so lean that my mother would have to go to the local food bank for groceries. In the years that the program was in place, my family received blocks of cheese and bags of powdered milk from the federal government. My health insurance all through my childhood was Medicaid—coverage for kids living in poverty. I moved out of my parents’ house a month before my eighteenth birthday. With a combination of personal earnings, grants, scholarships, and student loans I funded the bachelor’s degree in English and women’s studies that I’m still paying for. As of today, I owe $4,876. Over the years I’ve taken to saying—sometimes with astonishment, other times with anger, but mostly with a sense of resigned, distorted glee: “I’ll be paying off my student loans until I’m forty-three!” But you know what? I’m waving to you from the shores of forty-three and the months are peeling away. It’s looking extremely likely that I’ll still be paying off my student loans when I’m forty-four. Has this ruined my life? Has it kept me from pursuing happiness, my writing career, and ridiculously expensive cowboy boots? Has it compelled me to turn away from fantastically financially unsound expenditures on fancy dinners, travel, “organic” shampoo, and high-end preschools? Has it stopped me from adopting cats who immediately need thousands of dollars in veterinary care or funding dozens of friends’ artistic projects on Kickstarter or putting $20 bottles of wine on my credit card or getting the occasional pedicure? It has not. I have carried the weight of my student loan debt for about half of my life now, but I have not been “defined by my ‘student loan’ identity.” I do not even know what a student loan identity is . Do you? What is a student loan identity? It is, I guess, exactly what you’re stuck with if you can’t get some perspective on this matter, sweet pea. It’s the threadbare cape you’ve wrapped around yourself composed of self-pitying half truth. And it absolutely will not serve you. You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. I don’t say this as a condemnation—I need regular reminders to stop feeling sorry for myself too. I’m going to address you bluntly, but it’s a directness that rises from my compassion for you, not my judgment of you. Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out. You have driven out at least once already, Wearing Thin. You found yourself in a “deep, dark hole” a while back and then you courageously crawled out. You have to do it again. Your student loans will only hold you back if you allow them to. Yep, you have to figure out how to pay them. Yep, you can do that. Yep, it’s a pain in the ass. But it’s a pain in the ass that I promise will give you back more than you owe. You know the best thing about paying your own bills? No one can tell you what to do with your money. You say your parents are emotionally unsupportive. You say you’re wary of their intentions. You say they don’t see you for the vibrant woman that you are. Well, the moment you sign that paper absolving them of their financial obligation to your debts, you are free. You may love them, you may despise them, you may choose to have whatever sort of relationship you choose to have with them, but you are no longer beholden to them in this one particular and important way. You are financially accountable only to yourself. If they express disdain for the jobs you have or the way you spend your money, you can rightly tell them it’s none of their damn business. They have absolutely no power over you in this regard. No one does. That’s a mighty liberating thing. And it’s a hard thing too. I know, honey bun. I really, really, really do. Many years ago, I ran into an acquaintance I’ll call Kate a few days after we both graduated college (though, in my case, I’m using the word “graduated” rather liberally—see the chapter “The Future Has an Ancient Heart”). Kate was with her parents, who’d not only paid for her entire education, but also for her junior year abroad in Spain, and her summer “educational opportunities” that included unpaid internships at places like GQ magazine and language immersions in France and fascinating archaeological digs in God knows what fantastically interesting place. As we stood on the sidewalk chatting, I was informed that (a) Kate’s parents had given her a brand-new car for her graduation present, and (b) Kate and her mother had spent the day shopping for the new wardrobe Kate would need for her first-ever job. Not that she had one, mind you. She was applying for jobs while living off her parents’ money, of course. She was sending out her glorious résumé that included the names of foreign countries and trendy magazines to places that were no doubt equally glorious and I knew without knowing something simply glorious would be the result. It was all I could do not to sock her in the gut. Unlike Kate, by then I’d had a job. In fact, I’d had sixteen jobs, not including the years I worked as a babysitter before I could legally be anyone’s employee. They were janitor’s assistant (humiliatingly, at my high school), fast-food restaurant worker, laborer at a wildlife refuge, administrative assistant to a Realtor, English as a Second Language tutor, lemonade cart attendant, small town newspaper reporter, canvasser for a lefty nonprofit, waitress at a Japanese restaurant, volunteer coordinator for a reproductive rights organization, berry picker on a farm, waitress at a vegetarian restaurant, “coffee girl” at an accounting firm, student-faculty conflict mediator, teacher’s assistant for a women’s studies class, and office temp at a half a dozen places that by and large did not resemble offices and did not engage me in work that struck me as remotely “officey,” but rather involved things such as standing on a concrete floor wearing a hairnet, a paper mask and gown, goggles, and plastic gloves and—with a pair of tweezers—placing two pipe cleaners into a sterile box that came to me down a slow conveyor belt for eight excruciating hours a day. During those years, I sometimes wept with rage. My dream was to be a writer. I wanted it so badly that it made my insides hurt. And to be a writer—I felt sure—I needed to have a big life. Which at the time meant to me amazing experiences such as the sort Kate had. I needed to experience culture and see the world . I needed to speak French and hang out with people who knew people who worked at GQ . Instead I was forced, by accident of birth, to work one job after another in a desperate attempt to pay the bills. It was so damn unfair. Why did Kate get to study in Spain her junior year? Why did she get to write the word “France” on her résumé? Why did she get her bachelor’s degree debt-free and then, on top of that, a new car? Why did she get two parents who would be her financial fallback for years to come and then—decades into a future, which has not yet come to pass—leave her an inheritance upon their deaths? I didn’t get an inheritance! My mother died three months before I “graduated” college and all I got was her ancient, rusted-out Toyota that I quickly sold to a guy named Guy for $500. Bloody hell. So here’s the long and short of it, Wearing Thin: There is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand. Your parents helped you pay for your undergraduate education while you were a student and, presuming you didn’t graduate at twenty-five (a presumption which may or may not be correct), they also helped you during the years immediately following your graduation. They’ve declined to continue to assist you not because they wish to punish you, but because doing so would be difficult for them. This strikes me as perfectly reasonable and fair. You are an educated adult of sound mind, able body, and resilient spirit who has absolutely no reason not to be financially self-sufficient, even if doing so requires you to earn money in ways you find unpleasant. Your parents’ inability to continue paying your student loans will prevent you from realizing your “dream of attending graduate school” only if you let it. Are you really not going to pursue your dream because you now have one more bill than you had before? Are you truly so cowed by adversity? You don’t mention what you’d like to study, but I assure you there are many ways to fund a graduate education. I know a whole lot of people who did not go broke getting a graduate degree. There is funding for tuition remission at many schools, as well as grants, paid research, and teaching assistantships, and—yes—the offer of more student loans. Perhaps more importantly in your case, there are numerous ways to either cancel portions of your student loan debt or defer payment. Financial difficulty, unemployment, attending school at least half-time (i.e., graduate school!), working in certain professions, and serving in the Peace Corps or other community service jobs are some ways that you would be eligible for debt deferment or cancellation. I encourage you to investigate your options so you can make a plan that brings you peace of mind. There are many websites that will elucidate what I have summarized above. What I know for sure is that freaking out about your student loan debt is useless. You’ll be okay. It’s only money. And it was money well spent. Aside from the people I love, there is little I value more than my education. As soon as I pay off my undergraduate debt, Mr. Sugar and I intend to start saving for college for the baby Sugars. My dream is that they’ll have college experiences that resemble Kate’s more than mine. I want them to be able to focus on their studies instead of cramming them in around jobs. I want them to have a junior year abroad wherever they want to go. I want them to have cool internships that they could only take with parental financial support. I want them to go on cultural exchanges and interesting archaeological digs. I want to fund all that stuff I never got to do because no one was able to fund me. I can imagine all they would gain from that. But I can also imagine what they won’t get if Mr. Sugar and I manage to give them the college experience of my dreams. Turns out, I learned a lot from not being able to go to France. Turns out, those days standing on the concrete floor wearing a hairnet, a paper mask and gown, goggles, and plastic gloves and—with a pair of tweezers—placing two pipe cleaners into a sterile box that came to me down a slow conveyor belt for eight excruciating hours a day taught me something important I couldn’t have learned any other way. That job and the fifteen others I had before I graduated college were my own, personal “educational opportunities.” They changed my life for the better, though it took me a while to understand their worth. They gave me faith in my own abilities. They offered me a unique view of worlds that were both exotic and familiar to me. They kept things in perspective. They pissed me off. They opened my mind to realities I didn’t know existed. They forced me to be resilient, to sacrifice, to see how little I knew, and also how much. They put me in close contact with people who could’ve funded the college educations of ten thousand kids and also with people who would’ve rightly fallen on the floor laughing had I complained to them about how unfair it was that after I got my degree I’d have this student loan I’d be paying off until I was forty-three. They made my life big. They contributed to an education that money can’t buy. Yours, Sugar The Known Unknowns, Tiny Beautiful Things The Known Unknowns Dear Sugar, I dated this girl for a while only to reach the realization she was a self-absorbed crazy. Last year she and her best friend got into an argument and they stopped being friends. My ex’s friend called me up one night and asked me to hang out with her at her house. One thing led to another and I ended up sleeping with her. A few days later, this former best friend of my ex tells me she’s engaged. She wears this weird short-haired wig while she breaks off our friends-with-benefits relationship. The thing is, I connected better with her in the two weeks we hung out than I did with my ex in months. Please help me figure out if I should never talk to either one of them again. I’m not a smart man but I do know what love is. Gump Dear Gump, I’d rather be sodomized by a plastic lawn flamingo than vote for a Republican, but as I consider your situation, I can’t help but quote the former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who quite wisely said: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Shall we start with the known knowns, when it comes to your little triangular quagmire, Gump? a) You found your ex-girlfriend to be crazy and broke up with her. b) You fucked your ex-girlfriend’s ex–best friend for a fortnight and felt “connected.” c) In spite of such connection, your ex-girlfriend’s ex–best friend donned a wig and announced that she has no interest in continuing to fuck you, claiming to be on the brink of a (presumably) monogamous and eternal connection to someone else. Which brings us to the known unknowns: a) Why the wig? And if the wig, why the unnervingly short hair? b) Is the ex-girlfriend’s ex–best friend actually engaged to be married or is this simply a grandiose ruse to shake you from her disinterested but chickenshit tail? c) How can it be that so many people’s ex-girlfriends are crazy? What happens to these women? Do they eventually go on to birth babies and care for their elderly parents and scramble up gigantic pans of eggs on Sunday mornings for oodles of lounge-abouts who later have the nerve to inquire about what’s for dinner, or is there some corporate Rest Home for Crazy Bitches chain in cities across the land that I am unaware of that houses all these women who used to love men who later claim they were actually crazy bitches? Lastly, there are the unknown unknowns, the things, Gump, that you don’t know you don’t know. a) You have nothing for these women. b) These women have nothing for you. c) And yet. d) And yet! e) You are loved. Yours, Sugar The Obliterated Place, Tiny Beautiful Things The Obliterated Place Dear Sugar, It’s taken me many weeks to compose this letter and even still, I can’t do it right. The only way I can get it out is to make a list instead of write a letter. This is a hard subject and a list helps me contain it. You may change it to a regular letter if you wish to should you choose to publish it. I don’t have a definite question for you. I’m a sad, angry man whose son died. I want him back. That’s all I ask for and it’s not a question. I will start over from the beginning. I’m a fifty-eight-year-old man. Nearly four years ago, a drunk driver killed my son. The man was so inebriated he drove through a red light and hit my son at full speed. The dear boy I loved more than life itself was dead before the paramedics even got to him. He was twenty-two, my only child. I’m a father while not being a father. Most days it feels like my grief is going to kill me, or maybe it already has. I’m a living dead dad. Your column has helped me go on. I have faith in my version of God and I pray every day, and the way I feel when I’m in my deepest prayer is the way I feel when I read your words, which feel sacred to me. I see a psychologist regularly and I’m not clinically depressed or on medication. Suicide has occurred to me (this is what initially prompted me to make an appointment with my psychologist). Given the circumstance, ending my life is a reasonable thought, but I can’t do it because it would be a betrayal of my values and also of the values I instilled in my son. I have good friends who are supportive of me, my brother and sister-in-law and two nieces are a loving and attentive family to me, and even my ex-wife and I have become close friends again since our son’s death—we’d been cold to one another since our divorce when our son was fifteen. In addition, I have a rewarding job, good health, and a girlfriend whom I love and respect. In short, I’m going on with things in a way that makes it appear like I’m adjusting to life without my son, but the fact is I’m living in a private hell. Sometimes the pain is so great I simply lie in my bed and wail. I can’t stop thinking about my son. About the things he would be doing now if he were alive and also the things I did with him when he was young, my good memories of him, my wish to go back in time and either relive happy memories or alter those that are less happy. One thing I would change is when, at seventeen, my son informed me he was gay. I didn’t quite believe him or understand, so I inquired in a negative tone: But how can you not like girls? I quickly came to embrace him for who he was, but I regret my initial reaction to his homosexuality and I never apologized to him for it. I believe he knew I loved him. I believe he knew I wanted him to be happy, no matter what path his happiness might take. But, Sugar, for this and other things, I am tormented anyway. I hate the man who killed my son. For his crime, he was incarcerated eighteen months, then released. He wrote me a letter of apology, but I ripped it into pieces and threw it in the garbage after barely scanning it. My son’s former boyfriend has stayed in touch with my ex-wife and me and we care for him a great deal. Recently, he invited us to a party, where he informed us we would meet his new boyfriend—his first serious one since our son. We both lied and said we had other engagements, but the real reason we declined is that neither one of us could bear meeting his new partner. I fear you will choose not to answer my letter because you haven’t lost a child. I fear if you choose to answer my letter people will make critical comments about you, saying you don’t have the right to speak to this matter because you have not lost a child. I pray you will never lose a child. I will understand if you choose not to answer my letter. Most people, kind as they are, don’t know what to say to me, so why should you? I certainly didn’t know what to say to people such as me before my son died, so I don’t blame others for their discomfort. I’m writing to you because the way you’ve written about your grief over your mother dying so young has been meaningful to me. I’m convinced that if anyone can shed light into my dark hell, it will be you. What can you say to me? How do I go on? How do I become human again? Signed, Living Dead Dad Dear Living Dead Dad, I don’t know how you go on without your son. I only know that you do. And you have. And you will. Your shattering sorrowlight of a letter is proof of that. You don’t need me to tell you how to be human again. You are there, in all of your humanity, shining unimpeachably before every person reading these words right now. I am so sorry for your loss. I am so sorry for your loss. Iamsosorryforyourloss. You could stitch together a quilt with all the times that that has been and will be said to you. You could make a river of consolation words. But they won’t bring your son back. They won’t keep that man from getting into his car and careering through that red light at the precise moment your son was in his path. You’ll never get that. I hope you remember that when you peel back the rage and you peel back the idle thoughts of suicide and you peel back all the things you imagined your son would be but wasn’t and you peel back the man who got into the car and drove when he shouldn’t have and you peel back the man who the man your son loved now loves and you peel back all the good times you had and you peel back all the things you wish you’d done differently, at the center of that there is your pure father love that is stronger than anything. No one can touch that love or alter it or take it away from you. Your love for your son belongs only to you. It will live in you until the day you die. Small things such as this have saved me: How much I love my mother—even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death. Allowing such small things into your consciousness will not keep you from your suffering, but it will help you survive the next day. I keep imagining you lying on your bed and wailing. I keep thinking that hard as it is to do, it’s time for you to go silent and lift your head from the bed and listen to what’s there in the wake of your wail. It’s your life. The one you must make in the obliterated place that’s now your world, where everything you used to be is simultaneously erased and omnipresent, where you are forevermore a living dead dad. Your boy is dead, but he will continue to live within you. Your love and grief will be unending, but it will also shift in shape. There are things about your son’s life and your own that you can’t understand now. There are things you will understand in one year, and in ten years, and in twenty. The word “obliterate” comes from the Latin obliterare. Ob means “against”; literare means “letter” or “script.” A literal translation is “being against the letters.” It was impossible for you to write me a letter, so you made me a list instead. It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have. It’s wrong that this is required of you. It’s wrong that your son died. It will always be wrong. The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there. You have the power to withstand this sorrow. We all do, though we all claim not to. We say, “I couldn’t go on,” instead of saying we hope we won’t have to. That’s what you’re saying in your letter to me, Living Dead Dad. You’ve made it so long without your sweet boy and now you can’t take it anymore. But you can. You must. More will be revealed. Your son hasn’t yet taught you everything he has to teach you. He taught you how to love like you’ve never loved before. He taught you how to suffer like you’ve never suffered before. Perhaps the next thing he has to teach you is acceptance. And the thing after that, forgiveness. Forgiveness bellows from the bottom of the canoe. There are doubts, dangers, unfathomable travesties. There are stories you’ll learn if you’re strong enough to travel there. One of them might cure you. When my son was six he said, “We don’t know how many years we have for our lives. People die at all ages.” He said it without anguish or remorse, without fear or desire. It has been healing to me to accept in a very simple way that my mother’s life was forty-five years long, that there was nothing beyond that. There was only my expectation that there would be—my mother at eighty-nine, my mother at sixty-three, my mother at forty-six. Those things don’t exist. They never did. Think: My son’s life was twenty-two years long . Breathe in. Think: My son’s life was twenty-two years long . Breathe out. There is no twenty-three. You go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage. Letting go of expectation when it comes to one’s children is close to impossible. The entire premise of our love for them has to do with creating, fostering, and nurturing people who will outlive us. To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become. The entire premise of your healing demands that you do let go of expectation. You must come to understand and accept that your son will always be only the man he actually was: the twenty-two-year-old who made it as far as that red light. The one who loved you deeply. The one who long ago forgave you for asking why he didn’t like girls. The one who would want you to welcome his boyfriend’s new boyfriend into your life. The one who would want you to find joy and peace. The one who would want you to be the man he didn’t get to be. To be anything else dishonors him. The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever says to me is: Your mother would be proud of you . Finding a way in my grief to become the woman who my mother raised me to be is the most important way I have honored my mother. It has been the greatest salve to my sorrow. The strange and painful truth is that I’m a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place. I’d give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things. It showed me shades and hues I couldn’t have otherwise seen. It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach. Your grief has taught you too, Living Dead Dad. Your son was your greatest gift in his life and he is your greatest gift in his death too. Receive it. Let your dead boy be your most profound revelation. Create something of him. Make it beautiful. Yours, Sugar We Are Here to Build the House, Tiny Beautiful Things We Are Here to Build the House Dear Sugar, I am a young woman in an American city. I’ll be out of a job in a few weeks. Gulp. I’m in the process of entering into an arrangement with a man: we will rendezvous once or twice a week and he will pay me an “allowance” of $1,000 a month. About this, I have many conflicting thoughts. There are the practical questions: Is what I am doing illegal? Is what I am receiving taxable income? If so, how do I report it? Am I being paid fairly? But also, more importantly: Is what I am doing immoral? The man is married. He told me that he loves his wife, he is going to take care of her forever, but she doesn’t want sex like she used to; she’s not the jealous type, and he’d tell her but he doesn’t want to rub her face in it. To me this sounds cowardly. I am a person who believes in nonmonogamy; I believe in people making the choices that are the best for them. But I also believe in communication, respect, and integrity. Am I complicit in something awful? And my last set of questions, Sugar. Is this something I can do? Is this something I should be doing? I am theoretically pro-sex, but I’ve never really enjoyed it. I have all sorts of ugly issues involved—I know we all do—and I don’t know if this will make them better or worse. I am trying to approach the whole situation in a meta way, as an exploration of my feminist ideology—but every time I think about him touching me I want to cry. And yet I am very poor and soon to be unemployed. How much can/should I take my desperation into account? I think I am going to go through with this, so I don’t know what my question really is. I guess I just want to know how people negotiate all this shit, and how I am supposed to be okay. Thank you. LTL Dear LTL, I said yes to this gig immediately. Within the hour, I realized I’d made a mistake. I was way too busy to be Sugar. The job pays nothing. I earn my living as a writer. Mr. Sugar also earns his living as an artist. There is not a steady job, trust fund, savings account, retirement plan, parent willing to pay any portion of our preschool bill, free babysitter, not-maxed-out credit card, employer-paid health insurance policy, paid sick day, or even a middle-class childhood between us. Between us there are only two beautiful children and ten mountains of debt. I can’t work for free. I can’t work for free. Of course I can’t work for free! That was the mantra screaming through my head after I agreed to be Sugar. So, an hour after saying yes, I composed an email saying I’d changed my mind. The unsent email sat on my computer screen while I paced my living room thinking about all the reasons that it was perfectly unreasonable for me to write an advice column for no pay. Every reason was punctuated by a silent exclamation point. I had other writing to do! Writing for which I was being paid! Writing that would need to be pushed aside on a weekly basis so I could crank out a column! And what was a column anyway? I didn’t write columns! I didn’t know anything about giving advice! Plus, there were my kids! I was stretched thin already, my every not-writing moment consumed by caring for them! The whole Sugar idea was ridiculous from the start! And yet I could not bring myself to send that email. I wanted to be Sugar. I was intrigued. Sparked. Something powerful overrode all the silent exclamation points in my head: my gut. I decided to trust it. I gave Sugar a shot. I thought of this when I read your letter, sweet pea. It made me think about what’s at stake when we ponder a gig. About what work means. About the fine balance of money and reason and instinct and the ideas we have about ourselves when we imagine we can be “meta” about our bodies and lives and the ways we spend our days. About what’s at work when we attempt to talk ourselves into things we don’t want to do and out of things we do. When we think a payoff comes from being paid and a price exacted from doing things for free. About what morality is. And who gets to say. What relation it has to making money. And what relation it has to desperation. Your letter unsettles me. There is the husband predictably casting his decision to deceive his wife as a benevolent one. There is your naïveté about the logistics of prostitution—which is the correct term for the act of providing sex for money. Even if you refer to it as a rendezvous. But most of all there is you, dear fathomless bird of truth, telling me exactly what you know you must do. And then turning away from it. You don’t need me to tell you whether you should accept this offer. You need me only to show you to yourself. I am theoretically pro-sex, but I’ve never really enjoyed it, you write. Every time I think about him touching me I want to cry, you say. Do you hear that? It’s your body talking to you. Do what it tells you to do. Be its employee. It doesn’t matter what your head is working out—the monthly grand, the uncertainty of unemployment, the meta/feminist gymnastics. Putting faith in that stuff might pay the rent, but it’s never going to build your house. We are here to build the house. It’s our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what’s right for you and what’s wrong for you. And that knowing has nothing to do with money or feminism or monogamy or whatever other things you say to yourself when the silent exclamation points are going off in your head. Is it okay to be a participant in deceit and infidelity? Is it okay to exchange sex for cash? These are worthy questions. They matter. But the answers to them don’t tell us how to rightfully live our lives. The body does. There might be women out there who can fuck men for money and be perfectly fine, but you are not one of them. You told me so yourself. You’re simply not cut out for the job. When it comes to sex you say that you have “all sorts of ugly issues” and that you “know we all do,” but you’re wrong. We all don’t. You do. I once did. Not everyone does. By generalizing your problems regarding sex and sexuality, you’re running from yourself. You’re covering your wounds with a classic it’s-okay-if-I’m-fucked-up-because-everyone-is-fucked-up canard. It’s a lie you’ve told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts. But what hurts remains. Something inside of you that has to do with sex and men needs to be healed. And until you heal it you are going to have to open and patch and cover and deny that wound over and over again. This job offer is an opportunity, but not the sort you think it is. It’s an invitation to do the real work. The kind that doesn’t pay a dime, but leaves you with a sturdy shelter by the end. So do it. Forget the man. Forget the money. It’s your own sweet self with whom you must rendezvous. Yours, Sugar How the Real Work Is Done, Tiny Beautiful Things How the Real Work Is Done Dear Sugar, I am newly civilly unioned. I love my spouse (wife?) dearly, though we have our issues. What appears to me to be our biggest problem—the one that keeps me up some nights—is that she won’t get a job. We’re a quite poor couple in our mid-twenties, both in school. We’ve been together for four years, and in that time my girl has had three jobs: one she was laid off from because the job ended, one she quit, and one she was fired from. All these jobs lasted fewer than six months. She’s made halfhearted attempts to placate me in the year and a half she’s been unemployed. Mostly though? We fight, she cries, she shuts down, she lies and says she’s been trying to find a job, even though I know she hasn’t. She has moderate social anxiety issues and says she can’t work any jobs involving other people because of it. She doesn’t even offer up excuses for not applying to any number of other jobs I’ve suggested (throwing newspapers! work-study in a low-traffic area of her school! selling her lovely quirky crafts online! dishwashing!). At one point, she suggested that she would rather donate plasma every week than get a job. Sugar, I’m a full-time student working two jobs. We’re barely getting by on what I’m bringing in. We frequently must rely on my parents for money, and they’re rapidly losing their ability to keep up with my financial needs in addition to their own. I worry so much about this. I worry that my partner will never be motivated enough to hold a job. I worry about what her job prospects are going to be when she reaches thirty in a few years without ever actually having held a long-term job. I worry that, though she sees my struggles, she will never feel guilty enough to get things kicked into gear. What can I possibly do to get her to take job searching seriously? She’s emotionally fragile, due to years of social anxiety, sexual and emotional abuse from her father, and a recurring eating disorder. Because of that, I don’t want to threaten her with any ultimatums, because I wouldn’t mean any of them and I fear it would do more harm than good. My girl’s got a good heart, but she is so afraid of failure that she willfully ignores how much I sacrifice to keep our rent paid. I love her, and she loves me, yet I feel I’m without a partner in this. I don’t know what to do next. Please help. Working for Two Dear Sugar, My husband makes me laugh every day, EVERY day, multiple times. He’s been my best friend for years and is still my favorite person in the world. He’s enriched my life in so many innumerable ways, and he has told me that I have reciprocated that enrichment. I do love him so. SO. And I am quite certain he loves me. The issue is that he’s been unemployed for over three years. He did try to find a job for a while (and I believe he still occasionally does), but now I think he feels unqualified for anything other than the job he used to hate and also that he has no reason to be hired for anything else. Inertia has taken him over. He wants to write, but feels unworthy, so he doesn’t write. He is brilliant and funny and erudite, but he sees none of that. He doesn’t paint/sculpt/whatever might give him fulfillment or do anything that would move him forward in his life. I would be happy with him doing anything (and I truly mean that), yet he seems to be stuck. He’s also bipolar and self-hating and all of that. Fortunately, my job carries us financially, but only barely. The house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked, but in three years he hasn’t been able to figure out a way to financially contribute to our household. He’s stressed out about the fact that we have trouble paying our bills, but he does nothing (truly nothing) to change it. If I had plenty of money, I’d be fine with this, but I don’t. I’ve been carrying this load alone for a long time. I have repeatedly tried to talk to him about this, to no avail. I love him so much and I’m so sad about this. I think my staying with him may be ruining both our lives. Perhaps my support is keeping him from fulfilling his dreams. What do you think, Sugar? Responsible One Dear Women, As I’m sure you both know, there is nothing inherently wrong with a spouse who makes no money. The most common scenario in which it makes sense for one spouse to earn an income while the other does not is when the couple has a child or children who must be cared for, which goes along with a domestic life that requires constant vigilance of the cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, folding, tidying up, taking-the-cat-to-the-vet-and-the-kids-to-the-dentist variety. In this situation and others like it, the “nonworking” spouse is often doing more work, hour for hour, than the “working” spouse, and though on paper it appears that the one with the job is making a greater financial contribution to the household than the one who “stays at home,” if you ran the numbers and figured out what it would cost to employ someone to do the work of the “nonworking” spouse, it becomes apparent that one should probably shut their big trap when it comes to who is contributing what. There are other reasons, usually more fleeting, that one spouse may not be earning money in any given period: if he or she is unemployed or seriously ill or attending school full-time or caring for an infirm or dying parent or working in a field in which the money comes only after an extended period of what may or may not turn out to be unpaid labor. Neither of you appears to be in any of those circumstances. While it’s technically true that both of your spouses are unemployed, it seems clear that something more complex is at play here. Your spouse, Working for Two, has such a spotty and brief record of employment that unemployment is her customary mode rather than a temporary state of affairs. Your spouse, Responsible One, has apparently drifted into a post-unemployment funk and has given up the search for a job. You both feel overly burdened and seriously bummed out. You’re both desperate for change. You’ve both shared your feelings with your partners and been met with compassionate indifference (i.e., I feel terrible, sweetie, but I’m not going to do a damn thing about it ). What a mess. I hope it’s not going to be news to you when I say you can’t make your partners get jobs. Or at least you can’t make them get jobs by doing what you’ve done so far—appealing to their better nature regarding what’s fair and reasonable, imploring them to act out of their concern for you and your wishes, as well as your collective financial well-being. Whatever dark angst is keeping your spouses from taking responsibility for their lives—depression, anxiety, a loss of self-confidence, a fear-based desire to maintain the status quo—it’s got a greater hold on them than any angry fits you’ve pitched about being the only one bringing in any dough. It’s a truism of transformation that if we want things to be different we have to change ourselves. I think both of you are going to have to take this to heart the way anyone who has ever changed anything about their lives has had to take it to heart: by making it not just a nice thing we say, but a hard thing we do . Your spouses may or may not decide to get jobs in response to your changes, but that is out of your control. The way I see it, there are two paths out of your misery. They are: a) accept the fact that your partner won’t get a job (or even seriously delve into the reasons he/she won’t seek one), or b) decide your partner’s refusal to contribute financially is unacceptable and end the relationship (or at least break it off until circumstances change). So let’s say you went with option A. Both of you express love and adoration for your partners. You don’t want to lose them. How might you accept your deadbeat darlings for who they are at this era of their lives? Is this possible? Is what they give you worth the burden they place upon you? Are you willing to shelve your frustrations about your partner’s fiscal failings for a period of time? If so, how long? Can you imagine feeling okay with being the sole employed member of your union a year from now? Three years? Ten? Might you together agree to downsize and reduce expenses so that your single income becomes more feasible? What if you rethought the whole thing? What if instead of lamenting the fact that your partner is unemployed, the two of you embraced it as a choice you made together? Reframing it as a mutually agreed upon decision, in which you are the breadwinners and your partners are the significantly supportive, non-income-earning helpmates, would give you a sense of agency that’s lacking now. Working for Two, you don’t mention if your partner does more than her share around the house, but Responsible One, you state that “the house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is walked.” That’s something. In fact, it’s quite a lot. It’s not money, but your husband is positively contributing to your lives by seeing to those things. Oodles of people with jobs would be deeply pleased to return to a clean house that doesn’t contain mountains of dirty laundry and a dog demanding to go out. Many people pay people to do those things for them or they return from work only to have to work another, domestic shift. Your husband’s unpaid work benefits you. With that in mind, what other ways could your partners lighte	580,341
Wild (Cheryl Strayed) (Z-Library).epub	Wild Prologue Les arbres étaient hauts, mais je me trouvais encore plus haute qu’eux, accrochée au flanc d’une montagne du nord de la Californie. Quelques instants plus tôt, j’avais retiré mes chaussures de randonnée, et la gauche avait été propulsée dans le précipice par mon énorme sac à dos qui venait de se renverser. Elle avait dévalé le chemin caillouteux, rebondi sur un surplomb à quelques mètres en contrebas, puis disparu sous le feuillage. Impossible de la récupérer. J’avais poussé un cri incrédule. J’avais beau vivre dans la nature depuis trente-huit jours et savoir qu’il pouvait se passer n’importe quoi, le choc restait difficile à encaisser. Je n’avais plus de chaussure gauche. Fini, terminé. J’ai serré l’autre contre moi comme un bébé, bien que ce soit ridicule. À quoi pouvait bien servir une chaussure dépareillée ? À rien. C’était un objet inutile, une orpheline pour qui je ne pouvais éprouver aucune pitié. Une grosse bottine Raichle en cuir marron qui pesait son poids, avec ses lacets rouges et ses œillets métalliques. Je l’ai soulevée au-dessus de ma tête et lancée de toutes mes forces. Elle s’est enfoncée entre les arbres, disparaissant à tout jamais. J’étais seule. Pieds nus. J’avais vingt-six ans et, moi aussi, j’étais orpheline. « Une vraie vagabonde », avait commenté un inconnu deux semaines plus tôt lorsque je m’étais présentée et lui avais expliqué à quel point j’étais seule au monde. Mon père était sorti de ma vie quand j’avais six ans. Ma mère était morte quand j’en avais vingt-deux. Après son décès, mon beau-père, que je considérais jusque-là comme mon père, s’était peu à peu transformé en un homme que je ne reconnaissais plus. Mon frère et ma sœur avaient pris leurs distances pour faire leur deuil, malgré mes efforts pour que nous restions unis. J’avais fini par renoncer et m’éloigner moi aussi. Au cours des années qui avaient précédé la disparition de mes bottines dans le ravin, j’avais moi aussi dansé au bord du précipice. J’avais erré, tourné, dérivé – du Minnesota à l’Oregon en passant par New York, puis à travers tout l’ouest du pays – jusqu’à me retrouver là, sans chaussures, en cet été 1995, perdue mais les pieds sur terre. Une terre que je ne connaissais pas mais qui avait toujours existé, et où le chagrin, la confusion, la peur et l’espoir avaient fini par me conduire. Une terre où je comptais devenir la femme que je voulais être, et retrouver la petite fille que j’avais été. Une bande de terre de soixante centimètres de large sur quatre mille deux cent quatre-vingts kilomètres de long. Une terre qui s’appelait le Pacific Crest Trail, ou « chemin des crêtes du Pacifique ». La première fois que j’en avais entendu parler, c’était sept mois plus tôt, alors que je vivais à Minneapolis. J’étais triste, désespérée, sur le point de divorcer d’un homme que j’aimais encore. Je faisais la queue à la caisse d’un magasin de matériel de camping pour acheter une pelle pliante ; j’avais attrapé un livre intitulé The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume I : California sur une étagère et jeté un coup d’œil à la quatrième de couverture. Le PCT était apparemment un sentier de grande randonnée qui s’étendait sans interruption de la frontière mexicaine à la frontière canadienne, en longeant neuf chaînes de montagnes : la sierra de la Laguna, les monts San Jacinto, les montagnes de San Bernardino, les monts San Gabriel, les monts Liebre, les monts Tehachapi, la Sierra Nevada, les monts Klamath et la chaîne des Cascades. À vol d’oiseau, cela ne représentait que mille six cents kilomètres, mais les détours du chemin rallongeaient considérablement la distance. Le PCT sillonnait l’intégralité des États de la Californie, de l’Oregon et de Washington, à travers des parcs naturels, des réserves protégées, des terrains fédéraux, tribaux ou privés, des déserts, des montagnes, des forêts, des fleuves et des routes nationales. J’avais retourné le livre pour observer la photo de couverture – un lac parsemé de rochers et entouré de sommets acérés sur fond de ciel bleu – avant de le reposer sur son étagère et de régler mon achat. Mais, quelque temps plus tard, j’étais retournée chercher ce guide. À ce stade, le Pacific Crest Trail n’avait pas encore de réelle existence pour moi. Ce n’était qu’une vague idée un peu exotique, pleine de mystère et de promesses. Lorsque je suivais son tracé en dents de scie du bout du doigt sur la carte, je sentais monter quelque chose en moi. J’avais pris la décision de faire cette randonnée – ou, du moins, d’aller aussi loin que je le pourrais en cent jours. Séparée de mon mari, je vivais seule dans un appartement de Minneapolis, je bossais comme serveuse et j’étais plus déprimée et perdue que jamais. Chaque matin, j’avais l’impression de regarder le ciel depuis le fond d’un puits. Alors, j’avais décidé d’en sortir pour devenir une randonneuse en solo. Après tout, pourquoi pas ? J’avais déjà incarné tant de rôles à première vue incompatibles. Épouse aimante, puis adultère. Fille chérie qui passait désormais ses vacances seule. Perfectionniste ambitieuse et écrivain en herbe qui enchaînait les petits boulots alimentaires tout en abusant de la drogue et des amants d’un soir. J’étais la petite-fille d’un mineur de charbon de Pennsylvanie et la fille d’un ouvrier en métallurgie reconverti dans le commercial. Après la séparation de mes parents, j’avais vécu avec ma mère, mon frère et ma sœur dans des immeubles peuplés de mères célibataires et de leurs enfants. Pendant mon adolescence, nous nous étions installés en pleine forêt dans le nord du Minnesota, pour un retour à la terre dans une maison sans toilettes, ni électricité et eau courante. Malgré tout cela, j’étais devenue pom-pom girl et reine du lycée, avant de partir à la fac et de me transformer en militante féministe de gauche. Mais une femme qui marche seule en pleine nature sur près de deux mille kilomètres, c’était un rôle que je n’avais encore jamais essayé. Alors pourquoi pas : je n’avais rien à perdre. Ce jour-là, alors que je me tenais pieds nus sur cette montagne californienne, la décision complètement inconsciente de me lancer dans une longue randonnée sur le PCT pour m’en sortir me semblait remonter à des années, appartenir à une autre vie. À l’époque, je croyais que tout ce que j’avais vécu jusque-là m’avait préparée à ce voyage. En réalité, rien ne pouvait m’y préparer. Chaque jour sur le chemin était la seule préparation possible à celui qui suivrait. Et, parfois, cela ne suffisait même pas. Comme lorsque j’ai assisté à la chute définitive de mes chaussures dans un ravin. Au fond de moi, je n’étais pas mécontente de les voir disparaître. Depuis six semaines que je les avais aux pieds, j’avais parcouru des pistes désertiques, marché dans la neige, croisé des arbres, des buissons, des herbes, des fleurs de toutes les tailles et de toutes les couleurs, monté et descendu des montagnes, traversé des champs, des clairières et d’autres terrains dont je serais bien incapable de parler, hormis pour dire que j’y étais passée, que je l’avais fait, que j’avais réussi. Et, pendant tout ce temps, elles m’avaient causé d’énormes ampoules et mis les pieds à vif ; mes ongles avaient noirci et quatre d’entre eux s’étaient détachés dans d’atroces souffrances. Quand j’ai perdu mes chaussures, j’en avais fini avec elles et elles en avaient fini avec moi, en dépit de l’affection que j’éprouvais pour elles. D’objets inanimés, elles étaient devenues des extensions de ma personne, comme à peu près tout ce que je transportais cet été-là – mon sac à dos, ma tente, mon sac de couchage, mon purificateur d’eau et le petit sifflet orange qui me tenait lieu d’arme. Je connaissais chacune de ces choses par cœur et je savais que je pouvais compter sur elles pour aller jusqu’au bout. J’ai baissé les yeux vers les arbres dont le sommet s’agitait doucement dans la brise. « Qu’ils gardent mes chaussures ! », ai-je songé, le regard plongé dans l’immensité verte. C’était à cause de la vue que je m’étais arrêtée là. On était en fin d’après-midi, au milieu du mois de juillet, et je me trouvais à des kilomètres de la moindre trace de civilisation, à plusieurs jours de marche du bureau de poste solitaire où m’attendait mon prochain colis de réapprovisionnement. Certes, quelqu’un pouvait me dépasser sur le chemin, mais cela arrivait très rarement. Il s’écoulait généralement des jours sans que je voie personne. De toute façon, cela importait peu. Je devrais me débrouiller par mes propres moyens. J’ai contemplé mes pieds nus et abîmés, avec leurs quelques ongles restants. Ils étaient d’un blanc maladif jusqu’à quelques centimètres au-dessus de la cheville, là où s’arrêtaient mes chaussettes de laine. Mes mollets étaient musclés, bronzés et poilus, couverts de crasse et d’une constellation de bleus et d’égratignures. J’avais commencé ma randonnée dans le désert des Mojaves et n’avais pas l’intention de m’arrêter avant d’avoir posé la main sur le pont qui enjambe le fleuve Columbia à la frontière entre l’Oregon et l’État de Washington, celui qu’on appelle pompeusement le pont des Dieux. J’ai regardé vers le nord, dans sa direction – la seule pensée de ce pont me guidait comme un phare. J’ai regardé vers le sud, d’où je venais, vers l’étendue sauvage qui m’avait formée et endurcie. J’ai réfléchi aux différentes possibilités qui s’offraient à moi. Je savais qu’il n’y en avait qu’une seule d’envisageable. Comme toujours. Continuer à marcher. Wild Deuxième Partie CHEMINS Words are purposes. Words are maps. Les mots sont des intentions. Les mots sont des cartes. Adrienne Rich « Plongée dans le naufrage » Will you take me as I am ? Will you ? M’accepteras-tu comme je suis ? M’accepteras-tu ? Joni Mitchell « California » Wild 19 Le rêve d’un langage commun Le lendemain matin, le ciel était d’un bleu limpide et le soleil brillait sur Olallie Lake, avec une vue de carte postale sur le mont Jefferson au sud et sur Olallie Butte au nord. Assise à une table de pique-nique près du poste de rangers, j’ai préparé Monster pour la dernière étape de ma randonnée. Les Trois Jeunes Mâles avaient filé à l’aube, pressés d’atteindre le Canada avant que les Hautes Cascades de Washington ne soient complètement enneigées. Comme je n’irais pas jusque-là, je pouvais prendre mon temps. L’apparition de Guy, un carton dans les mains et l’air parfaitement sobre, m’a tirée de ma transe contemplative. « Je suis content que tu ne sois pas encore partie. Ça vient d’arriver. » J’ai pris le colis en jetant un coup d’œil à l’adresse de l’expéditeur. C’était celle de mon amie Gretchen. « Merci pour tout, ai-je lancé à Guy qui s’éloignait. Pour les cocktails l’autre soir et pour ton hospitalité. — Fais attention à toi. » Il a tourné au coin du bâtiment. Quand j’ai ouvert la boîte, je suis restée bouche bée devant son contenu : une douzaine de chocolats fourrés enveloppés de papiers brillants, et une bouteille de vin rouge. J’ai tout de suite mangé un chocolat, les yeux rivés sur la bouteille. Je mourais d’envie de la boire le soir même, mais cela signifiait que je devrais la transporter ensuite jusqu’à Timberline Lodge . Alors j’ai terminé de ranger mes affaires, hissé Monster sur mon dos, pris le colis vide et la bouteille, et je me suis dirigée vers le poste de rangers. « Cheryl ! » a tonné une voix dans mon dos. Je me suis retournée. « Te voilà ! Te voilà ! Je t’ai rattrapée ! » J’étais si surprise que j’ai laissé tomber le carton. L’homme a levé les mains au ciel et poussé un « youyou » que je reconnaissais sans parvenir à le situer. Il était jeune, barbu, les cheveux dorés, à la fois différent et semblable à lui-même. « Cheryl ! » a-t-il crié une nouvelle fois, avant de se jeter sur moi en manquant de me renverser. Le temps semblait s’écouler au ralenti ; peu à peu, j’ai pris conscience de qui il était sans vraiment le réaliser, et puis je me suis retrouvée dans ses bras et mise à hurler moi aussi : « Doug ! Doug, Doug, Doug ! — Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl ! » Il a fini par reculer d’un pas, et nous nous sommes dévisagés. « Tu as maigri, m’a-t-il lancé. — Toi aussi. — Tu t’es sacrément endurcie. — Je sais ! Toi aussi. — Je me suis laissé pousser la barbe. J’ai tellement de choses à te raconter ! — Moi aussi ! Où est Tom ? — Quelques kilomètres derrière moi. Il arrivera plus tard. — Vous avez réussi à traverser la neige ? — Une partie, et puis c’est devenu vraiment compliqué et on a fini par redescendre et faire le détour. » J’ai secoué la tête, encore stupéfaite de le voir là. Je lui ai annoncé que Greg avait abandonné et lui ai demandé des nouvelles de Matt et Albert. « Je n’en ai pas eu depuis la dernière fois qu’on les a vus. » Il m’a souri, le regard pétillant. « On a lu tes messages dans le registre tout l’été. Ils nous motivaient, nous poussaient à accélérer. On voulait te revoir. — Je m’apprêtais à partir. » Je me suis penchée pour ramasser la boîte. « Une minute de plus, et vous m’auriez manquée. Si ça se trouve, vous ne m’auriez jamais rattrapée. — Bien sûr que si. » Il a éclaté de rire, ce rire d’enfant choyé dont je me souvenais si bien et qui avait acquis une nouvelle sonorité – plus éraillée, moins assurée qu’auparavant, comme s’il avait vieilli de plusieurs années d’un coup. « Tu veux bien rester encore un peu, le temps que j’organise mes affaires ? Comme ça on pourra repartir ensemble. — Avec plaisir, ai-je répondu sans hésiter. Je voudrais arriver seule à Cascade Locks – tu sais, pour terminer de la même façon que j’ai commencé –, mais je peux vous accompagner jusqu’à Timberline Lodge . — Bon sang, Cheryl. » Il m’a serrée une nouvelle fois dans ses bras. « Je n’arrive pas à croire qu’on soit réunis. Oh, tu as toujours la plume noire que je t’ai donnée ! » Il a tendu la main pour la toucher. « Elle m’a porté bonheur, ai-je répondu. — C’est quoi, ce vin ? — Je vais l’offrir au ranger. Je n’ai pas envie de trimballer la bouteille jusqu’à Timberline. — Tu es folle ? Donne-moi ça. » Nous l’avons débouchée ce soir-là près de Warm Springs River à l’aide de mon couteau suisse. Pendant la journée, la température était montée au-dessus de vingt degrés, mais, depuis que la nuit était tombée, on sentait poindre la fraîcheur de l’automne. Les arbres avaient commencé à perdre quelques feuilles ; les tiges des fleurs sauvages se courbaient sous le poids des pétales fanés. Nous avons allumé un feu pendant que nos repas chauffaient, puis mangé à même nos casseroles en nous passant la bouteille, car nous n’avions pas de verre. Entre le vin, le feu et la compagnie retrouvée de Doug, j’avais l’impression que ce moment était un rite de passage, un cérémonial qui marquait la fin de mon voyage. Tout à coup, nous avons tourné la tête, surpris par des aboiements de coyotes très proches dans l’obscurité. « Ce bruit me donne toujours la chair de poule, a déclaré Doug en buvant une gorgée avant de me tendre la bouteille. Il est vraiment bon, ce vin. — Oui, hein. Moi aussi, j’ai souvent entendu des coyotes cet été. — Mais tu te répétais que tu n’avais pas peur, et ça fonctionnait, pas vrai ? — Effectivement. Sauf que, de temps en temps, je n’étais quand même pas très rassurée. — Pareil. » Il a posé une main sur mon épaule et je l’ai serrée. Je le considérais un peu comme mon frère, bien que nous n’ayons aucun lien de parenté. J’avais l’impression que je serais toujours liée à lui, même si je ne le revoyais jamais. Une fois la bouteille vide, je suis allée chercher le sac en plastique qui contenait mes livres. « Tu le veux ? » ai-je proposé à Doug en lui tendant Les Dix Mille Choses . Il a secoué la tête. Je l’avais terminé quelques jours plus tôt, mais je n’avais pas pu le brûler à cause de la pluie. Contrairement à la majorité des ouvrages que j’avais lus cet été-là, je le connaissais déjà quand je l’avais glissé dans mon colis quelques mois plus tôt. C’était un roman dense et lyrique traduit du danois, dont l’action se situait dans les îles Moluques en Indonésie. Acclamé par la critique à sa sortie en 1955, il avait depuis sombré dans l’oubli. Je n’avais jamais rencontré personne qui l’ait lu, à part le professeur d’université qui l’avait mis au programme de son atelier d’écriture l’année où ma mère était tombée malade. Le titre m’avait particulièrement frappée quand je l’avais ouvert à l’hôpital, dans l’espoir de chasser ma peur et mon chagrin en me concentrant sur les passages que je pourrais citer au prochain cours. Mais ça n’avait pas fonctionné. Je ne pensais qu’à ma mère. Et puis je connaissais déjà les dix mille choses évoquées par l’auteur. C’était toutes les choses connues ou non de l’univers qui, mises bout à bout, représenteraient toujours moins que son amour pour moi. Ou que celui que je lui portais. Alors, quand je m’étais préparée à partir sur le PCT, j’avais décidé de donner une seconde chance à ce roman. Cette fois, je n’avais eu aucun mal à me concentrer. Dès la première page, j’avais compris. Chaque phrase de Dermoût me frappait comme un poignard, décrivant un pays lointain qui me semblait teinté du sang de tous les endroits que j’avais aimés. « Je crois que je vais aller me coucher, a déclaré Doug, la bouteille vide à la main. Tom devrait arriver demain. — D’accord, j’éteindrai le feu. » Après son départ, j’ai arraché les pages des Dix Mille Choses de leur reliure souple et je les ai jetées sur les braises, poignée après poignée, en les remuant avec un bâton. Les yeux perdus dans les flammes, j’ai pensé à Eddie, comme chaque fois que j’étais assise devant un feu de bois. C’était lui qui m’avait montré comment en allumer un. Lui qui m’avait emmenée camper pour la première fois. Lui qui m’avait appris à monter une tente et à faire des nœuds. Grâce à lui, je savais ouvrir une boîte de conserve avec un couteau de poche, manier les rames d’un canoë et faire des ricochets à la surface d’un lac. Au début, nous allions camper et faire du canoë presque tous les week-ends, de juin à septembre, sur les rivières Minnesota, Sainte-Croix ou Namekagon. Et quand, trois ans après sa rencontre avec ma mère, nous nous étions installés dans le Nord sur le terrain acheté grâce à sa pension d’invalidité, il m’avait encore enseigné énormément de choses sur la forêt. On ne peut jamais savoir pourquoi certains événements arrivent et d’autres non, ce qui provoque quoi, ce qui détruit quoi. Quelles choses permettent à d’autres de naître, de mourir ou de changer de cours. Mais ce soir-là, près du feu, j’avais la quasi-certitude que, sans Eddie, je ne serais jamais partie sur le PCT. Et la boule douloureuse qui me serrait la gorge lorsque je songeais à lui, même si elle était toujours là, a commencé à me faire un peu moins mal. Il ne m’avait pas aimée comme il le fallait à la fin, mais il m’avait aimée plus qu’assez au moment où j’en avais vraiment besoin. Une fois Les Dix Mille Choses réduites en cendres, j’ai sorti mon autre livre du sachet en plastique. C’était The Dream of a Common Language . Bien que je l’aie eu sur moi depuis le début, je ne l’avais pas ouvert une seule fois depuis ma première nuit sur le chemin. Je n’en avais pas eu besoin. Je le connaissais par cœur. Tout l’été, il avait résonné par bribes dans ma tête – quelques strophes, ou parfois juste le titre, lui-même tiré d’un poème : « Le rêve d’un langage commun ». J’ai feuilleté le recueil à la lueur des flammes, parcourant une dizaine de textes si familiers qu’ils me procuraient un étrange réconfort. J’avais répété ces vers telle une incantation silencieuse pendant des jours et des jours. Souvent, je ne comprenais pas très bien ce qu’ils signifiaient tout en les saisissant parfaitement, comme s’ils étaient à la fois juste devant moi et hors de portée – comme un poisson qui évoluait tout près de la surface et que j’essayais d’attraper à mains nues, si proche, si présent, si clairement mien. Mais, dès que je tendais le bras, il disparaissait. J’ai refermé le livre et contemplé la couverture beige. Je n’avais aucune raison de ne pas le brûler lui aussi. Au lieu de ça, je l’ai serré contre ma poitrine. Nous avons atteint Timberline Lodge deux jours plus tard. Doug et moi n’étions plus seuls : Tom nous avait rattrapés, et nous avions également été rejoints par deux femmes, deux ex d’une vingtaine d’années qui parcouraient l’Oregon et une petite partie de l’État de Washington. Nous avancions tranquillement par groupes de deux, trois ou plus, ou à la file indienne, d’humeur joyeuse parce que nous étions nombreux et qu’il faisait beau. Lors de nos longues pauses, nous jouions à la balle ; une fois, nous nous sommes baignés tout nus dans un lac gelé, suscitant la colère d’une poignée de frelons que nous avons fuie en hurlant de rire. Quand nous avons atteint Timberline Lodge à mille huit cent trente mètres sur le flanc sud du mont Hood, nous étions devenus une véritable tribu, unie par les mêmes liens que des enfants à la fin d’une semaine en colonie de vacances. C’était le milieu de l’après-midi. Dans le salon de l’hôtel, nous avons réquisitionné deux gros canapés autour d’une table basse et commandé des sandwichs excessivement chers, puis siroté des cafés au Bayley’s en jouant au poker et au rami avec des cartes empruntées au barman. La fenêtre donnait sur le mont Hood. Avec ses trois mille quatre cent vingt-cinq mètres d’altitude, c’était le plus haut sommet de l’Oregon – et un ancien volcan, comme tous ceux que j’avais croisés depuis mon entrée dans la chaîne des Cascades au sud de Lassen Peak au mois de juillet. C’était aussi le dernier que je verrais, ce qui lui conférait une importance particulière. Pas seulement parce que j’étais juchée dessus. Sa vue m’était devenue familière ; les jours de beau temps, on distinguait même sa silhouette grandiose depuis Portland. En atteignant le mont Hood, je me suis rendu compte que, pour la première fois depuis longtemps, je me sentais un peu chez moi. Portland, où je n’avais jamais vraiment vécu malgré mon séjour mouvementé de huit ou neuf mois l’année précédente, n’était plus qu’à quatre-vingt-seize kilomètres. De loin, le mont Hood m’avait toujours coupé le souffle. Mais, comme cela arrive souvent, il était très différent de près. Moins majestueux, à la fois plus ordinaire et plus imposant dans sa sévérité. Par la fenêtre nord de l’hôtel, on ne voyait pas le pic blanc scintillant qui surplombait le paysage à des kilomètres à la ronde, mais une pente grisâtre et austère parsemées de quelques pins décharnés et d’une poignée de lupins et d’asters. Ce décor naturel était interrompu par la remontée mécanique qui conduisait aux hauteurs enneigées. J’étais heureuse de me sentir protégée de la montagne par le bâtiment luxueux, véritable petit paradis au cœur d’une nature sauvage. C’était une superbe structure en pierre et en bois construite par les ouvriers de la Work Progress Administration au milieu des années trente. Chaque parcelle de cet endroit avait une histoire. Les tableaux accrochés aux murs, l’architecture, les étoffes d’ameublement tissées main – autant de pièces d’artisanat délicates qui témoignaient du passé, du patrimoine et des ressources naturelles du Nord-Ouest Pacifique. J’ai abandonné les autres pour me promener dans l’hôtel et j’ai fini par déboucher sur une terrasse orientée plein sud. En cette belle journée ensoleillée, la vue s’étendait sur plus d’une centaine de kilomètres. J’ai regardé toutes ces montagnes par lesquelles j’étais passée – deux des Three Sisters, le mont Jefferson, le Broken Finger… Un, deux, trois, ciel. J’y étais. J’y étais presque. Mais je n’avais pas encore fini. Il me restait encore quatre-vingts kilomètres à parcourir pour atteindre le pont des Dieux. Le lendemain matin, j’ai fait mes adieux à Doug, Tom et aux deux filles, puis je suis partie seule à l’assaut du petit chemin escarpé qui reliait l’hôtel au PCT. Après être passée sous la remontée mécanique, j’ai bifurqué vers le nord-ouest pour contourner le mont Hood. La piste était couverte de ce qui avait dû être de la pierre concassée, transformée en sable grossier par les hivers rudes. Quand j’ai pénétré dans la réserve du mont Hood vingt minutes plus tard, la forêt a repris ses droits et le silence s’est abattu sur moi. C’était bon de me retrouver seule. C’était une sensation incroyable. Alors qu’on était au milieu du mois de septembre, le soleil brillait et le ciel était plus bleu que jamais. Le chemin s’ouvrait de temps à autre sur des panoramas vastes de plusieurs kilomètres, puis s’enfonçait de nouveau dans les bois, et ainsi de suite. J’ai parcouru seize kilomètres d’une traite, traversé la Sandy River, puis je me suis assise sur un petit surplomb rocheux de l’autre côté. Presque toutes les pages du Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2 : Oregon avaient disparu. J’ai sorti celles qui restaient de ma poche et je les ai relues, m’autorisant cette fois à aller jusqu’à la fin. J’étais tout excitée par la perspective d’atteindre Cascade Locks, mais aussi un peu triste. Bizarrement, j’avais fini par m’habituer à ce quotidien en plein air, aux nuits par terre sous la tente et aux journées entières à marcher dans la nature. L’idée de ne plus le faire m’effrayait. Je suis allée m’accroupir au bord de la rivière pour me laver le visage. À ce stade de l’été et étant donné l’altitude, ce n’était plus qu’un ruisseau étroit et peu profond. Où était ma mère ? me suis-je demandé. Je l’avais portée si longtemps avec moi, titubant sous son poids. « De l’autre côté de la rivière », ai-je songé. Et quelque chose en moi s’est libéré. Les jours qui ont suivi, j’ai dépassé les chutes de Ramona et fait plusieurs incursions dans la réserve de Columbia. Au nord, j’apercevais les monts Saint Helens, Rainier et Adams. Une fois à Wahtum Lake, je me suis écartée du PCT pour emprunter un itinéraire recommandé par les auteurs de mon guide. Il me conduirait à Eagle Creek, puis aux gorges de Columbia, et pour finir au fleuve du même nom près de la ville de Cascade Locks. En cette ultime journée de marche, je suis descendue encore et encore et encore, perdant mille deux cents mètres d’altitude en un peu moins de vingt-six kilomètres. Les ruisseaux et torrents de montagne qui traversaient ou longeaient le chemin descendaient eux aussi. Je sentais la puissance magnétique du fleuve, en bas, qui m’attirait vers le nord. Je sentais que j’approchais de la fin. À dix-sept heures, je me suis arrêtée pour passer la nuit à Eagle Creek, à moins de dix kilomètres de Cascade Locks. J’aurais pu continuer, mais je n’avais pas envie que mon voyage se termine dans l’obscurité. Je voulais prendre mon temps, contempler le fleuve et le pont des Dieux en pleine lumière. Ce soir-là, je me suis assise au bord du ruisseau et j’ai regardé l’eau déferler sur les rochers. La descente interminable avait été un vrai calvaire pour mes pieds. Après tout ce chemin, alors que mon corps était plus fort qu’il ne le serait sans doute jamais, randonner sur le PCT était toujours aussi douloureux. De nouvelles ampoules étaient apparues sur mes orteils – les descentes extrêmes ayant été relativement peu nombreuses dans l’Oregon, ma peau s’était affinée par endroits. Je les ai effleurées du bout des doigts pour les apaiser. Voyant qu’un autre ongle paraissait sur le point de tomber, j’ai tiré dessus et il m’est resté dans la main. C’était le sixième. Il ne m’en restait plus que quatre. Le PCT et moi n’étions plus à égalité. Avec un score de 4 à 6, le chemin avait pris l’avantage. J’ai dormi sur ma bâche car, pour ma dernière nuit, je n’avais pas envie de m’enfermer sous ma tente. Debout avant l’aube, j’ai regardé le soleil se lever au-dessus du mont Hood en songeant : « Ça y est. Impossible de revenir en arrière, de le retenir. C’est fini. » Je suis restée là un long moment pendant que la lumière emplissait le ciel et descendait vers les arbres. Puis j’ai fermé les yeux et écouté le bruit du ruisseau. Comme moi, Eagle Creek se précipitait vers le fleuve Columbia. J’ai eu l’impression de survoler les six kilomètres et demi qui me séparait du petit parking marquant la fin du chemin, poussée par une émotion pure qui ne pouvait être que de la joie. Après avoir traversé les emplacements vides et contourné les toilettes, j’ai pris un deuxième sentier qui me conduirait, trois kilomètres plus bas, à la ville de Cascade Locks. Tout à coup, il a bifurqué vers la droite et, au détour du virage, j’ai découvert le fleuve derrière le grillage de la route 84. Je me suis agrippée au métal, les yeux écarquillés. C’était presque un miracle de le voir devant moi, un peu comme si je venais de recueillir un nouveau-né dans mes bras après des heures de travail. Cette eau sombre et scintillante était plus belle que tout ce que j’avais imaginé au fil des kilomètres qui m’avaient menée jusque-là. J’ai continué vers l’est en empruntant un couloir de verdure – l’ancienne route de Columbia River, abandonnée depuis très longtemps. Par endroits, on distinguait encore quelques mètres de béton, mais la plus grande partie de la chaussée avait été recouverte par la mousse qui envahissait les bas-côtés. Les arbres inclinaient leurs lourdes branches au-dessus de ma tête et de grandes toiles d’araignées barraient le chemin. Elles se collaient sur mon visage comme des fils magiques et se prenaient dans mes cheveux. J’entendais sans les voir les voitures filer sur ma gauche, le long de la nationale qui me séparait du fleuve. Un bruit ordinaire, un bourdonnement sourd et insistant. Enfin, j’ai émergé de la forêt et je me suis retrouvée à Cascade Locks. Contrairement à tant d’autres « villes » croisées le long du chemin, celle-là en était vraiment une, avec plus d’un millier d’habitants. On était un vendredi matin, et je sentais l’atmosphère particulière aux vendredis émaner de chaque maison. Je suis passée sous la rocade et me suis promenée dans les rues, mon bâton de ski tintant sur le bitume. Les battements de mon cœur se sont accélérés lorsque j’ai posé les yeux sur le pont. C’était un élégant porte-à-faux à poutrelles d’acier, qui avait hérité son nom d’un gué naturel formé trois cents ans plus tôt par une gigantesque coulée de boue, laquelle avait temporairement coupé le fleuve Columbia. Les Amérindiens de la région l’avait surnommée le pont des Dieux. La structure réalisée plus tard de la main de l’homme enjambait le fleuve sur cinq cents mètres, reliant l’Oregon à l’État de Washington et la ville de Cascade Locks à celle de Stevenson. Quand je suis arrivée à la petite guérite installée côté Oregon, l’employée qui se trouvait à l’intérieur m’a annoncé que je pouvais traverser gratuitement. « Je ne traverse pas, ai-je répondu. Je voulais juste le toucher. » J’ai longé la route jusqu’au soutènement de béton, posé la main dessus et contemplé le fleuve en contrebas. C’était le plus large du Nord-Ouest Pacifique et le quatrième du pays. Les Amérindiens avaient vécu sur ses rives pendant des milliers d’années, se nourrissant pour la plupart des saumons qui pullulaient autrefois dans ses eaux. Meriwether Lewis et William Clark l’avaient descendu en pirogue lors de leur célèbre expédition de 1805. Cent quatre-vingt-dix ans plus tard, deux jours avant mon vingt-septième anniversaire, je me tenais devant lui. J’étais arrivée. Je l’avais fait. C’était si insignifiant et si magistral à la fois – une sorte de secret que je me répéterais longtemps, même si je n’en saisissais pas encore la portée. Je suis restée plantée là de longues minutes, au bord des larmes, tandis que voitures et camions filaient derrière moi. Mais je n’ai pas pleuré. Quelques semaines plus tôt, j’avais entendu dire par le téléphone arabe du chemin que, une fois à Cascade Locks, il fallait absolument passer au East Wind Drive-In pour goûter un de leurs gigantesques cornets de glace. J’avais mis deux dollars de côté dans ce but à Timberline Lodge . J’ai fini par quitter le pont et suivre une rue animée qui longeait la rivière et la nationale – l’essentiel de la ville étant pris en sandwich entre les deux. Il était encore tôt, et le drive-in n’était pas ouvert. Je me suis assise sur un petit banc en bois blanc, Monster à mes côtés. Je serais à Portland avant la fin de la journée ; ce n’était plus qu’à soixante-dix kilomètres à l’ouest. Je dormirais sur mon vieux futon, sous un vrai toit. Je déballerais mes CD et mon poste de radio, je pourrais écouter la chanson de mon choix. Je mettrais mes sous-vêtements en dentelle noire et mon jean. Je me jetterais sur toute la nourriture et les boissons possibles et imaginables. Je conduirais mon pick-up où bon me semblerait. J’allumerais mon ordinateur pour écrire mon roman. Je prendrais les cartons de livres qui m’avaient suivie depuis le Minnesota et j’irais les vendre dès le lendemain chez Powell’s pour avoir un peu de liquide. J’organiserais un vide-grenier qui me permettrait de tenir en attendant de trouver du travail. J’étalerais mes robes achetées en friperie, mes jumelles miniatures et ma scie pliante sur la pelouse et je les céderais en échange de ce qu’on voudrait bien me donner. Rien que d’y penser, j’avais la tête qui tournait. « Nous sommes prêts à prendre votre commande », m’a annoncé une femme en se penchant par la fenêtre coulissante du drive-in. J’ai choisi un cornet vanille-chocolat ; quelques minutes plus tard, elle me l’a tendu, a encaissé mes deux dollars et m’a rendu deux pièces de dix cents . C’était tout ce qui me restait de mes économies. Vingt cents. Assise sur le banc, j’ai dégusté ma glace en regardant passer les voitures. J’étais la seule cliente, jusqu’à l’arrivée d’une BMW d’où est sorti un jeune homme en costume. « Bonjour », m’a-t-il saluée au passage. Il avait environ mon âge, du gel dans les cheveux et des chaussures impeccables. Une fois servi, il est venu se planter à côté de moi. « On dirait que vous rentrez d’une longue randonnée. — Oui. Sur le Pacific Crest Trail. J’ai fait près de mille huit cents kilomètres, ai-je lâché, trop excitée pour me contenir. J’ai fini ce matin. — Vraiment ? » Il a éclaté de rire. « C’est incroyable. J’ai toujours rêvé de faire un truc comme ça. Un long périple. — Vous pourriez. Vous devriez. Croyez-moi, si j’en ai été capable, c’est à la portée de n’importe qui. — Je ne peux pas me libérer assez longtemps – je suis avocat. » Il a jeté la moitié de son cornet de glace à la poubelle avant de s’essuyer les mains sur une serviette en papier. « Et qu’est-ce que vous avez prévu pour la suite ? a-t-il repris. — Je pensais aller vivre à Portland un moment. — C’est là que j’habite. D’ailleurs, je peux vous emmener si vous voulez. Je vous déposerai à l’endroit qui vous arrange. — Merci. Mais je voudrais rester un peu ici. Le temps de réaliser. » Il a sorti une carte de visite de son portefeuille. « Appelez-moi quand vous serez installée. Je serais ravi de vous inviter à déjeuner pour que vous me racontiez votre voyage. — D’accord. » J’ai baissé les yeux vers la carte. Elle était blanche avec des lettres bleues en relief – une relique d’un autre monde. « J’ai été très honoré de vous rencontrer à ce tournant de votre vie, a-t-il déclaré. — Moi aussi. » Je lui ai serré la main. Après son départ, j’ai laissé aller ma tête en arrière et fermé les yeux pour me protéger du soleil. Les larmes que j’avais senti monter près du pont se sont enfin mises à couler. « Merci, ai-je pensé. Merci. » Pas seulement pour cette longue marche, mais pour tout ce que je sentais enfin fusionner en moi ; tout ce que le chemin m’avait appris et tout ce que je ne savais pas encore, mais qui était déjà là, quelque part. Par exemple, que je ne reverrais jamais l’homme à la BMW, mais que, quatre ans plus tard, je traverserais le pont des Dieux avec un autre et que je l’épouserais dans un lieu presque visible depuis mon banc. Que, neuf ans plus tard, cet homme et moi aurions un fils, Carver, suivi un an et demi après d’une fille nommée Bobbi. Que, quinze ans plus tard, je reviendrais avec ma famille sur ce même banc en bois blanc, que nous mangerions des glaces et que je leur raconterais comment j’étais passée par là, à la fin d’une très longue randonnée sur un chemin appelé le Pacific Crest Trail. Et qu’alors, seulement, je comprendrais la signification profonde de mon voyage et du secret dont j’avais eu l’intuition ce jour-là. Ce qui me conduirait à écrire ce livre. Je ne savais pas que je me replongerais dans le passé, que je chercherais et retrouverais certaines des personnes croisées sur le chemin. Que ce faisant, je tomberais sur une chose à laquelle je ne m’attendais pas : un avis de décès. Celui de Doug. Je ne me doutais pas qu’il mourrait neuf ans après nos adieux sur le PCT, lors d’un accident de kitesurf en Nouvelle-Zélande. Ni que, après avoir pleuré en repensant au jeune homme brillant qu’il avait été, je descendrais dans le recoin de la cave où j’avais suspendu Monster à des clous rouillés, et que je verrais la plume qu’il m’avait offerte – tordue, abîmée, mais toujours coincée dans l’armature, là où je l’avais glissée des années plus tôt. J’ignorais encore tout cela tandis que je me reposais sur le banc en bois blanc, le dernier jour de ma randonnée. Mais j’étais sûre d’une chose : je n’avais pas besoin de le savoir. Tout ce qui comptait, c’était l’authenticité de ce que je venais d’accomplir. Et le fait que j’en comprenne le sens même si je n’étais pas encore capable de le formuler – un peu comme pour les vers de The Dream of a Common Language qui m’avaient trotté en tête jour et nuit. Ce n’était pas la peine d’essayer d’attraper le poisson. Il suffisait qu’il soit là, sous la surface. Ainsi allaient les choses. Ainsi allait ma vie – comme toutes les vies, mystérieuse, irrévocable et sacrée. Si proche, si présente, si mienne. C’était tellement bon de lâcher prise. Wild 17 En mode primal Dans mon esprit, l’Oregon était un jeu de marelle. Je le parcourais en pensée, sautant d’une case à l’autre, de Crater Lake au pont des Dieux. Cent trente-six kilomètres me séparaient de mon prochain colis, qui m’attendait dans un endroit appelé le Shelter Cove Resort . Il y en aurait ensuite deux cent trente jusqu’au dernier point de ravitaillement, à Olallie Lake. Puis ce serait l’ultime ligne droite vers le fleuve Columbia : cent soixante-dix kilomètres pour rejoindre la ville de Cascade Locks, avec un arrêt à mi-chemin à Timberline Lodge, sur le mont Hood – le temps de boire le verre du « ça alors je n’y crois pas j’y suis presque ». Au total, cela représentait tout de même plus de cinq cent trente-sept kilomètres. La bonne nouvelle, comme je n’ai pas tardé à le constater, était que quoi qu’il arrive, je ne serais jamais à court de baies fraîches. Airelles, myrtilles, framboises jaunes et mûres poussaient à profusion au bord du chemin. Il me suffisait de passer la main dans les buissons pour les ramasser ; de temps en temps, je m’arrêtais pour en remplir mon chapeau. Et je progressais tranquillement à travers les réserves du mont Thielsen et de Diamond Peak. Il faisait froid. Puis chaud. La couche d’écorce croisée avec de la peau poulet s’était épaissie sur mes hanches. Mes pieds ne se couvraient plus d’ampoules sanglantes, bien qu’ils continuent à me faire souffrir le martyre. Je me suis accordé quelques demi-journées de repos, limitant mon quota quotidien à onze ou douze kilomètres pour soulager la douleur – sans succès. Les blessures étaient trop profondes. Parfois, j’avais l’impression que mes os étaient cassés et que je ferais mieux de remplacer mes chaussures par des plâtres. Que je leur avais causé des dommages irréversibles à force de porter un sac aussi lourd sur des kilomètres et des kilomètres de terrain accidenté. Pourtant, j’étais plus forte que jamais. Malgré mon sac imposant, j’étais désormais capable de parcourir de très longues distances – même si, le soir, j’étais toujours aussi épuisée. Le PCT était devenu un peu moins dur pour moi, ce qui ne signifiait pas qu’il était facile. Il y avait des matinées agréables et des débuts d’après-midi sans souci, où j’avalais une quinzaine de kilomètres presque sans effort. J’aimais me perdre dans le rythme de mes pas, bercée par le cliquetis de mon bâton, le silence et les chansons qui résonnaient dans ma tête. J’aimais les montagnes, les rochers, les biches et les lapins qui détalaient entre les arbres, les scarabées et les grenouilles qui se traînaient sur le chemin. Mais, chaque jour, je finissais par atteindre un stade où ça ne m’amusait plus, où la marche devenait monotone, pénible et où mon esprit passait en mode primal, vide de toute pensée à l’exception d’une seule : aller de l’avant. Je continuais jusqu’à ce que mon corps se rebelle et que je ne puisse plus mettre un pied devant l’autre. Alors je m’arrêtais, dressais mon campement et me chargeais avec efficacité de toutes les tâches nécessaires, dans le but d’arriver le plus vite possible au moment béni où je pourrais m’écrouler sous ma tente, complètement cassée. C’est dans cet état que je me suis traînée dans l’enceinte du Shelter Cove Resort , vannée, lassée du chemin, vide de tout à l’exception d’un soulagement intense. Je venais de sauter une nouvelle case dans la marelle de l’Oregon. Le site consistait en une boutique entourée de chalets rustiques et d’une grande pelouse verte, au bord d’un vaste lac appelé Odell qui donnait sur des forêts vert sombre. Je suis entrée dans la boutique. Il y avait quelques rangées de snacks, des appâts pour la pêche et une glacière pleine de bouteilles. Je me suis dirigée vers la caisse avec une limonade Snapple et un paquet de chips. « Vous randonnez sur le PCT ? » m’a demandé le vendeur. Quand j’ai hoché la tête, il a désigné la fenêtre au fond de la boutique. « La poste est fermée jusqu’à demain matin, mais vous pouvez camper gratuitement sur le terrain là-bas. Pour un dollar, vous pourrez même prendre une douche. » Il ne me restait que dix dollars – encore une fois, mes escales à Ashland et au parc de Crater Lake m’avaient coûté plus cher que prévu – mais je savais que j’en trouverais vingt autres dans le colis que je récupérerais le lendemain. J’ai réglé mes achats en lui demandant de la monnaie pour la douche. J’ai dégusté ma limonade et mes chips tout en me dirigeant, folle d’impatience, vers la cabane indiquée par l’homme. Une fois à l’intérieur, j’ai constaté avec joie qu’il s’agissait d’une douche privée. Dès que j’ai refermé la porte derrière moi, c’est devenu mon domaine. J’y aurais même dormi si je l’avais pu. Après avoir retiré mes vêtements, je me suis regardée dans le miroir craquelé. Mes pieds n’étaient pas les seuls à avoir souffert : mes cheveux étaient eux aussi dans un état lamentable, rêches, étrangement épaissis et permanentés par les couches de sueur et de poussière, comme si j’étais en train de me transformer peu à peu en un croisement entre Farah Fawcett et Gunga Din. J’ai glissé mes pièces dans la machine et j’ai enfin pu me délecter du luxe d’une douche chaude, utilisant le minuscule reste de savon abandonné par quelqu’un jusqu’à ce qu’il se dissolve dans mes mains. Je me suis séchée à l’aide du foulard qui me servait à faire la vaisselle dans les lacs et les torrents, puis j’ai remis mes vêtements sales. Quand je suis retournée à la boutique, Monster toujours sur le dos, je me sentais mille fois mieux. Devant, il y avait un banc qui courait sur toute la longueur du grand porche. Je m’y suis assise pour contempler Odell Lake en peignant mes cheveux mouillés avec mes doigts. Il ne restait plus qu’Olallie Lake et Timberline Lodge, et je serais à Cascade Locks. Un, deux, trois, ciel ! « C’est toi, Cheryl ? » m’a demandé un homme qui sortait du magasin. Aussitôt, deux autres sont apparus derrière lui. Ils n’avaient pas de sacs à dos mais, à leurs T-shirts tachés de sueur, j’ai tout de suite compris qu’il s’agissait de randonneurs. Ils étaient jeunes, beaux, barbus, bronzés et sales, à la fois très musclés et incroyablement maigres. Le premier était grand. Le deuxième blond. Et le troisième avait de magnifiques yeux bleus. J’étais tellement contente d’avoir pris une douche ! « Oui, ai-je répondu. — Ça fait un moment qu’on te suit, m’a avoué le blond avec un grand sourire. — On savait qu’on finirait par te rattraper, a ajouté celui qui avait de beaux yeux. On voyait tes traces de pas sur le chemin. — Et on a lu tes messages dans le registre, a renchéri le grand. — On essayait de deviner ton âge, a repris le blond. — Et alors, vous aviez parié sur quoi ? ai-je demandé en souriant de toutes mes dents. — On pensait que tu avais soit notre âge, soit la cinquantaine, a dit celui aux beaux yeux. — J’espère que vous n’êtes pas trop déçus ! » Nous avons tous éclaté de rire en rougissant un peu. Ils s’appelaient Rick, Josh et Richie et avaient quatre ans de moins que moi. Ils venaient respectivement de Portland, Eugene et La Nouvelle-Orléans. Ils étudiaient ensemble dans le Minnesota, dans une école d’art libérale située à une heure des Twin Cities. « Moi aussi, je suis du Minnesota ! » me suis-je exclamée, oubliant qu’ils le savaient déjà grâce au registre. « Tu n’as pas encore de surnom ? — Pas que je sache. » Eux, si : des randonneurs croisés dans le sud de la Californie les avaient appelés les Trois Jeunes Mâles. Ça leur allait bien. Ils étaient trois, jeunes et très virils. Ils étaient partis de la frontière mexicaine. Au lieu d’éviter la neige comme tout le monde, ils l’avaient affrontée et traversée – en dépit des chutes records qu’il y avait eu cette année-là –, ce qui expliquait qu’ils se retrouvent à l’arrière du peloton qui traversait tout le pays, du Mexique au Canada. Voilà pourquoi ils me rattrapaient si tardivement. Ils n’avaient pas croisé Tom, Doug, Greg, Matt, Albert, Brent, Stacy, Trina, Rex, Sam, Helen, John ou Sarah. Ils ne s’étaient pas arrêtés à Ashland. Ils n’avaient pas dansé sur des chansons du Grateful Dead ni mâché de l’opium ni fait l’amour avec quelqu’un contre un rocher sur une plage. Ils avaient marché sans relâche, avalant trente-cinq kilomètres par jour, gagnant peu à peu du terrain sur moi depuis que j’avais fait un bond vers le nord et récupéré le PCT à Sierra City. Ce n’était pas juste trois jeunes mâles. C’était trois incroyables machines à randonner. En leur compagnie, j’avais l’impression d’être en vacances. Nous sommes partis vers le terrain mis à notre disposition par la boutique, où ils avaient déjà déposé leurs sacs, et nous avons préparé à dîner en échangeant des histoires à propos du chemin et de nos vies. Je les aimais déjà énormément. Nous étions sur la même longueur d’onde. Ils étaient doux, beaux, drôles et gentils, et me faisaient oublier à quel point j’étais épuisée une heure plus tôt. En leur honneur, j’ai préparé le dessert déshydraté aux framboises que je transportais depuis des semaines en attendant une occasion spéciale. Nous l’avons mangé directement dans ma casserole, avant de nous coucher en rang d’oignons sous les étoiles. Le lendemain matin, nous avons récupéré nos colis et les avons rapportés au camp pour organiser le contenu de nos sacs avant de partir. J’ai plongé les mains entre les sachets de nourriture lisse, en quête de l’enveloppe qui contenait mon billet de vingt dollars. Je ressentais toujours une légère excitation lorsque je la sentais sous mes doigts. Sauf que, cette fois, je ne l’ai pas trouvée. J’ai retourné le carton, exploré les moindres recoins ; en vain. Je ne savais pas pourquoi, mais elle n’était pas là. Je n’avais plus que six dollars et douze cents. « Merde. — Quoi ? m’a demandé l’un des Trois Jeunes Mâles. — Rien. » J’étais gênée de toujours manquer d’argent, de n’avoir personne pour assurer mes arrières avec une carte de crédit ou un compte bancaire. J’ai rangé mes provisions dans mon vieux sac bleu, malade à l’idée de devoir parcourir les deux cent trente kilomètres qui me séparaient de mon prochain colis avec à peine plus de six dollars en poche. Pour me calmer, je me suis dit que, de toute façon, je n’aurais pas besoin d’argent. Je m’apprêtais à m’enfoncer dans le cœur de l’Oregon – à franchir les cols de Willamette, McKenzie et Santiam, avant de traverser les réserves des Three Sisters, du mont Washington et du mont Jefferson. Je n’aurais nulle part où dépenser mes six dollars et douze cents, pas vrai ? Une heure plus tard, je suis partie avec les Trois Jeunes Mâles, que j’ai rattrapés plusieurs fois au cours de la journée. Nous avons fait quelques pauses ensemble. J’étais stupéfaite par ce qu’ils mangeaient, et surtout par leur façon de manger : ils se jetaient sur la nourriture comme des barbares, engloutissant trois Snickers en l’espace de quinze minutes, alors qu’ils étaient aussi maigres que des clous. Quand ils enlevaient leurs chemises, on voyait leurs côtes. Moi aussi, j’avais perdu du poids, mais pas autant que les hommes – une injustice que j’avais déjà observée chez les autres randonneurs, hommes ou femmes, rencontrés cet été-là. De toute façon, je me moquais désormais pas mal de mon apparence. La seule chose qui m’intéressait, c’était de manger. J’étais moi aussi devenue une barbare, tenaillée par une faim monumentale et insatiable. J’avais atteint le stade où, quand un personnage de mon roman mangeait, j’étais obligée de sauter la scène, frustrée de ne pas pouvoir l’imiter. Cet après-midi-là, j’ai dit au revoir aux Trois Jeunes Mâles. Ils avaient l’intention de parcourir encore quelques kilomètres car, en plus d’être d’incroyables machines à randonner, ils étaient aussi très impatients d’atteindre le col de Santiam. Ils avaient prévu un détour de quelques jours pour rendre visite à de la famille et des amis. Pendant qu’ils mèneraient la belle vie, avec une vraie douche, de vrais lits et des plats dont je n’osais même pas rêver, je reprendrais de l’avance sur eux. « Essayez de me rattraper », les ai-je défiés en espérant qu’ils y arriveraient. Le soir venu, j’ai bivouaqu	743,571
A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland) (Z-Library).epub	A Book Of Silence Granta Publications, 12 Addison Avenue, London W11 4QR First published in Great Britain by Granta Books 2008 Paperback edition published by Granta Books 2009 This ebook edition published by Granta Books 2010 Copyright © Sara Maitland, 2008 The right of Sara Maitland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Extract from ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Sailor’ by Frank Mulville on pp. 77–79 ( Yachting Monthly, issue 132, May 1972. pp. 686–688) quoted by permission of Wendy Mulville. Quote from ‘In Search of the Master’/’On Looking in Vain for the Hermit’ by Jia Dao by Jia Dao on p. 219 from The Chinese Knight Errant by James Liu (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967 1967, p. 263) used with permission of the Taylor and Francis Group. Quote from ‘The Day they Took’ by Robert Drake on p. 86 (private publication, 1993) used with permission from the poet. All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. ISBN 978 1 84708 291 6 Typeset by M Rules A Book Of Silence For Janet Batsleer and John Russell for reasons best buried in silence A Book Of Silence ‘In Maitland’s hands, silence turns out to be another entire, psycho-geographical world laid alongside the one we know and hear and yack about so much. “I learned to tell when it had been snowing in the night by the quality of silence”… her book is full of such moments, articulating the common but usually ignored and unexpressed experiences in our lives’ Spectator ‘A healing book about the pleasures to be found alone and how solitude can set you free’ Red ‘Refreshing, insightful, strangely touching and bound to make you want to haul yourself off that sofa in search of a life-affirming journey’ Wanderlust ‘Extraordinary … Maitland is blazingly intelligent, and committed to rigorous, interrogative scholarship … a justified and valiant response to the widespread frenzy and mindlessness of 21st century life’ Sunday Business Post ‘[Sara Maitland] is right to think that silence is a deep need, ever less honoured in our lives’ Evening Standard ‘Fascinating … raises many interesting philosophical questions’ Sunday Times ‘An extraordinary book … in our noise-saturated culture’ Chosen by the Kew Bookshop in London in the Independent on Sunday ‘Her artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation and essay, describes her route away from urban brouhaha towards increased solitude … Her book demands to be taken on its own terms as the vision of a highly educated contemplative who is alert to Western culture’s distrust of loners’ Independent ‘Maitland is a bold adventurer and the rest of us, doubtless ill-equipped to deal with the emotional and intellectual challenge of self-sought solitude, are lucky she can give the condition of silence such an articulate voice’ Metro ‘By the end of her brave, honest, fascinating book, one respects her choice of lifestyle, the determination it has taken to bring it about and the sacrifices it has engendered’ Scotsman ‘Offering at once personal anecdotes, cultural diagnoses and soothing antidotes, these memoirs make for a timely and nourishing read’ List ‘The pursuit [of silence] is described with fervour and intelligence that make this book full of insights and explorations, oddities and quirks – about the natural world (some dazzling descriptive passages), about silence in several cultures, about the choice of where to live, about routines, satisfactions, happiness’ Tablet ‘You can’t help warming to Sara Maitland … Maitland is a rottweiler of enthusiasm who pursues her ideas to the end, eloquently and learnedly, and nowhere more than in this, her latest work’ Irish Times ‘Her dedication to the cause is both inspiring and shocking … There are many beautiful meditative passages in her meditation on silence … [A] wonderful salutary book’ Sunday Telegraph A Book Of Silence Growing up in a Noisy World I t is early morning. It is a morning of extraordinary radiance – and unusually up here there is practically no wind. It is almost perfectly silent: some small birds are chirping occasionally and a little while ago a pair of crows flapped past making their raucous cough noises. It is the first day of October so the curlew and the oystercatchers have gone down to the seashore. In a little while one particular noise will happen – the two-carriage Glasgow-to-Stranraer train will bump by on the other side of the valley; and a second one may happen – Neil may rumble past on his quad bike after seeing to his sheep on the hill above the house; if he does he will wave and I will wave back. That is more or less it. I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn’t know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obviously sensitive friend commented when she came to see my latest lunacy, ‘Only you, Sara – twenty-mile views of absolutely nothing!’ It isn’t ‘nothing’, actually – it is cloud formations, and the different ways reed, rough grass, heather and bracken move in the wind, and the changing colours, not just through the year but through the day as the sun and the clouds alternate and shift – but in another sense she is right, and it is the huge nothing that pulls me into itself. I look at it, and with fewer things to look at I see better. I listen to nothing and its silent tunes and rhythms sound harmonic. The irregular line of the hill, with the telegraph and electricity poles striding over it, holds the silence as though in a bowl and below me I can see occasional, and apparently unrelated, strips of silver, which are in fact the small river meandering down the valley. I am feeling a bit smug this morning because yesterday I got my completion certificate. When you build a new house you start out with planning permission and building warrant, and at the end of it all an inspector comes to see if you have done what you said you would do and check that your house is compliant with building regulations and standards. Mine is; it is finished, completed, certified. All done and dusted. Last night I paid off my builder, and we had a drink and ended a year-long relationship of bizarre intensity, both painful and delightful. Now I am sitting and regathering my silence, which is what I came here for in the first place. Three minutes ago – it is pure gift, something you cannot ask for or anticipate – a hen harrier came hunting down the burn, not twenty metres from the door. Not many people have a hen harrier in the garden. Hen harriers are fairly rare in the UK, with slightly over a hundred breeding couples mostly in the Scottish Highlands. They are slightly smaller and much lighter than buzzards, and inhabit desolate terrain. Male hen harriers, seen from below, look like ghosts – pure white except for their grey heads but with very distinct black wing tips. They hunt low and glide with their wings held in a shallow V; powerful hunters, beautiful, free. I do not see them very often, but the first time I came to the ruined shepherd’s house, which is now, today, my new home, there was a pair sitting on the drystone dyke. They speak to me of the great silence of the hills; they welcome me into that silence. The silent bird goes off about his own silent business, just clearing the rise to the west and vanishing as suddenly as he came. Briefly I feel that he has come this morning to welcome me and I experience a moment of fierce joy, but it rumbles gently down into a more solid contentment. There are lots of things that I ought to be getting on with, but I light a cigarette and go on sitting on my doorstep. It is surprisingly warm for October. We had the first frost last week, light-fingered on the car windscreen. I think about how beautiful it is, and how happy I am. Then I think how strange it is – how strange that I should be so happy sitting up here in the silent golden morning with nothing in my diary for the next fortnight, and no one coming and me going nowhere except perhaps into the hills or down the coast to walk, and to Mass on Sundays. I find myself trying to think through the story of how I come to be here and why I want to be here. And it is strange. I have lived a very noisy life. As a matter of fact we all live very noisy lives. ‘Noise pollution’ has settled down into the ecological agenda nearly as firmly as all the other forms of pollution that threaten our well-being and safety. But for everyone who complains about RAF low-flying training exercises, ceaseless background music in public places, intolerably loud neighbours and drunken brawling on the streets, there are hundreds who know they need a mobile phone, who choose to have incessant sound pumping into their environment, their homes and their ears, and who feel uncomfortable or scared when they have to confront real silence. ‘Communication’ (which always means talk) is the sine qua non of ‘good relationships’. ‘Alone’ and ‘lonely’ have become almost synonymous; worse, perhaps, ‘silent’ and ‘bored’ seem to be moving closer together too. Children disappear behind a wall of noise, their own TVs and computers in their own rooms; smoking carriages on trains have morphed into ‘quiet zones’ but even the people sitting in them have music plugged directly into their ears. We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, that we value privacy and that the solitary and silent person is somehow more ‘authentic’ than the same person in a social crowd, but we seldom seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticise silence on the one hand and on the other feel that it is terrifying, dangerous to our mental health, a threat to our liberties and something to be avoided at all costs. My life has also been noisy in a more specific way. Because of an odd conjunction of class, history and my parents’ personal choices I had an unusually noisy childhood. I was born in 1950, the second child and oldest girl in a family of six; the first five of us were born within six and a half years of each other. If you asked my mother why she had so many children, she would say it was because she loved babies, but if you asked my father he would say something rather different: ‘Two sets of tennis, two tables of bridge and a Scottish reel set in your own house.’ We grew up in London, and in an enormous early-Victorian mansion house (my father’s childhood home) in south-west Scotland. My parents adored each other. I think they adored us, though in a slightly collectivised way. They were deeply sociable and the house was constantly filled not just by all of us, but by their friends and our friends; my mother’s father lived with us for a while; there was a nanny and later an au pair girl. What was perhaps unusual for the time was that they were very directly engaged as parents; there was none of that ‘seen and not heard’ nursery life for us. We were blatantly encouraged to be highly articulate, contentious, witty, and to hold all authority except theirs in a certain degree of contempt. I am appalled now when I think back to the degree of verbal teasing that was not just permitted but participated in: simple rudeness was not encouraged, but sophisticated verbal battering, reducing people to tears, slamming doors, screaming fights and boisterous, indeed rough, play was fine. (You don’t grow out of these things – my son’s partner has since told me her first encounter with us as a group was one of the most scary experiences of her life – she could not believe that people could talk so loudly, so argumentatively and so rudely without it coming to serious fisticuffs.) We were immensely active and corporate; introspection, solitude, silence, or any withdrawal from the herd was not allowed. Within the magical space they had created for us, however, we were given an enormous amount of physical freedom – to play, to roam, to have fights and adventures. It worked best when we were all quite small. In 1968, when every newspaper in the country was bemoaning the outrageous behaviour of teenagers, my parents had five of them. I think retrospectively that they lost their nerve a bit. I am not sure what they imagined would happen. If you encourage your children to hold authority lightly, eventually they will work out that you are ‘authority’ and hold you lightly too. They were better with smaller children – we had fairly traumatic and very noisy teens. There were good moments. One thing that is hard to insert into this account is just how sophisticated and politically engaged my parents were. I remember the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, for example, with great vividness because one of my parents’ closest friends was an admiral in the US navy. He was staying with us, we went on a lovely sunny day trip to Cambridge and as we walked along the Backs, a very young man from the US Embassy appeared. He had been searching for Uncle Harry personally; he had to fly home immediately to Defend His Country against Communism. The following year I knew about the Profumo affair too, though rather lopsidedly. It was the cause of a rare fight between my parents, who usually managed to maintain perfect solidarity against their children’s activities. My father taught me a bitter little limerick about it, which he encouraged me to recite at a cocktail party of his Butlerite Conservative friends (several of them eminent) and which rather accurately reflected his own politics. There was a young girl called Christine Who shattered the Party machine. It isn’t too rude To lie in the nude But to lie in the House is obscene. The fight between my parents was not, interestingly, about the content of these lines, but about my father encouraging me to ‘show off’. A bit of me still wonders what on earth they thought would come of it, especially for their girls. You bring them up free and flamboyant, and are then totally surprised and even angry with them when they don’t magically turn into ‘ladies’. It was, for me at least, a strange mixture of upper-class convention and intellectual aspiration. There was a good, and noisy, example of my father’s confused vision a few years later. I was expelled, fairly forcibly, from the House of Commons in 1973 for disrupting a debate on the Equal Opportunities Act, then a Private Members’ Bill. I was pregnant at the time. The Times (my parents’ daily, obviously) made this a front-page item including my name. I was rather anxious about how my parents would react. My mother was appalled that I should do this while I was pregnant , but my father was entirely delighted. Not because he favoured such actions or had any particular enthusiasm for Equal Opportunities, but because the person responsible for ‘Order in the House’ was an old friend of his, whom nonetheless he found both prissy and pompous – he was much amused by the embarrassment that I would have caused this friend, having to deal with ‘one of us’, with someone he actually knew. He may also, of course, have admired my boldness, without admiring the way I had chosen to exercise it. We were inevitably sent off to boarding schools, the boys disgracefully at seven or eight and my sisters and I a little later. I am just about prepared to acknowledge that there might conceivably be children whom public school, under the old boarding system, positively suits and that there are homes so dire that boarding is a relief or even a joy, but it remains for me one of the very few institutions that is bad for both the individuals it ‘privileges’ and our society as a whole. In this context, however, all I want to do is point out that the entire ethos depended on no one ever being allowed any silence or privacy except as a punishment; and where the constant din inevitably created by over two hundred young women was amplified by bare corridors and over-large rooms. I found it a damaging, brutal experience, made worse by the fact that in my parents’ world not to enjoy your schooldays was proof that you were an inferior human being – you were supposed to be a ‘good mixer’, to ‘take the rough with the smooth’ and enjoy the team spirit. If you are feeling miserable and inferior the last thing you are going to do is tell parents who think that the way you feel is proof that you are miserable and inferior. Perhaps the stakes were too high; perhaps they were too proud of us. At home we were supposed to get into Cambridge, and wear long white gloves, a tartan silk sash and our deceased grandmother’s pearls, and dance at Highland Balls. I was expected to have my own political opinions, and have them turn out the same as my parents’. We were expected to be sociable, active and witty, and hard-working, industrious and calm. We were meant to be sociable and popular and bizarrely chaste. At school we were meant to be educated, independent, self-assured, and totally innocent. On Saturday mornings we all had to kneel down in the assembly hall so that the mistresses could walk along the rows and make sure everyone’s skirt exactly touched the ground. I am still not sure what the terror of the miniskirt was about, really. It all got pretty intolerable and very noisy. In 1968 I escaped. These were the days before the Gap Year was a well-organised middle-class rite of passage, but if you stayed on at school after A levels to do the then separate Oxbridge entrance exams, you finished school at Christmas and had an inevitable gap until the following October. My father filled this gap by packing us off to any foreign continent of our choice and leaving us to get on with it. It was probably the first time in my life that I had been on my own and responsible for myself; it should have been a time to break out. My skirts were spectacularly shorter than anyone in America had ever seen before – hippies and counterculture and the politics of protest and feminism itself may have been US imports, but the miniskirt was authentically British – and my class accent was less immediately identifiable, but I was not really up to it. It was six months of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong moment, just. I left Washington the day before Martin Luther King was shot and arrived in Los Angeles a week after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. In San Francisco I did go to Haight Ashbury, but I went as a tourist. From that perspective it seemed sordid and scary, and I left at once. I do remember, though, one bright hot dawn in the Arizona desert when I stared into my first huge nothing: it was the Grand Canyon. It was red and gold and vast and silent. Perhaps I should have sat down on the rim and stayed for a while, but it was too soon. I gawped for a bit and walked down a little way, then I turned round, got back on the Greyhound bus and went on to somewhere else. Then, that autumn, I went to Oxford. I became a student at exactly and precisely the right time – for then ‘to be young was very heaven’. What more joyful and lucky thing could happen to a privileged public-school girl than to find herself a student at Oxford between 1968 and 1971? It is fashionable now to decry the astonishing, extraordinary period in the late sixties – to dismiss it, or to blame it. I refuse to go there. I am with Angela Carter: There is a tendency to underplay, even to devalue completely, the experience of the 1960s, especially for women, but towards the end of that decade there was a brief period of public philosophical awareness that occurs only very occasionally in human history; when, truly, it felt like Year One, when all that was holy was in the process of being profaned, and we were attempting to grapple with the real relations between human beings … At a very unpretentious level, we were truly asking ourselves questions about the nature of reality. Most of us may not have come up with very startling answers and some of us scared ourselves good and proper and retreated into cul-de-sacs of infantile mysticism … but even so I can date to that time and to that sense of heightened awareness of the society around me in the summer of 1968 my own questioning of the nature of my reality as a woman. 1 Everything interesting and important that has happened to me since began in Oxford in the three years that I was an undergraduate. There I discovered the things that have shaped my life – the things that shape it still, however unexpectedly, as I sit on my doorstep and listen to the silence: socialism, feminism, friendship and Christianity; myself as writer, as mother and now as silence seeker. It was not instant. I arrived in Oxford more virginal in more ways than now seems credible. I felt like a cultural tourist, unable to connect directly with the hippies, with their drugs, mysticism and music; or with the politicos and their Parisian excitements, though I went like a tourist to hear Tariq Ali speak at the Student Union; or with the ‘sexual revolutionaries’ who whizzed off glamorously to London and complained about the repressive college, which expected us to be in bed, alone, by 10.30. I had to cope with the realisation that I was not the cleverest person in the world – a mistaken belief that had sustained me for years. It was culture shock; I had a strange, nagging sense that I was where I wanted to be, but I wasn’t quite getting it: an odd mixture of excitement and frustration. I wanted it. I wanted all of it. I did not know how to have it. My life could have gone horribly wrong at this point. Then, just in time and gloriously lucky, I tumbled, by chance, by grace, in with a new group of people. They were a group of American students, most of them Rhodes Scholars and all of them active against the Vietnam War. They hung out in a shambolic house in north Oxford. I am not entirely sure why they took me under their collective wing, but they did and I was saved. What they gave me was a connection point between politics and personal lives, the abundant energy that comes from self-interested righteousness, a sense that there were causes and things that could be done about them, and large dollops of collective affection. This household has become famous for something other than their sweet kindness to me – because one of the people in it was Bill Clinton, who has always, as far as I am concerned, been a loyal friend and an enormous resource; but it was not just him: it was the whole group of them. My world was transformed. The sky was bright with colour. I smoked my first joint, lost my virginity and went on my first political demonstration. I stopped attending lectures and my ears unblocked so I started to hear what was going on around me. I realised that a classical education, Whig history and compassionate liberalism were not the only values in the world. I was set suddenly and gloriously free. I made other friends, did other things – and we talked and talked and talked. A bit later this household gave me, rather unexpectedly, something every bit as important. One evening Bill asked me if I would go with him to hear Germaine Greer speak at Ruskin College, shortly before The Female Eunuch was published. He had heard she had terrific legs (she did) but very properly thought it was the sort of event that he wanted a woman to go with. Being Bill he quickly rounded up some more people and that night I met Mandy Merck and thus discovered the brand-new Women’s Liberation Movement. Once I felt secure enough to cope, it transpired that actually one thing my childhood had provided me with were the skills of collectivity. Groups suited me; quick-fire combative talk was something I had practised around the dining-room table from my earliest years. With well-trained energy I engaged in the very noisy, highly verbal student political life of the time – the noisy articulacy of the socialist left and then the emerging verbal culture of early feminism. In an odd way it was like all the good things and none of the bad ones from my own childhood. To speak out, to tell aloud, to break the silence (and, to be honest, to shout down the opposition) was not only permissible – it was virtuous, if not compulsory. In 1972 I had my first short stories published; I got married and I got pregnant. My husband was an American from upstate New York; he came to Oxford on a scholarship and stayed. By the time we got married he was a trainee Anglican vicar of the extreme Catholic persuasion – high church and high camp went together in those happier days. In the early seventies the best of the adherents of Anglo-Catholicism were all so funny, so witty and so quick, self-mocking, heavily ironic and we all loved talking. While he was training my husband invited a new friend to supper one night; the friend, nervous about dining with a heavily pregnant feminist intellectual, asked someone what we were like. ‘Don’t worry,’ said this mutual friend, ‘they all talk at the same time, very loudly; so you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’ So then I was an Anglo-Catholic socialist feminist. Perhaps the only thing that holds these two together is that they are both very noisy things to be. I quickly extended the din range, though; I became a vicar’s wife and a mother. A vicarage is the least quiet place imaginable – a house that is never your own and never empty or silent. My daughter was born in 1973. Looking back now, I know that my first experiences of positive nourishing silence were her night feeds. My husband’s great-grandfather was a carpenter – he had made furniture and when we got married my parents-in-law had sent from America the most exquisite New England four-poster bed made of bird’s eye maple with golden candy-twist posts. In the soft darkness of the pre-dawn, propped up in this beautiful bed, with my beautiful daughter contentedly dozing, I encountered a new sort of joy. From where I am now this does not surprise me, because that relationship between mother and child is one of the oldest and most enduring images of silence in Western culture. In about 2000 BCE one of the psalmists wrote: I have set my soul in silence and in peace, As the weaned child on its mother’s breast so even is my soul. 2 Four thousand years later Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, wrote, in a totally different context, almost exactly the same thing: that the capacity to be alone, to enjoy solitude in adult life, originates with the child’s experience of being alone in the presence of the mother . He postulates a state in which the child’s immediate needs – for food, warmth, contact etc. – have been satisfied, so there is no need for the baby to be looking to the mother for anything nor any need for her to be concerned with providing anything; they are together, at peace, in silence. Both the ancient poet and the contemporary analyst focus on the child here – but as a mother I would say there is a full mutuality in the moment. I remember it with an almost heartbreaking clarity. Some of it is simply physical – a full and contented baby falling asleep at the empty and contented breast. But even so I now think that those sweet dawns, when it turned from dark to pale night, and we drifted back into our own separate selves without wrench or loss, were the starting point of my journey into silence. I am a bit curious that it is the night feed, rather than any of the other times the ‘weaned child’ lies in the mother’s arms, with its wide eyes somehow joyously unfocused. There is something about the dark itself, and the quiet of the world, even in cities, at that strange time before the dawn, but also I suspect that physical tiredness enhances the sensation. More particularly, you are awake to experience it solely and only because you are experiencing it. If the feeding were not happening you would almost certainly be asleep, be absent from consciousness in a very real way. This is not true during daytime feeds, but here, in the fading night, there is nothing else to do save be present. The dark, the ‘time out of time’ and the quiet of night are fixed in my memory along with the density of that particular silent joy. At the time I did not recognise it for what it was, but I now know that it was an encounter with positive silence, in an unexpected place. For the most part the experience of having small children is not silent. Meanwhile I was in the process of becoming a writer; more words, more word games. More noise. It is easy to think of writers as living silent lives, but on the whole we don’t; when we are writing we usually work alone and usually with great concentration and intensity – but no one writes all the time. Perhaps as a relief from that intensity there is a tendency, at least among younger writers, to seek out people and activities. Anyway it was the seventies; feminist writers were engaged in demystifying our work, opening it up and talking about it. Everyone was in a Writers’ Group. I was in a wonderful Writers’ Group – with Michelene Wandor, Zoe Fairbairns, Valerie Miner and Michele Roberts. We wrote a collective book and we talked and talked and talked. I liked my noisy life. All that talking. All my life I have talked and talked. I love talking. I used to say that if I were ever in Who’s Who I would put down deipnosophy as my hobby. Deipnosophy means the ‘love of, or skill of, dinner-table conversation’ (from the Greek deipnos – dinner). I have always loved this word and I loved the thing itself. I’ve been lucky enough to know some of the great deipnosophists of my times. It is hard to think of a less silent life. It was – and this is important to me – an extremely happy life. I achieved almost all the personal ambitions I started out with. I am a published writer of the sorts of books I want to write and believe in: I have written five novels, including Daughter of Jerusalem , which, with Michèle Robert’s first novel, Piece of the Night, was credited with being the UK’s first ‘feminist novel’ and which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1979. I have also written a range of non-fiction books and, perhaps most important to me, I have produced a long steady line of short stories. I made a living doing freelance things I liked to do. I had two extraordinary and beautiful children with whom I get on very well. I felt respected and useful and satisfied. I do not regret any of it. This does matter. When things changed and I started not just to be more silent, but also to love silence and want to understand it and hunt it down, both in practice and in theory, I did not feel I was running away from anything. On the contrary, I wanted more . I had it all and it was not enough. Silence is additional to, not a rejection of, sociability and friends and periods of deep emotional and professional satisfaction. I have been lucky, or graced; in a deep sense, as I shall describe, I feel that silence sought me out rather than the other way round. For nearly twenty years I had a marvellous life. Then, at the very end of the 1980s, for reasons I have not fully worked out yet, that well ran dry. My marriage disintegrated. Thatcherism was very ugly. It was not just the defeat of old hopes, but in the impoverished East End of London where my husband had his parish it was visibly creating fragmentation and misery. There was a real retreat from the edge, in personal relationships, in progressive movements of all kinds and in publishing. Anglo-Catholicism ceased to be fun ; and became instead increasingly bitter, misogynistic and right-wing; we stopped laughing, and a religion where you cannot laugh at yourself is a joyless, destructive thing. As a writer I ran out of steam. I lost my simple conviction that stories , narrative itself, could provide a direct way forward in what felt like a cultural impasse. I also went through a curious experience – a phase of extremely vivid and florid ‘voice hearing’, or auditory hallucinations. Although such experiences are commonly held to be symptoms of psychosis, and often form a central part of a diagnosis of so-called ‘schizophrenia’, this does not seem to me to describe the experience fully. I continued to carry on with my life. I found the content of these voices more absorbing and engaging than tormenting, and they certainly never urged hideous actions upon me. They were very distinct, however, and belonged to individuals, mainly drawn from fairy stories – a ‘lost little girl’, a dwarf, a sort of cat-monster. The most threatening were a sort of collective voice which I called the Godfathers and who seemed to represent a kind of internalised patriarchy, offering rewards for ‘good’ or punishments for ‘bad’ behaviour. I am still uncertain how much they were connected to the death of my real father in 1982, just a few months after my son was born and named after my father. When they were at their most garrulous there was a genuine conflict between my normal noisy lifestyle and listening to them and attempting to explore and understand what they were saying. There was an additional problem; inasmuch as they gave me any ‘instructions’ at all, these were about not telling anyone about them. This meant the rather novel experience of having something important going on in my life that I did not talk about. The worst aspect of all this was the fear, indeed the terror, that I might be going mad. It was the normal cultural response to the voices that was the most disturbing aspect; otherwise and in retrospect they gave me a good deal of fictional material, some interesting things to think about and an awareness that there was something somewhat awry in my life. In the early years of the 1990s I began to make changes in how I lived. I became a Roman Catholic, escaping from the increasing strains of high Anglicanism without losing the sacraments, the richness of ritual and the core of faith. I bought a house in Warkton, a tiny village just outside Kettering in Northamptonshire. It was the chocolate-box dream of a cottage in the country – very old with low-beamed ceilings and a thatched roof. At that point I did not seriously think that my marriage was ending. We bought the house jointly. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. My husband’s tenure in the Church of England was looking shakier by the day and it seemed reasonable for us to have a house to live in if or when he no longer had a vicarage. Whatever the intention, the reality was very soon that I lived in the house in Kettering and he lived in the vicarage. Then something unexpected happened. My son decided that he wanted to stay at his school in London. (This did not last long, actually – when he had finished his GCSEs, he came to Kettering to do his A levels and we had an extraordinarily happy two years together there. I don’t think he has quite forgiven me yet for selling that sweet house and moving north.) Although he came to Kettering almost every weekend, I was suddenly, and without exactly planning it, living on my own for the first time in my life. Sometimes one’s subconscious plays subtle tricks on one. To be honest I went to Warkton in a bit of a sulk. It was supposed to be a noble way of supporting my husband – he needed more space, but he also needed no ‘scandal’. He was part of a group who wanted to become Roman Catholic priests despite being married. A small group of ex-Anglican clergy did in fact pull this off. But while Cardinal Hume was extending the tradition in every way he could manage on their behalf, clearly divorce, or even formal separation, was not going to be taken on board. An agreeable flat in London was not going to pass muster; a charming cottage in the country was much more acceptable. In many ways I felt that this was very thoughtful and kindly of me. I am not sure at that point I would have been up to doing it at all if I had thought how much it would change the trajectory of my life. Too much seemed to be changing too quickly. The entirely unexpected thing was that I loved it. It is quite hard in retrospect to remember which came first – the freedom of solitude or the energy of silence. If you live alone you have particular freedom: when I first moved into the cottage it needed redecorating and I found myself choosing very deep rich colours. Someone commented on how different this was from all the houses I had lived in before, and I was slightly startled to realise how much of my domestic tastes had been a compromise between my preferences and my household’s. (It amuses me still to see how different my house and my husband’s house both are from the houses that we shared.) Food was another freedom; to eat what you want, when you want it, is a significant freedom after years of catering for a busy household with all the managing, compromises, effort and responsibility. These are little daily things, but they add up. Suddenly the amount of time in the day expanded, and there was freedom and space and choice. I became less driven, more reflective and a great deal less frenetic. And into that space flowed silence: I would go out into the garden at night or in the early morning and just look and listen; there were stars, weather, seasons, growth and repetition. For the first time in my life I noticed the gradation of colours before sunrise – from indigo through apricot to a lapidary blueness. One morning very early I was outside and heard a strange noise, a sort of high-pitched series of squeaky protests. It was not a loud noise; I would not have heard it, even if it had occurred, in anything except the silence of a rural dawn. Suddenly something resembling an oversized bumblebee whirred past barely a metre from my face and crashed into the crab apple tree; then after a pause another one, and another. They were five baby blue-tits leaving their nest in the shed wall for the first time, free and flying, however clumsily, into the early sunshine. It was a privilege of solitude and a gift of silence. For me, from the beginning, silence and solitude have been very closely linked. I know that this is not true for everyone – there are people who love solitude, who spend enormous amounts of time alone, without having any sense of themselves as silent – who have, for example, music or even television on a great deal of the time and who go, in happy solitude, to social or public events – to concerts, plays, films, sporting events and to the pub. Equally there are individuals whose silence is happily communal – you sometimes see this with couples, who need and enjoy to have their partner in the house but whose relationship for long periods of time seems to need no speech to flourish. More deliberately there are the silent religious communities, both Buddhist and Christian, for whom the silence of the people around them enriches their own. But for me personally the two are inextricably entwined. I suspect this is because I am a deeply socialised person; when I am with other people I find it nearly impossible not to be aware of them, and that awareness breaks up the silence. I worry occasionally that this may have something to do with the thinness of my sense of self, which can be so easily overwhelmed by others. But for whatever reasons, I cannot properly separate the two and I have noticed that I tend to use the words almost indiscriminately, so that the phrase ‘silence and solitude’ can be almost tautological; they both refer to that space in which both the social self and the ego dissolve into a kind of hyper awareness where sound, and particularly language, gets in the way. This was space that I was coming to love. It took a little while to realise how much I loved it. It was not a sudden plunge into solitude and silence; it was a gradual shifting of gears, a gentle movement towards a new way of living that gave me an increasing deep satisfaction. I still wonder what created that profound change in me. I honestly do not think I had been suppressing a deep desire for solitude or a need for silence for a long time; I still feel it was something new. Change. The change. I think perhaps that it really does have something to do with menopause. I am by no means the first woman to shift her life in her mid forties and create a new sort of space for herself. In 1993, quite soon after I moved to Warkton, Joanna Golds-worthy asked me to contribute an essay to her forthcoming Virago collection, A Certain Age . At first I said I was too young – indeed, I did not finally stop menstruating for another ten years – but when I thought about it I became aware that there were changes going on – not just the ones I have been describing but more physical basic things. I had always enjoyed a textbook twenty-eight-day menstrual cycle; between 5 and 10 a.m. every fourth Friday I would start to bleed; I would bleed for five days and that would be it. Now that was getting bumpier, I could no longer count on the timing and instead I had backaches, bad-tempered fits and mild cramps. I, who had never shaved my legs or underarms on high feminist principle, was having to think about how I felt about the faint but real moustache that adorned my upper lip. I started to get hangovers and the occasional hot flush. There are so few clues. No one wants to talk about it. We live in a culture that is terrified of the process of ageing, and in which women are encouraged to take artificial hormones so that they do not enter into this magical condition. But it is not just a modern phenomenon. Middle-aged and menopausal women are conspicuously absent from most myths and traditional stories: first you are the princess and the mother, then you vanish and reappear as aged crone. Even psychoanalysts throw up their hands in despair; at menopause women move beyond their help and good management. Helene Deutsch gives a particularly brutal, but not atypical, analysis of her own helplessness: Successful psychotherapy in the climacterium is made difficult because usually there is little one can offer the patient as a substitute for the fantasy gratifications. There is a large element of real fear behind the neurotic anxiety, for reality has actually become poor in prospects and resignation without compensations is often the only solution. 3 Probably the suggestion that such women might like to go and live alone and experiment with silence would not come comfortably to a proponent of ‘talking therapies’. Unfortunately there is such a taboo around menopause, and such a wide range of ages at which it takes place in individual women, that it is hard to tell whether a turn to silence and solitude might be connected with this life event. There is, however, an interesting group of women saints, who lived highly active lives ‘in the world’ and then in their forties took a mystical path, joining religious orders often of considerable austerity or becoming recluses. Hilda of Whitby did not become a nun until she was middle-aged; Bridget of Sweden was married, had eight children and was a lady-in-waiting to the queen before she started to experience her visions; she became a nun and founded her new community when she was in her forties. Although Teresa of Avila became a nun at twenty, she had what she called her ‘interior conversion’, which opened the way for her visionary experiences, in 1555 and in 1562 she began her reform movement, moving her order (the Carmelites) back towards greater silence. So I am tempted to believe that there is something significant in this passage for women at least. As I became more interested in silence I became intrigued by the negative silence and secrecy that has made menopause almost inaudible culturally – except occasionally, like Sarah or Elizabeth in the Bible, where the restrictions or freedoms of menopause are miraculously overcome by the direct intervention of God. Throughout the 1990s I wrote a series of short stories about menopausal women, refinding them in old tales and inventing new ones. 4 A lot of these, old and new, are about women making unexpected changes in their lives, opening up their imaginations and finding a new self-sufficiency. They are also stories deeply imbued with the countryside, and the rhythms of seasons and growth. While I was researching for these stories I learned a strange and beautiful thing. Birds have hollow bones – their bones are not solid like mammals’ bones, like human bones, but are filled with air pockets, a bit like bubble-wrap only less regular. (This is why when you pick up a dead bird it feels so insubstantial in your hand, unlike, say a mouse.) This is a deft evolutionary development – archaeopteryx, the earliest winged dinosaur, had feathers but solid bones – to make flying easier for them. At menopause women’s bones thin out and fill with air pockets – in acute osteoporosis, under a microscope they are almost indistinguishable from birds’ bones: at menopause women can learn to fly as free as a bird. 5 Oddly enough, in my own fiction, flying – dragons, witches, birds and angels – has often appeared as an image of women’s freedom, so this discovery was especially delightful. When I look back at those stories now I cannot help but sense that something new and happy was going on for me over these years. Perhaps not surprisingly, parallel with this I discovered the silent joy of gardening. In my childhood gardening, which meant almost entirely kitchen gardening – fruit and vegetables – had been a chore, an unending series of household tasks in which we had all been required to participate; needless to say we did this in a highly organised team spirit and it had never seemed to me like a pleasure or a source of contemplative serenity. My husband had a lovely garden at the East End vicarage, but it was always very definitely his garden; I felt no jealousy and was happy for him both to make the decisions and to do the work. The garden behind my cottage in Warkton was my garden. Everyone should have her first garden on Northamptonshire loam – it is so encouraging: you stick in a spade and it cuts into this rich, fertile, dark soil, never too dry and never boggy, with few stones and a generous well-balanced nature. Everything grows fast and strong. And of course it grows silently. In our noise-obsessed culture it is very easy to forget just how many of the major physical forces on which we depend are silent – gravity, electricity, light, tides, the unseen and unheard spinning of the whole cosmos. The earth spins, it spins fast. It spins about its own axis at about 1,700 kilometres per hour (at the Equator); it orbits the sun at 107,218 kilometres per hour. And the whole solar system spins through the spinning galaxy at speeds I hardly dare to think about. The earth’s atmosphere spins with it, which is why we do not feel it spinning. It all happens silently. Organic growth is silent too. Cells divide, sap flows, bacteria multiply, energy runs thrilling through the earth, but without a murmur. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ 6 is a silent force. Soil, that very topmost skin coating, is called earth and the planet itself is called earth. It is all alive – pounding, heaving, thrusting. Microscopic fungi spores grow, lift pavements and fell houses. We hear the crack of the pavements and the crash of the buildings – such human artefacts are inevitably noisy – but the fungus itself grows silently. Perhaps we are wise to be terrified of silence – it is the terror that destroyeth in the noontide. Gardening puts me in contact with all this silent energy; gardeners become active partners in all that silent growth. I do not make it happen, but I share in it happening. The earth works its way under my nails and into my fingerprints, and a gardener has to pay attention to the immediate now of things. In one’s own garden one must not be caught unawares – a single sprout of couch grass can grow five miles of roots in a year, while lurking silently behind the delphiniums, which are growing less extravagantly but just as determinedly in the opposite direction: up, up, upwards, and creating a magnificence of blue as though they were pulling the sky down to them. I have to pay attention to that silence. In Warkton for the first time a garden became precious to me – it became an occupation, a resource and also my first glimpse that there might be art forms that I could practise which were not made out of words. Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not ‘in silence’ but with silence – it was a silent creativity. The garden itself, through that silent growth, put in more creative energy than I did; it grew silently but not unintelligently. I started to think about gardens; not so much about gardening, which I see as a technical skill like spelling is for writers, but about gardens themselves. This meant looking at other people’s gardens and reading about the history of gardens. To my surprise, because he is usually criticised among feminists for his rationalist philosophy and his desire to ‘manage’ and control nature, I found myself deeply in tune with the Renaissance figure Francis Bacon, who made himself three notable gardens and also wrote Of Gardens (1625), a personal and individual essay about beauty and taste, and Sylva sylvarum (published after his death in 1626) in which sections 5 and 6 are devoted to his ideas about gardening. Although ac	665,536
Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey) (Z-Library).epub	Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness Contents Author’s Introduction The First Morning Solitaire The Serpents of Paradise Cliffrose and Bayonets Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks Rocks Cowboys and Indians Cowboys and Indians Part II Water The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud The Moon-Eyed Horse Down the River Havasu The Dead Man at Grandview Point Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert Episodes and Visions Terra Incognita: Into the Maze Bedrock and Paradox Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness COWBOYS AND INDIANS PART II There are lonely hours. How can I deny it? There are times when solitaire becomes solitary, an entirely different game, a prison term, and the inside of the skull as confining and unbearable as the interior of the housetrailer on a hot day. To escape both, I live more and more in the out-of-doors. First I built the fireplace on a level bench of sandstone about fifty yards to the rear of the trailer. I dragged the wooden picnic table close to the fireplace and this became my office and dining room. Next I built a ramada or sunshelter over both. The ramada is a simple affair: four upright posts about ten feet tall tied and braced with crosspoles and supporting a thatched roof of juniper branches, which keeps out the sunlight but lets smoke and heat filter up through. There are of course no walls to this structure. The floor is sandstone, swept clean by the winds, with a couple of wild shrubs—cliffrose and blackbush—growing in one corner. The windbells and the red bandana, my private flag, hang from the projecting end of one of the crosspoles. Finally I set up a cot near the ramada—not under it—and my home without walls was complete. I can sleep at night with nothing but space between me and the stars, comforted in the knowledge that I am not likely to miss anything important up there. The housetrailer serves now chiefly as storage place and kitchen. Although I sometimes cook at the fireplace outside, it is certainly easier to use the gas stove in the trailer, despite the heat. When the meal is ready I carry it out to the picnic table under the ramada and eat it there. The refrigerator, too, is a useful machine. Not indispensable but useful. It is in fact one of the few positive contributions of scientific technology to civilization and I am grateful for it. Raised in the backwoods of the Allegheny Mountains, I remember clearly how we used to chop blocks of ice out of Crooked Creek, haul them with team and wagon about a mile up the hill to the farmhouse and store them away in sawdust for use in the summer. Every time I drop a couple of ice cubes into a glass I think with favor of all the iron and coal miners, bargemen, railroaders, steelworkers, technicians, designers, factory assemblers, wholesalers, truckdrivers and retailers who have combined their labors (often quite taxing) to provide me with this simple but pleasant convenience, without which the highball or the Cuba libre would be poor things indeed. Once the drink is mixed, however, I always go outside , out in the light and the air and the space and the breeze, to enjoy it. Making the best of both worlds, that’s the thing. But how, you might ask, does living outdoors on the terrace enable me to escape that other form of isolation, the solitary confinement of the mind? For there are the bad moments, or were, especially at the beginning of my life here, when I would sit down at the table for supper inside the housetrailer and discover with a sudden shock that I was alone. There was nobody, nobody at all, on the other side of the table. Alone-ness became loneliness and the sensation was strong enough to remind me (how could I have forgotten?) that the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society. By society I do not mean the roar of city streets or the cultured and cultural talk of the schoolmen (reach for your revolver!) or human life in general. I mean the society of a friend or friends or a good, friendly woman. Strange as it might seem, I found that eating my supper out back made a difference. Inside the trailer, surrounded by the artifacture of America, I was reminded insistently of all that I had, for a season, left behind; the plywood walls and the dusty venetian blinds and the light bulbs and the smell of butane made me think of Albuquerque. But taking my meal outside by the burning juniper in the fireplace with more desert and mountains than I could explore in a lifetime open to view, I was invited to contemplate a far larger world, one which extends into a past and into a future without any limits known to the human kind. By taking off my shoes and digging my toes in the sand I made contact with that larger world—an exhilarating feeling which leads to equanimity. Certainly I was still by myself, so to speak—there were no other people around and there still are none—but in the midst of such a grand tableau it was impossible to give full and serious consideration to Albuquerque. All that is human melted with the sky and faded out beyond the mountains and I felt, as I feel—is it a paradox?—that a man can never find or need better companionship than that of himself. As for the “solitary confinement of the mind,” my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for the brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he’s a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic. In the evenings after work I sit at the table outside and watch the sky condensing in the form of twilight over the desert. I am alone but loneliness has passed like a shadow, has come and is gone. I hear the mutter of the flames in the fireplace, eating wood. Far away to the south I can see the headlights of a car or truck approaching Moab. It is so far away, that merged point of light, that unless you watch it steadily you will not perceive that it is in motion; relative to the distance the light moves as the stars move or about as fast as the sun fades from the sky or the fire consumes the log. I am not alone. From the vicinity of Balanced Rock comes the cry of the great horned owl. Suppertime, for the owl. The mice, squirrels, gophers, rabbits know what I mean. What is he up to? Rather than hunt for his supper the owl seems to be calling his supper to come to him. He calls again and again, always from the same place, not moving, in a voice which seems to come from not one spot alone but—anywhere. A war of nerves. His nervous, timorous prey, terribly insecure, hear that cry and tremble. Where exactly is the owl? Perhaps the next shrub, the next rock, would offer better concealment than this. They hesitate. The great horned owl cries again and a rabbit breaks, dashes for what might be a better place, revealing his position. Quiet as a moth the owl swoops down. The horned owl may be the natural enemy of the rabbit but surely the rabbit is the natural friend of the horned owl. The rabbit feeds the owl. One can imagine easily the fondness, the sympathy, the genuine affection with which the owl regards the rabbit before rending it into edible portions. Is the affection reciprocated? In that moment of truce, of utter surrender, when the rabbit still alive offers no resistance but only waits, is it possible that the rabbit also loves the owl? We know that the condemned man, at the end, does not resist but submits passively, almost gratefully, to the instruments of his executioner. We have seen millions march without a whimper of protest into an inferno. Is it love? Or only teamwork again—good sportsmanship? Fear betrays the rabbit to the great horned owl. Fear does the hard work, making the owl’s job easy. After a lifetime of dread it is more than likely that the rabbit yields to the owl during that last moment with a sense of gratitude, as pleased to be eaten—finally!—as the owl is to eat. For the one a consummation, for the other fulfillment. How can we speak of natural enemies in such a well organized system of operations and procedures? All the time, everywhere, something or someone is dying to please. The great horned owl calls again, once or twice every few minutes, concerned but not anxious. Supper will come. A few bats flicker through the air near the ramada making tiny clicking noises—sonar. There is no moon tonight. Stars appear one by one, forming incomplete constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius and the Big Dipper. Like a solitary diamond Venus glows on the soft flare in the west, following the sun. Thou fair-haired angel of the evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown Put on, and smile upon our evening bed. Smile on our loves.… In the mixture of starlight and cloud-reflected sunlight in which the desert world is now illuminated, each single object stands forth in preternatural though transient brilliance, a final assertion of existence before the coming of night: each rock and shrub and tree, each flower, each stem of grass, diverse and separate, vividly isolate, yet joined each to every other in a unity which generously includes me and my solitude as well. Or so it seems at the moment, as my fire dies to a twist of smoke and a heap of rubies, and for a moment I think I’ve almost caught a falling star: there is no mystery; there is only paradox, the incontrovertible union of contradictory truths. A falling star which melts into vapor as I grasp it, which flows through my fingers like water, like smoke. What about the Indians? There are no Indians in the Arches country now; they all left seven hundred years ago and won’t be back for a long time. But here as elsewhere in the canyonlands they left a record of their passage. Near springs and under overhanging cliffs, good camping spots, you may find chipping grounds scattered with hundreds of fragments of flint or chert where the Anasazi hunters worked their arrowpoints. You may find shards of pottery. At other places you will see their writing on the canyon walls—the petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are carved in the rock; pictographs are painted on the rock. Whether in one form or the other they consist of representations of birds, snakes, deer and many other animals, of human, semihuman and superhuman figures, and of designs purely abstract or symbolic. In some places you find only petroglyphs, in other places only pictographs, in some places both. The explicitly representational often comes side by side with the highly abstract. In style the inscriptions and paintings range from the crude and simple to the elegant, sophisticated and subtle. They seem to include the work of different cultures and a great extent of time: on a wall of rock near Turnbow Cabin is pictured a man on horseback, which must have been made after the arrival of the Spanish in North America; on another rock wall a few miles southwest of Moab is the petroglyph of what appears to be a mastodon—a beast supposedly extinct more than twenty thousand years ago. Whether crude or elegant, representational or abstract, very old or relatively new, all of the work was done in a manner pleasing to contemporary taste, with its vogue for the stylized and primitive. The ancient canyon art of Utah belongs in that same international museum without walls which makes African sculpture, Melanesian masks, and the junkyards of New Jersey equally interesting—those voices of silence which speak to us in the first world language. As for the technical competence of the artists, its measure is apparent in the fact that these pictographs and petroglyphs though exposed to the attack of wind, sand, rain, heat, cold and sunlight for centuries still survive vivid and clear. How much of the painting and sculpture being done in America today will last—in the merely physical sense—for even a half-century? The pictures (to substitute one term for the petroglyph-pictograph combination) are found on flat surfaces along the canyon walls, often at heights now inaccessible to a man on foot. (Because of erosion.) They usually appear in crowded clusters, with figures of a later date sometimes superimposed on those of an earlier time. There is no indication that the men who carved and painted the figures made any attempt to compose them into coherent murals; the endless variety of style, subject and scale suggests the work of many individuals from different times and places who for one reason or another came by, stopped, camped for days or weeks and left a sign of their passing on the rock. What particular meaning, if any, have these pictures on the canyon walls? No one has a definite answer to that question but several possible explanations come to mind when you see them, in their strange and isolated settings, for the first time. They could be the merest doodling—that is an easy first impression. Yet there’s quite a difference between scribbling on paper and on sandstone. As anyone knows who has tried to carve his name in rock, the task requires persistence, patience, determination and skill. Imagine the effort required to inscribe, say, the figure of a dancer, with no tool but a flint chisel and in such a way as to make it last five hundred years. Perhaps these stone walls served as community bulletin boards, a form of historical record-keeping, a “newspaper rock” whereon individuals carved and painted their clan or totemic signatures. Or the frequently repeated figures of deer, beaver, bighorn sheep and other animals might represent the story of successful hunting parties. While many of the pictures may have had for their makers a religious or ceremonial significance, others look like apparitions out of bad dreams. In this category belong the semihuman and superhuman beings with horned heads, immensely broad shoulders, short limbs and massive bodies that taper down to attenuated legs. Some of them have no legs at all but seem to rise ghostlike out of nothing, floating on air. These are sinister and supernatural figures, gods from the underworld perhaps, who hover in space, or dance, or stand solidly planted on two feet carrying weapons—a club or sword. Most are faceless but some stare back at you with large, hollow, disquieting eyes. Demonic shapes, they might have meant protection and benevolence to their creators and a threat to strangers: Beware, traveler. You are approaching the land of the horned gods.… Whatever their original intention, the long-dead artists and hunters confront us across the centuries with the poignant sign of their humanity. I was here, says the artist. We were here, say the hunters. One other thing is certain. The pre-Columbian Indians of the Southwest, whether hunting, making arrowpoints, going on salt-gathering expeditions or otherwise engaged, clearly enjoyed plenty of leisure time. This speaks well of the food-gathering economy and also of its culture, which encouraged the Indians to employ their freedom in the creation and sharing of a durable art. Unburdened by the necessity of devoting most of their lives to the production, distribution, sale and servicing of labor-saving machinery, lacking proper recreational facilities, these primitive savages were free to do that which comes as naturally to men as making love—making graven images. But now they are gone, some six or seven hundred years later, though not as a race extinguished: their descendants survive in the Hopi, Zuñi and other Pueblo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. What drove the ancient ones out of the canyonlands? Marauding enemies? Drouth and starvation? Disease? The fear born of nightmares, the nightmares that rise from fear? A combination of these and other causes? The old people have left no record of disaster on the mural walls of the canyons; we can do no more than make educated guesses based on what is known about climatic changes, tribal warfare and Indian village life in the Southwest. Their departure from the high plateau country may have been gradual, an emigration spread out over many years, or it may in some places have been a sudden, panicky flight. In almost all of the cliff dwellings valuable property was abandoned—arrowheads, pottery, seed corn, sandals, turquoise and coral jewelry—which suggests that something happened which impelled the inhabitants to leave in a great hurry. But other explanations are possible. Personal property would have been buried with the dead, to be later dug up by pillagers and animals or exposed by erosion. Or the departing Indians, having no domesticated animals except dogs, may simply have been unable to carry away all of their possessions. Or the abandoned articles may have been under a curse, associated with disease and death. Today, outside the canyon country and particularly in Arizona and New Mexico, the Indians are making a great numerical comeback, outbreeding the white man by a ratio of three to two. The population of the Navajo tribe to take the most startling example has increased from approximately 9500 in 1865 to about 90,000 a century later—a multiplication almost tenfold in only three generations. The increase is the indirect result of the white man’s medical science as introduced on the Navajo reservation, which greatly reduced the infant mortality rate and thereby made possible such formidable fecundity. This happened despite the fact that infant mortality rates among the Indians are still much higher than among the American population as a whole. Are the Navajos grateful? They are not. To be poor is bad enough; to be poor and multiplying is worse. In the case of the Navajo the effects of uncontrolled population growth are vividly apparent. The population, though ten times greater than a century ago, must still exist on a reservation no bigger now than it was then. In a pastoral economy based on sheep, goats and horses the inevitable result, as any child could have foreseen, was severe overgrazing and the transformation of the range—poor enough to start with—from a semiarid grassland to an eroded waste of blowsand and nettles. In other words the land available to the Navajos not only failed to expand in proportion to their growing numbers; it has actually diminished in productive capacity. In order to survive, more and more of the Navajos, or The People as they used to call themselves, are forced off the reservation and into rural slums along the major highways and into the urban slums of the white man’s towns which surround the reservation. Here we find them today doing the best they can as laborers, gas station attendants, motel maids and dependents of the public welfare system. They are the Negroes of the Southwest—red black men. Like their cousins in the big cities they turn for solace, quite naturally, to alcohol and drugs; the peyote cult in particular grows in popularity under the name of The Native American Church. Unequipped to hold their own in the ferociously competitive world of White America, in which even the language is foreign to them, the Navajos sink ever deeper into the culture of poverty, exhibiting all of the usual and well-known symptoms: squalor, unemployment or irregular and ill-paid employment, broken families, disease, prostitution, crime, alcoholism, lack of education, too many children, apathy and demoralization, and various forms of mental illness, including evangelical Protestantism. Whether in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the barrios of Caracas, the ghettos of Newark, the mining towns of West Virginia or the tarpaper villages of Gallup, Flagstaff and Shiprock, it’s the same the world over—one big wretched family sequestered in sullen desperation, pawed over by social workers, kicked around by the cops and prayed over by the missionaries. There are interesting differences, of course, both in kind and degree between the plight of the Navajo Indians and that of their brothers-in-poverty around the world. For one thing the Navajos have the B.I.A. looking after them—the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The B.I.A. like everything else is a mixture of good and bad, with policies that change and budgets that fluctuate with every power shift in Washington, but its general aim over the long run has been to change Indians into white men, a process called “assimilation.” In pursuit of this end the little Indians are herded into schools on and off the reservation where, under the tutelage of teachers recruited by the B.I.A. from Negro colleges deep in the Bible Belt, the Navajo children learn to speak American with a Southern accent. The B.I.A., together with medical missions set up by various churches, also supplies the Navajos with basic medical services, inadequate by national standards but sufficient nevertheless to encourage the extravagant population growth which is the chief cause, though not the only cause, of the Navajos’ troubles. A second important difference in the situation of the Navajo Indians from that of others sunk in poverty is that the Navajos still have a home of their own—the reservation, collective property of the tribe as a whole. The land is worn out, barren, eroded, hopelessly unsuited to support a heavy human population but even so, however poor in economic terms, it provides the Navajo people with a firm base on earth, the possibility of a better future and for the individual Navajo in exile a place where, when he has to go back there, they have to take him in. Where they would not think of doing otherwise. Poor as the land is it still attracts the avarice of certain whites in neighboring areas who can see in it the opportunity for profit if only the present occupants are removed. Since the land belongs to the tribe no individual within the tribe is legally empowered to sell any portion of it. Periodic attempts are made, therefore, by false friends of the Navajos, to have the reservation broken up under the guise of granting the Indians “property rights” so that they will be “free” to sell their only tangible possession—the land—to outsiders. So far the tribe has been wise enough to resist this pressure and so long as it continues to do so The People will never be completely separated from their homeland. Retaining ownership of their land, the Navajos have been able to take maximum advantage through their fairly coherent and democratic tribal organization of the modest mineral resources which have been found within the reservation. The royalties from the sale of oil, uranium, coal and natural gas, while hardly enough to relieve the Indians’ general poverty, have enabled them to develop a tribal timber business, to provide a few college scholarships for the brainiest (not necessarily the best) of their young people, to build community centers and finance an annual tribal fair (a source of much enjoyment to The People), and to drill a useful number of water wells for the benefit of the old sheep and goat raising families still hanging on in the backlands. The money is also used to support the small middle class of officials and functionaries which tribal organization has created, and to pay the costs of a tribal police force complete with uniforms, guns, patrol cars and two-way radios. These unnecessary evils reflect the influence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the desire on the part of the more ambitious Navajos to imitate as closely as they can the pattern of the white man’s culture which surrounds them, a typical and understandable reaction. Despite such minor failures the Navajos as a tribe have made good use of what little monetary income they have. It is not entirely their fault if the need remains far greater than tribal resources can satisfy. Meanwhile the tribal population continues to grow in geometric progression: 2… 4… 8… 16… 32… 64, etc., onward and upward, as the majority of The People settle more deeply into the second-class way of life, American style, to which they are fairly accustomed, with all of its advantages and disadvantages: the visiting caseworker from the welfare department, the relief check, the derelict automobiles upside down on the front yard, the tarpaper shack next to the hogan and ramada, the repossessed TV set, the confused adolescents, and the wine bottles in the kitchen midden. Various solutions are proposed: industrialization; tourism; massive federal aid; better education for the Navajo children; relocation; birth control; child subsidies; guaranteed annual income; four lane highways; moral rearmament. None of these proposals are entirely devoid of merit and at least one of them—birth control—is obviously essential though not in itself sufficient if poverty is to be alleviated among the Navajo Indians. As for the remainder, they are simply the usual banal, unimaginative if well-intentioned proposals made everywhere, over and over again, in reply to the demand for a solution to the national and international miseries of mankind. As such they fail to take into account what is unique and valuable in the Navajo’s traditional way of life and ignore altogether the possibility that the Navajo may have as much to teach the white man as the white man has to teach the Navajo. Industrialization, for example. Even if the reservation could attract and sustain large-scale industry heavy or light, which it cannot, what have the Navajos to gain by becoming factory hands, lab technicians and office clerks? The Navajos are people , not personnel ; nothing in their nature or tradition has prepared them to adapt to the regimentation of application forms and time clock. To force them into the machine would require a Procrustean mutilation of their basic humanity. Consciously or unconsciously the typical Navajo senses this unfortunate truth, resists the compulsory miseducation offered by the Bureau, hangs on to his malnourished horses and cannibalized automobiles, works when he feels like it and quits when he has enough money for a party or the down payment on a new pickup. He fulfills other obligations by getting his wife and kids installed securely on the public welfare rolls. Are we to condemn him for this? Caught in a no-man’s-land between two worlds the Navajo takes what advantage he can of the white man’s system—the radio, the pickup truck, the welfare—while clinging to the liberty and dignity of his old way of life. Such a man would rather lie drunk in the gutters of Gallup, New Mexico, a disgrace to his tribe and his race, than button on a clean white shirt and spend the best part of his life inside an air-conditioned office building with windows that cannot be opened. Even if he wanted to join the American middle class (and some Indians do wish to join and have done so) the average Navajo suffers from a handicap more severe than skin color, the language barrier or insufficient education: his acquisitive instinct is poorly developed. He lacks the drive to get ahead of his fellows or to figure out ways and means of profiting from other people’s labor. Coming from a tradition which honors sharing and mutual aid above private interest, the Navajo thinks it somehow immoral for one man to prosper while his neighbors go without. If a member of the tribe does break from this pattern, through luck, talent or special training, and finds a niche in the affluent society, he can also expect to find his family and clansmen camping on his patio, hunting in his kitchen, borrowing his car and occupying his bedrooms at any hour of the day or night. Among these people a liberal hospitality is taken for granted and selfishness regarded with horror. Shackled by such primitive attitudes, is it any wonder that the Navajos have not yet been able to get in step with the rest of us? If industrialism per se seems an unlikely answer to the problems of the Navajo (and most of the other tribes) there still remains industrial tourism to be considered. This looks a little more promising, and with the construction of new highways, motels and gas stations the tribe has taken steps to lure tourists into the reservation and relieve them of their dollars. The chief beneficiaries will be the oil and automotive combines far away, but part of the take will remain on the reservation in the form of wages paid to those who change the sheets, do the laundry, pump the gas, serve the meals, wash the dishes, clean the washrooms and pump out the septic tanks—simple tasks for which the Navajos are available and qualified. How much the tourist industry can add to the tribal economy, how many Indians it may eventually employ, are questions not answerable at this time. At best it provides only seasonal work and this on a marginal scale—ask any chambermaid. And whether good or bad in strictly pecuniary terms, industrial tourism exacts a spiritual price from those dependent upon it for their livelihood. The natives must learn to accustom themselves to the spectacle of hordes of wealthy, outlandishly dressed strangers invading their land and their homes. They must learn the automatic smile. They must expect to be gaped at and photographed. They must learn to be quaint, picturesque and photogenic. They must learn that courtesy and hospitality are not simply the customs of any decent society but are rather a special kind of commodity which can be peddled for money. I am not sure that the Navajos can learn these things. For example, the last time I was in Kayenta I witnessed the following incident: One of the old men, one of the old Longhairs with a Mongolian mustache and tall black hat, is standing in the dust and sunlight in front of the Holiday Inn, talking with two of his wives. A big car rolls up—a Buick Behemoth I believe it was, or it may have been a Cadillac Crocodile, a Dodge Dinosaur or a Mercury Mastodon, I’m not sure which—and this lady climbs out of it. She’s wearing golden stretch pants, green eyelids and a hiveshaped head of hair that looks both in color and texture exactly like 25¢ worth of candy cotton. She has a camera in her hands and is aiming it straight at the old Navajo. “Hey!” she says. “Look this way.” He looks, sees the woman, spits softly on the ground and turns his back. Naturally offended, the lady departs without buying even a postcard. But he was an old one. The young are more adaptable and under the pressure to survive may learn to turn tricks for the tourist trade. That, and a few coal mines here and there, and jobs away from the reservation, and more welfare, will enable the Navajos to carry on through the near future. In the long run their economic difficulties can only be solved when and if our society as a whole is willing to make an honest effort to eliminate poverty. By honest effort, as opposed to the current dishonest effort with its emphasis on phoney social services which benefit no one but the professional social workers, I mean a direct confrontation with the two actual basic causes of poverty: (1) too many children and—(here I reveal the secret, the elusive and mysterious key to the whole problem)—(2) too little money. Though simple in formula, the solution will seem drastic and painful in practice. To solve the first part of the problem we may soon have to make birth control compulsory; to solve the second part we will have to borrow from Navajo tradition and begin a more equitable sharing of national income. Politically unpalatable? No doubt. Social justice in this country means social surgery—carving some of the fat off the wide bottom of the American middle class. Navajo poverty can be cured and in one way or the other—through justice or war—it will be cured. It is doubtful, however, that the Navajo way of life, as distinguished from Navajos, can survive. Outnumbered, surrounded and overwhelmed, the Navajos will probably be forced in self-defense to malform themselves into the shape required by industrial econometrics. Red-skinned black men at present, they must learn to become dark-brown white men with credit cards and crew-cut sensibilities. It will not be easy. It will not be easy for the Navajos to forget that once upon a time, only a generation ago, they were horsemen, nomads, keepers of flocks, painters in sand, weavers of wool, artists in silver, dancers, singers of the Yei-bei-chei. But they will have to forget, or at least learn to be ashamed of these old things and to bring them out only for the amusement of tourists. A difficult transitional period. Tough on people. For instance, consider an unfortunate accident which took place only a week ago here in the Arches country. Parallel to the highway north of Moab is a railway, a spur line to the potash mines. At one point close to the road this railway cuts through a hill. The cut is about three hundred feet deep, blasted through solid rock with sides that are as perpendicular as the walls of a building. One afternoon two young Indians—Navajos? Apaches? beardless Utes?—in an old perverted Plymouth came hurtling down the highway, veered suddenly to the right, whizzed through a fence and plunged straight down like helldivers into the Big Cut. Investigating the wreckage we found only the broken bodies, the broken bottles, the stain and smell of Tokay, and a couple of cardboard suitcases exploded open and revealing their former owners’ worldly goods—dirty socks, some underwear, a copy of True West magazine, a comb, three new cowboy shirts from J.C. Penney’s, a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. But nowhere did we see any eagle feathers, any conchos of silver, any buffalo robes, any bows, arrows, medicine pouch or drums. Some Indians. Well… the cowboys have their troubles too. Viviano, old Roy Scobie, they’re finished. Cowboyism rides rampant as never before on a field of golden neon dollar signs but job openings for working cowboys are scarce. The cattlegrowing industry like almost everything else has been mechanized and automated. There was a time and not so very long ago when ranching was a way of life, and a good one. Now it is simply a component of the lab to market food-processing apparatus: you take a steer, drop a hormone tablet in his ear and step back quickly. The steer bloats up suddenly like a poisoned pup and you’ve got two hundred dollars worth of marbled beef on the hoof, waiting for the meat hook. Most of the cowboys I know are out of work or about to lose their jobs or doing something else. My friend Ralph Newcomb studies Sri Aurobindo and Bill Eastlake has sunk to writing novels. Others play the electric guitar, drive trucks, or break their bones with an unpleasant crunching sound on the rodeo circuit. Many are committing slow suicide on skid row (like the Indians) or at best (as Viviano used to do) working overtime in hopes of collecting back pay. While the actual working cowboy disappears, along with the genuine nonworking Indian, the make-believe cowboys flourish and multiply like flies on a pecan pie. Everywhere you see them now, from California to Florida, from Texas to Times Square, crowding the streets in their big white hats, tight pants, flowered shirts, and high-heeled fruity boots. From the rear many of them look like women; many of them are women. Especially in the small towns west of the Mississippi, where cowboyism as a cult grows in direct ratio to the disappearance of cattle-herding as an occupation, you will see the latest, the Mr. and Mrs. Cattleman couple in authentic matching Western costume—the husband with sunburnt nose and belly bulging over a steerhorn buckle heavy enough to kill a horse with, and his wife, a tall tough broad in gabardines and boots with a look on her face that would make a Comanche blanch. But it wasn’t always a fake. I think of Viviano, of old Roy, and of another I knew for a while, Leslie McKee, who was both cowboy and cattleman, since he ran a one-man outfit. His career followed an irregular course; every other year the bank took his little ranch away from him and every other year Leslie managed to get it back. Between ranches he worked at whatever he could find. In his youth—long before asphalt—he had driven the first motor stage between Monticello and Moab, a unique bus line which, according to Les, carried three classes of passengers: first class rode, second class walked, third class pushed. He rode as an extra in the movies and got hit in the eye with one of Geronimo’s rubber-tipped arrows. One day on Grand Mesa he came on a bear and roped it, planning to lead it home; he changed his mind when the bear took the rope in both paws and walked toward Les and his horse, coiling up the rope as he came. He’d made a little money in the rodeo game and offered me this advice on riding the broom tails: “Always give a bronc a fair shake. Don’t pull its head up and don’t grab leather. Better yet don’t get on.” Like most other cowboys I have known Leslie was getting on in years. Also, he suffered from sciatica and shingles and like me was allergic to tumbleweed. Leslie too went the way of the others, leaving no sons. Cowboys and Indians disappear, dying off or transforming themselves by tortuous degrees into something quite different. The originals are nearly gone and will soon be lost forever in the overwhelming crowd. Legendary enemies, their ghosts ride away together—buddies at last—into the mythic sunset of the West. Weep, all you little rains, wail, winds, wail— all along, along, along the Colorado Trail.… Twilight is over, night is here, the sky is rich with frosty, burning, glittering stars. I become aware that the great horned owl near Balanced Rock has stopped calling; presumably he has found a satisfactory dinner. Bon appetit, mon frère. My little fire is now completely dead, too cold to rekindle, and I must decide whether to rebuild it or unroll the sleeping bag on the cot and turn in. Not an easy decision. The air is still and cool and I am glad that the heat of the day is finally gone. Tomorrow—or is it the day after?—will be the first of July. I have come to the midpoint of my season in the desert. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness WATER “This would be good country,” a tourist says to me, “if only you had some water.” He’s from Cleveland, Ohio. “If we had water here,” I reply, “this country would not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?” “If you had more water more people could live here.” “Yes sir. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?” “I see what you mean. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here. So dry and desolate. Nice for pictures but my God I’m glad I don’t have to live here.” “I’m glad too, sir. We’re in perfect agreement. You wouldn’t want to live here, I wouldn’t want to live in Cleveland. We’re both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Why change it?” “Agreed.” We shake hands and the tourist from Ohio goes away pleased, as I am pleased, each of us thinking he has taught the other something new. The air is so dry here I can hardly shave in the mornings. The water and soap dry on my face as I reach for the razor: aridity. It is the driest season of a dry country. In the afternoons of July and August we may get thundershowers but an hour after the storms pass the surface of the desert is again bone dry. It seldom rains. The geography books credit this part of Utah with an annual precipitation of five to nine inches but that is merely a statistical average. Low enough, to be sure. And in fact the rainfall and snowfall vary widely from year to year and from place to place even within the Arches region. When a cloud bursts open above the Devil’s Garden the sun is blazing down on my ramada. And wherever it rains in this land of unclothed rock the run off is rapid down cliff and dome through the canyons to the Colorado. Sometimes it rains and still fails to moisten the desert—the falling water evaporates halfway down between cloud and earth. Then you see curtains of blue rain dangling out of reach in the sky while the living things wither below for want of water. Torture by tantalizing, hope without fulfillment. And the clouds disperse and dissipate into nothingness. Streambeds are usually dry. The dry wash, dry gulch, arroyo seco . Only after a storm do they carry water and then but briefly—a few minutes, a couple of hours. The spring-fed perennial stream is a rarity. In this area we have only two of them, Salt Creek and Onion Creek, the first too salty to drink and the second laced with arsenic and sulfur. Permanent springs or waterholes are likewise few and far between though not so rare as the streams. They are secret places deep in the canyons, known only to the deer and the coyotes and the dragonflies and a few others. Water rises slowly from these springs and flows in little rills over bare rock, over and under sand, into miniature fens of wire grass, rushes, willow and tamarisk. The water does not flow very far before disappearing into the air and under the ground. The flow may reappear farther down the canyon, surfacing briefly for a second time, a third time, diminishing in force until it vanishes completely and for good. Another type of spring may be found on canyon walls where water seeps out between horizontal formations through cracks thinner than paper to support small hanging gardens of orchids, monkeyflower, maidenhair fern, and ivy. In most of these places the water is so sparingly measured that it never reaches the canyon floor at all but is taken up entirely by the thirsty plant life and transformed into living tissue. Long enough in the desert a man like other animals can learn to smell water. Can learn, at least, the smell of things associated with water—the unique and heartening odor of the cottonwood tree, for example, which in the canyonlands is the tree of life. In this wilderness of naked rock burnt to auburn or buff or red by ancient fires there is no vision more pleasing to the eyes and more gratifying to the heart than the translucent acid green (bright gold in autumn) of this venerable tree. It signifies water, and not only water but also shade, in a country where shelter from the sun is sometimes almost as precious as water. Signifies water, which may or may not be on the surface, visible and available. If you have what is called a survival problem and try to dig for this water during the heat of the day the effort may cost you more in sweat than you will find to drink. A bad deal. Better to wait for nightfall when the cottonwoods and other plants along the streambed will release some of the water which they have absorbed during the day, perhaps enough to allow a potable trickle to rise to the surface of the sand. If the water still does not appear you may then wish to attempt to dig for it. Or you might do better by marching farther up the canyon. Sooner or later you should find a spring or at least a little seep on the canyon wall. On the other hand you could possibly find no water at all, anywhere. The desert is a land of surprises, some of them terrible surprises. Terrible as derived from terror. When out for a walk carry water; not less than a gallon a day per person. More surprises. In places you will find clear-flowing streams, such as Salt Creek near Turnbow Cabin, where the water looks beautifully drinkable but tastes like brine. You might think, beginning to die of thirst, that any water however salty would be better than none at all. Not true. Small doses will not keep you going or alive and a deep drink will force your body to expend water in getting rid of the excess salt. This results in a net loss of bodily moisture and a hastening of the process of dehydration. Dehydration first enervates, then prostrates, then kills. Nor is blood, your own or a companion’s, any adequate substitute for water; blood is too salty. The same is true of urine. If it’s your truck or car which has failed you, you’d be advised to tap the radiator, unless it’s full of Prestone. If this resource is not available and water cannot be found in the rocks or under the sand and you find yourself too tired and discouraged to go on, crawl into the shade and wait for help to find you. If no one is looking for you write your will in the sand and let the wind carry your last words and signature east to the borders of Colorado and south to the pillars of Monument Valley—someday, never fear, your bare elegant bones will be discovered and wondered and marveled at. A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time. On my first walk down into Havasupai Canyon, which is a branch of the Grand Canyon, never mind exactly where, I took with me only a quart of water, thinking that would be enough for a mere fourteen-mile downhill hike on a warm day in August. At Topocoba on the rim of the canyon the temperature was a tolerable ninety-six degrees but it rose about one degree for each mile on and downward. Like a fool I rationed my water, drank frugally, and could have died of the heatstroke. When late in the afternoon I finally stumbled—sun-dazed, blear-eyed, parched as an old bacon rind—upon that blue stream which flows like a miraculous mirage down the floor of the canyon I was too exhausted to pause and drink soberly from the bank. Dreamily, deliriously, I waded into the waist-deep water and fell on my face. Like a sponge I soaked up moisture through every pore, letting the current bear me along beneath a canopy of overhanging willow trees. I had no fear of drowning in the water—I intended to drink it all. In the Needles country high above the inaccessible Colorado River there is a small spring hidden at the heart of a maze of fearfully arid grabens and crevasses. A very small spring: the water oozes from the grasp of moss to fall one drop at a time, one drop per second, over a lip of stone. One afternoon in June I squatted there for an hour—two hours? three?—filling my canteen. No other water within miles, the local gnat population fought me for every drop. To keep them out of the canteen I had to place a handkerchief over the opening as I filled it. Then they attacked my eyes, drawn irresistibly by the liquid shine of the human eyeball. Embittered little bastards. Never have I tasted better water. Other springs, more surprises. Northeast of Moab in a region of gargoyles and hobgoblins, a landscape left over from the late Jurassic, is a peculiar little waterhole named Onion Spring. A few wild onions grow in the vicinity but more striking, in season, is the golden princess plume, an indicator of selenium, a mild poison often found in association with uranium, a poison not so mild. Approaching the spring you notice a sulfurous stink in the air though the water itself, neither warm nor cold, looks clear and drinkable. Unlike most desert waterholes you will find around Onion Spring few traces of animal life. Nobody comes to drink. The reason is the very good one that the water of Onion Spring contains not only sulfur, and perhaps selenium, but also arsenic. When I was there I looked at the water and smelled it and ran my hands through it and after a while, since the sampling of desert water is in my line, I tasted it, carefully, and spat it out. Afterwards I rinsed my mouth with water from my canteen. This poison spring is quite clear. The water is sterile, lifeless. There are no bugs, which in itself is a warning sign, in case the smell were not sufficient. When in doubt about drinking from an unknown spring look for life. If the water is scummed with algae, crawling with worms, grubs, larvae, spiders and liver flukes, be reassured, drink hearty, you’ll get nothing worse than dysentery. But if it appears innocent and pure, beware. Onion Spring wears such a deceitful guise. Out of a tangle of poison-tolerant weeds the water drips into a basin of mud and sand, flows from there over sandstone and carries its potent solutions into the otherwise harmless waters of the creek. There are a number of springs similar to this one in the American desert. Badwater pool in Death Valley, for example. And a few others in the canyonlands, usually in or below the Moenkopi and Shinarump formations—mudstone and shales. The prospector Vernon Pick found a poison spring at the source of the well-named Dirty Devil River, when he was searching for uranium over in the San Rafael Swell a few years ago. At the time he needed water; he had to have water; and in order to get a decent drink he made something like a colander out of his canteen, punching it full of nail holes, filling it with charcoal from his campfire and straining the water through the charcoal. How much this purified the water he had no means of measuring but he drank it anyway and although it made him sick he survived, and is still alive today to tell about it. There are rumors that when dying of the thirst you can save your soul and body by extracting water from the barrel cactus. This is a dubious proposition and I don’t know anyone who has made the experiment. It might be possible in the Sonoran desert where the barrel cactus grows tall as a man and fat as a keg of beer. In Utah, however, its nearest relative stands no more than a foot high and bristles with needles curved like fishhooks. To get even close to this devilish vegetable you need leather gloves and a machete. Slice off the top and you find inside not water but only the green pulpy core of the living plant. Carving the core into manageable chunks you might be able to wring a few drops of bitter liquid into your cup. The labor and the exasperation will m	574,000
Désert solitaire (Edward Abbey) (Z-Library).epub	Désert solitaire DU MÊME AUTEUR LE GANG DE LA CLEF À MOLETTE , 2006 LE RETOUR DU GANG DE LA CLEF À MOLETTE , 2007 LE FEU SUR LA MONTAGNE , 2008 UN FOU ORDINAIRE , 2009 Désert solitaire Edward Abbey DÉSERT SOLITAIRE Traduit de l’américain par Jacques Mailhos Ouvrage traduit avec le concours du Centre national du livre Préface de Doug Peacock Désert solitaire Titre original : Desert Solitaire Copyright © 1968 by Edward Abbey Introduction copyright © 2010 by Doug Peacock All rights reserved © Éditions Gallmeister, 2010 pour la traduction française ISBN 978-2-35178-038-1 ISSN 1951-3976 Désert solitaire Pour Josh et Aaron Désert solitaire Introduction : Désert solitaire revisité D ÉSERT SOLITAIRE FUT PUBLIÉ AUX É TATS -U NIS EN 1968, et le monde découvrit alors un écrivain tout à la fois éloquent, enragé, poétique, rude et diablement drôle. Edward Abbey écrivait avec la vivacité d’un lièvre et parlait d’une voix qui vous saisissait avec le piquant de l’ail. Abbey était un défenseur acharné de la nature sauvage ; il était l’ennemi de l’injustice et le héraut des sans-voix et des démunis de ce monde. Sur son chemin de teigneux, Ed massacrait autant de vaches sacrées qu’il pouvait. Désert solitaire fut donc naturellement accueilli par des louanges hyperboliques aussi bien que par un mépris caustique. À l’évidence, Désert solitaire se distingue de la plupart des livres “de nature”. Il prône la désobéissance civile et pousse le lecteur à agir, voire à changer radicalement de vie. Il y a quarante ans, mon meilleur ami du Michigan se plongea dans ce recueil, me le passa, puis partit s’installer comme défenseur du haut désert. Dans l’Oregon, une femme le lut, fit ses valises et s’en alla vivre dans le sud de l’Utah comme ranger dans un parc national, chargée d’empêcher les voleurs de vestiges archéologiques de piller les sépultures indiennes. Elle y est toujours. La publication de Désert solitaire fut au moins contemporaine de l’émergence du mouvement militant pour la conservation de l’Ouest américain, et sans doute pas étrangère à celle-ci. Le groupe écologiste radical Earth First ! fut un descendant direct des écrits d’Abbey. Au cours des années 1970 et 1980, de plus en plus d’individus changèrent de vie en réponse au défi lancé par Ed ; des conservationnistes et de nouvelles cohortes de militants firent serment d’allégeance aux droits des animaux sauvages, des plantes et des pierres. Abbey continue à vivre comme le compas éthique, la muse tribale et la rage sacrée qui inspirent ceux qui tiennent la barre des combats les plus visionnaires et les plus importants en matière de préservation, tels le Wildlands Project ou les America’s Round River Conservation Studies. Du fait de cette influence, Abbey se vit accrocher diverses étiquettes et fut injustement décrété misanthrope (Ed était animé par l’amour et la joie), éco-anarchiste et saint patron de l’écologie radicale américaine. Ces clichés sommaires passent à côté de l’immense qualité littéraire de ses écrits, nulle part aussi prégnante que dans Désert solitaire – ce livre où des pages d’un lyrisme dense et acéré sur la beauté du désert alternent avec des paraboles sur la guerre nucléaire, ce recueil où des fulgurances paradoxales sur un avenir apocalyptique succèdent à des diatribes paillardes et politiquement incorrectes, le tout empaqueté dans un emballage de contradictions et servi avec un tonitruant éclat de rire auto-ironique. Plus vous en demanderez à ce livre, plus votre récolte sera riche. Certains biographes d’Abbey affirment qu’il naquit à Home, en Pennsylvanie, et périt à Oracle, Arizona. Ces deux informations sont fausses. Ed aimait ces noms, voilà tout. Il recevait juste son courrier à Oracle. Bien qu’Abbey fût souvent accusé de ne jamais laisser des faits sans importance gâcher une bonne histoire, il incarnait lui-même une vérité plus grande. “Ce n’est pas fondamentalement un livre sur le désert”, écrit-il dans son introduction à l’édition originale de Désert solitaire . “Comme il n’est pas plus possible de capturer le désert dans un livre qu’il n’est possible à un pêcheur de remonter toute la mer dans un simple chalut, je me suis efforcé de créer un monde de mots dans lequel le désert figure plus en tant que médium qu’en tant que matériel. Mon but ne fut pas l’imitation, mais l’évocation.” Ainsi, écoutant les crapauds à couteaux chanter dans leur trou d’eau fraîchement rempli par les pluies de l’été, Abbey nous offre-t-il une explication de ce phénomène différente de celle de la biologie traditionnelle : Pourquoi chantent-[ils] ? demande Ed. Est-ce le poison qu’ils ont dans la peau qui permet à ces amphibiens d’être aussi téméraires ? Non, écrit-il, c’est la joie qui les fait chanter. “La joie est-elle un atout dans la lutte pour la survie darwinienne ? Quelque chose me dit que oui ; quelque chose me dit que les êtres moroses et craintifs sont voués à l’extinction. Là où il n’y a pas de joie il ne peut y avoir de courage ; et sans courage toutes les autres vertus sont vaines.” L’accueil que le public réserva à Désert solitaire irritait gentiment Ed Abbey. Comme d’autres romanciers qui préfèrent que l’on se souvienne d’eux pour leur fiction, Ed considérait son chef-d’œuvre du désert comme un enfant de l’amour inattendu et accidentel. Le succès commercial de ce classique le surprit tout particulièrement. “Après ce livre, dit-il, je n’ai plus eu besoin d’avoir un travail honnête jusqu’à la fin de mes jours.” On pourrait croire qu’Edward Abbey serait du genre à persister et signer pour chaque mot de Désert solitaire , mais ce n’était pas le cas. Les années passant, il en vint à regretter amèrement ce qu’il avait écrit sur les compositeurs du désert : “Je ferais tout, me confia-t-il dans les années 1970, pour supprimer ces pages sur la musique (Berg, Webern, etc.).” Il finit par préférer Mozart ou les derniers quartets de Beethoven. “Ce bon vieux Ludwig, écrivit-il, fameux donneur de courage, héros de l’homme de l’Ouest.” Son évocation magique et sensuelle du désert, sa défense acharnée des espaces sauvages et ses attaques irrévérencieuses contre les conventions de tout type et de toute couleur politique vaudront à Abbey de se voir comparé à ses héros et frères de lutte pour la protection de l’environnement : Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold et John Muir. Mais Désert solitaire se distingue des œuvres de ces grands hommes en ce qu’il est un classique radicalement moderne ; il nous entraîne par-delà la fin du XX e siècle et nous fait entrer dans la périlleuse topographie du monde actuel. Abbey nous dit d’emblée que le monde immaculé de Désert solitaire “a déjà disparu, ou est en train de disparaître rapidement”. Le nuage noir qui menace à l’horizon s’appelle le “Progrès”. Les bulldozers de la croissance économique mordent sans cesse davantage dans la nature sauvage et le “Tourisme industriel” envahit nos parcs nationaux. Et il y a pire : les horribles monstres qui rôdent aux marges de notre monde humain actuel – la guerre nucléaire, le réchauffement climatique – sont déjà en train de prendre forme dans Désert solitaire . Dans “Rocs”, Abbey raconte l’histoire d’un triangle amoureux meurtrier sur fond de tromperie atomique et de rapacité cupide à l’égard du minerai d’uranium. À la fin de ce récit, un enfant éprouve une splendide hallucination de la terre vivante, puis meurt de son exposition massive aux rayons atomiques ou à ceux du soleil : est-ce une parabole de la guerre apocalyptique ou bien du prochain changement climatique ? Si Abbey n’offre aucune réponse simple, une chose au moins est évidente : c’est au moment même où nous comprenons notre besoin absolu de la beauté sauvage du monde que nous la perdons. Et ce sont nos enfants qui paieront. Ed connaît parfaitement le moteur de cette folie : c’est la cupidité humaine illustrée par trop d’humains vivant tous beaucoup trop comme des pourceaux. Abbey prédit la ruine de la civilisation industrielle, nous alerte sur le fait que nous devons réduire notre empreinte écologique avant que la catastrophe ne se charge de le faire pour nous. Il redoute un monde “totalement urbanisé, totalement industrialisé et sans cesse plus peuplé. En ce qui me concerne, je préférerais tenter ma chance dans un conflit thermonucléaire plutôt que de vivre dans un tel monde”. Le temps et le vent enseveliront les villes polluées du Sud-Ouest, prévient-il, car “la croissance pour la croissance est une folie cancéreuse”, et la population humaine sera spectaculairement réduite par les conséquences de notre technologie industrielle autodestructrice. Les plus téméraires des survivants partiront explorer cette terre dévastée et le deuxième essai sera peut-être le bon : “Oui. Les pieds sur terre. Touchons du bois. Touchons de la pierre. Et bonne chance à tous” – tel est “le socle rocheux de foi animale” d’Abbey. Edward Abbey n’est pas le seul à porter ces idées ; il était seulement considérablement en avance sur son temps. James Lovelock, célèbre militant contemporain contre le réchauffement planétaire et inventeur de l’hypothèse de Gaïa, prédit que dans les trente années qui viennent la montée des océans poussera un milliard de réfugiés affamés à l’exil, que la désertification mondiale fera remonter le Sahara jusqu’en Europe et que Berlin sera aussi chaude que Bagdad. D’ici la fin du siècle, prédit Lovelock, l’humanité sera décimée par la famine et la maladie ; des Asiatiques affamés ne pouvant plus cultiver de quoi manger migreront en masse vers la Sibérie, déclenchant une guerre nucléaire entre la Russie et la Chine, et tous ces facteurs combinés tueront 6 des 6,6 milliards d’êtres humains vivant actuellement. La faune et la flore de notre belle planète connaîtront leur sixième grande extinction, la plus sévère de toutes, entièrement due à l’homme cette fois. Lovelock craint que ce soit alors la fin de toute civilisation humaine. Abbey, en revanche, ne nous permet pas de nous reposer dans nos confortables fauteuils matelassés de statistiques et de prédictions précises ; et pourtant, il plante soigneusement les graines de l’alerte à la ruine industrielle dans le tuf cryptogame de Désert solitaire . Chez lui, la polémique alterne constamment avec la poésie et l’humour provocateur. Ed utilisait l’argumentation contradictoire comme une forme d’art. Il voulait dire la vérité, “surtout lorsque cette vérité est impopulaire”. La vérité qui heurte “tout ce qui est traditionnel, mythique, sentimental”. Au bout du compte, nous sommes face à un livre à nul autre pareil. L’introduction qu’Ed a lui-même écrite compte parmi les tout meilleurs textes de la littérature américaine. Désert solitaire est prophétique ; c’est à la fois un classique du nature writing et un sommet de style et d’humour. Le message central d’Abbey est l’affirmation de l’importance cruciale de la nature et de la nécessité de se battre pour la préservation des espaces sauvages avec la même férocité que nous mettrions à protéger notre foyer de l’intrusion d’un psychopathe armé. Nous étions nombreux à penser qu’un ou plusieurs autres écrivains viendraient glisser leurs pieds dans les grosses tatanes lubriques à semelles crantées qu’Ed a laissées derrière lui. Mais, pour une raison que j’ignore, ce ne fut pas le cas. Je tiens ce chef-d’œuvre d’Abbey pour le livre le plus important jamais écrit dans le vaste rayon de la littérature écologiste. Edward Abbey est mort comme il avait vécu, avec une immense dignité, avec tout son amour féroce de la vie, en pensant au désert sauvage et à ses enfants. Je frissonne encore en y repensant : sa mort fut la plus brave de toutes celles auxquelles j’ai pu assister. Vivre dans la joie de chaque jour, connaître le chagrin et, oui, se battre, enrager : la nature sauvage, disait-il, est la seule chose qui vaille d’être sauvée. Lors de son ultime longue marche sac au dos dans les lieux désertiques les plus inviolés qui existent – le désert du Cabeza Prieta, en Arizona –, Abbey griffonna dans son carnet, devant un minuscule feu de camp, ses dernières notes de terrain : “Smog dans la vallée entre ici et les monts Growler. Saloperie de Phoenix. Saloperie de LA. Saloperie de culture techno-industrielle. Vous savez quoi ? Je voudrais que Doug Peacock apparaisse là, à côté de moi, juste parce qu’il me cherchait.” Eh bien, Ed, dis-je à la fumée, je suis en chemin. Nous le sommes tous. Doug Peacock Mars 2010 Ajo, Arizona Désert solitaire Avant-propos I L Y A ENVIRON DIX ANS , j’ai travaillé comme ranger saisonnier dans un parc appelé Arches National Monument, près de la petite ville de Moab, dans le sud-est de l’Utah. La raison pour laquelle je l’ai fait n’a plus aucune importance. Ce que j’y ai vu, en revanche, forme le sujet de ce livre. Mon travail commença le 1 er avril et s’acheva au dernier jour de septembre. Il me plut, le pays des canyons me plut, et je décidai donc de rempiler la saison suivante. J’y serais volontiers retourné pour une troisième saison, puis pour toutes les saisons suivantes, mais malheureusement pour moi, le parc des Arches, qui était un lieu primitif lorsque j’y mis la première fois les pieds, fut si bien aménagé et amélioré que je dus partir. Un certain nombre d’années plus tard, cependant, j’y retournai et bouclai la boucle en y travaillant une troisième saison. Je fus ainsi mieux à même d’évaluer les transformations qui avaient été effectuées durant mon absence. Je n’ai que d’excellents souvenirs de ces périodes, notamment des deux premières saisons, où le tourisme ne s’était pas encore vraiment développé et où le temps passait comme le temps devrait toujours passer : avec une lenteur extrême, des jours qui s’étirent et se traînent, longs et lents et libres comme des étés d’enfant. Il y avait enfin du temps pour ne rien faire, ou presque rien, et l’essentiel de la substance de ce livre est tiré, parfois tel quel, sans corrections ni ajouts, des pages du journal que je tenais au fil de ces jours qui s’écoulaient ainsi, sans à-coup ni rupture, pendant ces merveilleux étés. Le reste du livre consiste en digressions et errances vers des idées et des lieux qui, d’une manière ou d’une autre, ont des frontières communes avec cette saison centrale passée dans le pays des canyons. Ce n’est pas fondamentalement un livre sur le désert. En tenant les minutes des impressions que suscitait en moi la scène naturelle, je me suis avant tout efforcé de viser à l’exactitude, car je crois qu’il existe une forme de poésie, et même une forme de vérité, dans la pure nudité des faits. Mais le désert est un vaste monde, un monde océanique aussi profond, à sa manière, et aussi complexe et changeant que la mer. La langue n’offre qu’un filet aux mailles terriblement lâches pour aller à la pêche à la nudité des faits lorsque ces faits sont en nombre infini. Il serait possible d’écrire un livre entier sur le genévrier ; ce n’est qu’une question de savoir. Pas un livre sur le genévrier en général, mais un livre sur ce genévrier particulier qui pousse sur une saillie de grès nu non loin de l’entrée de l’Arches National Monument. Mon projet, donc, fut un peu différent. Comme il n’est pas plus possible de capturer le désert dans un livre qu’il n’est possible à un pêcheur de remonter toute la mer dans un simple chalut, je me suis efforcé de créer un monde de mots dans lequel le désert figure plus en tant que médium qu’en tant que matériel. Mon but ne fut pas l’imitation, mais l’évocation. En dehors de cette modeste prétention, ce livre est relativement simple et direct. Évidemment, certains défauts sauteront aux yeux du lecteur, et je m’en excuse par avance. Je reconnais sans peine que ce livre pourra souvent sembler âpre, cru, bougon, empreint d’une mauvaise foi agressive et peu constructive – voire franchement antisocial dans sa perspective générale. Ce livre agacera profondément, s’ils le lisent, les critiques sérieux, les bibliothécaires sérieux et les chargés de cours en littérature anglaise sérieux ; tout au moins je l’espère. Aux autres, je dirais simplement que les éventuelles qualités que ce livre peut avoir sont impossibles à démêler de ses défauts ; qu’il existe une façon de se tromper qui est parfois absolument juste. On objectera que ce livre s’attache beaucoup trop à des choses qui ne sont qu’apparences, qu’il reste trop souvent à la surface du monde et qu’il échoue à pénétrer et à dévoiler les structures des relations unificatrices qui forment la réalité sous-jacente de l’existence. Ici, je dois confesser que, ne l’ayant jamais croisée, je ne sais absolument rien de la vraie réalité sous-jacente. Je n’ignore pas qu’il existe de nombreuses personnes affirmant l’avoir rencontrée ; ces personnes-là ont simplement été plus chanceuses que moi. Pour ce qui me concerne, la surface des choses m’apporte suffisamment de bonheur. À dire vrai, elle seule me paraît avoir une quelconque importance. Des choses comme une main d’enfant qui serre la vôtre, la saveur d’une pomme, l’étreinte d’un ami ou d’une amante, la douceur soyeuse des cuisses d’une jeune femme, le coucher de soleil sur la roche et les feuilles, l’entrain de telle musique, l’écorce de cet arbre, la lente abrasion du granite et du sable, une chute d’eau cristalline dans une marmite de grès, le visage du vent : qu’existe-t-il d’autre ? De quoi d’autre avons-nous besoin ? À mon grand regret, je n’ai pu faire autrement qu’écrire quelques mots durs à l’égard de mon employeur saisonnier, le Service des parcs nationaux, ministère de l’Intérieur, gouvernement des États-Unis. Ce gouvernement lui-même n’a pas complètement échappé à ma plume parfois acerbe. Je voudrais donc souligner ici le fait que, depuis des années, le Service des parcs est soumis à d’énormes pressions exercées par des forces puissantes, et que dans ces circonstances il a jusqu’à présent plutôt fait du bon boulot. Pour une agence gouvernementale, le Service des parcs est une bonne agence, bien meilleure que beaucoup. J’attribue cette qualité non pas à ses administrateurs – comme tous les administrateurs, partout, les siens se distinguent fondamentalement par leur médiocrité sans nom –, mais aux rangers qui travaillent effectivement pour lui sur le terrain, dont la majorité sont des hommes compétents, honnêtes et dévoués. Parmi ceux que j’ai connus personnellement, je voudrais citer ici M. Bates Wilson, de Moab, Utah, que l’on pourrait sincèrement décrire comme le fondateur du Canyonlands National Park. S’il ne saurait être tenu pour responsable d’aucune des opinions exprimées dans ce livre, il est en revanche responsable d’une bonne partie de la connaissance et de la compréhension que j’ai de ce pays que nous aimons tous les deux. Quelques mots au sujet des noms propres. Toutes les personnes et tous les lieux mentionnés dans ce livre sont ou furent réels. Cependant, pour des raisons tenant au respect de la vie privée, j’ai changé le nom de certaines personnes que j’ai connues dans la région de Moab et, dans deux ou trois cas, j’ai également inventé les indications temporelles et spatiales se rapportant à telle ou telle personne réelle. J’espère que ceux qui liront ceci me comprendront et me pardonneront ; les autres ne s’en soucieront pas. Enfin, une mise en garde : L’été prochain, ne sautez pas dans votre voiture pour filer vers le pays des canyons dans l’espoir de voir par vous-même certaines des choses que j’ai évoquées dans ces pages. Tout d’abord, vous ne verrez rien du tout en voiture ; vous devrez sortir de votre foutu engin et marcher ou, mieux encore, ramper à quatre pattes sur le grès, à travers les buissons épineux, entre les cactus. Lorsque vous commencerez à laisser des traces de sang derrière vous, vous verrez quelque chose. Peut-être. Ou peut-être pas. Ensuite, la plupart des choses dont je parle ici ont déjà disparu ou sont en train de disparaître rapidement. Ce livre n’est pas un guide de voyage ; c’est une élégie. Un tombeau. Ce que vous tenez entre vos mains est une stèle. Une foutue dalle de roc. Ne vous la faites pas tomber sur les pieds ; lancez-la contre quelque chose de grand, fait de verre et d’acier. Qu’avez-vous à perdre ? Edward Abbey Avril 1967 Au bar Nelson’s Marine Hoboken Désert solitaire Donnez-moi le silence, l’eau, l’espoir Donnez-moi le combat, le fer et les volcans N ERUDA Désert solitaire Premier matin C ’ EST LE PLUS BEL ENDROIT AU MONDE . Des endroits comme ça, il en existe beaucoup. Tout homme, toute femme, a dans son cœur et dans son esprit l’image de l’endroit idéal, de l’endroit juste, de l’authentique chez-soi, connu ou inconnu, réel ou imaginé. Une péniche dans le Cachemire, un appartement avec vue sur Atlantic Avenue à Brooklyn, un corps de ferme gothique tout gris au bout d’un chemin de pierres dans les Allegheny Mountains, une cabane sur la berge d’un lac bleu dans la région des pins et des épicéas, une ruelle poisseuse près de la rive de l’Hudson, à Hoboken, ou même, pourquoi pas, pour les personnes au tempérament moins exigeant, une vue sur le monde depuis un appartement confortable en haut d’une tour noyée dans le smog onctueux et velouté de Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio ou Rome – il n’y a pas de limite à la capacité qu’a l’homme de se sentir chez lui quelque part. Des théologiens, des aviateurs et des astronautes ont même pu sentir l’appel de ce chez-soi descendre sur eux depuis l’en haut et les vastes régions désertiques de l’espace interstellaire. Pour moi, ce sera Moab, Utah. Je ne parle pas de la ville elle-même, bien sûr, mais de ses environs : le pays des canyons. Le désert de grès lisse. La poussière rouge et les à-pics brûlés et le ciel solitaire. Tout ce qui se trouve au-delà du bout des routes. Ce choix m’est apparu comme une évidence ce matin lorsque je suis sorti d’une caravane – de ma caravane – de logement du Service des parcs et que j’ai admiré pour la première fois de ma vie un lever de soleil sur les hoodoos de l’Arches National Monument. Je n’avais pas pu en voir grand-chose la veille au soir. Après avoir roulé toute la journée – quatre cent cinquante miles (1) – depuis Albuquerque, j’avais atteint Moab de nuit par un temps froid, venteux et nuageux. Au siège administratif du parc, au nord de la ville, j’avais rencontré le directeur et le chef ranger qui étaient, avec un homme chargé de la maintenance et de l’entretien, les seuls employés permanents au sein de cette cellule particulière du système des parcs nationaux américains. Ils m’offrirent un café, puis me donnèrent les clefs de ma caravane ainsi que des indications pour la trouver ; ma mission implique que je vive et travaille non pas au siège mais dans ce poste avancé à quelque vingt miles à l’intérieur du parc. Seul. C’est exactement ce que je voulais, naturellement, sans quoi je n’aurais jamais postulé pour ce job. Je quittai le siège et les lumières de Moab, roulai douze miles vers le nord sur la grand-route, jusqu’à un croisement avec une piste de terre sur la droite, marquée par un petit panneau de bois indiquant : ARCHES NATIONAL MONUMENT 8 MILES . Je quittai le macadam et tournai vers l’est et la grande nature sauvage. Le vent du nord-ouest hurlait, les nuages noirs filaient devant les étoiles – tout ce que je voyais, c’était des touffes de buissons et quelques genévriers çà et là au bord de la route. Puis je vis un autre petit panneau : DANGER : SABLE MOUVANT NE TRAVERSEZ PAS LE LIT SI VOUS VOYEZ DE L’EAU Dans le faisceau de mes phares, le lit semblait parfaitement sec. Je descendis le talus, traversai et remontai de l’autre côté pour continuer à m’enfoncer dans la nuit. De chaque côté, j’entraperçus d’étranges blocs de roche pâle, comme des éléphants, des dinosaures ou des gobelins du Néolithique pétrifiés. De temps à autre, quelque chose de vivant traversait la route à toute vitesse : rat kangourou, lièvre, et un animal qui ressemblait à un croisement entre un raton laveur et un écureuil – le bassaris rusé. Un peu plus loin, un couple de cerfs mulets surgit hors d’un buisson et détala en diagonale dans le losange de mes phares, soulevant des petits nuages de poussière que le vent, plus rapide que mon pick-up, emportait loin devant moi, hors de vue dans la nuit. Ma route étroite et rocailleuse serpentait en virages serrés, plongeait dans des ravines, en remontait, tout en grimpant progressivement vers un sommet que je ne découvrirais qu’à la lumière du lendemain. Des bourrasques de neige tourbillonnaient dans l’air lorsque je franchis la limite non clôturée du parc et passai la borne qui en marquait l’entrée. Un quart de mile plus loin, je trouvai le poste de ranger – un large espace où garer les voitures, un panneau d’information sous un petit abri, et, cinquante yards plus loin, la petite caravane gouvernementale en fer-blanc où j’allais établir mes quartiers pour les six mois à venir. Nuit froide, vent froid, flocons qui tombent comme des confettis. À la lumière de mes phares, j’ouvris la caravane, sortis mon sac de couchage et mes bagages, et entrai. À celle de ma torche, je trouvai le lit, enlevai mes bottes, déroulai mon duvet et m’y glissai pour m’endormir immédiatement. Ma dernière pensée consciente fut pour la caravane secouée par le vent et le bruit à l’intérieur de souris affamées qui trottinaient en tous sens pour porter la bonne nouvelle : leur froid et maigre et long hiver était fini, leur ami nourricier était enfin venu. Ce matin, je me réveille avant l’aube, sors la tête de mon duvet, regarde en plissant les yeux à travers la fenêtre, pour contempler une scène floue et vague faite de langues de brume filant vers des formes sombres et fantastiques qui se perdent dans la nuit. Paysage improbable. Je me lève, en sous-vêtements longs, chaussettes aux pieds, en me penchant pour ne pas me cogner contre le plafond bas et l’embrasure de la porte, plus basse encore, de la caravane, machine à habiter conçue de façon si rationnelle et si compacte qu’un homme y a à peine la place de respirer. Un poumon d’acier, voilà ce que c’est. Un poumon d’acier avec fenêtres et stores vénitiens. Les souris m’observent en silence depuis leurs cachettes, mais le vent souffle encore et dehors le sol est couvert de neige. Il fait froid comme dans une tombe, une prison, une grotte ; je m’allonge sur le sol poussiéreux, sur le linoléum froid parsemé de crottes de souris, pour allumer la flamme de veille du chauffage à butane. Une fois que cet appareil est lancé, l’endroit se réchauffe rapidement, de manière dense et malsaine, avec une couche de chaleur juste sous le plafond, à hauteur de tête, et rien que de l’air glacial en bas, jusqu’aux genoux. Mais nous avons tout le confort indispensable : cuisinière à gaz, réfrigérateur à gaz, chauffe-eau, évier avec eau courante (si les tuyaux n’ont pas gelé), placards et étagères, tout cela à portée de main où que vous vous trouviez. Le gaz est fourni par deux bouteilles en acier stockées dehors dans un abri ; l’eau coule par simple gravité depuis un réservoir enfoui dans une colline proche. C’est assez luxueux, pour la nature sauvage. Il y a même une douche et des toilettes avec un rat mort au fond de la cuvette. Pas vraiment ce qui s’appelle vivre à la dure. Ma pauvre mère a élevé cinq enfants sans aucun de ces luxes et elle pourrait sûrement s’en passer encore aujourd’hui s’il n’y avait eu Hitler, la guerre et les trente glorieuses. Il est temps de s’habiller, de sortir et d’aller jeter un œil à l’allure du monde. Temps de me faire un petit déjeuner. J’essaie d’enfiler mes bottes mais elles sont dures comme le roc à cause du froid. J’allume un feu de la gazinière et passe mes bottes au-dessus de la flamme jusqu’à ce qu’elles soient suffisamment malléables pour que je puisse y enfoncer mes pieds. J’enfile un manteau et je sors. Au centre du monde, sur le nombril de Dieu, au pays d’Abbey, le désert rouge. Le soleil n’est pas encore visible mais les signes avant-coureurs sont évidents. Des nuages lavande filent comme une armada sur l’aube vert pâle ; étirés et comme dégauchis par le vent, ils ont tous une base plane de pur or flamboyant. Au sud-est, à vingt miles à vol d’oiseau, se dressent les pics de la sierra La Sal qui culminent à douze ou treize mille pieds au-dessus du niveau de la mer, couverts de neige et roses dans la lumière de l’aube. L’air est froid, mais sec et clair ; les dernières langues de brouillard laissées par la tempête d’hier s’enfuient comme des fantômes, poussées par le vent et le levant, pour disparaître en s’effilochant dans le néant. La vue est dégagée et parfaite dans toutes les directions à l’exception de l’ouest, où le terrain remonte et où l’horizon n’est distant que de quelques centaines de yards. En regardant vers les montagnes, je vois, creusée dans la mesa de grès, la gorge sombre du Colorado à cinq ou six miles de distance, mais pas le fleuve lui-même, caché tout au fond du canyon. Vers le sud, du côté lointain du fleuve, se trouve la vallée de Moab, encadrée par des falaises rocheuses de mille pieds, avec quelque part la ville de Moab, trop petite pour que je l’aperçoive d’ici. Au-delà de la vallée de Moab, ce sont encore des canyons et des plateaux qui s’étirent jusqu’aux Blue Mountains à cinquante miles au sud. Vers le nord et le nord-ouest, je vois les Roan Cliffs et les Book Cliffs, les deux à-pics du plateau de Uinta. Au pied de ces falaises, peut-être à trente miles d’ici, invisibles d’où je suis, filent la U.S. 6-50, grande artère est-ouest pour la circulation des hommes, des marchandises et des ordures, ainsi que les rails de la principale voie de chemin de fer Denver-Rio Grande. À l’est, sous le soleil levant qui s’étale, ce sont encore des mesas, encore des canyons, des lieues et des lieues de falaises rouges et de plateaux arides s’étendant dans la brume violette sur l’ample courbure du monde jusqu’aux chaînes du Colorado : un océan de désert. À l’intérieur de ce vaste périmètre, au centre et au premier plan de l’image, domaine très personnel, se trouvent les trente-trois milles acres de l’Arches National Monument, dont je suis aujourd’hui le seul habitant, usufruitier, observateur et gardien. Que sont les Arches ? D’où je me trouve, devant ma caravane, je vois quelques-unes de la bonne centaine d’arches que l’on a découvertes dans ce parc. Ce sont des arches naturelles, des trous dans la roche, des fenêtres dans la pierre ; toutes différentes, tant de forme que de taille. Elles vont de petits trous à peine suffisants pour laisser passer un homme à des ouvertures assez grandes pour abriter le dôme du Capitole à Washington DC. Certaines ressemblent à des anses de cruches ou à des contreforts de cathédrale, d’autres à des ponts naturels, à ce détail technique près : un pont naturel enjambe un cours d’eau, une arche naturelle non. Ces arches furent formées au cours de centaines de milliers d’années par l’érosion des immenses murs de grès, ou ailerons, où on les trouve aujourd’hui. Ni œuvre d’une main cosmique, ni résultat du travail de vents sculpteurs porteurs de sable, comme de nombreuses personnes aimeraient le croire, ces arches naquirent et continuent de naître grâce à la modeste action destructrice de l’eau de pluie, de la neige fondue, du gel et de la glace, avec l’aide de la gravitation universelle. Leur nuancier va du blanc cassé au rouge en passant par les tons chamois, roses et bruns, qui varient eux-mêmes selon l’heure du jour et l’humeur de la lumière, du temps et du ciel. Debout devant ma caravane, admirant bouche bée ce spectacle monstrueux et inhumain de roc et de nuages et de ciel et de vastitude, je sens une ridicule vague d’avidité et de désir de possession m’envahir. Je veux connaître tout cela, je veux posséder tout cela, je veux étreindre toute cette scène intimement, profondément, intégralement, comme un homme peut désirer une belle femme. Souhait insensé ? Peut-être pas. Au moins n’y a-t-il rien d’autre là, aucun humain, pour me disputer cette possession. La terre couverte de neige luit d’un éclat métallique bleu mat, reflet du ciel et du soleil imminent. D’ici aussi part l’étroite route de terre, attirante piste primitive vers le nulle part, qui descend la pente en serpentant jusqu’au cœur du labyrinthe de roche nue. Près du premier groupe d’arches, un roc de cinquante pieds de haut serti en équilibre sur un piédestal de même taille, semble suspendu de manière menaçante à l’aplomb d’un coude de la route. On dirait une statue de l’île de Pâques, un dieu de roche ou un ogre pétrifié. Un dieu ? Un ogre ? La personnification de la nature est précisément la tendance contre laquelle je me bats en moi-même et que j’essaie d’éliminer pour de bon. Je ne suis pas ici seulement pour échapper un temps au tumulte, à la crasse et au chaos de la machine culturelle, mais aussi pour me confronter de manière aussi immédiate et directe que possible au noyau nu de l’existence, à l’élémentaire et au fondamental, au socle de pierre qui nous soutient. Je veux être capable de regarder et d’examiner un genévrier, un morceau de quartz, un vautour, une araignée, et de voir ces choses comme elles sont en elles-mêmes, vierges de toute qualité attribuée par l’homme, catégories scientifiques comprises. Voir Dieu ou la Méduse face à face, même si cela implique de risquer tout ce que j’ai d’humain en moi. Je rêve d’un mysticisme âpre et brutal dans lequel le moi dénudé se fonde dans un monde non humain et y survit pourtant, toujours intact, individué, discret. Paradoxe et socle de pierre. Bien… le soleil sera là dans quelques minutes et je n’ai toujours pas lancé le café. Je vais à mon pick-up prendre ma caisse de ravitaillement et mon matériel de cuisine, retourne à la caravane et me prépare mon petit déjeuner. Dans un lieu comme celui-ci, le simple fait de respirer aiguise l’appétit. Le jus d’orange est gelé, le lait figé en paillettes de glace. Dans la caravane, il fait encore assez frais pour que ma respiration se transforme en vapeur. Lorsque les premiers rayons du soleil frappent les falaises, je me sers une grande tasse de café brûlant et m’assieds sur le seuil, face au levant, affamé de chaleur. Soudain le voilà, le globe flamboyant qui illumine les pinacles et les minarets et les rocs en équilibre, les à-pics des canyons et les montants des fenêtres creusées dans les ailerons de grès. Nous nous saluons, le soleil et moi, par-delà le vide noir de quatre-vingt-treize millions de miles. La neige luit et scintille entre nous deux, des acres et des acres de diamants presque douloureux à l’œil. D’ici une heure, toute la neige exposée au soleil aura disparu et la roche sera humide et vaporeuse. En l’espace de quelques minutes, sous mes yeux, des gouttes de neige fondue commencent à tomber des branches d’un genévrier à quelques mètres de moi. Dans mon dos, d’autres gouttes s’assemblent pour strier les flancs de la caravane. Je ne suis pas seul, finalement. Trois corbeaux font des acrobaties aériennes près du Rocher en équilibre, s’adressant à eux-mêmes en lançant vers l’aube des croassements stridents. Je suis sûr qu’ils sont aussi heureux que moi du retour du soleil et j’aimerais connaître leur langue. Je préférerais échanger des idées avec les oiseaux qui peuplent notre planète plutôt que d’apprendre à entretenir des communications intergalactiques avec quelque obscure race d’humanoïdes habitant un astre satellite du système de Bételgeuse. Les bœufs d’abord, la charrue ensuite. Les corbeaux crient de leur voix rauque, leurs ailes bleu-noir battant sur le ciel d’or. Par-dessus mon épaule me parviennent le grésillement et l’odeur du bacon frit. Ainsi étaient les choses ce matin-là. Désert solitaire Solitaire P REMIER JOUR ENCORE , 1 er avril ici au centre. Merle McRae et Floyd Bence – le directeur et le ranger-en-chef – arrivent à midi avec cinq cents gallons d’eau dans un camion-citerne et un pick-up du service des Parcs équipé d’une radio à ondes courtes, d’outils de lutte contre les incendies, d’une corde d’alpiniste, d’une pelle, d’une chaîne de traction, d’une trousse de premiers secours, d’un brancard, d’une hache, etc. Ils me laisseront le pick-up et tout son équipement. Je dois l’utiliser pour patrouiller sur les routes du parc, porter assistance aux touristes en difficulté, ainsi que pour livrer du bois aux campings et collecter leurs ordures. Une fois par semaine, je peux m’en servir pour aller au siège, à Moab, faire le plein d’essence et de ravitaillement. Nous remplissons le réservoir d’eau enterré dans la colline au-dessus de la caravane et déjeunons au soleil autour d’une table de pique-nique en bois installée devant ma porte. Merle, le directeur, le patron, est un homme svelte et racé d’une cinquantaine d’années, au visage fin, sérieux et expressif, buriné mais pas endurci par presque toute une vie passée dehors. Il est né et a grandi dans un petit ranch du Nouveau-Mexique, a étudié à l’université de Virginie puis gagné sa vie comme éleveur de bétail, employé dans un ranch-auberge, directeur d’un centre d’aide par le travail et de protection de la nature (pendant la Grande Dépression), et depuis 1940 comme ranger pour le Service des parcs nationaux. Il me fait l’impression d’être quelqu’un de doux, de généreux et d’une bonne humeur inoxydable, mais il se plaint également gentiment de l’hypothétique ulcère que les années passées à se battre avec la paperasserie administrative ne manqueront pas de lui valoir. Il est marié et a trois enfants ; l’aîné étudie à l’université de l’Utah. Floyd Bence est un homme grand et puissant d’environ trente ans, archéologue de formation, marié, deux enfants. Eu égard à ses centres d’intérêt et à son cursus universitaire, il devrait travailler dans un endroit comme Mesa Verde ou Chaco Canyon, à fouiller des ruines poussiéreuses, mais il se satisfait de sa situation présente tant qu’il est libre de passer au moins une partie de son temps hors de son bureau ; les deux choses qu’il redoute le plus, en tant que fonctionnaire du Service des parcs, sont la promotion à un poste de cadre administratif à gros salaire et la mutation vers l’est dans un des parcs historiques à boulets de canon comme Appomattox ou Gettysburg ou Ticonderoga. Comme moi, il préférerait vivre en se serrant la ceinture dans l’Ouest plutôt que prospérer et s’étioler dans l’Est sibérien. Préférence violente et vouée à la perte. Mais là, dans l’air étincelant sous le grand soleil du désert de l’Utah, les mauvaises nouvelles semblent fort lointaines. — Alors, Ranger Abbey, dit Merle, vous vous plaisez dans ce coin perdu ? Je réponds que ça me convient. Ils sourient. — C’est un peu solitaire, non ? demande Floyd. Je réponds que ça va. Après le repas, nous montons tous les trois dans la cabine du pick-up gouvernemental et faisons le tour du parc. Arches National Monument est encore ce que le Service des parcs appelle une aire sous-développée, bien qu’à moi elle paraisse développée juste comme il faut. Le réseau de routes amène à distance de marche confortable de la plupart des grandes arches. Aucune d’entre elles n’est à plus de deux miles du lieu de stationnement. Certes, ces routes ne sont pas goudronnées, mais elles sont facilement praticables avec n’importe quelle voiture, sauf pendant ou juste après un orage. Les pistes sont bien indiquées, faciles à suivre ; il faut le vouloir pour se perdre. Il y a trois petits campings équipés de tables, de lieux aménagés pour faire du feu, de poubelles et de toilettes de campagne. (Emportez votre propre réserve d’eau.) Nous fournissons même le bois pour le feu sous forme de bûches de pin et de vieux poteaux de clôture en cèdre qu’il sera de mon ressort de trouver et de livrer aux campeurs. Nous roulons sur les routes de terre et marchons sur certaines pistes. Tout est beau, sauvage et baigné d’une douceur virginale. Les arches elles-mêmes, étranges, impressionnantes, grotesques, forment une part petite et inessentielle de la beauté générale de ce pays. Lorsque nous pensons roche, nous pensons d’ordinaire aux pierres, aux rochers brisés enfouis sous le sol et la vie végétale, mais ici tout est exposé et nu, avec une dominante de formations de grès monolithiques qui se dressent hors de la surface de la terre et s’étendent sur des miles, parfois à l’horizontale, parfois de manière oblique et chaotique sous l’effet des forces souterraines qui les firent affleurer, avant d’être sculptées par l’érosion en un labyrinthe complexe de vallées, grottes, failles, boyaux étroits et canyons profonds. À première vue, ce paysage semble un vaste chaos géologique, mais il y a de la méthode derrière tout ça, de la méthode d’un genre fanatique et acharné : chaque rainure dans le roc mène à un sillon naturel d’un genre ou d’un autre, chaque sillon mène à une rigole puis à un fossé et à une ravine, lits d’écoulement chaque fois plus grands jusqu’à un fond de canyon ou un large arroyo menant à son tour au Colorado et à l’océan. Comme prévu, la neige a maintenant fondu et tous les cours d’eau du parc sont secs à l’exception de Salt Creek, l’unique torrent pérenne alimenté par une source. C’est un ruisseau limpide de quelques pouces de profondeur qui traverse des bancs de sable mouvant et des plats de glaise couverts de blanches croûtes d’alcali. Bien qu’elle ait l’air potable, cette eau est trop saline pour l’homme ; les chevaux et le bétail peuvent la boire, mais pas les hommes. C’est du moins ce que me disent Merle et Floyd. Je décide de tester leur croyance par moi-même. Je m’accroupis au bord du ruisseau, y plonge mes deux mains jointes en coupelle et bois une petite gorgée d’eau. Franchement mauvaise ; ni potable ni buvable. Un homme pourrait peut-être, suggéré-je, s’habituer à boire cette eau en en prenant juste un peu chaque jour et en augmentant progressivement la dose… ? — Essaye donc, dit Merle. — Ouais, dit Floyd, et fais-nous ton rapport avant de partir. En fin d’après-midi, nous regagnons la caravane. Floyd me prête une chemise de ranger dont il me dit qu’il n’a plus l’usage et que je devrai porter en guise d’uniforme, pour me donner une sorte d’allure officielle vis-à-vis des touristes. Il y a aussi le badge argenté que je suis censé épingler à ma chemise. Ce badge me confère le droit d’arrêter les contrevenants et les voyous, m’explique Floyd. Ou qui je veux, en fait. Je mets donc immédiatement Floyd et Merle en état d’arrestation et leur ordonne de dîner avec moi. J’ai une grosse cocotte de haricots rouges qui mijote sur le feu. Mais ils refusent, ont des promesses à tenir et doivent s’en aller, et bientôt ils roulent dans le camion-citerne sur la route rocailleuse qui mène à la quatre voies et à Moab. Je monte la côte derrière ma caravane et les regarde partir, leur camion demeure visible sur à peu près un mile avant que la route n’oblique pour s’enfoncer plus profondément dans le dédale de dunes, monolithes érodés et crêtes abruptes, à l’ouest. Environ dix miles au-delà de la grande route se dressent les pentes d’éboulis et les falaises rouges verticales de la Dead Horse Mesa, île déserte céleste toute plate, qui s’étire sur quarante miles du nord au sud entre les canyons convergents de la Green River et du Colorado. Domaine public. Au-dessus de la mesa, le soleil brille en suspens entre des langues et des haillons de nuages fouettés par le vent. Il y aura encore des orages. Mais pour le moment, chez moi tout au moins, l’air est calme et je saisis pour la première fois de la journée l’immensité du silence dans lequel je suis perdu. Ce n’est en fait pas tant un silence qu’une grande quiétude – car des bruits, il y en a : cri d’un oiseau caché par un genévrier, petit tourbillon de vent qui passe et s’évanouit comme un soupir, tic-tac de ma montre –, petits bruits qui rompent l’impression de silence absolu tout en aiguisant mon ressenti de la vaste et implacable paix qui m’entoure. Temps suspendu, présent perpétuel. Si je regarde le petit appareil que je porte bouclé à mon poignet, les chiffres, et même la grande aiguille au mouvement ample, semblent presque ridicules d’avoir perdu tout sens. Nul voyageur, nul campeur, nul vagabond n’est venu dans ce coin de désert aujourd’hui et, l’espace de quelques instants, je sens et comprends que je suis vraiment très seul. Je n’ai rien d’autre à faire que retourner à ma caravane, ouvrir une canette de bière et manger mon dîner. Après quoi je mets un chapeau, enfile un manteau et ressors, m’assieds sur la table, regarde le ciel et le désert se dissoudre lentement dans le mystère et la chimie du couchant. Il nous faut un feu. Je fouille autour de la caravane, ramasse quelques branches mortes sous les genévriers et prépare un petit feu de squaw pour me tenir compagnie. Des nuages noirs traversent les champs d’étoiles. Étoiles souvent puissantes et proches, à l’éclat glacé dans des tons de bleu, d’émeraude et d’or. Là, là-bas, étendus sous mes yeux vers le sud, l’est et le nord, les arches et les à-pics et les pinacles et les rochers de grès en équilibre (désormais placés sous ma tutelle) ont perdu la chaude lueur rouge du couchant pour virer à des teintes douces, intangibles, innommées et innommables, de violet, teintes qui semblent non pas les recouvrir mais irradier de leur cœur. Une planète jaune flotte à l’ouest, plus brillant des objets célestes. Vénus. J’ouvre grand mes oreilles à l’écoute d’un cri de chouette ou d’engoulevent, mais n’entends que le crépitement de mon feu, qu’un bref souffle de vent. Le feu. L’odeur du genévrier qui brûle est la plus belle odeur au monde, à mon humble avis ; tous les encensoirs du paradis de Dante, je pense, ne parviennent à l’égaler. Comme la fragrance de la sauge après la pluie, une simple bouffée de fumée de genévrier suffit à évoquer, par une sorte de catalyse magique comme en produit parfois la musique, l’espace, la lumière, la clarté et l’étrangeté poignante de l’Ouest américain. Dieu fasse que cette fumée dure. Mon petit feu ondule, vacille, commence à mourir. Je brise une autre branche de genévrier contre mon genou et pose les morceaux sur le tas de braises. Un filet de fumée bleutée s’en élève et le bois, sec comme le roc d’où il vient, s’épanouit en longues flammes. Va mon encens, monte de ce foyer, Demande aux dieux pardon de cette claire flamme (2) . J’attends et j’observe ; je garde le désert, les arches, le sable et la roche nue, les genévriers solitaires et les touffes de sauge éparses qui m’entourent dans le silence et la simplicité, sous les étoiles. Le feu faiblit de nouveau. Je le laisse mourir, prends mon bâton de marche et pars me promener le long de la route, dans l’obscurité de plus en plus épaisse. J’ai avec moi une torche mais je ne l’allumerai pas, sauf si j’entends un signe de vie animale qui vaut que j’y regarde de plus près. La torche électrique est un instrument utile dans certaines situations, mais je vois suffisamment bien la route sans elle. En fait, je la vois mieux. Il y a un autre inconvénient au fait d’utiliser la torche : comme nombre de gadgets mécaniques, elle tend à faire écran entre l’homme et son environnement. Si je l’allume, mes yeux s’adapteront à elle et je ne verrai plus que la petite flaque de lumière qu’elle projettera devant moi ; je me retrouverai coupé du monde. En laissant ma torche dans ma poche, à sa juste place, je continue à faire partie de l’univers dans lequel je marche, et ma vision, bien que limitée, n’a pas de frontière nette ou prédéfinie. Cette limite inhérente aux machines m’apparaît doublement évidente lorsque je rentre dans ma caravane. J’ai décidé d’écrire une lettre (à moi-même) avant de me coucher, et plutôt que d’allumer une bougie je vais lancer le vieux groupe électrogène. C’est un petit moteur quatre cylindres à essence monté sur un trépied de bois pas très loin de la caravane. Pas du tout assez loin, à mon goût. J’abaisse la manette des gaz, règle le starter, engage la manivelle et donne un premier tour. Le moteur crachote, hoquette, démarre, prend de la vitesse, s’emballe en hurlant, soupapes tressautant, bielles tempêtant, pistons sifflant en allant et venant dans leurs cylindres huilés. Parfait : le courant jaillit dans les fils ; dans la caravane, les ampoules commencent à luire, puis brillent de plus en plus fort en gagnant en incandescence. Les lumières sont si puissantes que je n’y vois rien et dois protéger mes yeux d’une main alors que je me dirige en trébuchant vers la porte ouverte de la caravane. Et je n’entends rien d’autre non plus que le grondement de l’engin. Je suis coupé du monde naturel et hermétiquement emprisonné dans une boîte de lumière et de bruit tyrannique. Une fois à l’intérieur de la caravane, mes sens s’adaptent à la nouvelle situation et bientôt, tandis que j’écris ma lettre, j’oublie les ampoules et la plainte du moteur. Mais je me suis complètement coupé du plus vaste monde qui entoure ma coquille manufacturée. Le désert et la nuit ont dû reculer, battre en retraite – je ne peux plus les observer ou interagir avec eux ; j’ai troqué un monde majestueux et virtuellement illimité pour un autre, petit et pauvre. Volontairement, je ne le nie pas ; ce troc est temporairement pratique et réversible à mon gré. Ma lettre finie, je sors éteindre le groupe électrogène. Les ampoules faiblissent et s’éteignent, le martèlement furieux des pistons cesse en un dernier soupir. Debout à côté du moteur inerte et impuissant, j’entends ses dernières vibrations mourir comme des vaguelettes à la surface d’une poche d’eau perdue au loin, quelque part dans le quiet océan du désert, quelque part au-delà de Delicate Arch, au-delà des terres vaines de Yellow Cat, au-delà de la frontière de l’ombre. J’attends. Maintenant, la nuit revient à flots, le silence tout puissant m’étreint et m’englobe ; je vois de nouveau les étoiles et le monde qu’elles font luire. À plus de vingt miles de mon contemporain le plus proche, ce n’est pas de la solitude que je ressens, mais de la béatitude. Une béatitude à la fois douce et exaltée.	675,906
Into the wild (Jon Krakauer) (Z-Library).epub	Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer 11 Chesapeake Tout avait changé soudainement. Le ton, le climat moral ; on ne savait que penser, ni qui croire. C’était comme si on nous avait conduits par la main – tels de petits enfants – toute notre vie et que soudain nous nous retrouvions seuls ; il fallait apprendre à marcher par soi-même. Il n’y avait personne auprès de nous, ni parents ni quiconque dont nous respections le jugement. Dans une telle époque, on ressentait le besoin de se consacrer à un idéal – la vie, la vérité ou la beauté –, de lui obéir, au lieu de suivre les règles humaines qui avaient été mises au rebut. Nous devions nous soumettre à un but ultime plus pleinement, avec moins de réserve que nous ne l’avions fait dans les jours paisibles et familiers de la vie passée, qui était maintenant abolie et avait disparu pour de bon. Boris Pasternak, Le Docteur Jivago . Passage souligné dans l’un des livres trouvés avec les affaires de Chris McCandless. On peut lire, écrit de sa main, dans la marge au-dessus du passage : « Besoin d’un but. » Samuel Walter McCandless, Jr., âgé de cinquante-six ans, est un homme taciturne. Il porte la barbe, ses cheveux poivre et sel assez longs sont ramenés en arrière et dégagent son grand front. Grand, de stature solide, il porte des lunettes à monture métallique qui lui donnent l’air d’un professeur. Sept semaines après la découverte du corps de son fils enveloppé dans le sac de couchage bleu que Billie avait confectionné pour lui, Walt concentre son regard sur un voilier qui évolue devant la fenêtre de sa maison du front de mer. Contemplant sans expression la Chesapeake Bay, il pense à haute voix : « Comment se fait-il qu’un enfant qui a en lui tant de compassion puisse causer une telle douleur à ses parents ? » La maison des McCandless à Chesapeake Beach, dans le Maryland, est décorée avec goût, parfaitement propre et sans le moindre désordre. Des portes-fenêtres donnent sur la baie brumeuse. Une grosse Chevy Suburban et une Cadillac blanche stationnent devant la porte, dans le garage il y a une Corvette 69 soigneusement restaurée et sur le quai est amarré un catamaran de croisière de 9 mètres. Sur la table de la salle à manger, cela fait de nombreux jours que sont disposées quatre grandes feuilles couvertes de photos illustrant la brève vie de Chris. Tournant autour de cette présentation, Billie montre Chris tout petit, sur un cheval à bascule, Chris à huit ans dans un ciré jaune, pour sa première randonnée, Chris à son entrée au lycée. Walt s’arrête devant une photo qui montre son fils faisant le clown pendant les vacances. D’une voix qui tremble imperceptiblement, il dit : « Le plus dur, c’est de ne plus l’avoir auprès de soi. J’ai passé beaucoup de temps avec Chris, peut-être plus qu’avec aucun de mes autres enfants. J’aimais beaucoup sa présence, même s’il nous en privait souvent. » Walt porte un survêtement gris, des tennis, et un blouson de base-ball en satin portant le logo du Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Malgré cette tenue de loisir, il donne une impression d’autorité. Dans son domaine, celui d’une technologie avancée des radars appelée SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), c’est un ponte. Depuis 1978, année où le premier satellite équipé du SAR – Seasat – a été mis sur orbite, cette technologie a toujours été utilisée dans les missions spatiales. Lors du lancement de Seasat , le directeur du projet de la NASA était Walt McCandless. Sur la première ligne de son curriculum vitae, on peut lire : « À l’intention du Département de la Défense. Top Secret. » Un peu plus bas la mention de son expérience professionnelle commence ainsi : « En tant que consultant privé, j’offre des services concernant les projets de capteurs à distance et de satellites, en relation avec la transmission de signaux, la réduction de données et les tâches d’extraction de l’information. » Ses collègues parlent de lui comme d’un esprit brillant. Walt est habitué à ce que les regards soient tournés vers lui. Par réflexe, inconsciemment, il garde la maîtrise de lui-même. Bien qu’il parle calmement avec ce débit tranquille des Américains de l’Ouest, il y a quelque chose de forcé dans sa voix et ses mâchoires trahissent une nervosité sous-jacente. Même dans la pièce où nous sommes, on sent qu’un courant à très haute tension parcourt ses nerfs. On comprend sans erreur possible d’où venait l’intensité de Chris. Quand Walt parle, les gens écoutent. Si quelque chose ou quelqu’un lui déplaît, ses yeux se plissent et ses propos deviennent plus hachés. D’après les membres de sa famille, son humeur peut être sombre et changeante, bien que, d’après eux, son caractère ait beaucoup perdu de sa versatilité ces dernières années. Après le départ de Chris en 1990, Walt a changé. La disparition de son fils lui a fait peur et l’a amené à s’amender. Un côté plus doux, plus tolérant de sa personnalité a pris le dessus. Walt a vécu son enfance dans une famille pauvre à Greeley dans le Colorado. C’est une agglomération rurale située dans les hautes plaines battues par les vents, près de la frontière du Wyoming. Il déclare sans ambages que sa famille « était du mauvais côté de la barrière ». Enfant doué et suivi de près, il obtint une bourse pour aller à l’université d'État du Colorado, dans la localité toute proche de Fort Collins. Pour joindre les deux bouts, il avait fait toute une série de travaux à temps partiel, notamment dans une morgue, mais ses revenus les plus réguliers venaient de sa participation au quartette de jazz de Charlie Novak. L’orchestre de Novak, avec Walt au piano, tournait dans toute la région, déversant sa musique de danse et ses vieux airs dans des bouges enfumés d’un bout à l’autre de la chaîne de Front. Walt est un musicien inspiré, de grand talent, et aujourd’hui encore, il joue de temps à autre en professionnel. En 1957, les Soviétiques lancèrent leur Spoutnik 1 , répandant une peur diffuse dans toute l’Amérique. Dans l’hystérie nationale qui suivit, le Congrès déversa des millions de dollars sur l’industrie aérospatiale basée en Californie, et ce fut le début du boom. Pour le jeune Walt McCandless, à peine sorti de l’université, marié, bientôt père, le Spoutnik ouvrit la porte de la chance. Après l’obtention de son diplôme, il entra à la Hughes Aircraft qui l’envoya à Tucson pendant trois ans. Là, il obtint un diplôme de troisième cycle dans le domaine de la théorie des antennes à l’université d’Arizona. Aussitôt après avoir terminé sa thèse sur « l’analyse des hélices coniques », il rejoignit le grand théâtre d’opérations californien de Hughes où se passaient les choses sérieuses, avec un désir aigu d’apporter sa contribution à la conquête de l’espace. Il acheta un petit bungalow à Torrance, travailla dur et grimpa rapidement les échelons. Sam naquit en 1959 ; quatre autres enfants suivirent rapidement : Stacy, Shawna, Shelly et Shannon. Walt fut nommé directeur des essais et directeur de département pour la mission de Surveyor 1 , le premier engin spatial à se poser en douceur sur la Lune. Son étoile brillait, et montait. Mais, en 1967, son mariage commença à battre de l’aile. Marcia et lui se séparèrent. Walt se mit à fréquenter une secrétaire de chez Hughes nommée Wilhelmina Johnson – tout le monde l’appelait Billie – qui avait vingt-deux ans et de remarquables yeux noirs. Ils s’éprirent l’un de l’autre et vécurent ensemble. Billie attendit un enfant. Très menue, elle ne prit que 4 kilos en neuf mois et ne porta jamais de vêtements de grossesse. Le 12 février 1968, Billie donna naissance à un fils. Son poids était insuffisant, mais il était en bonne santé et vif. Walt offrit à Billie une guitare Gianini sur laquelle elle jouait des berceuses pour calmer le nouveau-né. Vingt-deux ans plus tard, les gardes du parc national trouveraient cette même guitare sur le siège arrière d’une Datsun jaune abandonnée près de la rive du lac Mead. Il est impossible de savoir quelle obscure combinaison chromosomique, quelle dynamique parents-enfant ou quelle configuration astrale en fut responsable, mais Christopher Johnson McCandless vint au monde avec des dons hors du commun et une volonté qui ne déviait pas facilement de sa trajectoire. À l’âge de deux ans, il se leva au milieu de la nuit, parvint à sortir sans réveiller ses parents et pénétra dans la maison d’un voisin pour prendre des confiseries dans un tiroir. À l’école, comme il obtenait des notes élevées, on le mit dans un cycle accéléré destiné aux meilleur élèves. « Ça ne lui fit pas plaisir, se souvient Billie, parce qu’il lui fallait travailler plus. Il passa une semaine à tenter de quitter ce cycle. Ce petit gamin essaya de convaincre le professeur, le principal, et tous ceux qui voulaient bien l’entendre que ses notes résultaient d’une erreur et que ce n’était pas sa place. Nous en eûmes un écho lors de la réunion de parents. Son professeur nous prit à part et nous dit : "Chris suit une musique différente", et puis elle hocha simplement la tête. » « Même quand on était petits, dit Carine, née trois ans après Chris, il aimait être seul. Il n’était pas asocial – il avait des amis et tout le monde l’appréciait –, mais il pouvait partir et s’occuper tout seul pendant des heures. Il semblait n’avoir pas besoin d’amis ou de jouets. Il pouvait être seul sans souffrir de la solitude. » Alors que Chris avait six ans, on offrit à Walt un poste à la NASA, ce qui entraîna un déménagement dans la capitale fédérale. La famille fit l’acquisition d’une maison à deux niveaux dans Willet Drive, à Annandale. Elle avait des volets verts, une baie vitrée, une jolie cour. Quatre ans après leur arrivée en Virginie, Walt quitta la NASA pour créer avec Billie une entreprise de conseil, la User Systems, installée à leur domicile. Ils n’avaient pas beaucoup d’argent. Non seulement ils avaient échangé des salaires réguliers pour les revenus aléatoires des travailleurs indépendants mais Walt, à cause de sa séparation d’avec sa première femme, devait entretenir deux familles. Pour y arriver, raconte Carine, « Papa et Maman avaient des journées de travail incroyablement longues. Quand nous nous réveillions le matin pour aller à l’école, Chris et moi, ils travaillaient dans le bureau. Quand nous rentrions l’après-midi, ils travaillaient dans le bureau. Quand nous allions nous coucher, ils travaillaient dans le bureau. Ensemble, ils ont mis sur pied une bonne entreprise, et ensuite ils ont commencé à gagner beaucoup d’argent, mais ils travaillaient tout le temps. » C’était une existence pleine de tension. Walt et Billie sont tous deux nerveux, émotifs, peu disposés à donner des explications. De temps en temps éclataient des disputes et dans ces moments de colère, l’un ou l’autre menaçait de divorcer. Ces conflits étaient plus de la fumée que du feu, explique Carine, mais « je pense que c’est une des raisons pour lesquelles Chris et moi étions si proches. Nous avons appris à compter l’un sur l’autre quand Papa et Maman ne s’entendaient pas. » Mais il y avait aussi de bons moments. Les week-ends ou pendant les vacances scolaires, la famille prenait la route. Ils allaient à Virginia Beach et sur la côte de la Caroline, dans le Colorado pour rendre visite aux enfants de Walt, dans les Grands Lacs, dans les montagnes de Blue Ridge. « Nous campions à l’arrière de la camionnette, la Chevy Suburban, raconte Walt. Plus tard nous avons acheté une caravane. Chris adorait ces expéditions, plus ça durait, mieux c’était. La famille a toujours eu le goût des voyages, et il a été manifeste assez tôt que Chris en a hérité. » Au cours de leurs périples, ils séjournèrent à Iron Mountain, dans le Michigan. C’est une petite ville minière, située dans la forêt de la péninsule supérieure, où se trouve la maison natale de Billie. Elle avait cinq frères et sœurs. Loren Johnson, son père, travaillait officiellement comme chauffeur routier, « mais il ne gardait jamais longtemps le même travail », dit-elle. Walt explique : « Le père de Billie ne s’intégrait pas vraiment à la société. Par beaucoup de points, Chris et lui se ressemblaient. » Loren Johnson était fier, obstiné et rêveur. C’était un homme des bois, un musicien autodidacte, un poète. Dans les environs d’Iron Mountain, son amour des animaux était célèbre. « Il prônait toujours la vie sauvage, dit Billie. Quand il trouvait un animal pris au piège, il le ramenait, amputait le membre blessé, le soignait et ensuite, il remettait l’animal en liberté. Une fois, il a heurté avec son camion une biche, dont le faon restait orphelin. Atterré, il le ramena et l’éleva à l’intérieur de la maison, derrière le poêle à bois, comme si c’était un de ses enfants. » Pour entretenir sa famille, Loren se lança dans une série d’aventures commerciales. Aucune ne donna de bons résultats. Pendant un temps, il éleva des poulets, puis des visons et des chinchillas. Il installa une écurie et proposa des promenades à cheval aux touristes. La plus grande partie de la nourriture qui arrivait sur la table provenait de la chasse, en dépit du fait que ça lui déplaisait de tuer des animaux. « Mon père pleurait chaque fois qu’il tirait un cerf, dit Billie, mais il fallait bien que nous mangions, alors il le faisait. » Il travaillait aussi comme guide pour la chasse, ce qui l’attristait encore plus. « Des gens de la ville venaient dans leurs grosses Cadillac et mon père les emmenait sur son terrain de chasse pendant une semaine, pour qu’ils rapportent un trophée. Il le leur garantissait. Mais la plupart d’entre eux étaient de si piètres tireurs et buvaient tant qu’ils manquaient tout, alors, généralement, c’est lui qui devait tuer le cerf à leur place. Il détestait cela. » Loren, ce qui n’est pas étonnant, était conquis par Chris. Et Chris adorait son grand-père. L’expérience que le vieil homme avait de la vie dans les bois, son affinité avec la nature firent une impression profonde sur l’enfant. Quand Chris eut huit ans, Walt l’emmena faire une randonnée de trois jours – c’était la première fois – dans le Shenandoah pour escalader l’Old Rag. Ils atteignirent le sommet et pendant tout le parcours Chris porta lui-même son sac à dos. Les randonnées dans la montagne devinrent une tradition pour le père et le fils. Après cette première escalade, presque chaque année, ils firent ensemble l’ascension de l’Old Rag. Lorsque Chris fut un peu plus âgé, Walt emmena Billie et les enfants de ses deux mariages sur le pic Longs dans le Colorado. S’élevant à 4 345 mètres, c’est le plus haut sommet du parc national des montagnes Rocheuses. Chris, Walt et le plus jeune fils de son premier mariage atteignirent l’altitude de 3 962 mètres. Là, sur une brèche proéminente appelée Keyhole, Walt décida de faire demi-tour. Il était fatigué et sentait les effets de l’altitude. Et puis, plus haut, la voie semblait pierreuse, peu sûre et même dangereuse. « Chris, explique Walt, voulait continuer vers le sommet. Je lui ai répondu qu’il n’en était pas question. Il n’avait que douze ans à l’époque, aussi se contenta-t-il de protester. S’il avait eu quatorze ou qu inze ans, il aurait tout simplement continué sans moi. » Walt devient plus calme, son regard se perd dans le lointain. Après une longue pause, il dit : « Tout petit déjà, Chris était intrépide. Il ne croyait pas que le danger le concernait. On était toujours obligé de le retenir par la chemise. » Chris réussissait tout ce qu’il lui prenait la fantaisie d’entreprendre. Au lycée, il obtenait des A sans beaucoup d’effort. Une seule fois, il eut une note inférieure à B : un F en physique. Quand Walt vit le carnet de notes, il demanda un rendez-vous avec le professeur pour savoir ce qui n’allait pas. « C’était un colonel de l’armée de l’air à la retraite, se souvient Walt, un vieux bonhomme, traditionaliste, assez rigide. Il avait expliqué au début du semestre que comme il avait à peu près deux cents élèves, les comptes-rendus d’expériences devaient être rédigés en respectant une certaine disposition de façon à faciliter la notation. Chris, trouvant cela stupide, décida de ne pas en tenir compte. Il rédigea son compte-rendu mais dans une présentation différente. C’est pourquoi le professeur lui mit un F. Après m’être entretenu avec l’enseignant, je suis rentré et j’ai dit à Chris qu’il avait eu la note qu’il méritait. » Chris et Carine avaient tous les deux hérité du don de Walt pour la musique. Chris s’essaya à la guitare, au piano et au cor. « C’était étrange à voir chez un gamin de cet âge, dit Walt, mais il aimait Tony Bennett. Il chantait beaucoup de ses chansons comme Tender is the night tandis que je l’accompagnais au piano. Il était très bon. » Et de fait, dans une cassette vidéo réalisée par Chris à l’université, on peut le voir chanter à pleins poumons Summers by the sea/Sailboats in Capri avec un panache impressionnant et av ec le charme d’un chanteur de cabaret professionnel. Doué pour le cor d’harmonie, il fut membre dans son adolescence de l’American University Symphony mais il n’y resta pas. Selon Walt, il n’était pas d’accord avec les règles imposées par le chef d’orchestre. Carine pense qu’il y avait autre chose : « Il est parti parce qu’il n’aimait pas qu’on lui dise ce qu’il devait faire, mais aussi à cause de moi. Je voulais ressembler à Chris, alors je me suis mise au cor. Et il est apparu que c’était le seul domaine où j’étais meilleure que lui. Quand j’étais cadette et lui senior, j’obtins la première place dans l’orchestre des seniors et il ne voulait à aucun prix s’asseoir derrière sa satanée petite sœur. » Toutefois, cette rivalité musicale ne semble pas avoir nui à leur relation. Depuis leur plus jeune âge ils s’entendaient très bien, passant des heures à construire des forts avec des coussins et des couvertures dans le salon de la maison d’Annandale. « Il était toujours gentil avec moi, dit Carine, et très protecteur. Il me tenait la main quand nous marchions dans la rue. Quand il entra au lycée, il sortait plus tôt que moi, mais il m’attendait dans la maison de son ami Brian Paskowitz pour que nous puissions rentrer ensemble. » Chris avait hérité les traits angéliques de Billie, et plus particulièrement ses yeux d’un noir profond qui exprimaient la moindre émotion. Bien qu’il fût de petite taille – sur les photographies de classe, il est toujours au premier rang –, il était fort et ses mouvements étaient bien coordonnés. Il s’essaya à de nombreux sports mais n’avait pas la patience d’en apprendre un à fond. Quand il skiait, pendant les vacances familiales dans le Colorado, il effectuait rarement des virages. Il se contentait de s’accroupir, dans une position de gorille, les pieds bien écartés pour assurer sa stabilité, et il filait droit vers le bas de la pente. « De la même façon, dit Walt, quand j’ai essayé de lui apprendre à jouer au golf, il refusa d’admettre que tout est dans le style. À chaque fois, il lançait le plus grand swing qu’on ait jamais vu. Parfois, il envoyait la balle à 300 mètres, mais le plus souvent elle allait dans le fairway suivant. Il avait beaucoup de talent, mais si on essayait de le diriger, d’affiner ses aptitudes, d’apporter une amélioration, un mur s’élevait. Il résistait à toute instruction. Je suis un bon joueur de racquet-ball et j’ai appris à Chris à y jouer quand il avait onze ans. À quinze ou seize ans, il me battait régulièrement. Il était très, très rapide et avait beaucoup de puissance. Mais quand je lui suggérais de travailler les faiblesses de son jeu, il refusait d’entendre. Une fois, dans un tournoi, il fut opposé à un homme de quarante-cinq ans qui avait beaucoup d’expérience. Dès le départ, Chris gagna quelques points, mais le type l’étudiait méthodiquement, cherchant ses faiblesses. Dès qu’il eut compris quelles balles gênaient le plus Chris, il joua de cette façon et tout fut dit. » Les finesses, la stratégie, et tout ce qui allait au-delà des rudiments n’intéressaient pas Chris. Sa seule façon d’affronter une épreuve était de foncer droit devant avec toute son extraordinaire énergie. En conséquence, il était souvent déçu. Ce ne fut qu’avec la course à pied – qui exige plus de volonté que de finesse ou d’habileté – qu’il trouva sa voie dans le sport. À l’âge de dix ans, il participa à sa première compétition, une course de dix kilomètres sur route. Il finit soixante-neuvième et battit plus d’un millier d’adultes. Dès lors, il avait trouvé sa voie. Pendant son adolescence, il fut l’un des meilleurs coureurs de fond de la région. Chris avait douze ans quand Walt et Billie achetèrent un chien à Carine, un shetland nommé Buckley. Chris prit l’habitude d’emmener Buckley dans ses entraînements quotidiens à la course. « Buckley était censé être mon chien, dit Carine, mais Chris et lui devinrent inséparables. Buck était rapide, il battait toujours Chris quand ils rentraient à la maison en courant. Je me souviens de l’excitation de Chris le jour où il rentra le premier. Il pleurait et criait dans toute la maison : "Je bats Buck ! Je bats Buck !" » Au lycée Woodson – un grand établissement public de Fairfax, qui a une bonne réputation pour les études et le sport –, Chris était le capitaine du groupe de cross-country. Il aimait beaucoup ce rôle et il imagina un entraînement nouveau, dur, dont ses camarades se souviennent encore. « Il voulait vraiment se dépasser, explique Gordy Cucullu, qui était un membre plus jeune de l’équipe. Chris inventa un entraînement qu’il appela "les Guerriers de la route". Il nous faisait faire de longues courses tuantes à travers champs, sur des chantiers de construction, dans des endroits où nous n’étions pas censés aller, et il essayait de nous égarer. Nous courions aussi loin et aussi vite que nous pouvions, le long de rues étranges, dans les bois, partout. Son idée était de nous faire perdre nos repères, de nous obliger à aller sur un terrain inconnu. Alors on courait à un rythme un peu moins rapide, jusqu’à ce qu’on ait trouvé une route que nous connaissions, et la course reprenait à pleine vitesse. D’une certaine façon, c’est comme ça que Chris menait sa vie. » Pour McCandless, la course à pied était un exercice spirituel intense, proche de la religion. « Chris se se rvait de l’aspect spirituel pour nous motiver, se souvient Eric Hathaway, un autre membre de l’équipe. Il nous disait de penser au mal dans le monde, à la haine, et d’imaginer que nous courions contre les forces du mal qui tentaient de nous empêcher de courir de notre mieux. Il croyait que la réussite venait entièrement du mental, qu’il suffisait de mobiliser toute l’énergie disponible. Nous étions de jeunes lycéens impressionnables, ce genre de discours nous épatait. » Mais la course à pied n’était pas exclusivement une pratique spirituelle. C’était aussi une compétition. Quand McCandless courait, il voulait gagner. « Chris prenait la course à pied très au sérieux », dit Kris Maxie Gillmer, une camarade de son équipe qui fut sans doute son amie la plus proche à Woodson. « Je me souviens de l’avoir regardé courir, depuis la ligne d’arrivée, sachant à quel point il voulait faire un bon temps et combien il serait déçu s’il ne parvenait pas au résultat attendu. Après une mauvaise course, ou même une mauvaise séance d’entraînement, il s’en voulait beaucoup. Et il ne voulait pas en parler. Si j’essayais de le consoler, il prenait un air ennuyé et me repoussait. Il intériorisait sa déception. Il partait tout seul quelque part pour se faire des reproches. Ce n’était pas seulement la course que Chris prenait au sérieux, ajoute Gillmer. Il était comme ça pour tout. On n’est pas censé réfléchir à de grands problèmes au lycée. Mais moi je le faisais, et lui aussi. C’est la raison pour laquelle nous nous sommes compris. Pendant la récréation, nous allions près de son casier et nous parlions de la vie, de l’état du monde, d’autres choses sérieuses. Je suis noire et je n’ai jamais pu comprendre pourquoi tout le monde accorde tant d’importance à la race. Chris me parlait de tout cela. Il comprenait. Il abordait toujours les problèmes de la même manière. Je l’aimais beaucoup. C’était vraiment un brave garçon. » McCandless prenait à cœur les injustices de la vie. Pendant sa dernière année à Woodson, il était obsédé par la discrimination raciale en Afrique du Sud. À ses amis, il parlait très sérieusement d’entrer clandestinement dans le pays avec des armes et de se joindre à la lutte contre l’apartheid. « Une fois nous en avons discuté, se souvient Hathaway. Chris n’aimait pas passer par les canaux habituels, collaborer avec le système, attendre son tour. Il disait : "Allez, Eric, on peut rassembler assez d’argent pour partir en Afrique du Sud par nos propres moyens, tout de suite. Il s’agit seulement d’en prendre la décision." Je répliquais en lui rappelant que nous n’étions que deux gamins et que notre présence ne changerait rien. Mais avec lui on ne pouvait pas argumenter. Il répondait quelque chose comme : "Oh ! Je suppose que tu te moques de ce qui est bien et de ce qui est mal." » Les week-ends, alors que ses camarades de lycée regardaient des stupidités ou essayaient de se faufiler dans les bars de Georgetown, McCandless se promenait dans les quartiers les plus misérables de Washington, bavardant avec des prostituées et des sans-abri, leur achetant de la nourriture et leur suggérant très sérieusement des moyens d’améliorer leur existence. « Chris ne comprenait pas comment on peut permettre que des gens aient faim, tout particulièrement dans notre pays, dit Billie. Il pouvait tenir pendant des heures sur ce genre de sujet. » Une fois, Chris rencontra un homme qui vivait dans la rue à Washington. Il l’amena dans le prospère Annandale et l’installa en secret dans la caravane que ses parents avaient parquée auprès de leur garage. Walt et Billie ne surent jamais qu’ils avaient hébergé un vagabond. Une autre fois, Chris alla chez Hathaway en voiture et lui annonça qu’ils allaient faire un tour en ville. Hathaway se souvient d’avoir pensé : « Chouette ! » « C’était un vendredi soir, et je croyais que nous allions chez des amis à Georgetown. Au lieu de cela. Chris gara la voiture dans la 14 e Rue, qui, à l’époque, était un coin très mal famé. Puis il dit : "Tu vois, Eric, on peut lire des livres sur ces choses-là, mais on ne peut vraiment les comprendre qu’en les vivant. C’est ce que nous allons faire ce soir." Nous avons passé les heures suivantes dans des endroits à donner la chair de poule, à discuter avec des maquereaux, des prostituées, avec la faune des bas-fonds. J’étais littéralement effrayé. Vers la fin de la soirée, Chris me demanda combien d’argent j’avais sur moi. Je lui dis : "5 dollars." Il en avait 10. "OK, toi, tu achètes l’essence, me dit-il, moi, je vais chercher de la nourriture." Avec ses 10 dollars il rapporta un grand sac plein de hamburgers et nous tournâmes en voiture dans le quartier, tendant des hamburgers à des types puants qui dormaient sur des grilles. Ce fut le plus étrange vendredi soir de ma vie. Mais Chris faisait souvent ce genre de chose. » Au début de son année de terminale à Woodson, Chris informa ses parents qu’il n’avait aucune intention d’aller à l’université. Quand Walt et Billie firent valoir qu’il avait besoin d’un diplôme pour accédera une carrière qui lui plaise, Chris répondit que la carrière était une « invention avilissante du XX e siècle », un assujettissement plus qu’un atout, et que tout irait bien en s’en passant, merci. « Nous avons ressenti une sorte de panique, admet Walt. Billie et moi venons de familles ouvrières. Nous ne prenons pas les diplômes à la légère, et nous avons travaillé dur pour pouvoir envoyer nos enfants dans de bonnes écoles. Alors, Billie l’a fait asseoir et lui a dit : "Chris, si tu veux vraiment changer les choses, si tu veux aider les déshérités, il faut d’abord que tu en acquières les moyens. Va à l’université, obtiens un diplôme de droit et, ensuite, tu pourras vraiment être efficace." » « Chris rapportait de bonnes notes à la maison, raconte Hathaway. Il n’avait pas d’ennuis, c’était un fonceur, il faisait ce qu’il était censé faire. Ses parents n’avaient pas vraiment de raisons de se plaindre. Mais ils se sont braqués au sujet de l’université ; je ne sais pas ce qu’ils lui ont dit mais ça a marché. Il a fini par aller à Emory tout en considérant que ça n’avait aucun sens, que c’était une perte de temps et d’argent. » Il est assez étonnant que Chris ait cédé au sujet de l’université, alors que dans tant d’autres domaines il avait refusé de les écouter. Mais dans les relations entre Chris et ses parents, les contradictions apparentes ne manquaient pas. Quand Chris allait voir Kris Gillmer, il s’emportait souvent contre Walt et Billie, les dépeignant comme des tyrans déraisonnables. Mais avec les garçons – Hathaway, Cucullu et Andy Horowitz, une autre star de la piste – il ne se plaignait presque pas. « J’ai eu l’impression que ses parents étaient très gentils, dit Hathaway, guère différents de mes propres parents ou des parents des autres. Simplement, Chris n’aimait pas qu’on lui dise ce qu’il devait faire. Je pense qu’il aurait été malheureux avec n’importe quels parents. C’est avec l' idée de parents qu’il était en conflit. » La personnalité de McCandless était d’une complexité déroutante. Il avait un sens aigu de son domaine privé mais pouvait également se montrer convivial ou même sociable à l’extrême. Et en dépit de sa conscience sociale hyperdéveloppée, ce n’était pas une de ces bonnes consciences à la mine sérieuse qui froncent les sourcils à tout amusement. Au contraire, il aimait bien boire un verre de temps en temps et c’était un incorrigible cabotin. Ses sentiments à l’égard de l’argent constituent peut-être sa plus profonde contradiction. Walt et Billie avaient tous les deux connu la pauvreté dans leur enfance, et après s’être battus pour en sortir ils ne voyaient rien de mal à profiter du fruit de leur travail. « Nous avons travaillé très très dur, insiste Billie. Quand les enfants étaient petits nous avons vécu très modestement, nous avons économisé ce que nous gagnions et investi pour l’avenir. » Lorsque, finalement, ils ont atteint une modeste aisance, ils n’en ont pas fait étalage. Ils ont acheté de beaux vêtements, quelques bijoux pour Billie et une Cadillac. Puis ils ont acquis la maison sur la baie et le bateau. Ils ont emmené les enfants en Europe, leur ont fait faire du ski à Breckenridge et une croisière dans les Caraïbes. « Tout cela, remarque Billie, mettait Chris mal à l’aise. » Le jeune disciple de Tolstoï trouvait que la richesse est honteuse, corruptrice et donc mauvaise. L’ironie, c’est que Chris était un capitaliste-né qui avait une étrange facilité pour gagner de l’argent. Billie dit en riant : « Chris a toujours été un chef d’entreprise, toujours. » À huit ans, il se mit à cultiver des légumes derrière la maison, à Annandale ; ensuite il les vendait en faisant du porte-à-porte dans le voisinage. « Et voilà ce mignon petit garçon tirant une charrette pleine de haricots, de tomates et de poivrons tout frais, raconte Carine. Qui aurait pu résister ? Chris le savait. Il avait sur le visage cette expression : "Regardez comme je suis mignon ! Voulez-vous acheter des haricots ?" Quand il rentrait, la charrette était vide, et il avait une liasse de billets dans la main. » À douze ans, il imprima des affichettes et se mit à faire des photocopies pour les gens du quartier : « Chris – copies rapides – enlèvement de documents et livraison gratuits. » Il se servait de la photocopieuse de Walt et Billie, donnait à ses parents quelques cents par copie et faisait payer au client deux cents de moins qu’à la boutique du coin. Il en tirait un profit substantiel. En 1985, alors qu’il était au lycée à Woodson, Chris fut engagé par un entrepreneur local pour proposer aux propriétaires de maisons à vendre des environs des travaux de revêtement et de rénovation de cuisine. Il se révéla étonnamment efficace ; c’était un vendeur hors pair. En l’espace de quelques mois, il en vint à diriger une équipe de six lycéens et mit sur son compte en banque une somme de sept mille dollars. C’est une partie de cet argent qu’il utilisa pour acheter sa Datsun jaune d’occasion. Chris avait un don tellement exceptionnel pour la vente qu’au printemps 1986, à l’approche de la fin de ses études secondaires, le patron de l’entreprise de construction téléphona à Walt pour lui proposer de payer les études supérieures de Chris si Walt parvenait à persuader son fils de rester à Annandale et de continuer à travailler tout en suivant sa scolarité, au lieu de partir à Emory. « Lorsque j’ai informé Chris de cette offre, dit Walt, il n’a même pas voulu y réfléchir. Il a répondu à son patron qu’il avait d’autres projets. » Dès la fin de l’année scolaire, Chris déclara qu’il allait passer l’été à parcourir le pays au volant de sa nouvelle voiture. Personne ne devina que ce voyage serait le premier d’une série d’aventures transcontinentales. Et nul dans sa famille ne pouvait prévoir qu’une découverte due au hasard pendant ce voyage initial l’amènerait à se replier sur lui-même et à s’en aller, provoquant ainsi chez lui et chez ceux qui l’aimaient un mélange de ressentiment, d’incompréhension et de peine. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer 10 Fairbanks AGONISANT DANS LA FORÊT, UN RANDONNEUR NOTE SES DERNIERS INSTANTS. Anchorage, 12 septembre (AP) – Dimanche dernier, un jeune randonneur, immobilisé par une blessure, a été trouvé mort dans un campement isolé de l’intérieur de l’Alaska. Personne ne sait encore avec certitude qui il était. Mais son journal intime et deux notes trouvés sur place racontent l’histoire poignante de ses efforts désespérés et bientôt futiles pour essayer de survivre. Le journal indique que cet homme, que l’on croit être un Américain d’environ trente ans, pourrait bien s’être blessé dans une chute à la suite de laquelle il a dû rester à son camp pendant plus de trois mois. Il raconte comment il a tenté de se maintenir en vie en chassant et en consommant des plantes sauvages, sans autre résultat qu’un constant affaiblissement. L’une de ses deux notes est un appel au secours adressé à toute personne qui viendrait à son camp pendant que lui-même chercherait de la nourriture dans les environs. La seconde note est un adieu au monde… Une autopsie effectuée cette semaine dans les services du coroner à Fairbanks établit que l’homme est mort de dénutrition, probablement fin juillet. Les autorités ont trouvé dans ses affaires un nom qu’elles pensent être le sien. Mais jusqu’à présent elles n’ont pu confirmer son identité et, en attendant, se sont refusées à la divulguer. The New York Times. 13 septembre 1992. Au moment où le New York Times rapportait l’histoire du randonneur, cela faisait une semaine que la police montée d’Alaska essayait de découvrir son identité. Lorsqu’il mourut, McCandless portait un sweat-shirt bleu sur lequel était imprimé le logo d’une entreprise de dépannage de Santa Barbara. Quand on s’adressa à lui, le remorqueur d’épaves assura ne rien savoir de l’homme ni de la façon dont il avait acquis le vêtement. Comme le journal bref et sibyllin que l’on avait trouvé près du corps comportait en maints endroits des observations succinctes sur la flore et la faune, on se demanda si McCandless n’était pas un biologiste de terrain. Mais cela non plus ne conduisit nulle part. Le 10 septembre, soit trois jours avant l’article du Times , l' Anchorage Daily News rapporta le fait divers en première page. Lorsque Jim Gallien vit le titre et la carte qui indiquait que le corps avait été trouvé à 40 kilomètres à l’ouest de Healy sur la piste Stampede, il sentit ses cheveux se dresser sur sa tête : c’était Alex ! Gallien gardait encore en mémoire l’image de l’étrange et sympathique jeune homme en train de descendre la piste dans des bottes trop grandes pour lui – les vieilles bottes marron qu’il avait persuadé le garçon de prendre. « D’après l’article du journal, malgré le peu d’informations, ça avait bien l’air d’être la même personne. Alors j’ai appelé la police montée et je leur ai dit : "Je pense que j’ai pris ce type en stop." "Ouais, d’accord, répliqua le policier Roger Ellis à l’autre bout du fil. Qu’est-ce qui vous fait penser ça ? Vous êtes le sixième en une heure qui prétend connaître l’identité du randonneur." » Mais Gallien insista, et plus il parlait, plus le scepticisme d’Ellis diminuait. Gallien donna une description de plusieurs objets que l’article ne mentionnait pas et qui correspondaient à l’équipement trouvé avec le corps. Et puis Ellis fit le rapprochement avec le début mystérieux du journal intime : « Quitté Fairbanks. Galliennement installé. Mauvais jour. » À ce moment-là, les policiers avaient déjà développé les photos du randonneur. Apparemment, elles comprenaient plusieurs autoportraits. « Quand ils m’ont apporté les photos sur mon lieu de travail, raconte Gallien, il n’y avait plus à hésiter. Le gars sur les photos, c’était Alex. » Comme McCandless avait dit à Gallien qu’il venait du Dakota du Sud, les policiers orientèrent leurs recherches dans cette direction, afin de retrouver un de ses parents. Par coïncidence, un bulletin de recherche signalait une personne disparue nommée McCandless et venant d’une petite ville située à 32 kilomètres de Carthage. Les policiers pensèrent avoir trouvé leur homme. Mais c’était encore une fausse piste. Westerberg n’avait eu aucune nouvelle de l’ami qu’il connaissait sous le nom d’Alex McCandless depuis la carte postale envoyée de Fairbanks au printemps précédent. Le 13 septembre, il roulait sur une route déserte après avoir quitté Jamestown, dans le Dakota du Nord, pour ramener son équipe de moissonneurs à Carthage. Il venait de boucler quatre mois de moisson dans le Montana. Soudain la radio VHF se mit à hurler : « Wayne ! crachotait une voix angoissée qui venait d’un des véhicules de l’équipe, ici Bob, tu as mis la radio ? — Oui, Bobby, ici Wayne, qu’est-ce qui se passe ! — Vite, allume ta radio et écoute Paul Harvey. Il parle d’un gars qui est mort de faim en Alaska, la police ne sait pas qui c’est. Ça a bien l’air d’être Alex. » Westerberg trouva la station à temps pour entendre la fin de l’émission, et il fut forcé de l’admettre : les quelques précisions fournies faisaient terriblement penser à son ami. Aussitôt arrivé à Carthage, Westerberg, complètement abattu, téléphona à la police montée en Alaska pour dire ce qu’il savait de McCandless. Mais déjà, dans tout le pays, les journaux avaient fait une place importante à la mort du randonneur, publiant même des extraits de son journal. Aussi les policiers étaient-ils submergés d’appels de gens qui prétendaient connaître son identité. Ils furent donc encore moins réceptifs à ce que voulait leur dire Westerberg qu’ils ne l’avaient été pour Gallien. « Le flic me dit qu’ils avaient eu plus de cent cinquante appels de personnes qui prétendaient qu’Alex était leur enfant, leur ami ou leur frère, raconte Westerberg. Ça me cassait vraiment les pieds d’entrer dans ce cirque, alors je lui ai dit : "Écoutez, je ne suis pas comme ces fêlés qui vous appellent. Je sais qui il est. Il a travaillé pour moi. Je pense même que j’ai son numéro de sécurité sociale quelque part." » Westerberg fouilla dans ses dossiers jusqu’à ce qu’il retrouve les deux fiches que McCandless avait remplies. Sur la première, qui remontait à son premier séjour à Carthage en 1990, il avait griffonné : Néant, Néant, Néant, Néant. Nom : Iris Fucyu. Adresse : Ce n’est pas votre affaire. Numéro de Sécurité sociale : Je l’ai oublié. Mais sur la seconde fiche, datée du 30 mars 1992, soit deux semaines avant son départ en Alaska, il avait indiqué son nom : Chris J. McCandless, et son numéro de Sécurité sociale : 228-31-6704. Westerberg rappela l’Alaska. Cette fois, les policiers le prirent au sérieux. Le numéro de Sécurité sociale était exact. Il permettait de situer le domicile de McCandless dans le nord de la Virginie. La police montée se mit en rapport avec les autorités de cet État, lesquelles entreprirent de chercher des McCandless dans l’annuaire téléphonique. À cette époque, Walt et Billie étaient allés s’installer sur la côte du Maryland et n’avaient plus de numéro de téléphone en Virginie, mais le fils aîné de Walt vivait à Annandale et figurait dans l’annuaire. C’est ainsi que le 17 septembre en fin d’après-midi Sam McCandless reçut un appel de la police criminelle du comté de Fairfax. Sam, de neuf ans plus âgé que Chris, avait vu un bref article sur le randonneur dans le Washington Post quelques jours plus tôt, mais, dit-il : « Il ne m’est pas venu à l’esprit qu’il puisse s’agir de Chris. Ça ne m’a même pas effleuré. L’ironie veut qu’en lisant l’article je me sois dit : "Oh, mon Dieu, quelle terrible tragédie ! La famille de ce garçon, quelle qu’elle soit, est bien à plaindre. Quelle triste histoire !" » Sam a été élevé en Californie et dans le Colorado chez sa mère et n’est venu s’installer en Virginie qu’en 1987, après que Chris fut parti faire ses études à l’université d’Atlanta. Aussi Sam connaissait-il peu son demi-frère. Mais quand l’inspecteur se mit à lui demander si le randonneur pouvait être quelqu’un de sa connaissance, il fut persuadé qu’il s’agissait de Chris : « Le fait qu’il soit parti en Alaska et qu’il y soit allé tout seul. Tout concordait. » À la demande de l’inspecteur, Sam se rendit dans les bureaux de la police de Fairfax, et là, un policier lui montra une photographie du randonneur, envoyée par fax de Fairbanks. « C’était un agrandissement, se souvient Sam, un portrait. Il avait les cheveux longs et portait la barbe. Chris avait presque toujours les cheveux coupés court et se rasait de près. Et sur la photo le visage était extrêmement émacié. Mais je l’ai reconnu tout de suite. Il n’y avait aucun doute possible. C’était Chris. Je suis rentré chez moi, et avec ma femme, Michele, nous sommes partis en voiture pour le Maryland pour prévenir Papa et Billie. Je ne savais pas ce que j’allais dire. Comment annoncer à des parents que leur enfant est mort ? » Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer 18 La piste Stampede Il est presque impossible à l’homme moderne d’imaginer ce que c’est que de vivre de la chasse. L’existence d’un chasseur n’est qu’un pénible et continuel déplacement… C’est une constante inquiétude que la prochaine capture ne réussisse pas, que le piège ou la battue ne donnent rien, que les hardes ne se montrent pas cette saison-là. Mais surtout, l’existence d’un chasseur implique la menace de manquer de nourriture et de mourir de faim. John M. Campbell, L’Été de la faim . Qu’est-ce que l’histoire ? C’est l’exploration systématique de l’énigme de la mort au cours des siècles, avec la perspective de son triomphe. C’est pour cette raison qu’on découvre un infini mathématique et des ondes électromagnétiques, c’est pour cette raison qu’on écrit une symphonie. On ne peut s’engager dans cette voie sans une certaine foi. On ne peut faire de telles découvertes sans une armature spirituelle. Et la base de cette armature, ce sont les Évangiles. Que disent-ils ? Tout d’abord, d’aimer son prochain , ce qui est la forme suprême de l’énergie vitale. Quand elle remplit le cœur d’un homme, elle déborde et se répand d’elle-même. Ensuite, on trouve en eux les deux idéaux fondamentaux de l’homme moderne – sans lesquels on ne peut le concevoir –, l’idée de personnalité libre et l’idée que la vie est un sacrifice . Boris Pasternak, Le Docteur Jivago . Passage souligné dans l’un des livres trouvés parmi les affaires de Chris McCandless. Sa tentative de quitter la forêt ayant été arrêtée par le niveau de la Teklanika, McCandless fut de retour à l’autobus le 8 juillet. Il est impossible de savoir ce qu’il pensait à ce moment-là car son journal ne révèle rien. Que le chemin du retour soit barré le laissait sans doute plutôt insouciant. Et, de fait, il n’y avait pas vraiment de raisons de s’inquiéter. C’était le plein été, le pays regorgeait de plantes et d’animaux, son approvisionnement alimentaire était suffisant. Il fit probablement la supposition que, s’il attendait jusqu’au mois d’août, la Teklanika aurait suffisamment baissé pour qu’il puisse la traverser. Réinstallé dans la carcasse du Fairbanks 142, il reprit sa routine de chasse et de cueillette. Il lut la nouvelle de Tolstoï La Mort d’Ivan Ilitch et le roman de Michael Crichton L’Homme terminal . Il nota dans son journal qu’il pleuvait sans discontinuer depuis une semaine. Il semble qu’il y ait eu abondance de gibier. Dans les trois dernières semaines de juillet, il tua 35 écureuils, 4 grouses, 5 geais et piverts, et 2 grenouilles qu’il complétait avec des pommes de terre sauvages, de la rhubarbe sauvage, diverses sortes de baies et une grande quantité de champignons. Mais malgré cette apparente pléthore d’aliments, la quantité de viande était assez faible et il absorbait moins de calories qu’il n’en dépensait. Après avoir subsisté pendant trois mois avec un régime à peine suffisant, McCandless se trouvait en état de déficit calorique. Il était en équilibre instable. Puis, fin juillet, il commit l’erreur qui lui fut fatale. Il venait de terminer Le Docteur Jivago dont il avait souligné plusieurs passages et rempli les marges de notes fébriles. Lara suivit un chemin tracé par les pèlerins, puis elle le quitta pour entrer dans les champs. Là, elle s’arrêta et, fermant les yeux, respira profondément l’air au parfum de fleurs que lui apportait cette grande étendue autour d’elle. Cela lui était plus cher que sa famille, plus délicieux qu’un amant, plus instructif qu’un livre. Pendant un moment, elle redécouvrit le but de sa vie. Elle était sur la terre pour saisir la signification de son enchantement sauvage et pour appeler chaque chose par son nom véritable ou, si elle n’en avait pas le pouvoir, pour donner naissance, dans l’amour de la vie, à des successeurs qui le feraient à sa place. « NATURE/PURETÉ », écrit-il en majuscules en haut de la page. Oh ! comme on souhaite parfois échapper à l’absurde monotonie de l’éloquence humaine, à toutes ces périodes sublimes, pour se réfugier dans la nature, si muette en apparence, ou dans un long et épuisant labeur sans paroles, dans un sommeil profond, dans une musique véritable, ou encore dans une compréhension humaine rendue silencieuse par l’émotion ! McCandless cocha et mit ce paragraphe entre crochets. Il entoura à l’encre noire « se réfugier dans la nature ». Juste après : « Et ainsi, il apparut que seule une vie semblable à la vie de ceux qui nous entourent, unie à elle sans un accroc, est la vie véritable, et que le bonheur non partagé n’est pas le bonheur… et c’était cela qui était le plus contrariant…», il a écrit : « Le bonheur n’est vrai que quand il est partagé. » Il est tentant de considérer cette dernière note comme une preuve de plus que le long et solitaire séjour sabbatique de McCandless l’avait fait évoluer. On peut l’interpréter comme le signe qu’il était prêt à remiser une partie de l’armure dont il entourait son cœur, et qu’en retournant vers la civilisation, il avait l’intention d’abandonner sa vie de vagabond solitaire, de cesser de protéger si fortement son intimité, et de devenir membre de la communauté humaine. Mais nous ne le saurons jamais vraiment, car Le Docteur Jivago fut le dernier livre qu’il ait lu. Deux jours après l’avoir terminé, le 30 juillet, on lit dans son journal ces mots inquiétants : « Extrêmement faible. À cause des graines de pom. Beaucoup de mal à tenir debout. Faim. Grave danger. » Avant cette note, rien n’indique dans son journal qu’il était dans une situation dangereuse. Il avait faim, et en raison de son régime insuffisant son corps ressemblait à celui d’une bête efflanquée qui n’a que la peau sur les os. Mais il paraissait en assez bonne santé. Puis, brusquement, le 30 juillet, sa condition physique s’effondra et, le 19 août, il était mort. On a fait beaucoup d’hypothèses sur la cause d’un déclin si rapide. Dans les jours qui suivirent l’identification de la dépouille de McCandless, Wayne Westerberg se souvint vaguement que Chris avait pu acheter des graines dans le Dakota du Sud avant de partir, notamment, peut-être, des graines de pommes de terre, qu’il avait l’intention de planter après s’être installé dans le sous-bois. Selon une théorie, McCandless ne planta aucun jardin potager (je n’en ai pas observé la moindre trace dans les environs de l’autobus) et, fin juillet, il se trouva tellement affamé qu’il mangea les graines, lesquelles l’empoisonnèrent. Les plantes de pomme de terre sont en fait modérément toxiques quand elles ont commencé à germer. Elles contiennent de la solanine, poison que l’on trouve dans les végétaux de la famille de la morelle. Elle provoque d’abord des vomissements, des diarrhées, des maux de tête et une léthargie, puis, si elle est consommée pendant plus longtemps, elle affecte gravement le rythme cardiaque et la tension artérielle. Cette théorie soulève néanmoins une objection importante. Pour que McCandless ait été gravement affecté par les graines de pomme de terre, il aurait fallu qu’il en consomme plusieurs kilos ; et, étant donné la légèreté de son sac quand Gallien le déposa, il est très peu probable qu’il ait eu plus de quelques grammes de graines de pomme de terre, si toutefois il en avait. Mais d’autres scénarios font intervenir des graines de pomme de terre d’une variété toute différente, et ceux-là sont plus plausibles. Aux pages 126 et 127 de La Botanique des Tanaina , il y a la description d’une plante que les Indiens Dena’ina appellent « la pomme de terre sauvage » et dont ils cueillent la racine en forme de carotte. Cette plante, connue des botanistes sous le nom de Hedysarum alpinum , pousse dans les sols caillouteux de toute la région. Selon La Botanique des Tanaina , « La racine de la pomme de terre sauvage constitue probablement la base de l’alimentation des Dena’ina,	436,321
Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky [Dostoevsky, Fyodor]) (Z-Library).epub	Table of Contents Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Part I : Underground I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI Part II : À Propos of the Wet Snow Epigraph I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks Titlepage Imprint Notes from Underground Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright V V Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself? I am not saying this now from any mawkish kind of remorse. And, indeed, I could never endure saying, “Forgive me, Papa, I won’t do it again,” not because I am incapable of saying that—on the contrary, perhaps just because I have been too capable of it, and in what a way, too. As though of design I used to get into trouble in cases when I was not to blame in any way. That was the nastiest part of it. At the same time I was genuinely touched and penitent, I used to shed tears and, of course, deceived myself, though I was not acting in the least and there was a sick feeling in my heart at the time. … For that one could not blame even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have continually all my life offended me more than anything. It is loathsome to remember it all, but it was loathsome even then. Of course, a minute or so later I would realise wrathfully that it was all a lie, a revolting lie, an affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this emotion, these vows of reform. You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics: answer, because it was very dull to sit with one’s hands folded, and so one began cutting capers. That is really it. Observe yourselves more carefully, gentlemen, then you will understand that it is so. I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way. How many times it has happened to me—well, for instance, to take offence simply on purpose, for nothing; and one knows oneself, of course, that one is offended at nothing; that one is putting it on, but yet one brings oneself at last to the point of being really offended. All my life I have had an impulse to play such pranks, so that in the end I could not control it in myself. Another time, twice, in fact, I tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In the depth of my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint stir of mockery, but yet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I was jealous, beside myself … and it was all from ennui, gentlemen, all from ennui; inertia overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this already. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all “direct” persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing. To begin to act, you know, you must first have your mind completely at ease and no trace of doubt left in it. Why, how am I, for example, to set my mind at rest? Where are the primary causes on which I am to build? Where are my foundations? Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case of the laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the end? Why, just the same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you did not take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees justice in it. Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice. And so he is at rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing. But I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently if I attempt to revenge myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course, might overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve quite successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is not a cause. But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began with that just now, you know). In consequence again of those accursed laws of consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left again—that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands folded. The day after tomorrow, at the latest, you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve? IX IX Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am, perhaps, jesting against the grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is desirable to reform man in that way? And what leads you to the conclusion that man’s inclinations need reforming? In short, how do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man? And to go to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that not to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the conclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous for man and must always be a law for mankind? So far, you know, this is only your supposition. It may be the law of logic, but not the law of humanity. You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that man is preeminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering—that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead . But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is predestined to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the “direct” practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead somewhere , and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of les animaux domestiques —such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that pattern which endures for ever—the ant-heap. With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant-heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station—and there is occupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for … my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the “Palace of Crystal” it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a “palace of crystal” if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing. IV IV I had been certain the day before that I should be the first to arrive. But it was not a question of being the first to arrive. Not only were they not there, but I had difficulty in finding our room. The table was not laid even. What did it mean? After a good many questions I elicited from the waiters that the dinner had been ordered not for five, but for six o’clock. This was confirmed at the buffet too. I felt really ashamed to go on questioning them. It was only twenty-five minutes past five. If they changed the dinner hour they ought at least to have let me know—that is what the post is for, and not to have put me in an absurd position in my own eyes and … and even before the waiters. I sat down; the servant began laying the table; I felt even more humiliated when he was present. Towards six o’clock they brought in candles, though there were lamps burning in the room. It had not occurred to the waiter, however, to bring them in at once when I arrived. In the next room two gloomy, angry-looking persons were eating their dinners in silence at two different tables. There was a great deal of noise, even shouting, in a room further away; one could hear the laughter of a crowd of people, and nasty little shrieks in French: there were ladies at the dinner. It was sickening, in fact. I rarely passed more unpleasant moments, so much so that when they did arrive all together punctually at six I was overjoyed to see them, as though they were my deliverers, and even forgot that it was incumbent upon me to show resentment. Zverkov walked in at the head of them; evidently he was the leading spirit. He and all of them were laughing; but, seeing me, Zverkov drew himself up a little, walked up to me deliberately with a slight, rather jaunty bend from the waist. He shook hands with me in a friendly, but not over-friendly, fashion, with a sort of circumspect courtesy like that of a General, as though in giving me his hand he were warding off something. I had imagined, on the contrary, that on coming in he would at once break into his habitual thin, shrill laugh and fall to making his insipid jokes and witticisms. I had been preparing for them ever since the previous day, but I had not expected such condescension, such high-official courtesy. So, then, he felt himself ineffably superior to me in every respect! If he only meant to insult me by that high-official tone, it would not matter, I thought—I could pay him back for it one way or another. But what if, in reality, without the least desire to be offensive, that sheepshead had a notion in earnest that he was superior to me and could only look at me in a patronising way? The very supposition made me gasp. “I was surprised to hear of your desire to join us,” he began, lisping and drawling, which was something new. “You and I seem to have seen nothing of one another. You fight shy of us. You shouldn’t. We are not such terrible people as you think. Well, anyway, I am glad to renew our acquaintance.” And he turned carelessly to put down his hat on the window. “Have you been waiting long?” Trudolyubov inquired. “I arrived at five o’clock as you told me yesterday,” I answered aloud, with an irritability that threatened an explosion. “Didn’t you let him know that we had changed the hour?” said Trudolyubov to Simonov. “No, I didn’t. I forgot,” the latter replied, with no sign of regret, and without even apologising to me he went off to order the hors d’œuvre . “So you’ve been here a whole hour? Oh, poor fellow!” Zverkov cried ironically, for to his notions this was bound to be extremely funny. That rascal Ferfitchkin followed with his nasty little snigger like a puppy yapping. My position struck him, too, as exquisitely ludicrous and embarrassing. “It isn’t funny at all!” I cried to Ferfitchkin, more and more irritated. “It wasn’t my fault, but other people’s. They neglected to let me know. It was … it was … it was simply absurd.” “It’s not only absurd, but something else as well,” muttered Trudolyubov, naively taking my part. “You are not hard enough upon it. It was simply rudeness—unintentional, of course. And how could Simonov … h’m!” “If a trick like that had been played on me,” observed Ferfitchkin, “I should …” “But you should have ordered something for yourself,” Zverkov interrupted, “or simply asked for dinner without waiting for us.” “You will allow that I might have done that without your permission,” I rapped out. “If I waited, it was …” “Let us sit down, gentlemen,” cried Simonov, coming in. “Everything is ready; I can answer for the champagne; it is capitally frozen. … You see, I did not know your address, where was I to look for you?” he suddenly turned to me, but again he seemed to avoid looking at me. Evidently he had something against me. It must have been what happened yesterday. All sat down; I did the same. It was a round table. Trudolyubov was on my left, Simonov on my right, Zverkov was sitting opposite, Ferfitchkin next to him, between him and Trudolyubov. “Tell me, are you … in a government office?” Zverkov went on attending to me. Seeing that I was embarrassed he seriously thought that he ought to be friendly to me, and, so to speak, cheer me up. “Does he want me to throw a bottle at his head?” I thought, in a fury. In my novel surroundings I was unnaturally ready to be irritated. “In the N—— office,” I answered jerkily, with my eyes on my plate. “And ha-ave you a go-od berth? I say, what ma-a-de you leave your original job?” “What ma-a-de me was that I wanted to leave my original job,” I drawled more than he, hardly able to control myself. Ferfitchkin went off into a guffaw. Simonov looked at me ironically. Trudolyubov left off eating and began looking at me with curiosity. Zverkov winced, but he tried not to notice it. “And the remuneration?” “What remuneration?” “I mean, your sa-a-lary?” “Why are you cross-examining me?” However, I told him at once what my salary was. I turned horribly red. “It is not very handsome,” Zverkov observed majestically. “Yes, you can’t afford to dine at cafés on that,” Ferfitchkin added insolently. “To my thinking it’s very poor,” Trudolyubov observed gravely. “And how thin you have grown! How you have changed!” added Zverkov, with a shade of venom in his voice, scanning me and my attire with a sort of insolent compassion. “Oh, spare his blushes,” cried Ferfitchkin, sniggering. “My dear sir, allow me to tell you I am not blushing,” I broke out at last; “do you hear? I am dining here, at this café, at my own expense, not at other people’s—note that, Mr. Ferfitchkin.” “Wha-at? Isn’t everyone here dining at his own expense? You would seem to be …” Ferfitchkin flew out at me, turning as red as a lobster, and looking me in the face with fury. “Tha-at,” I answered, feeling I had gone too far, “and I imagine it would be better to talk of something more intelligent.” “You intend to show off your intelligence, I suppose?” “Don’t disturb yourself, that would be quite out of place here.” “Why are you clacking away like that, my good sir, eh? Have you gone out of your wits in your office?” “Enough, gentlemen, enough!” Zverkov cried, authoritatively. “How stupid it is!” muttered Simonov. “It really is stupid. We have met here, a company of friends, for a farewell dinner to a comrade and you carry on an altercation,” said Trudolyubov, rudely addressing himself to me alone. “You invited yourself to join us, so don’t disturb the general harmony.” “Enough, enough!” cried Zverkov. “Give over, gentlemen, it’s out of place. Better let me tell you how I nearly got married the day before yesterday. …” And then followed a burlesque narrative of how this gentleman had almost been married two days before. There was not a word about the marriage, however, but the story was adorned with generals, colonels and kammer-junkers, while Zverkov almost took the lead among them. It was greeted with approving laughter; Ferfitchkin positively squealed. No one paid any attention to me, and I sat crushed and humiliated. “Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!” I thought. “And what a fool I have made of myself before them! I let Ferfitchkin go too far, though. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me sit down with them. They don’t understand that it’s an honour to them and not to me! I’ve grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers! Zverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he came in. … But what’s the use! I must get up at once, this very minute, take my hat and simply go without a word … with contempt! And tomorrow I can send a challenge. The scoundrels! As though I cared about the seven roubles. They may think. … Damn it! I don’t care about the seven roubles. I’ll go this minute!” Of course I remained. I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my discomfiture. Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected. My annoyance increased as the wine went to my head. I longed all at once to insult them all in a most flagrant manner and then go away. To seize the moment and show what I could do, so that they would say, “He’s clever, though he is absurd,” and … and … in fact, damn them all! I scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes. But they seemed to have forgotten me altogether. They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful. Zverkov was talking all the time. I began listening. Zverkov was talking of some exuberant lady whom he had at last led on to declaring her love (of course, he was lying like a horse), and how he had been helped in this affair by an intimate friend of his, a Prince Kolya, an officer in the hussars, who had three thousand serfs. “And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an appearance here tonight to see you off,” I cut in suddenly. For one minute everyone was silent. “You are drunk already.” Trudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my direction. Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an insect. I dropped my eyes. Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses with champagne. Trudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me. “Your health and good luck on the journey!” he cried to Zverkov. “To old times, to our future, hurrah!” They all tossed off their glasses, and crowded round Zverkov to kiss him. I did not move; my full glass stood untouched before me. “Why, aren’t you going to drink it?” roared Trudolyubov, losing patience and turning menacingly to me. “I want to make a speech separately, on my own account … and then I’ll drink it, Mr. Trudolyubov.” “Spiteful brute!” muttered Simonov. I drew myself up in my chair and feverishly seized my glass, prepared for something extraordinary, though I did not know myself precisely what I was going to say. “ Silence! ” cried Ferfitchkin. “Now for a display of wit!” Zverkov waited very gravely, knowing what was coming. “Mr. Lieutenant Zverkov,” I began, “let me tell you that I hate phrases, phrasemongers and men in corsets … that’s the first point, and there is a second one to follow it.” There was a general stir. “The second point is: I hate ribaldry and ribald talkers. Especially ribald talkers! The third point: I love justice, truth and honesty.” I went on almost mechanically, for I was beginning to shiver with horror myself and had no idea how I came to be talking like this. “I love thought, Monsieur Zverkov; I love true comradeship, on an equal footing and not … H’m … I love … But, however, why not? I will drink your health, too, Mr. Zverkov. Seduce the Circassian girls, shoot the enemies of the fatherland and … and … to your health, Monsieur Zverkov!” Zverkov got up from his seat, bowed to me and said: “I am very much obliged to you.” He was frightfully offended and turned pale. “Damn the fellow!” roared Trudolyubov, bringing his fist down on the table. “Well, he wants a punch in the face for that,” squealed Ferfitchkin. “We ought to turn him out,” muttered Simonov. “Not a word, gentlemen, not a movement!” cried Zverkov solemnly, checking the general indignation. “I thank you all, but I can show him for myself how much value I attach to his words.” “Mr. Ferfitchkin, you will give me satisfaction tomorrow for your words just now!” I said aloud, turning with dignity to Ferfitchkin. “A duel, you mean? Certainly,” he answered. But probably I was so ridiculous as I challenged him and it was so out of keeping with my appearance that everyone including Ferfitchkin was prostrate with laughter. “Yes, let him alone, of course! He is quite drunk,” Trudolyubov said with disgust. “I shall never forgive myself for letting him join us,” Simonov muttered again. “Now is the time to throw a bottle at their heads,” I thought to myself. I picked up the bottle … and filled my glass. … “No, I’d better sit on to the end,” I went on thinking; “you would be pleased, my friends, if I went away. Nothing will induce me to go. I’ll go on sitting here and drinking to the end, on purpose, as a sign that I don’t think you of the slightest consequence. I will go on sitting and drinking, because this is a public-house and I paid my entrance money. I’ll sit here and drink, for I look upon you as so many pawns, as inanimate pawns. I’ll sit here and drink … and sing if I want to, yes, sing, for I have the right to … to sing … H’m!” But I did not sing. I simply tried not to look at any of them. I assumed most unconcerned attitudes and waited with impatience for them to speak first . But alas, they did not address me! And oh, how I wished, how I wished at that moment to be reconciled to them! It struck eight, at last nine. They moved from the table to the sofa. Zverkov stretched himself on a lounge and put one foot on a round table. Wine was brought there. He did, as a fact, order three bottles on his own account. I, of course, was not invited to join them. They all sat round him on the sofa. They listened to him, almost with reverence. It was evident that they were fond of him. “What for? What for?” I wondered. From time to time they were moved to drunken enthusiasm and kissed each other. They talked of the Caucasus, of the nature of true passion, of snug berths in the service, of the income of an hussar called Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew personally, and rejoiced in the largeness of it, of the extraordinary grace and beauty of a Princess D., whom none of them had ever seen; then it came to Shakespeare’s being immortal. I smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the room, opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again. I tried my very utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet I purposely made a noise with my boots, thumping with my heels. But it was all in vain. They paid no attention. I had the patience to walk up and down in front of them from eight o’clock till eleven, in the same place, from the table to the stove and back again. “I walk up and down to please myself and no one can prevent me.” The waiter who came into the room stopped, from time to time, to look at me. I was somewhat giddy from turning round so often; at moments it seemed to me that I was in delirium. During those three hours I was three times soaked with sweat and dry again. At times, with an intense, acute pang I was stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years, forty years would pass, and that even in forty years I would remember with loathing and humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most awful moments of my life. No one could have gone out of his way to degrade himself more shamelessly, and I fully realised it, fully, and yet I went on pacing up and down from the table to the stove. “Oh, if you only knew what thoughts and feelings I am capable of, how cultured I am!” I thought at moments, mentally addressing the sofa on which my enemies were sitting. But my enemies behaved as though I were not in the room. Once—only once—they turned towards me, just when Zverkov was talking about Shakespeare, and I suddenly gave a contemptuous laugh. I laughed in such an affected and disgusting way that they all at once broke off their conversation, and silently and gravely for two minutes watched me walking up and down from the table to the stove, taking notice of them . But nothing came of it: they said nothing, and two minutes later they ceased to notice me again. It struck eleven. “Friends,” cried Zverkov getting up from the sofa, “let us all be off now, there !” “Of course, of course,” the others assented. I turned sharply to Zverkov. I was so harassed, so exhausted, that I would have cut my throat to put an end to it. I was in a fever; my hair, soaked with perspiration, stuck to my forehead and temples. “Zverkov, I beg your pardon,” I said abruptly and resolutely. “Ferfitchkin, yours too, and everyone’s, everyone’s: I have insulted you all!” “Aha! A duel is not in your line, old man,” Ferfitchkin hissed venomously. It sent a sharp pang to my heart. “No, it’s not the duel I am afraid of, Ferfitchkin! I am ready to fight you tomorrow, after we are reconciled. I insist upon it, in fact, and you cannot refuse. I want to show you that I am not afraid of a duel. You shall fire first and I shall fire into the air.” “He is comforting himself,” said Simonov. “He’s simply raving,” said Trudolyubov. “But let us pass. Why are you barring our way? What do you want?” Zverkov answered disdainfully. They were all flushed, their eyes were bright: they had been drinking heavily. “I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted you, but …” “Insulted? You insulted me ? Understand, sir, that you never, under any circumstances, could possibly insult me .” “And that’s enough for you. Out of the way!” concluded Trudolyubov. “Olympia is mine, friends, that’s agreed!” cried Zverkov. “We won’t dispute your right, we won’t dispute your right,” the others answered, laughing. I stood as though spat upon. The party went noisily out of the room. Trudolyubov struck up some stupid song. Simonov remained behind for a moment to tip the waiters. I suddenly went up to him. “Simonov! give me six roubles!” I said, with desperate resolution. He looked at me in extreme amazement, with vacant eyes. He, too, was drunk. “You don’t mean you are coming with us?” “Yes.” “I’ve no money,” he snapped out, and with a scornful laugh he went out of the room. I clutched at his overcoat. It was a nightmare. “Simonov, I saw you had money. Why do you refuse me? Am I a scoundrel? Beware of refusing me: if you knew, if you knew why I am asking! My whole future, my whole plans depend upon it!” Simonov pulled out the money and almost flung it at me. “Take it, if you have no sense of shame!” he pronounced pitilessly, and ran to overtake them. I was left for a moment alone. Disorder, the remains of dinner, a broken wineglass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette ends, fumes of drink and delirium in my brain, an agonising misery in my heart and finally the waiter, who had seen and heard all and was looking inquisitively into my face. “I am going there!” I cried. “Either they shall all go down on their knees to beg for my friendship, or I will give Zverkov a slap in the face!” Colophon Colophon Notes from Underground was published in 1864 by Fyodor Dostoevsky . It was translated from Russian in 1918 by Constance Garnett . This ebook was produced for the Standard Ebooks project by Hendrik Matvejev , and is based on a transcription produced in 1996 by Judith Boss and Al Haines for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans available at Google Books . The cover page is adapted from Alphonse Promayet , a painting completed in 1851 by Gustave Courbet . The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type . This edition was released on January 23, 2021, 8:41 p.m. and is based on revision 84096fb . The first edition of this ebook was released on February 12, 2019, 11:01 p.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/notes-from-underground/constance-garnett . The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org . V V “So this is it, this is it at last—contact with real life,” I muttered as I ran headlong downstairs. “This is very different from the Pope’s leaving Rome and going to Brazil, very different from the ball on Lake Como!” “You are a scoundrel,” a thought flashed through my mind, “if you laugh at this now.” “No matter!” I cried, answering myself. “Now everything is lost!” There was no trace to be seen of them, but that made no difference—I knew where they had gone. At the steps was standing a solitary night sledge-driver in a rough peasant coat, powdered over with the still falling, wet, and as it were warm, snow. It was hot and steamy. The little shaggy piebald horse was also covered with snow and coughing, I remember that very well. I made a rush for the roughly made sledge; but as soon as I raised my foot to get into it, the recollection of how Simonov had just given me six roubles seemed to double me up and I tumbled into the sledge like a sack. “No, I must do a great deal to make up for all that,” I cried. “But I will make up for it or perish on the spot this very night. Start!” We set off. There was a perfect whirl in my head. “They won’t go down on their knees to beg for my friendship. That is a mirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastical—that’s another ball on Lake Como. And so I am bound to slap Zverkov’s face! It is my duty to. And so it is settled; I am flying to give him a slap in the face. Hurry up!” The driver tugged at the reins. “As soon as I go in I’ll give it him. Ought I before giving him the slap to say a few words by way of preface? No. I’ll simply go in and give it him. They will all be sitting in the drawing-room, and he with Olympia on the sofa. That damned Olympia! She laughed at my looks on one occasion and refused me. I’ll pull Olympia’s hair, pull Zverkov’s ears! No, better one ear, and pull him by it round the room. Maybe they will all begin beating me and will kick me out. That’s most likely, indeed. No matter! Anyway, I shall first slap him; the initiative will be mine; and by the laws of honour that is everything: he will be branded and cannot wipe off the slap by any blows, by nothing but a duel. He will be forced to fight. And let them beat me now. Let them, the ungrateful wretches! Trudolyubov will beat me hardest, he is so strong; Ferfitchkin will be sure to catch hold sideways and tug at my hair. But no matter, no matter! That’s what I am going for. The blockheads will be forced at last to see the tragedy of it all! When they drag me to the door I shall call out to them that in reality they are not worth my little finger. Get on, driver, get on!” I cried to the driver. He started and flicked his whip, I shouted so savagely. “We shall fight at daybreak, that’s a settled thing. I’ve done with the office. Ferfitchkin made a joke about it just now. But where can I get pistols? Nonsense! I’ll get my salary in advance and buy them. And powder, and bullets? That’s the second’s business. And how can it all be done by daybreak? and where am I to get a second? I have no friends. Nonsense!” I cried, lashing myself up more and more. “It’s of no consequence! The first person I meet in the street is bound to be my second, just as he would be bound to pull a drowning man out of water. The most eccentric things may happen. Even if I were to ask the director himself to be my second tomorrow, he would be bound to consent, if only from a feeling of chivalry, and to keep the secret! Anton Antonitch. …” The fact is, that at that very minute the disgusting absurdity of my plan and the other side of the question was clearer and more vivid to my imagination than it could be to anyone on earth. But. … “Get on, driver, get on, you rascal, get on!” “Ugh, sir!” said the son of toil. Cold shivers suddenly ran down me. Wouldn’t it be better … to go straight home? My God, my God! Why did I invite myself to this dinner yesterday? But no, it’s impossible. And my walking up and down for three hours from the table to the stove? No, they, they and no one else must pay for my walking up and down! They must wipe out this dishonour! Drive on! And what if they give me into custody? They won’t dare! They’ll be afraid of the scandal. And what if Zverkov is so contemptuous that he refuses to fight a duel? He is sure to; but in that case I’ll show them … I will turn up at the posting station when he’s setting off tomorrow, I’ll catch him by the leg, I’ll pull off his coat when he gets into the carriage. I’ll get my teeth into his hand, I’ll bite him. “See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!” He may hit me on the head and they may belabour me from behind. I will shout to the assembled multitude: “Look at this young puppy who is driving off to captivate the Circassian girls after letting me spit in his face!” Of course, after that everything will be over! The office will have vanished off the face of the earth. I shall be arrested, I shall be tried, I shall be dismissed from the service, thrown in prison, sent to Siberia. Never mind! In fifteen years when they let me out of prison I will trudge off to him, a beggar, in rags. I shall find him in some provincial town. He will be married and happy. He will have a grownup daughter. … I shall say to him: “Look, monster, at my hollow cheeks and my rags! I’ve lost everything—my career, my happiness, art, science, the woman I loved , and all through you. Here are pistols. I have come to discharge my pistol and … and I … forgive you. Then I shall fire into the air and he will hear nothing more of me. …” I was actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at that moment that all this was out of Pushkin’s “ Silvio ” and Lermontov’s Masquerade . And all at once I felt horribly ashamed, so ashamed that I stopped the horse, got out of the sledge, and stood still in the snow in the middle of the street. The driver gazed at me, sighing and astonished. What was I to do? I could not go on there—it was evidently stupid, and I could not leave things as they were, because that would seem as though … Heavens, how could I leave things! And after such insults! “No!” I cried, throwing myself into the sledge again. “It is ordained! It is fate! Drive on, drive on!” And in my impatience I punched the sledge-driver on the back of the neck. “What are you up to? What are you hitting me for?” the peasant shouted, but he whipped up his nag so that it began kicking. The wet snow was falling in big flakes; I unbuttoned myself, regardless of it. I forgot everything else, for I had finally decided on the slap, and felt with horror that it was going to happen now, at once , and that no force could stop it . The deserted street lamps gleamed sullenly in the snowy darkness like torches at a funeral. The snow drifted under my greatcoat, under my coat, under my cravat, and melted there. I did not wrap myself up—all was lost, anyway. At last we arrived. I jumped out, almost unconscious, ran up the steps and began knocking and kicking at the door. I felt fearfully weak, particularly in my legs and knees. The door was opened quickly as though they knew I was coming. As a fact, Simonov had warned them that perhaps another gentleman would arrive, and this was a place in which one had to give notice and to observe certain precautions. It was one of those “millinery establishments” which were abolished by the police a good time ago. By day it really was a shop; but at night, if one had an introduction, one might visit it for other purposes. I walked rapidly through the dark shop into the familiar drawing-room, where there was only one candle burning, and stood still in amazement: there was no one there. “Where are they?” I asked somebody. But by now, of course, they had separated. Before me was standing a person with a stupid smile, the “madam” herself, who had seen me before. A minute later a door opened and another person came in. Taking no notice of anything I strode about the room, and, I believe, I talked to myself. I felt as though I had been saved from death and was conscious of this, joyfully, all over: I should have given that slap, I should certainly, certainly have given it! But now they were not here and … everything had vanished and changed! I looked round. I could not realise my condition yet. I looked mechanically at the girl who had come in: and had a glimpse of a fresh, young, rather pale face, with straight, dark eyebrows, and with grave, as it were wondering, eyes that attracted me at once; I should have hated her if she had been smiling. I began looking at her more intently and, as it were, with effort. I had not fully collected my thoughts. There was something simple and good-natured in her face, but something strangely grave. I am sure that this stood in her way here, and no one of those fools had noticed her. She could not, however, have been called a beauty, though she was tall, strong-looking, and well built. She was very simply dressed. Something loathsome stirred within me. I went straight up to her. I chanced to look into the glass. My harassed face struck me as revolting in the extreme, pale, angry, abject, with dishevelled hair. “No matter, I am glad of it,” I thought; “I am glad that I shall seem repulsive to her; I like that.” VIII VIII “Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality, say what you like,” you will interpose with a chuckle. “Science has succeeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and what is called freedom of will is nothing else than—” Stay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself I confess, I was rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the teaching of science … and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula—then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances—can such a thing happen or not? “H’m!” you decide. “Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage. But when all that is explained and worked out on paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless to suppose that some laws of nature man will never understand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be senseless in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning can be really calculated—because there will some day be discovered the laws of our so-called free will—so, joking apart, there may one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall choose in accordance with it. If, for instance, some day they calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that particular way, what freedom is left me, especially if I am a learned man and have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we should have to understand that. And, in fact, we ought unwearyingly to repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even … to the chemical retort, there’s no help for it, we must accept the retort too, or else it will be accepted without our consent. …” Yes, but here I come to a stop! Gentlemen, you must excuse me for being over-philosophical; it’s the result of forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect, gentlemen, that you are looking at me with compassion; you tell me again that an enlightened and developed man, such, in short, as the future man will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous to himself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it can—by mathematics. But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases. And in particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage—for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason … and … and … do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity. Put it to the test and cast your eyes upon the history of mankind. What will you see? Is it a grand spectacle? Grand, if you like. Take the Colossus of Rhodes, for instance, that’s worth something. With good reason Mr. Anaevsky testifies of it that some say that it is the work of man’s hands, while others maintain that it has been created by nature herself. Is it many-coloured? May be it is many-coloured, too: if one takes the dress uniforms, military and civilian, of all peoples in all ages—that alone is worth something, and if you take the undress uniforms you will never get to the end of it; no historian would be equal to the job. Is it monotonous? May be it’s monotonous too: it’s fighting and fighting; they are fighting now, they fought first and they fought last—you will admit, that it is almost too monotonous. In short, one may say anything about the history of the world—anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat. And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them th	244,468
Quiet El poder de los introvertidos Quiet The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking (Susan Cain) (Z-Library).epub	11. De remendones y generales. Cómo criar a niños callados en un mundo incapaz de oírlos, El poder de los introvertidos 11 DE REMENDONES Y GENERALES Cómo criar a niños callados en un mundo incapaz de oírlos Sabes que nada hay más importante que el principio a la hora de acometer cualquier empresa, y sobre todo si hablamos de un ser joven y tierno, pues ese es el tiempo en que se forma el carácter y con más facilidad se deja en él la impronta deseada. PLATÓN, La república Mark Twain refirió en cierta ocasión la historia de un hombre que recorrió el mundo entero en busca del general más grande que hubiese existido jamás, y cuando supo que el varón que tanto ansiaba encontrar había muerto, viajó al cielo para conocerlo. San Pedro señaló entonces a un hombre de aspecto corriente. —Ese no puede ser el más grande de todos los generales —protestó el recién llegado—. Lo conozco de cuando vivía en la Tierra, y no era más que un zapatero remendón. —Lo sé —repuso el portero—, pero si hubiese sido general, habría sido el más grande de todos. 1 Todos deberíamos abrir bien los ojos por si damos con remendones que podrían haber llegado a ser egregios generales, y tal cosa implica poner atención en los niños introvertidos, cuyos dones se reprimen a menudo en casa, en la escuela o en el parque. Piénsese en la siguiente anécdota aleccionadora oída al doctor Jerry Miller, psicólogo infantil y director del Centro del Niño y la Familia de la Universidad de Michigan. 2 Miller tenía un paciente llamado Ethan. Sus padres lo llevaron a su consulta en cuatro ocasiones, y en todas ellas expresaron el mismo temor: a su hijo le pasaba algo. Él siempre llegó a la conclusión, tranquilizadora, de que el crío estaba bien. El motivo de su preocupación inicial había sido bastante sencillo: Ethan tenía siete años, y aunque su hermano de cuatro le había pegado varias veces, él no se había defendido. A sus padres, gentes resueltas y extrovertidas que gozaban de puestos de trabajo de relieve en el mundo empresarial y sentían una gran pasión por juegos competitivos como el tenis o el golf, no les habían parecido mal las agresiones del pequeño, pero temían que la pasividad del mayor fuese a marcar toda su vida. A medida que fue creciendo este último, sus padres trataron de inculcarle un «espíritu combativo» que él no parecía interesado en asumir. Lo inscribieron en el equipo de béisbol y en el de fútbol, pero él solo pensaba en volver a casa para ponerse a leer. Ni siquiera era competitivo en el colegio, donde, pese a su inteligencia, no pasaba de notable. Podía rendir más, y sin embargo, prefería dedicar el tiempo a sus aficiones, sobre todo a la de construir maquetas de coche. Tenía algunos amigos íntimos, pero solía huir del centro de la vida social de la clase. Sus padres, incapaces de explicarse tan desconcertante comportamiento, temían que sufriera depresión. No obstante, al decir del doctor Miller, el suyo no era, ni más ni menos, que un caso evidente de falta de afinidad entre ellos y su hijo. Este era alto, delgado y muy poco atlético: el aspecto propio del típico rarito. Ellos, en cambio, eran sociables, decididos y «siempre estaban hablando y sonriendo a todos mientras tiraban de Ethan para que no se quedara atrás». Solo hay que comparar sus preocupaciones con la evaluación del doctor Miller. «Era el clásico Harry Potter —señala con entusiasmo—: todo el día leyendo. Le encantaban los juegos imaginativos de toda clase, y construir cosas. Había un montón de cosas de las que estaba deseando hablar. Aceptaba a sus padres mucho más que ellos a él, pues no pensaba que lo suyo fuese patológico, sino que, simplemente, no eran como él. Un niño así, en otra familia, habría sido una criatura ejemplar». Pero sus padres nunca fueron capaces de verlo así. Lo último que supo de él es que, al final, consultaron el caso con otro psicólogo que sí se avino a «tratar» a su hijo. Y ahora es el doctor Miller el que está preocupado por Ethan. «Es un caso claro de problema iatrogénico —afirma—; es decir, cuando es el tratamiento lo que te hace enfermar, como ocurre, por ejemplo, cuando se intenta hacer cambiar de tendencia a un muchacho homosexual. Me preocupa ese chiquillo: los padres son gente muy cariñosa y tienen buenas intenciones; están convencidos de que, si no lo tratan, están descuidando su deber de preparar a su hijo para vivir en sociedad. Piensan que necesita más brío, y en esto último quizá tengan algo de razón: no lo sé; pero la tengan o no, creo firmemente que es imposible cambiar a ese crío, y temo que están tratando a un niño perfectamente sano y van a dañar su propia estimación». Huelga decir que no tiene por qué haber falta de afinidad entre padres extrovertidos e hijos introvertidos. Con un poco de sensatez y de comprensión, cualquiera puede compenetrarse bien con toda clase de niño, según sostiene el doctor Miller; pero es necesario que los progenitores se olviden de sus propias preferencias para ver qué aspecto presenta el mundo para su hijo callado. — Veamos ahora el caso de Joyce y su hija de siete años, Isabel, una niña grácil de segundo de primaria a quien encantan las sandalias de purpurina y los brazaletes de goma de vivos colores con que ciñe sus brazos delgados. Tiene varias amigas íntimas con las que intercambia secretos, aunque se lleva bien con la mayoría de las de su clase. Es la primera que acude a rodear con el brazo a la compañera que ha tenido un mal día, y hasta ha dado los regalos de su cumpleaños a la beneficencia. Por eso a su madre, una mujer atractiva y simpática de humor muy agudo y porte decidido, la han dejado tan perpleja los problemas que está teniendo Isabel en la escuela. Estando en primero, la niña llegaba a casa a menudo consumida por la inquietud que le provocaba la matona de la clase, que lanzaba improperios a toda aquella compañera que fuera lo bastante sensible para sentirse ofendida. Aunque por lo común elegía meterse con otras crías, Isabel pasaba horas meditando sobre las palabras de aquel mal bicho, tratando de descifrar cuáles habían sido sus verdaderas intenciones y hasta si podía estar sufriendo en casa algún tipo de situación que la llevase a mostrar semejante comportamiento en clase. Al llegar a segundo, Isabel comenzó a pedir a su madre que no quedase con los padres de sus amigas para ir al parque o a su casa sin preguntarle primero a ella. Normalmente prefería quedarse en casa, y cuando Joyce la recogía del colegio, comprobaba a menudo que, en tanto que las otras niñas se reunían en grupos, ella estaba sola en el patio, jugando a encestar en la canasta. «No estaba con las demás. Tuve que dejar de ir por ella durante un tiempo —recuerda su madre—, porque me daba mucha pena verla así». No podía entender que su hija, aquella criatura dulce y cariñosa, quisiera pasar tanto tiempo en soledad: su niña debía de tener algo. ¿No sería que, pese a lo que siempre había creído de su natural empático, Isabel careciera de la capacidad para relacionarse con otros? Cuando la informé de que quizá se trataba solo de un caso de introversión y le expliqué lo que era, Joyce empezó, por fin, a pensar de otro modo sobre las vivencias escolares de su hija. A esta, desde luego, la situación no parecía alarmarla en absoluto. «Necesito descansar después del cole —me diría más tarde—. Allí hay que esforzarse un montón, porque hay muchas niñas en la clase. Me echo a temblar cuando mi madre queda con mis amigas sin decírmelo, porque no quiero que ellas se sientan mal, pero prefiero quedarme en mi casa. En la de los demás tienes que hacer lo que te dicen otros. Además, a mí me encanta pasar el rato con mi madre, porque puedo aprender de ella: lleva viva más tiempo que yo. Tenemos conversaciones profundas, que son las que a mí me gustan, porque hacen felices a las personas». *1 Isabel nos está diciendo, con la sabiduría que posee ya en segundo de primaria, que los introvertidos sí se relacionan con los demás. Por descontado: simplemente lo hacen a su modo. Ahora que Joyce entiende las necesidades de Isabel, las dos se divierten haciendo lluvias de ideas para crear tácticas que ayuden a la niña a desenvolverse durante su jor-nada escolar. «Antes, la tenía todo el día fuera con otros críos y le llenaba de actividades el tiempo libre —señala Joyce—, y ahora he comprendido que le resulta muy estresante estar en el colegio; de modo que, juntas, tratamos de averiguar cuánta actividad social es recomendable y cuándo hay que tenerla». A la madre ya no le importa que su hija quiera pasar el tiempo a solas en su cuarto después de la escuela o ausentarse un poco antes que los otros de un cumpleaños, y también se hace cargo de que, si Isabel no ve nada de eso como un problema, tampoco ella tiene por qué preocuparse. También ha aprendido a ayudar a su hija a resolver las diversas situaciones que se le presentan en el patio de recreo. En cierta ocasión, Isabel se mostró angustiada por no saber cómo dividir su tiempo entre tres amigas que no se llevaban bien entre ellas. «Mi primera reacción —recuerda su madre— habría sido decirle: “No le des vueltas: ¡juega con todas, y asunto resuelto”; pero ahora entiendo que ella pertenece a una clase distinta de persona, a la que no resulta fácil trazar un plan para tratarse con tantos niños a la vez durante el recreo. Así que hablamos de con quién va a jugar y cuándo, y ensayamos lo que puede decir a sus amigas para suavizar las cosas». Unos años más tarde, Isabel llegó a casa un día disgustada porque sus amigas se sentaban en dos mesas distintas en el comedor. En una estaban las más tranquilas de la clase, y en la otra, las extrovertidas. «Gritan —decía de estas últimas—, no paran de hablar, se sientan unas encima de otras…¡Puaj!». Sin embargo, la entristecía que su amiga Amanda quisiese sentarse en «la mesa de las locas», aun teniendo también buen trato con las de «la mesa más relajada, más pacífica». Tenía el corazón dividido: ¿dónde tenía que sentarse? Joyce pensó primero que la de «las locas» parecía la más divertida, pero optó por preguntar a Isabel qué era lo que prefería ella. Isabel meditó unos instantes y respondió: —A lo mejor me siento en la de Amanda de vez en cuando, pero a la hora de comer me gusta más estar tranquila y descansar de todo. «¿Y por qué?», pensó su madre; pero se mordió la lengua y dijo en cambio: —Me parece buena idea. Además, Amanda sigue queriendo tenerte de amiga; lo que pasa es que le gusta mucho esa otra mesa. Eso no significa que no quiera estar contigo. Está muy bien que te des el respiro que necesitas. Reconoce que el hecho de entender la introversión ha cambiado su manera de educar a Isabel, y lo cierto es que le cuesta creer que haya tardado tanto en darse cuenta. «Cuando la veo portarse como la criatura maravillosa que es en realidad, me doy cuenta de cuánto valoro su forma de ser por más que el mundo quiera hacerle ver que debería sentarse en aquella otra mesa. De hecho, contemplar a través de sus ojos a las que se sientan en ella me ayuda a reflexionar sobre la imagen que debo de estar ofreciendo yo a los demás y sobre la necesidad de andar con ojo y administrar mi propia extroversión para no perderme la compañía de quienes son como mi niña». Ahora también aprecia la sensibilidad de su hija. «Isabel tiene la cabeza de un adulto —asegura—. A veces se me olvida que no es más que una niña. Cuando hablo con ella no me siento tentada a usar ese tono de voz especial que reserva todo el mundo para los niños, ni tampoco adapto mi vocabulario: me dirijo a ella como a cualquier persona mayor. Es muy sensible y muy cariñosa. Se preocupa por el bienestar de todos. Se angustia con facilidad, pero viene todo en el mismo paquete, y a mí me encanta su manera de ser». — Joyce es la madre más cariñosa que he visto, y sin embargo, hubo de superar un proceso de aprendizaje arduo en lo tocante a la educación de su hija por la diferencia que existía entre sus temperamentos. ¿Habría disfrutado de una afinidad más natural con Isabel de haber sido ella también introvertida? Quizá no: los padres introvertidos pueden tener que superar sus propios retos. A veces, pueden interponerse recuerdos dolorosos de su propia infancia. Emily Miller, trabajadora social y psicóloga titulada de Ann Arbor (Michigan), me refirió el caso de Ava, una pequeña a la que trató cuya timidez llegaba al extremo de impedirle hacer amigos o concentrarse en clase. 3 Cuando se echó a llorar al tener que unirse a un grupo de compañeros para cantar delante del resto de la clase, su madre, Sarah, decidió buscar ayuda profesional. Cuando Miller le pidió que colaborase con ella durante el tratamiento, la mujer, periodista financiera de no poco éxito, prorrumpió asimismo en llanto: ella también había sido vergonzosa de pequeña, y se sentía responsable de que la niña hubiese de soportar la misma carga terrible. «Ahora lo disimulo mejor —confesó— y puedo hablar con todo el mundo, aunque solo si me escondo detrás de la libreta de periodista». Su reacción no es poco corriente entre los padres seudoextrovertidos de hijos tímidos, según sostiene Miller. Sarah está reviviendo su propia infancia y, además, está proyectando en Ava sus peores recuerdos; pero tiene que comprender que su hija y ella no son la misma persona, aun cuando dé la impresión de que han heredado temperamentos similares. Entre otras cosas, porque la influencia de su padre y de toda una serie de factores ambientales hace que su personalidad esté llamada a presentar una expresión diferente. La pequeña, de hecho, no tiene por qué sufrir la misma angustia que su madre, y lo cierto es que le hace un flaco favor asumir que será así. Con la orientación correcta, Ava puede llegar a un punto en el que su timidez no pase de ser una molestia insignificante. No obstante, al decir de Miller, hasta los padres que aún tienen mucho que hacer para mejorar su propia estimación pueden ser de gran ayuda a sus hijos. El consejo de un progenitor capaz de apreciar el modo como se siente su hijo resulta beneficioso de suyo. Si el primer día de colegio se siente nervioso y su padre le dice que a él le ocurría lo mismo, y que todavía le pasa, a menudo, en el trabajo, pero que con el tiempo se hace más llevadero, este estará dándole a entender —aun en caso de que el pequeño no acabe de creerle— que lo comprende y lo acepta. También puede emplear su empatía para ayudarse a sí mismo a determinar cuándo cumple alentar a su hijo a que haga frente a sus miedos y cuándo puede resultar demasiado abrumador para él. Sarah, por ejemplo, podría imaginar que el de cantar ante el resto de la clase constituye un paso demasiado largo para pedir a Ava que lo dé de buenas a primeras. Sin embargo, también podría imaginar que hacerlo en privado ante un grupo reducido con el que ella se encuentre a gusto, o aun ante una sola amiga de confianza, supone un comienzo mucho más abordable, por más que Ava proteste al principio. Dicho de otro modo: puede saber cuándo tiene que empujar a su hija y hasta dónde. — La psicóloga Elaine Aron, cuya obra sobre la sensibilidad hemos abordado en el capítulo 6, ofrece no poca información valiosa acerca de estas cuestiones al hablar de Jim, uno de los mejores padres que conoce. 4 Este hombre extrovertido y confiado tiene dos hijas. La primera, Betsy, es idéntica a él; pero la segunda, Lily, es más sensible: una gran observadora del mundo que la rodea que, sin embargo, tiende a dejarse acometer por la angustia. Jim es amigo de Aron y, por lo tanto, sabe cuanto hay que saber sobre sensibilidad e introversión. Con todo, aunque aceptó por entero el modo de ser de Lily, no quería que creciese sin superar su timidez. En consecuencia, «se resolvió —en palabras de Aron— a hacer que conociese todas y cada una de las experiencias en potencia placenteras que presenta la vida, desde las olas del océano, la sensación de trepar a un árbol o la de probar comidas desconocidas hasta las reuniones familiares, el fútbol y el hecho de cambiar de vestimenta frente a la comodidad de llevar siempre el mismo uniforme. En casi todos los casos, la cría pensó en un principio que aquellas vivencias nuevas no valían tanto la pena, y él siempre, sin excepción, respetaba su decisión. Jamás la forzaba, aunque, eso sí, podía llegar a ser muy persuasivo. Y así, se limitaba a compartir con ella su opinión: lo seguro que resultaba probar y el gran placer que podía resultar de la experiencia, y aprovechaba para recalcar las semejanzas que guardaba con otras cosas que ya le habían gustado. Aguardaba a ver ese fugaz centelleo de sus ojos que le indicaba que deseaba unirse a los otros, aun cuando en ese instante no pudiera aún. «Jim evaluaba bien cada una de las situaciones para asegurarse de que en ningún momento fuesen a asustarla, de que pudieran proporcionarle tanto placer como el orgullo de haber superado con éxito su renuencia. Por encima de todo, no dejó nunca que aquel conflicto interior dejara de ser tal para convertirse en un conflicto entre él y ella. […] Y si ella u otra persona hacen algún comentario sobre sus silencios o su indecisión, no duda en responder: “Esa es tu forma de ser; así de sencillo. Hay quien tiene otra forma de ser, pero tú eres así: te gusta tomarte tu tiempo y estar convencida”. Él sabe también que parte de la personalidad de Lily consiste en hacerse amiga de cualquier niño a quien los demás toman el pelo, hacer bien su trabajo, darse cuenta de cuanto ocurre en la familia y ser la mejor estratega de toda su liguilla de fútbol». Una de las mejores cosas que pueden hacerse por un niño retraído es ayudarle a abordar sus respuestas ante la novedad. Recuérdese que los niños introvertidos reaccionan no solo ante los desconocidos, sino también a los lugares y los acontecimientos nuevos. Por lo tanto, no debe confundir la cautela que pueda mostrar ante una situación ignota con la incapacidad para relacionarse con otros: retrocede ante la novedad o la sobreestimulación, y no ante el contacto humano. Tal como vimos en el capítulo anterior, el grado de introversión y extroversión no guarda correspondencia con el de amabilidad ni con el de deseo de intimidad. Los retraídos son tan propensos como los demás críos a buscar la compañía de otros, aunque muchas veces lo hagan en dosis menores. La clave está en exponerlos de forma gradual a situaciones y gentes nuevas, cuidando de respetar sus límites, aun cuando puedan parecer extremados. Esta táctica les da más seguridad que la de protegerlos en demasía o empujarlos en exceso. Hay que hacer que sepan que lo que sienten es normal y natural, pero también que no hay nada que temer: «Ya sé que puede ser un poco raro jugar con alguien que no conoces de nada, pero ¿qué te juegas a que ese niño te dice que sí encantado si le pides que juegue contigo a los camiones?». Recuerde seguir el ritmo de su hijo y no aguijarlo. Si es pequeño, quizá sea necesario que haga las presentaciones con el otro niño y no se aleje mientras tenga la impresión de que su presencia le resulta confortadora —si es muy pequeño, convendrá incluso que le deje una mano apoyada con cariño en la espalda—. Cuando asuma riesgos en su trato con los demás, habrá que hacerle saber que admiramos sus esfuerzos: «Ayer te vi acercarte a esos niños nuevos. Sé que eso no siempre es fácil, y estoy muy orgulloso de ti por ello». Otro tanto cabe decir del resto de situaciones. Imagine el lector a una niña que le tiene más miedo al mar que las otras criaturas de su edad. Sus padres, si son sensatos, reconocerán que tal reacción es natural y aun prudente, pues el mar es de veras peligroso. Sin embargo, no permitirán que se pase el verano refugiada en la seguridad de las dunas, ni tampoco la lanzarán al agua con la esperanza de que salga nadando. En lugar de eso, le dejarán claro que entienden su inquietud, a tiempo que la inducen a dar pasos modestos. Y así, tras dejar que pase unos días jugando en la arena, con las olas rompiendo a una distancia segura, la aproximarán a la orilla, quizás a hombros de uno de los mayores. Aguardarán a que el mar esté tranquilo, o la marea baja, para hacer que meta un dedo del pie; luego, el pie completo, y después, la pierna hasta la rodilla. Lo harán sin prisa, porque cada pasito es una zancada de gigante en el mundo de un chiquillo. Cuando la niña haya aprendido a nadar como un pez, habrá alcanzado un punto crucial en su relación no ya con el agua, sino con el miedo. La pequeña se irá dando cuenta poco a poco de que vale la pena superar su turbación para alcanzar la diversión que la espera al otro lado. Aprenderá cómo hacerlo sin ayuda. Tal como lo expresa el doctor Kenneth Rubin, director del Centro para la Infancia, las Relaciones y la Cultura de la Universidad de Maryland: «Si uno se muestra constante en la ayuda que brinda a su pequeño para que aprenda a regular sus emociones y sus conductas de un modo relajante y favorecedor, observará que empieza a suceder algo casi mágico: con el tiempo verá que la criatura parece estar reafirmándose en silencio: “Esos niños se lo están pasando bien: voy a ver”. Estará aprendiendo a poner coto al miedo y la preocupación». 5 Quien quiera que su hijo adquiera por sí mismo estas facultades no deberá permitir que lo oiga llamarlo tímido , pues acabará por asumir la etiqueta y entenderá su nerviosismo como un rasgo fijo más que como una emoción que puede dominar. Por pequeño que sea, seguro que sabe que la palabra tiene connotaciones negativas en nuestra sociedad. Sobre todo, no deberá hacer que se avergüence de su timidez. A ser posible, es mejor enseñarle a sentirse orgulloso de sí mismo cuando aún es muy pequeño y no existen prejuicios tan marcados respecto del retraimiento. Dé ejemplo saludando a los desconocidos de forma calmada y amistosa, así como reuniéndose con sus propios amigos. Invite también a casa a algunos de los compañeros de clase del niño. Hágale saber con dulzura que, cuando están con otros, no está bien que le hable en susurros o le tire de la pernera a fin de comunicarle sus necesidades: tiene que hacerse oír. Asegúrese de que sus encuentros sociales son placenteros eligiendo a críos que no sean demasiado enérgicos y a pandillas que se muestren amigables. Déjelo que juegue con niños más pequeños, si eso le da confianza, o con niños mayores, si le resulta inspirador. Si no congenia con uno concreto, no lo fuerce, pues lo que queremos es que sus primeras experiencias sociales sean positivas en su mayor parte. Intente exponerlo a situaciones nuevas de un modo tan gradual como le sea posible: cuando vayan a asistir a un cumpleaños, por ejemplo, háblele antes de lo que va a encontrarse en la fiesta y de cómo podría saludar a los demás («Primero voy a decir: “Felicidades, Joey”, y después: “Hola, Sabrina”»). Y asegúrese de llegar temprano: a él le resultará mucho más fácil si es de los primeros invitados y tiene, por lo tanto, la sensación de que son los demás quienes se están uniendo a él en un espacio que «posee» él, más que de estar irrumpiendo en un grupo ya existente. Del mismo modo, si el niño se muestra nervioso antes del primer día de colegio, puede llevarlo a ver su aula y, si es posible, conocer al maestro y a otros de los adultos que tendrán con él un trato amable, como miembros del equipo directivo, orientadores, conserjes, personal del comedor…Debe ser sutil a la hora de proponer la visita: «Yo no conozco tu clase nueva. ¿Por qué no nos acercamos y le echamos un vistazo?». Jueguen a tratar de averiguar dónde estarán los aseos, cuáles serán las normas para ir, cuál es el camino del aula al comedor y en qué punto lo recogerá el autobús escolar cuando acabe la jornada. Haga que se junte durante el verano con compañeros de su clase que sean compatibles con él. También puede enseñar a su hijo tácticas sociales sencillas para superar momentos embarazosos. Anímelo a parecer seguro aun cuando no lo esté. Hay tres cosas que a él le serán fáciles de recordar y con las que tendrá buena parte del camino andado: sonríe, ponte derecho y mira a los demás a los ojos. Enséñelo a distinguir rostros amigables en un grupo nutrido de personas. Bobby tiene tres años y no quiere ir a la guardería porque durante el recreo la clase abandona los seguros confines del aula para jugar en la azotea con niños de cursos superiores. Se sintió tan intimidado que solo quiere ir los días de lluvia, en los que no salen a jugar. Sus padres lo han ayudado a recordar con qué compañeros se lo pasó bien y a entender que un grupo ruidoso de niños mayores no tiene por qué aguarle la fiesta. Si no se siente capaz de hacer todo esto o cree que a su hijo le podría venir bien la asistencia de alguien más, pida a un pediatra que lo ayude a buscar talleres de habilidades sociales en su zona. En ellos se enseña a los críos cómo entrar a formar parte de un grupo, presentarse a otros e interpretar el lenguaje corporal y las expresiones faciales. Además, pueden serle de gran utilidad para superar con éxito lo que para muchos niños introvertidos es la parte más peliaguda de su vida social: la jornada escolar. — Un martes de octubre por la mañana, la clase de quinto curso de primaria de una escuela pública neoyorquina se prepara para estudiar los tres poderes del Estado. Los alumnos se han sentado con las piernas cruzadas sobre la alfombra que cubre el suelo de un rincón bien iluminado del aula mientras su maestra, sentada en una silla con un libro de texto en el regazo, dedica unos minutos a exponer los conceptos básicos antes de pasar a una actividad de grupo destinada a aplicar lo aprendido. —La clase se queda hecha un desastre después de la merienda —señala—. Hay chicle debajo de las mesas, envoltorios por todas partes y galletitas de queso por el suelo. ¿Verdad que no queremos ver así de sucia nuestra clase? Todos niegan con la cabeza, y ella prosigue: —Hoy vamos a intentar resolver este problema, y lo vamos a hacer juntos. Divide la clase en tres grupos de 7 niños: uno legislativo, que se encargará de promulgar una ley por la que se regule el comportamiento que deberán seguir todos durante la hora de merienda; otro ejecutivo, que deberá decidir cómo hacer respetar dichas normas, y uno judicial, que tendrá que pensar en un sistema destinado a hacerse cargo de los que ensucien el aula. Los críos se reparten encantados y se sientan en tres equipos nutridos. No es necesario cambiar de sitio ninguna pieza del mobiliario, pues los planes de estudio están tan orientados al trabajo colectivo, que los pupitres ya están dispuestos en conjuntos de 7. La clase entera se ha sumido en un jovial alboroto, y algunos de los que parecían ir a morir de aburrimiento durante los diez minutos de la explicación mantienen ahora una charla animada con sus compañeros. Sin embargo, no todos están tan contentos. Si se considera el aula en general, como una masa voluminosa, podría confundirse con una sala llena de cachorrillos juguetones; pero centrando la mirada en algunos niños en particular —como Maya, una pelirroja con cola de caballo, gafas metálicas y expresión soñadora— es posible tener una impresión muy diferente. En el grupo de Maya, el que representa al poder ejecutivo, todo el mundo está hablando a la vez…menos ella, que no acaba de decidirse. Samantha, una niña alta y gordita vestida con una camiseta morada, toma las riendas sacando la bolsa del bocadillo de su mochila para anunciar: —El que tenga la bolsa tiene la palabra. Los componentes del equipo se van pasando el bocadillo mientras aportan sus ideas. Recuerdan a los protagonistas de El señor de las moscas cuando se pasan la caracola con gesto civilizado, al menos hasta que se arma la de tirios y troyanos. Maya parece abrumada cuando la bolsa cae de pronto en sus manos. —Estoy de acuerdo —asegura antes de tendérsela al compañero de al lado como quien se deshace de una patata caliente. La merienda de Samantha da varias vueltas a la mesa, y Maya, cada vez que le toca, la pasa al siguiente sin decir nada. Cuando, por fin, acaba el debate, parece preocupada. Tengo la impresión de que la avergüenza no haber participado. Samantha lee la lista de mecanismos que ha ido proponiendo el equipo para hacer cumplir los preceptos y que ella ha ido apuntando en su cuaderno durante la lluvia de ideas. —Regla número 1 —dice—: Quien se salte las normas se quedará sin recreo… —¡Espera! —la interrumpe entonces Maya—. ¡Tengo una idea! —Venga: dila —responde Samantha un tanto impaciente. Pero nuestra pelirroja, que como muchos otros introvertidos sensibles parece captar las señales de desaprobación más leves, percibe cierta tensión en su voz, y aunque abre la boca para hablar, solo consigue bajar la mirada mientras masculla algo ininteligible. Nadie alcanza a oírla, y de hecho, nadie lo intenta. La más guay de la clase —a años luz del resto, con sus vestidos entallados tan a la moda— suspira con gesto teatral; Maya pierde toda resolución, y aquella dice: —En fin, Samantha, ya puedes seguir leyendo las normas. La profesora pide al poder ejecutivo un resumen de su trabajo, y todos rivalizan por hablar…excepto Maya. Samantha se erige en portavoz, como de costumbre, tras subir el tono hasta dejar a todo el equipo callado. Su informe no tiene mucho sentido, pero lo lee con una actitud tan confiada y amable, que apenas parece importar ese detalle. Maya, por su parte, acurrucada aún en una orilla, no deja de escribir su nombre una y otra vez en su cuaderno con grandes letras de molde como si quisiera reafirmar su identidad, cuando menos ante ella misma. Poco antes, la maestra me ha dicho que es una alumna de grandes dotes intelectuales que destaca en sus redacciones. También tiene mucho talento jugando al sóftbol, y es un encanto con sus compañeros, a quienes ayuda cuando se rezagan en lo académico. Sin embargo, esta mañana no ha hecho patentes ninguno de sus atributos positivos. — A cualquier padre lo llenaría de consternación pensar que pueda ser esta la experiencia que tiene su hijo de su vida escolar y social, y hasta de sí mismo. Maya es una niña introvertida, y se ve fuera de su ambiente en una aula ruidosa y rebosante de estímulos en las que los temas se estudian en grupos numerosos. Su maestra me aseguró que se encontraría mucho mejor en una escuela en la que imperase una atmósfera más calmada y que le permitiera trabajar con otros niños «igual de aplicados y de atentos al detalle», en la que, además, buena parte del día estuviese dedicada al estudio autónomo. Está claro que Maya necesita aprender a reafirmarse en grupo, pero ¿cabe pensar que experiencias como la que acabo de relatar van a serle útiles para ello? Lo cierto es que son muchas las escuelas diseñadas para extrovertidos, y al decir de Jill Burruss y Lisa Kaenzig, expertos en pedagogía del College of William and Mary, los introvertidos necesitan recibir un género de formación diferente del que se brinda a aquellos. Por lo común «se ponen a disposición de dicho alumno muy pocas herramientas, aparte del consejo perenne de que debería adoptar una actitud más sociable». 6 Solemos olvidar que nada tiene de sacrosanto el hecho de aprender en clases que giran en torno al trabajo en equipos nutridos, y que si organizamos así a los alumnos no es porque sea el modo más eficaz de docencia, sino el más rentable, y al cabo, ¿qué otra cosa podemos hacer con nuestros hijos mientras los adultos trabajan? No tiene nada de malo que su chiquilla prefiera trabajar en solitario y no relacionarse con más de una persona a la vez: el único problema es que no encaja en el modelo imperante. Si la misión del colegio debería ser la de preparar a los alumnos para el resto de su vida, ocurre con mucha frecuencia que lo que necesitan estos es que los preparen para sobrevivir a la propia jornada escolar. El entorno académico puede ser, de hecho, por demás antinatural, sobre todo desde el punto de vista de un niño introvertido a quien gusta volcar su atención en proyectos que le resulten atractivos y tratar con uno o dos amigos a la vez. Por la mañana, el autobús escolar abre sus puertas para vomitar a sus ocupantes en una masa chillona resuelta en empujones. Las clases están dominadas por debates en grupo en los que el profesor lo aguija a participar. Almuerza en el bullicio cacofónico del comedor, en donde se las ve negras para encontrar sitio en una mesa abarrotada. Y lo peor de todo es que apenas tiene tiempo de pensar o crear. Los días están estructurados de tal manera que, en lugar de estimular a los estudiantes, parecen querer garantizar que acabarán sin un ápice de energía. ¿Por qué aceptamos este modelo, que no tiene en cuenta las diferencias existentes entre los alumnos, como si fuera el único posible cuando sabemos de sobra que los adultos no se organizan de esta manera? A menudo nos maravillamos de que niños introvertidos y raritos florezcan para convertirse en adultos seguros y felices. Lo equiparamos a una metamorfosis, y sin embargo, bien podría ser que no fuesen nuestros hijos quienes cambiasen, sino el entorno en que se desenvuelven. De mayores pueden elegir la ocupación, el cónyuge y los círculos sociales con los que mejor encajen. No tienen que vivir en el ámbito al que tengan a bien lanzarlos. Los estudios procedentes de la disciplina que estudia la afinidad del individuo con su entorno demuestran que los seres humanos prosperan en lo personal cuando, según la expresión del psicólogo Brian Little, «se ocupan en puestos de trabajo, funciones o contextos que concuerdan con su personalidad»; y viceversa: los niños dejan de aprender cuando se sienten amenazados en el terreno emocional. Nadie lo sabe mejor que LouAnne Johnson, veterana de la Infantería de Marina y profesora sin pelos en la lengua que alcanzó no poco reconocimiento por educar a algunos de los adolescentes más conflictivos del sistema californiano de enseñanza pública (Michelle Pfeiffer la interpretó en la película Mentes peligrosas ). Tuve ocasión de visitar su casa de Truth or Consequences (Nuevo México) a fin de saber más de su experiencia docente con muchachos de toda clase. Sucede que Johnson es una gran experta en la formación de niños muy tímidos, lo cual no es ninguna coincidencia. Una de sus técnicas consiste en compartir con sus alumnos las vivencias de cuando ella misma era una muchacha apocada. El recuerdo más temprano que guarda de su experiencia escolar es del día en que, estando en la guardería, la obligaron a ponerse de pie en un taburete porque prefería pasarse las horas sentada en un rincón leyendo libros, mientras que la maestra quería verla «interactuar». «Muchos críos tímidos se emocionan al descubrir que su profesora también lo ha sido —me dijo—. Recuerdo que la madre de una alumna muy retraída de cuando daba lengua en el instituto fue a agradecerme que le hubiese dicho a su hija que estaba convencida de que iba a alcanzar su mejor momento en una etapa muy posterior de su vida y que, por lo tanto, no tenía que preocuparse si no destacaba en la secundaria. Me dijo que con un solo comentario había cambiado por completo la actitud vital de la chiquilla. Imagínate: una cosa que dije casi sin pensar tuvo una influencia tremenda sobre la criatura». Cuando queremos impulsar a hablar a los tímidos, a su decir, es de gran ayuda presentarles el tema en cuestión de un modo tan apasionante que olviden todas sus inhibiciones. Aconseja, por lo tanto, pedir a los alumnos que debatan cuestiones candentes como: «Los chicos lo tienen todo mucho más fácil que las chicas». Johnson, que ofrece numerosas conferencias sobre educación pese al miedo a hablar en público que ha tenido siempre, ha podido comprobar en persona el funcionamiento de este método. «Nunca he llegado a superar del todo mi timidez —reconoce—: sigue sentada en un rincón y no se cansa de llamarme; pero a mí me apasiona la idea de transformar nuestras escuelas, y esta inclinación hace que olvide toda vergüenza una vez que comienzo a hablar. Cuando encuentras algo que te entusiasma o supone un reto interesante, te olvidas de ti misma durante un rato, como si te tomaras unas vacaciones emocionales». Sin embargo, uno no debe arriesgarse a hacer que los alumnos se dirijan a la clase antes de haberlos provisto de las herramientas suficientes para poder confiar en que todo irá sobre ruedas. Lo mejor es ponerlos a practicar ante un solo compañero o en grupos pequeños, y si aun así se muestran aterrados, no forzar la situación. Los expertos creen que las experiencias negativas vividas en la infancia en este terreno pueden provocar un miedo perpetuo a la palestra. 7 Dicho esto, ¿qué género de entorno académico puede ser de más ayuda a Maya y a los críos que como ella hay en el mundo? Antes de nada, ahí va una serie de ideas para los profesores: – No hay que pensar en la introversión como algo que debe curarse. Si un niño retraído necesita ayuda con sus aptitudes sociales, refuerce este aspecto o recomiéndele practicar fuera del aula, tal como haría con un alumno que requiriese apoyo con las matemáticas o la lectura. No dude en valorarlos tal como son. «El comentario clásico que se recoge en el boletín de notas suele ser el de: “Sería recomendable que Molly interviniera más en clase” —me reveló Pat Adams, antigua directora de la Escuela Emerson para superdotados de Ann Arbor (Michigan)—; pero aquí entendemos que muchos niños son introspectivos». Tratamos de hacer que expresen lo que llevan dentro, aunque no hacemos de ello un objetivo primordial. Para nosotros, los introvertidos son, sin más, alumnos con un estilo de aprendizaje diferente. – Los estudios demuestran que entre la tercera parte y la mitad de los estadounidenses somos introvertidos. Esto quiere decir que el docente debe de tener más de estos alumnos de los que piensa. Algunos aprenden ya a una edad temprana a pasar por extrovertidos, y eso hace que sea muy difícil reconocerlos. Busque un equilibrio en los métodos de enseñanza a fin de atender a todos los de la clase. A los extrovertidos suelen resultarles atractivos el movimiento, la estimulación, el trabajo en equipo…, y los introvertidos prefieren leer, disfrutar de tiempo muerto y trabajar por su cuenta. 8 Alterne de forma ponderada unas tácticas con otras. – Los introvertidos poseen a menudo uno o dos campos de interés que no tienen por qué atraer a sus compañeros. En ocasiones tienden a considerarlos raros por la pasión con que los abordan, aunque los estudios ponen de relieve que esta clase de intensidad constituye un requisito previo para el desarrollo de ciertos dones. 9 Alábelos por su interés, aliéntelos y ayúdelos a dar con almas gemelas, bien dentro, bien fuera del aula. – En general, les resulta llevadera, y aun beneficiosa, cierta proporción de trabajo cooperativo; pero debe llevarse a término en grupos pequeños —de dos o tres integrantes— y estructurarse de manera que cada niño conozca cuál es su papel. Roger Johnson, director adjunto del Centro de Aprendizaje Cooperativo de la Universidad de Minnesota, afirma que los niños tímidos o introvertidos se benefician en particular de la colaboración en pequeños grupos bien organizados porque, «por lo común, se encuentran muy cómodos hablando con uno o dos de sus compañeros cuando se trata de buscar respuesta a una pregunta o completar una tarea, aunque jamás se les pasaría por la cabeza levantar la mano para dirigirse al conjunto de la clase. Es muy importante que estos alumnos tengan la ocasión de expresar su pensamiento mediante el lenguaje». 10 Imagine lo diferente que habría sido la experiencia de Maya de haber sido más reducido su grupo y haberse molestado alguien en decir: «Samantha, tú eres la encargada de mantener bien encarrilado el debate; Maya, tu misión consistirá en tomar notas y leérselas al grupo». – Recuerde, por otra parte, la investigación de Anders Ericsson sobre la práctica deliberada que vimos en el capítulo 3. En muchos ámbitos, es imposible alcanzar el grado de excelencia sin saber trabajar en solitario. Haga, pues, que sus alumnos extrovertidos aprendan a aplicar algunas de las tácticas de sus compañeros introvertidos. Enseñe a unos y a otros a estudiar por su cuenta. – No siente a los niños más callados en zonas de «alto grado de interacción» del aula, conforme a las recomendaciones de James McCroskey, profesor experto en comunicación. 11 Así no conseguimos que hablen más, sino más bien que se sientan amenazados y tengan dificultades para concentrarse. Facilíteles la participación en clase, pero sin insistir. «Obligar a expresarse verbalmente a quienes se muestran asustados ante dicha idea es pernicioso —escribe McCroskey—, pues aumentará su aprensión y mermará su autoestima». – Si su escuela tiene algún plan de selección, piénseselo dos veces antes de basar las decisiones al respecto en el comportamiento que pueden presentar los alumnos en el patio de recreo y otros contextos similares. Muchos introvertidos cierran la boca al verse ante un grupo de desconocidos, y le será imposible ver siquiera vislumbres de cómo son una vez relajados y cómodos. A continuación se ofrecen también algunas pautas para padres. Si tiene el lector la suerte de poder elegir la escuela a la que irá su hijo, bien buscando un centro especializado o mudándose a un barrio cuyo colegio público sea de su agrado, bien enviándolo a uno privado, puede buscar uno que: – valore el interés por actividades independientes y haga hincapié en la autonomía; – recurra a actividades de grupo con moderación y empleando para ello equipos reducidos y bien organizados; – dé importancia a la amabilidad, el cariño, la empatía y la educación; – insista en que se mantenga el orden en aulas y pasillos; – esté estructurado en aulas pequeñas y tranquilas; – posea profesores capaces de entender el temperamento tímido, serio, introvertido o sensible; – centre sus actividades académicas, deportivas y extraescolares en asuntos que interesen a su hijo; – imponga medidas severas contra el acoso escolar; – fomente actitudes tolerantes y cordiales, y – atraiga a alumnos con intereses similares —intelectuales, artísticos, atléticos…— a los de su hijo. Aunque la de elegir una escuela a la carta puede ser una quimera para muchas familias, piense que, sea cual sea el centro, es mucho lo que puede hacer usted para ayudar a su hijo introvertido a prosperar. Averigüe qué ámbitos lo estimulan más y deje que avance en ellos, ya con tutores externos, ya mediante actividades como muestras científicas o cursos de escritura creativa. En lo tocante a las actividades de grupo, enséñele a buscar una posición que le resulte cómoda dentro de colectivos nutridos. Una de las ventajas que presenta el trabajo en equipo —para unos y otros— es que ofrece a menudo muchas posibilidades diferentes. Anímelo a tomar la iniciativa y reclamar la responsabilidad de hacer anotaciones, trazar gráficos o cualquier otra función que pueda resultarle interesante. Si sabe cuál es la contribución que se espera de él, le será más fácil participar. También puede ayudarlo a practicar para aprender a expresar sus ideas en voz alta. Explíquele que no está mal que se tome su tiempo para poner en orden sus pensamientos antes de hablar, aun cuando dé la impresión de que los demás están deseando entrar en liza. Al mismo tiempo, adviértale que es mucho más fácil hacer una aportación al principio del debate que esperar a que hayan hablado todos los demás y dejar que aumente la tensión mientras espera para tomar la palabra. Si no está seguro de lo que va a decir, o se encuentra incómodo haciendo declaraciones, ayúdele a sacar provecho de sus dones: si suele hacer preguntas sesudas, alabe esta cualidad e infórmelo de que formular buenos interrogantes resulta, a menudo, más útil que proponer respuestas; si acostumbra a mirar las cosas desde su punto de vista especial, enséñele lo valioso que es eso y haga que se pregunte cómo puede compartir con otros sus opiniones. Explore situaciones de la vida real. Los padres de Maya, por ejemplo, podrían sentarse con ella y tratar de ver cómo podía haber abordado de otro modo el ejercicio del poder ejecutivo. Juegue a representar papeles diversos en situaciones específicas y posibles. Maya podría probar a decir con sus propias palabras: «¡Yo me encargo de apuntar lo que decimos!», o: «¿Y si ponemos la norma de que quien tire envoltorios al suelo tiene que dedicar los diez minutos últimos del recreo a recoger la basura», y así hacerse una idea de cómo se habría sentido. La pega es que para ello es necesario que Maya se sincere y cuente lo que ha pasado en la clase. Aunque comunicativos por lo general, muchos niños prefieren no compartir experiencias con las que se han sentido embarazados. Cuanto más pequeños sean, más fácil es que nos confíen cosas así; con que más vale comenzar este proceso lo antes posible en su trayectoria académica. Pídale información con amabilidad y sin mostrarse crítico, y emplee para ello preguntas específicas y claras. En lugar de: «¿Cómo te ha ido el día?», pruebe con: «¿Qué has hecho hoy en clase de matemáticas?»; en vez de: «¿Te gusta tu seño?», pregunte: «¿Qué es lo que más te gusta de ella?», o: «¿Qué es lo que no te gusta tanto?». Deje que se tome su tiempo para contestar. Trate de evitar preguntar con el tono alegre que emplean todos los padres: «¿Te lo has pasado bien hoy en el cole?», pues entenderá que es muy importante que la respuesta sea afirmativa. Si sigue sin querer hablar, espere a que se decida. En ocasiones necesitará varias horas de descompresión antes de estar listo. Puede ser que solo se avenga a hacerlo en momentos íntimos y relajados, como el del baño o el de irse a dormir. Si se da el caso, asegúrese de propiciar instantes similares a lo largo del día. Y si prefiere hablar con otros, como una niñera de confianza, una tía o un hermano mayor, tráguese su orgullo y pídales ayuda. Por último, trate de no preocuparse si todo apunta a que su hijo introvertido no es el alumno que más aceptación tiene del colegio. Es de vital importancia para su desarrollo emocional y social que tenga uno o dos amigos de verdad, según nos indican los expertos en evolución infantil; pero tampoco es necesario ser popular. 12 Muchos introvertidos despliegan habilidades sociales excelentes al crecer, aunque tiendan a relacionarse con grupos a su manera, aguardando unos instantes antes de sumergirse en ellos o participando solo durante períodos breves. Su hijo necesita adquirir dichas habilidades y hacer amigos, pero no trocarse en el alumno más sociable de su centro. Esto no significa que la popularidad no sea un bien deseable: probablemente a usted le haría ilusión que gozara de ella, y también que fuese bien parecido o atlético. Sin embargo, debe asegurarse de que no está imponiéndole sus propios anhelos, y recordar siempre que son muchos los caminos que llevan a una vida satisfactoria. — Muchos de estos se encuentran en las pasiones que posee el muchacho fuera del aula. En tanto que los extrovertidos son más amigos de saltar de una afición a otra, los introvertidos suelen ser fieles a lo que los entusiasma. Esto les confiere una ventaja mayor cuando crecen, ya que la verdadera estimación propia procede de la aptitud, y no a la inversa. Los investigadores han dado con que la dedicación plena a una actividad constituye una vía comprobada a la felicidad y el bienestar. 13 Los dones e intereses bien desarrollados pueden ser una fuente generosa de confianza para su hijo con independencia de lo diferente que pueda sentirse de los demás. A Maya, la niña convertida en integrante muda del «poder ejecutivo», le encanta volver a casa después de las clases y ponerse a leer; pero también es una gran aficionada a jugar al sóftbol, pese a la presión social y de rendimiento que comporta todo deporte. Todavía recuerda el día en que entró en el equipo tras superar una prueba de selección. El miedo la tenía atenazada, y sin embargo, también se sentía fuerte, capaz de asestar a la pelota un buen golpe con el bate. «Al final, los entrenamientos dieron su fruto —reflexionaría más tarde—. No dejé de sonreír en todo el rato. Estaba tan emocionada, tan orgullosa…Y esa sensación nunca ha llegado a consumirse». Para los padres, sin embargo, no siempre es fácil crear situaciones de las que nazca este hondo sentimiento de satisfacción. Podrían suponer, por ejemplo, que deberían alentar a su hijo introvertido a jugar al deporte concreto que represente en su ciudad el billete a la amistad y la apreciación; y no es mala idea, siempre que al crío le guste dicha actividad y se le dé bien, tal como le ocurre a Maya con el sóftbol. Los deportes de equipo pueden ser de gran ayuda a cualquiera, y en particular a los chiquillos que, en cualquier otro contexto, se sienten incómodos dentro de un grupo. Sin embargo, tiene que ser él quien decida cuáles son las aficiones que más le atraen. Puede ser que no le haga gracia ningún juego de colaboración, y tampoco eso está mal. Ayúdelo a buscar actividades en las que, amén de entrar en contacto con otros niños, disfrute de sobrado espacio propio. Fomente los aspectos positivos de su personalidad, y si lo que le apasiona son quehaceres demasiado solitarios en opinión de usted, recuerde que hasta las actividades más solitarias, como la pintura, la ingeniería o la escritura creativa, pueden desembocar en la creación de comunidades de entusiastas. «He conocido a niños —señala el doctor Miller— que entablaban relación con otros por compartir con ellos intereses de relieve: ajedrez, juegos de rol de gran complejidad o aun materias como las matemáticas o la historia, sobre las que conversaban con pasión». Rebecca Wallace-Segall, que ofrece talleres de escritura para niños y adolescentes en calidad de directora del Writopia Lab de la ciudad de Nueva York, asevera que los alumnos que se inscriben en sus cursos «no son tanto de los que se pasan el día hablando de moda y de famosos. De estos vienen menos, quizá porque son menos amigos	813,075
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) (Z-Library).epub	SIDDHARTHA An Indian Tale by Hermann Hesse FIRST PART To Romain Rolland, my dear friend THE SON OF THE BRAHMAN In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe. Joy leapt in his father's heart for his son who was quick to learn, thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man and priest, a prince among the Brahmans. Bliss leapt in his mother's breast when she saw him, when she saw him walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, Siddhartha, strong, handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect respect. Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans' young daughters when Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips. But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many. No, and he, Govinda, as well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of thousands of Brahmans. He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved, the splendid. And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god, when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow. Siddhartha was thus loved by everyone. He was a source of joy for everybody, he was a delight for them all. But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans. Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also the love of his friend, Govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him. He had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. The ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit's thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart. The sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent--but was that all? Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune? And what about the gods? Was it really Prajapati who had created the world? Was it not the Atman, He, the only one, the singular one? Were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject to time, mortal? Was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make offerings to the gods? For whom else were offerings to be made, who else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman? And where was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself? But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So, where, where was it? To reach this place, the self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile looking for? Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial songs! They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing? Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses. "Your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the Atman. Marvellous wisdom was in these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees. No, not to be looked down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.-- But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all knowledge but also to live it? Where was the knowledgeable one who wove his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one. His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow --but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? Was not Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? It had to be found, the pristine source in one's own self, it had to be possessed! Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost. Thus were Siddhartha's thoughts, this was his thirst, this was his suffering. Often he spoke to himself from a Chandogya-Upanishad the words: "Truly, the name of the Brahman is satyam--verily, he who knows such a thing, will enter the heavenly world every day." Often, it seemed near, the heavenly world, but never he had reached it completely, never he had quenched the ultimate thirst. And among all the wise and wisest men, he knew and whose instructions he had received, among all of them there was no one, who had reached it completely, the heavenly world, who had quenched it completely, the eternal thirst. "Govinda," Siddhartha spoke to his friend, "Govinda, my dear, come with me under the Banyan tree, let's practise meditation." They went to the Banyan tree, they sat down, Siddhartha right here, Govinda twenty paces away. While putting himself down, ready to speak the Om, Siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse: Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow's target, That one should incessantly hit. After the usual time of the exercise in meditation had passed, Govinda rose. The evening had come, it was time to perform the evening's ablution. He called Siddhartha's name. Siddhartha did not answer. Siddhartha sat there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between the teeth, he seemed not to breathe. Thus sat he, wrapped up in contemplation, thinking Om, his soul sent after the Brahman as an arrow. Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha's town, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun, surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers and lank jackals in the realm of humans. Behind them blew a hot scent of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial. In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddhartha spoke to Govinda: "Early tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha will go to the Samanas. He will become a Samana." Govinda turned pale, when he heard these words and read the decision in the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from the bow. Soon and with the first glance, Govinda realized: Now it is beginning, now Siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is beginning to sprout, and with his, my own. And he turned pale like a dry banana-skin. "O Siddhartha," he exclaimed, "will your father permit you to do that?" Siddhartha looked over as if he was just waking up. Arrow-fast he read in Govinda�s soul, read the fear, read the submission. "O Govinda," he spoke quietly, "let's not waste words. Tomorrow, at daybreak I will begin the life of the Samanas. Speak no more of it." Siddhartha entered the chamber, where his father was sitting on a mat of bast, and stepped behind his father and remained standing there, until his father felt that someone was standing behind him. Quoth the Brahman: "Is that you, Siddhartha? Then say what you came to say." Quoth Siddhartha: "With your permission, my father. I came to tell you that it is my longing to leave your house tomorrow and go to the ascetics. My desire is to become a Samana. May my father not oppose this." The Brahman fell silent, and remained silent for so long that the stars in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, 'ere the silence was broken. Silent and motionless stood the son with his arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the stars traced their paths in the sky. Then spoke the father: "Not proper it is for a Brahman to speak harsh and angry words. But indignation is in my heart. I wish not to hear this request for a second time from your mouth." Slowly, the Brahman rose; Siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded. "What are you waiting for?" asked the father. Quoth Siddhartha: "You know what." Indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed and lay down. After an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood up, paced to and fro, and left the house. Through the small window of the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw Siddhartha standing, his arms folded, not moving from his spot. Pale shimmered his bright robe. With anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed. After another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that the moon had risen. Through the window of the chamber he looked back inside; there stood Siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins. With worry in his heart, the father went back to bed. And he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked through the small window, saw Siddhartha standing, in the moon light, by the light of the stars, in the darkness. And he came back hour after hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the same place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest, filled his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness. And in the night's last hour, before the day began, he returned, stepped into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed tall and like a stranger to him. "Siddhartha," he spoke, "what are you waiting for?" "You know what." "Will you always stand that way and wait, until it'll becomes morning, noon, and evening?" "I will stand and wait. "You will become tired, Siddhartha." "I will become tired." "You will fall asleep, Siddhartha." "I will not fall asleep." "You will die, Siddhartha." "I will die." "And would you rather die, than obey your father?" "Siddhartha has always obeyed his father." "So will you abandon your plan?" "Siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do." The first light of day shone into the room. The Brahman saw that Siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees. In Siddhartha's face he saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot. Then his father realized that even now Siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in his home, that he had already left him. The Father touched Siddhartha's shoulder. "You will," he spoke, "go into the forest and be a Samana. When you'll have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach me to be blissful. If you'll find disappointment, then return and let us once again make offerings to the gods together. Go now and kiss your mother, tell her where you are going to. But for me it is time to go to the river and to perform the first ablution." He took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside. Siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk. He put his limbs back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do as his father had said. As he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there, and joined the pilgrim--Govinda. "You have come," said Siddhartha and smiled. "I have come," said Govinda. WITH THE SAMANAS In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny Samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience. They were accepted. Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak. He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from his thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encountered women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture. A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret. Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he neither felt any pain nor thirst any more. Silently, he stood there in the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping over freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there, until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more, until they were silent, until they were quiet. Silently, he cowered in the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from festering wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed motionless, until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until nothing burned any more. Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing. He learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and almost none. Instructed by the oldest if the Samanas, Siddhartha practised self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest--and Siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a heron's death. A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst. Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading away from the self he learned to go. He went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self. But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him. By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook the same efforts. They rarely spoke to one another, than the service and the exercises required. Occasionally the two of them went through the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers. "How do you think, Govinda," Siddhartha spoke one day while begging this way, "how do you think did we progress? Did we reach any goals?" Govinda answered: "We have learned, and we'll continue learning. You'll be a great Samana, Siddhartha. Quickly, you've learned every exercise, often the old Samanas have admired you. One day, you'll be a holy man, oh Siddhartha." Quoth Siddhartha: "I can't help but feel that it is not like this, my friend. What I've learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day, this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler means. In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it." Quoth Govinda: "Siddhartha is putting me on. How could you have learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain there among these wretched people?" And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda." Quoth Govinda: "You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard. It's true that a drinker numbs his senses, it's true that he briefly escapes and rests, but he'll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,--has not risen several steps." And Siddhartha spoke with a smile: "I do not know, I've never been a drunkard. But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far removed from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother's womb, this I know, oh Govinda, this I know." And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said: "What now, oh Govinda, might we be on the right path? Might we get closer to enlightenment? Might we get closer to salvation? Or do we perhaps live in a circle-- we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?" Quoth Govinda: "We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn. We are not going around in circles, we are moving up, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level." Siddhartha answered: "How old, would you think, is our oldest Samana, our venerable teacher?" Quoth Govinda: "Our oldest one might be about sixty years of age." And Siddhartha: "He has lived for sixty years and has not reached the nirvana. He'll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate. But we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't. Oh Govinda, I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one, not a single one, will reach the nirvana. We find comfort, we find numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others. But the most important thing, the path of paths, we will not find." "If you only," spoke Govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words, Siddhartha! How could it be that among so many learned men, among so many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy men, no one will find the path of paths?" But Siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice: "Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever. I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. I have asked the Brahmans, year after year, and I have asked the holy Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devote Samanas, year after year. Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill-bird or the chimpanzee. It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as `learning'. There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I'm starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning." At this, Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke: "If you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! Truly, you words stir up fear in my heart. And just consider: what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of the Brahmans' caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as you say, if there was no learning?! What, oh Siddhartha, what would then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is venerable on earth?!" And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad: He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of Atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart. But Siddhartha remained silent. He thought about the words which Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end. Yes, he thought, standing there with his head low, what would remain of all that which seemed to us to be holy? What remains? What can stand the test? And he shook his head. At one time, when the two young men had lived among the Samanas for about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a myth reached them after being retold many times: A man had appeared, Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths. He was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by disciples, without possession, without home, without a wife, in the yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with a cheerful brow, a man of bliss, and Brahmans and princes would bow down before him and would become his students. This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded, its fragrants rose up, here and there; in the towns, the Brahmans spoke of it and in the forest, the Samanas; again and again, the name of Gotama, the Buddha reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with praise and with defamation. It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the wise man of the family of Sakya. He possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew neither exercises nor self-castigation. The myth of Buddha sounded sweet. The scent of magic flowed from these reports. After all, the world was sick, life was hard to bear--and behold, here a source seemed to spring forth, here a messenger seemed to call out, comforting, mild, full of noble promises. Everywhere where the rumour of Buddha was heard, everywhere in the lands of India, the young men listened up, felt a longing, felt hope, and among the Brahmans' sons of the towns and villages every pilgrim and stranger was welcome, when he brought news of him, the exalted one, the Sakyamuni. The myth had also reached the Samanas in the forest, and also Siddhartha, and also Govinda, slowly, drop by drop, every drop laden with hope, every drop laden with doubt. They rarely talked about it, because the oldest one of the Samanas did not like this myth. He had heard that this alleged Buddha used to be an ascetic before and had lived in the forest, but had then turned back to luxury and worldly pleasures, and he had no high opinion of this Gotama. "Oh Siddhartha," Govinda spoke one day to his friend. "Today, I was in the village, and a Brahman invited me into his house, and in his house, there was the son of a Brahman from Magadha, who has seen the Buddha with his own eyes and has heard him teach. Verily, this made my chest ache when I breathed, and thought to myself: If only I would too, if only we both would too, Siddhartha and me, live to see the hour when we will hear the teachings from the mouth of this perfected man! Speak, friend, wouldn't we want to go there too and listen to the teachings from the Buddha's mouth?" Quoth Siddhartha: "Always, oh Govinda, I had thought, Govinda would stay with the Samanas, always I had believed his goal was to live to be sixty and seventy years of age and to keep on practising those feats and exercises, which are becoming a Samana. But behold, I had not known Govinda well enough, I knew little of his heart. So now you, my faithful friend, want to take a new path and go there, where the Buddha spreads his teachings." Quoth Govinda: "You're mocking me. Mock me if you like, Siddhartha! But have you not also developed a desire, an eagerness, to hear these teachings? And have you not at one time said to me, you would not walk the path of the Samanas for much longer?" At this, Siddhartha laughed in his very own manner, in which his voice assumed a touch of sadness and a touch of mockery, and said: "Well, Govinda, you've spoken well, you've remembered correctly. If you only remembered the other thing as well, you've heard from me, which is that I have grown distrustful and tired against teachings and learning, and that my faith in words, which are brought to us by teachers, is small. But let's do it, my dear, I am willing to listen to these teachings--though in my heart I believe that we've already tasted the best fruit of these teachings." Quoth Govinda: "Your willingness delights my heart. But tell me, how should this be possible? How should the Gotama's teachings, even before we have heard them, have already revealed their best fruit to us?" Quoth Siddhartha: "Let us eat this fruit and wait for the rest, oh Govinda! But this fruit, which we already now received thanks to the Gotama, consisted in him calling us away from the Samanas! Whether he has also other and better things to give us, oh friend, let us await with calm hearts." On this very same day, Siddhartha informed the oldest one of the Samanas of his decision, that he wanted to leave him. He informed the oldest one with all the courtesy and modesty becoming to a younger one and a student. But the Samana became angry, because the two young men wanted to leave him, and talked loudly and used crude swearwords. Govinda was startled and became embarrassed. But Siddhartha put his mouth close to Govinda's ear and whispered to him: "Now, I want to show the old man that I've learned something from him." Positioning himself closely in front of the Samana, with a concentrated soul, he captured the old man's glance with his glances, deprived him of his power, made him mute, took away his free will, subdued him under his own will, commanded him, to do silently, whatever he demanded him to do. The old man became mute, his eyes became motionless, his will was paralysed, his arms were hanging down; without power, he had fallen victim to Siddhartha's spell. But Siddhartha's thoughts brought the Samana under their control, he had to carry out, what they commanded. And thus, the old man made several bows, performed gestures of blessing, spoke stammeringly a godly wish for a good journey. And the young men returned the bows with thanks, returned the wish, went on their way with salutations. On the way, Govinda said: "Oh Siddhartha, you have learned more from the Samanas than I knew. It is hard, it is very hard to cast a spell on an old Samana. Truly, if you had stayed there, you would soon have learned to walk on water." "I do not seek to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let old Samanas be content with such feats!" GOTAMA In the town of Savathi, every child knew the name of the exalted Buddha, and every house was prepared to fill the alms-dish of Gotama's disciples, the silently begging ones. Near the town was Gotama's favourite place to stay, the grove of Jetavana, which the rich merchant Anathapindika, an obedient worshipper of the exalted one, had given him and his people for a gift. All tales and answers, which the two young ascetics had received in their search for Gotama's abode, had pointed them towards this area. And arriving at Savathi, in the very first house, before the door of which they stopped to beg, food has been offered to them, and they accepted the food, and Siddhartha asked the woman, who handed them the food: "We would like to know, oh charitable one, where the Buddha dwells, the most venerable one, for we are two Samanas from the forest and have come, to see him, the perfected one, and to hear the teachings from his mouth." Quoth the woman: "Here, you have truly come to the right place, you Samanas from the forest. You should know, in Jetavana, in the garden of Anathapindika is where the exalted one dwells. There you pilgrims shall spent the night, for there is enough space for the innumerable, who flock here, to hear the teachings from his mouth." This made Govinda happy, and full of joy he exclaimed: "Well so, thus we have reached our destination, and our path has come to an end! But tell us, oh mother of the pilgrims, do you know him, the Buddha, have you seen him with your own eyes?" Quoth the woman: "Many times I have seen him, the exalted one. On many days, I have seen him, walking through the alleys in silence, wearing his yellow cloak, presenting his alms-dish in silence at the doors of the houses, leaving with a filled dish." Delightedly, Govinda listened and wanted to ask and hear much more. But Siddhartha urged him to walk on. They thanked and left and hardly had to ask for directions, for rather many pilgrims and monks as well from Gotama's community were on their way to the Jetavana. And since they reached it at night, there were constant arrivals, shouts, and talk of those who sought shelter and got it. The two Samanas, accustomed to life in the forest, found quickly and without making any noise a place to stay and rested there until the morning. At sunrise, they saw with astonishment what a large crowd of believers and curious people had spent the night here. On all paths of the marvellous grove, monks walked in yellow robes, under the trees they sat here and there, in deep contemplation--or in a conversation about spiritual matters, the shady gardens looked like a city, full of people, bustling like bees. The majority of the monks went out with their alms-dish, to collect food in town for their lunch, the only meal of the day. The Buddha himself, the enlightened one, was also in the habit of taking this walk to beg in the morning. Siddhartha saw him, and he instantly recognised him, as if a god had pointed him out to him. He saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe, bearing the alms-dish in his hand, walking silently. "Look here!" Siddhartha said quietly to Govinda. "This one is the Buddha." Attentively, Govinda looked at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed to be in no way different from the hundreds of other monks. And soon, Govinda also realized: This is the one. And they followed him and observed him. The Buddha went on his way, modestly and deep in his thoughts, his calm face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly and inwardly. With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, somewhat resembling a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. But his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an unwhithering light, an untouchable peace. Thus Gotama walked towards the town, to collect alms, and the two Samanas recognised him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the quietness of his appearance, in which there was no searching, no desire, no imitation, no effort to be seen, only light and peace. "Today, we'll hear the teachings from his mouth." said Govinda. Siddhartha did not answer. He felt little curiosity for the teachings, he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had, just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha's teachings again and again, though these reports only represented second- or third-hand information. But attentively he looked at Gotama's head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of truth. This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. This man was holy. Never before, Siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one. They both followed the Buddha until they reached the town and then returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from on this day. They saw Gotama returning--what he ate could not even have satisfied a bird's appetite, and they saw him retiring into the shade of the mango-trees. But in the evening, when the heat cooled down and everyone in the camp started to bustle about and gathered around, they heard the Buddha teaching. They heard his voice, and it was also perfected, was of perfect calmness, was full of peace. Gotama taught the teachings of suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to relieve suffering. Calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed on. Suffering was life, full of suffering was the world, but salvation from suffering had been found: salvation was obtained by him who would walk the path of the Buddha. With a soft, yet firm voice the exalted one spoke, taught the four main doctrines, taught the eightfold path, patiently he went the usual path of the teachings, of the examples, of the repetitions, brightly and quietly his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light, like a starry sky. When the Buddha--night had already fallen--ended his speech, many a pilgrim stepped forward and asked to accepted into the community, sought refuge in the teachings. And Gotama accepted them by speaking: "You have heard the teachings well, it has come to you well. Thus join us and walk in holiness, to put an end to all suffering." Behold, then Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke: "I also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked to accepted into the community of his disciples and was accepted. Right afterwards, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly: "Siddhartha, it is not my place to scold you. We have both heard the exalted one, be have both perceived the teachings. Govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken refuge in it. But you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk the path of salvation? Would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait any longer?" Siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard Govinda's words. For a long tome, he looked into Govinda's face. Then he spoke quietly, in a voice without mockery: "Govinda, my friend, now you have taken this step, now you have chosen this path. Always, oh Govinda, you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Won't Govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me, out of his own soul? Behold, now you've turned into a man and are choosing your path for yourself. I wish that you would go it up to its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!" Govinda, not completely understanding it yet, repeated his question in an impatient tone: "Speak up, I beg you, my dear! Tell me, since it could not be any other way, that you also, my learned friend, will take your refuge with the exalted Buddha!" Siddhartha placed his hand on Govinda's shoulder: "You failed to hear my good wish for you, oh Govinda. I'm repeating it: I wish that you would go this path up to its end, that you shall find salvation!" In this moment, Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he started to weep. "Siddhartha!" he exclaimed lamentingly. Siddhartha kindly spoke to him: "Don't forget, Govinda, that you are now one of the Samanas of the Buddha! You have renounced your home and your parents, renounced your birth and possessions, renounced your free will, renounced all friendship. This is what the teachings require, this is what the exalted one wants. This is what you wanted for yourself. Tomorrow, oh Govinda, I'll leave you." For a long time, the friends continued walking in the grove; for a long time, they lay there and found no sleep. And over and over again, Govinda urged his friend, he should tell him why he would not want to seek refuge in Gotama's teachings, what fault he would find in these teachings. But Siddhartha turned him away every time and said: "Be content, Govinda! Very good are the teachings of the exalted one, how could I find a fault in them?" Very early in the morning, a follower of Buddha, one of his oldest monks, went through the garden and called all those to him who had as novices taken their refuge in the teachings, to dress them up in the yellow robe and to instruct them in the first teachings and duties of their position. Then Govinda broke loose, embraced once again his childhood friend and left with the novices. But Siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought. Then he happened to meet Gotama, the exalted one, and when he greeted him with respect and the Buddha's glance was so full of kindness and calm, the young man summoned his courage and asked the venerable one for the permission to talk to him. Silently the exalted one nodded his approval. Quoth Siddhartha: "Yesterday, oh exalted one, I had been privileged to hear your wondrous teachings. Together with my friend, I had come from afar, to hear your teachings. And now my friend is going to stay with your people, he has taken his refuge with you. But I will again start on my pilgrimage." "As you please," the venerable one spoke politely. "Too bold is my speech," Siddhartha continued, "but I do not want to leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts. Does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?" Silently, the Buddha nodded his approval. Quoth Siddhartha: "One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in your teachings most of all. Everything in your teachings is perfectly clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects. Never before, this has been seen so clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps, clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods. Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your exalted teachings, oh perfected one. But according to your very own teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation. But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void. Please forgive me for expressing this objection." Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved. Now he spoke, the perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice: "You've heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've thought about it thus deeply. You've found a gap in it, an error. You should think about this further. But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. There is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings, you've heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else." "I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the young man. "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions. But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And--thus is my thought, oh exalted one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am continuing my travels--not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man." The Buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling. "I wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not be in error, that you shall reach the goal! But tell me: Have you seen the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?" "Far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed Siddhartha. "I wish that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their goal! It is not my place to judge another person's life. Only for myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse. Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one. If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I'd fear that it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!" With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness, Gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly noticeable gesture. "You are wise, oh Samana.", the venerable one spoke. "You know how to talk wisely, my friend. Be aware of too much wisdom!" The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained forever etched in Siddhartha	229,149
Steppenwolf A Novel (Hermann Hesse, Basil Creighton) (Z-Library).epub	Steppenwolf Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Author’s Note — 1961 Preface Harry Haller’s Records “For Madmen Only” Copyright Steppenwolf “You don’t need to be jolly,” she said. “Hermine told me that you had troubles. Any one can understand that. Tell me, then, do I please you still? The other day, when we were dancing, you were very much in love with me.” I kissed her eyes, her mouth and neck and breasts. A moment ago I had thought of Hermine with bitterness and reproach. Now I held her gift in my hands and was thankful. Maria’s caresses did not harm the wonderful music I had heard that evening. They were its worthy fulfillment. Slowly I drew the clothes from her lovely body till my kisses reached her feet. When I lay down beside her, her flower face smiled back at me omniscient and bountiful. During this night by Maria’s side I did not sleep much, but my sleep was as deep and peaceful as a child’s. And between sleeping I drank of her beautiful warm youth and heard, as we talked softly, a number of curious tales about her life and Hermine’s. I had never known much of this side of life. Only in the theatrical world, occasionally, in earlier years had I come across similar existences—women as well as men who lived half for art and half for pleasure. Now, for the first time, I had a glimpse into this kind of life, remarkable alike for its singular innocence and singular corruption. These girls, mostly from poor homes, but too intelligent and too pretty to give their whole lives to some ill-paid and joyless way of gaining their living, all lived sometimes on casual work, sometimes on their charm and easy virtue. Now and then, for a month or two, they sat at a typewriter; at times were the mistresses of well-to-do men of the world, receiving pocket money and presents; lived at times in furs and motorcars, at other times in attics, and though a good offer might under some circumstances induce them to marry, they were not at all eager for it. Many of them had little inclination for love and gave themselves very unwillingly, and then only for money and at the highest price. Others, and Maria was one of them, were unusually gifted in love and unable to do without it. They lived solely for love and besides their official and lucrative friends had other love affairs as well. Assiduous and busy, care-ridden and light-hearted, intelligent and yet thoughtless, these butterflies lived a life at once childlike and raffiné; independent, not to be bought by every one, finding their account in good luck and fine weather, in love with life and yet clinging to it far less than the bourgeois, always ready to follow a fairy prince to his castle, always certain, though scarcely conscious of it, that a difficult and sad end was in store for them. During that wonderful first night and the days that followed Maria taught me much. She taught me the charming play and delights of the senses, but she gave me, also, new understanding, new insight, new love. The world of the dance and pleasure resorts, the cinemas, bars and hotel lounges that for me, the hermit and esthete, had always about it something trivial, forbidden, and degrading, was for Maria and Hermine and their companions the world pure and simple. It was neither good nor bad, neither loved nor hated. In this world their brief and eager lives flowered and faded. They were at home in it and knew all its ways. They loved a champagne or a special dish at a restaurant as one of us might a composer or poet, and they lavished the same enthusiasm and rapture and emotion on the latest craze in dances or the sentimental cloying song of a jazz singer as one of us on Nietzsche or Hamsun. Maria talked to me about the handsome saxophone player, Pablo, and spoke of an American song that he had sung them sometimes, and she was so carried away with admiration and love as she spoke of it that I was far more moved and impressed than by the ecstasies of any highly cultured person over artistic pleasures of the rarest and most distinguished quality. I was ready to enthuse in sympathy, be the song what it might. Maria’s loving words, her fond and tender looks tore large gaps in the bulwark of my esthetics. There was to be sure a beauty, one and indivisible, small and select, that seemed to me, with Mozart at the top, to be above all dispute and doubt, but where was the limit? Hadn’t we all as connoisseurs and critics in our youth been consumed with love for works of art and for artists that today we regarded with doubt and dismay? Hadn’t that happened to us with Liszt and Wagner, and, to many of us, even with Beethoven? Wasn’t the blossoming of Maria’s childish emotion over the song from America just as pure and beautiful an artistic experience and exalted as far beyond doubt as the rapture of any academic big-wig over Tristan, or the ecstasy of a conductor over the Ninth Symphony? And didn’t this agree remarkably well with the views of Herr Pablo and prove him right? Maria too appeared to love the beautiful Pablo extremely. “He certainly is a beauty,” said I. “I like him very much too. But tell me, Maria, how can you have a fondness for me as well, a tiresome old fellow with no looks, who even has grey hairs and doesn’t play a saxophone and doesn’t sing any English love songs?” “Don’t talk so horribly,” she scolded. “It is quite natural. I like you too. You, too, have something nice about you that endears you and marks you out. I wouldn’t have you different. One oughtn’t to talk of these things and want them accounted for. Listen, when you kiss my neck or my ear, I feel that I please you, that you like me. You have a way of kissing as though you were shy, and that tells me: ‘You please him. He is grateful to you for being pretty.’ That gives me great, great pleasure. And then again with another man it’s just the opposite that pleases me, that he kisses me as though he thought little of me and conferred a favor.” Again we fell asleep and again I woke to find my arm still about her, my beautiful, beautiful flower. And this beautiful flower, strange to say, continued to be nonetheless the gift that Hermine had made me. Hermine continued to stand in front of her and to hide her with a mask. Then suddenly the thought of Erica intervened—my distant, angry love, my poor friend. She was hardly less pretty than Maria, even though not so blooming; and she was more constrained, and not so richly endowed in the little arts of making love. She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance. And so in the tender beauty of the night many pictures of my life rose before me who for so long had lived in a poor pictureless vacancy. Now, at the magic touch of Eros, the source of them was opened up and flowed in plenty. For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life, and how thronged the soul of the wretched Steppenwolf with high eternal stars and constellations. My childhood and my mother showed in a tender transfiguration like a distant glimpse over mountains into the fathomless blue; the litany of my friendships, beginning with the legendary Herman, soul-brother of Hermine, rang out as clear as trumpets; the images of many women floated by me with an unearthly fragrance like moist sea flowers on the surface of the water, women whom I had loved, desired and sung, whose love I had seldom won and seldom striven to win. My wife, too, appeared. I had lived with her many years and she had taught me comradeship, strife and resignation. In spite of all the shortcomings of our life, my confidence in her remained untouched up to the very day when she broke out against me and deserted me without warning, sick as I was in mind and body. And now, as I looked back, I saw how deep my love and trust must have been for her betrayal to have inflicted so deep and lifelong a wound. These pictures—there were hundreds of them, with names and without—all came back. They rose fresh and new out of this night of love, and I knew again, what in my wretchedness I had forgotten, that they were my life’s possession and all its worth. Indestructible and abiding as the stars, these experiences, though forgotten, could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their starry light the undying value of my being. My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness; it was bitter with the salt of all human things; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be proud of. It had been for all its wretchedness a princely life. Let the little way to death be as it might, the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It had purpose and character and turned not on trifles, but on the stars. Time has passed and much has happened, much has changed; and I can only remember a little of all that passed that night, a little of all we said and did in the deep tenderness of love, a few moments of clear awakening from the deep sleep of love’s weariness. That night, however, for the first time since my downfall gave me back the unrelenting radiance of my own life and made me recognize chance as destiny once more and see the ruins of my being as fragments of the divine. My soul breathed once more. My eyes were opened. There were moments when I felt with a glow that I had only to snatch up my scattered images and raise my life as Harry Haller and as the Steppenwolf to the unity of one picture, in order to enter myself into the world of imagination and be immortal. Was not this, then, the goal set for the progress of every human life? In the morning, after we had shared breakfast, I had to smuggle Maria from the house. Later in the same day I took a little room in a neighboring quarter which was designed solely for our meetings. True to her duties, Hermine, my dancing mistress, appeared and I had to learn the Boston. She was firm and inexorable and would not release me from a single lesson, for it was decided that I was to attend the Fancy Dress Ball in her company. She had asked me for money for her costume, but she refused to tell me anything about it. To visit her, or even to know where she lived, was still forbidden me. This time, about three weeks before the Fancy Dress Ball, was remarkable for its wonderful happiness. Maria seemed to me to be the first woman I had ever really loved. I had always wanted mind and culture in the women I had loved, and I had never remarked that even the most intellectual and, comparatively speaking, educated woman never gave any response to the Logos in me, but rather constantly opposed it. I took my problems and my thoughts with me to the company of women, and it would have seemed to me utterly impossible to love a girl for more than an hour who had scarcely read a book, scarcely knew what reading was, and could not have distinguished Tschaikovsky from Beethoven. Maria had no education. She had no need of these circuitous substitutes. Her problems all sprang directly from the senses. All her art and the whole task she set herself lay in extracting the utmost delight from the senses she had been endowed with, and from her particular figure, her color, her hair, her voice, her skin, her temperament; and in employing every faculty, every curve and line and every softest modeling of her body to find responsive perceptions in her lovers and to conjure up in them an answering quickness of delight. The first shy dance I had had with her had already told me this much. I had caught the scent and the charm of a brilliant and carefully cultivated sensibility and had been enchanted by it. Certainly, too, it was no accident that Hermine, the all-knowing, introduced me to this Maria. She had the scent and the very significance of summer and of roses. It was not my fortune to be Maria’s only lover, nor even her favorite one. I was one of many. Often she had no time for me, often only an hour at midday, seldom a night. She took no money from me. Hermine saw to that. She was glad of presents, however, and when I gave her, perhaps, a new little purse of red lacquered leather there might be two or three gold pieces inside it. As a matter of fact, she laughed at me over the red purse. It was charming, but a bargain, and no longer in fashion. In these matters, about which up to that time I was as little learned as in any language of the Eskimos, I learned a great deal from Maria. Before all else I learned that these playthings were not mere idle trifles invented by manufacturers and dealers for the purposes of gain. They were, on the contrary, a little or, rather, a big world, authoritative and beautiful, many sided, containing a multiplicity of things all of which had the one and only aim of serving love, refining the senses, giving life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love, from powder and scent to the dancing show, from ring to cigarette case, from waist-buckle to handbag. This bag was no bag, this purse no purse, flowers no flowers, the fan no fan. All were the plastic material of love, of magic and delight. Each was a messenger, a smuggler, a weapon, a battle cry. I often wondered who it was whom Maria really loved. I think she loved the young Pablo of the saxophone, with his melancholy black eyes and his long, white, distinguished, melancholy hands. I should have thought Pablo a somewhat sleepy lover, spoiled and passive, but Maria assured me that though it took a long time to wake him up he was then more strenuous and forward and virile than prize fighter or riding master. In this way I got to know many secrets about this person and that, jazz musicians, actors and many of the women and girls and men of our circle. I saw beneath the surface of the various alliances and enmities and by degrees (though I had been such an entire stranger to this world) I was drawn in and treated with confidence. I learned a good deal about Hermine, too. It was of Herr Pablo, however, of whom Maria was fond, that I saw the most. At times she, too, availed herself of his secret drugs and was forever procuring these delights for me also; and Pablo was always most markedly on the alert to be of service to me. Once he said to me without more ado: “You are so very unhappy. That is bad. One shouldn’t be like that. It makes me sorry. Try a mild pipe of opium.” My opinion of this jolly, intelligent, childlike and, at the same time, unfathomable person gradually changed. We became friends, and I often took some of his specifics. He looked on at my affair with Maria with some amusement. Once he entertained us in his room on the top floor of an hotel in the suburbs. There was only one chair, so Maria and I had to sit on the bed. He gave us a drink from three little bottles, a mysterious and wonderful draught. And then when I had got into a very good humor, he proposed, with beaming eyes, to celebrate a love orgy for three. I declined abruptly. Such a thing was inconceivable to me. Nevertheless I stole glance at Maria to see how she took it, and though she at once backed up my refusal I saw the gleam in her eyes and observed that the renunciation cost her some regret. Pablo was disappointed by my refusal but not hurt. “Pity,” he said. “Harry is too morally minded. Nothing to be done. All the same it would have been so beautiful, so very beautiful! But I’ve got another idea.” He gave us each a little opium to smoke, and sitting motionless with open eyes we all three lived through the scenes that he suggested to us while Maria trembled with delight. As I felt a little unwell after this, Pablo laid me on the bed and gave me some drops, and while I lay with closed eyes I felt the fleeting breath of a kiss on each eyelid. I took the kiss as though I believed it came from Maria, but I knew very well it came from him. And one evening he surprised me still more. Coming to me in my room he told me that he needed twenty francs and would I oblige him? In return he offered that I instead of him should have Maria for the night. “Pablo,” I said, very much shocked, “you don’t know what you say. Barter for a woman is counted among us as the last degradation. I have not heard your proposal, Pablo.” He looked at me with pity. “You don’t want to, Herr Harry. Very good. You’re always making difficulties for yourself. Don’t sleep tonight with Maria if you would rather not. But give me the money all the same. You shall have it back. I have urgent need of it.” “What for?” “For Agostino, the little second violin, you know. He has been ill for a week and there’s no one to look after him. He hasn’t a sou, nor have I at the moment.” From curiosity and also partly to punish myself, I went with him to Agostino. He took milk and medicine to him in his attic, and a wretched one it was. He made his bed and aired the room and made a most professional compress for the fevered head, all quickly and gently and efficiently like a good sick nurse. The same evening I saw him playing till dawn in the City Bar. I often talked at length and in detail about Maria with Hermine, about her hands and shoulders and hips and her way of laughing and kissing and dancing. “Has she shown you this?” asked Hermine on one occasion, describing to me a peculiar play of the tongue in kissing. I asked her to show it me herself, but she was most earnest in her refusal. “That is for later. I am not your love yet.” I asked her how she was acquainted with Maria’s ways of kissing and with many secrets as well that could be known only to her lovers. “Oh,” she cried, “we’re friends, after all. Do you think we’d have secrets from one another? I must say you’ve got hold of a beautiful girl. There’s no one like her.” “All the same, Hermine, I’m sure you have some secrets from each other, or have you told her everything you know about me?” “No, that’s another matter. Those are things she would not understand. Maria is wonderful. You are fortunate. But between you and me there are things she has not a notion of. Naturally I told her a lot about you, much more than you would have liked at the time. I had to win her for you, you see. But neither Maria nor anyone else will ever understand you as I understand you. I’ve learned something about you from her besides, for she’s told me all about you as far as she knows you at all. I know you nearly as well as if we had often slept together.” It was curious and mysterious to know, when I was with Maria again, that she had had Hermine in her arms just as she had me … New, indirect and complicated relations rose before me, new possibilities in love and life; and I thought of the thousand souls of the Steppenwolf treatise. * * * In the short interval between the time that I got to know Maria and the Fancy Dress Ball I was really happy; and yet I never had the feeling that this was my release and the attainment of felicity. I had the distinct impression, rather, that all this was a prelude and a preparation, that everything was pushing eagerly forward, that the gist of the matter was to come. I was now so proficient in dancing that I felt quite equal to playing my part at the Ball of which everybody was talking. Hermine had a secret. She took the greatest care not to let out what her costume was to be. I would recognize her soon enough, she said, and should I fail to do so, she would help me; but beforehand I was to know nothing. She was not in the least inquisitive to know my plans for a fancy dress and I decided that I should not wear a costume at all. Maria, when I asked her to go with me as my partner, explained that she had a cavalier already and a ticket too, in fact; and I saw with some disappointment that I should have to attend the festivity alone. It was the principal Fancy Dress Ball of the town, organized yearly by the Society of Artists in the Globe Rooms. During these days I saw little of Hermine, but the day before the Ball she paid me a brief visit. She came for her ticket, which I had got for her, and sat quietly with me for a while in my room. We fell into a conversation so remarkable that it made a deep impression on me. “You’re really doing splendidly,” she said. “Dancing suits you. Anyone who hadn’t seen you for the last four weeks would scarcely know you.” “Yes,” I agreed. “Things haven’t gone so well with me for years. That’s all your doing, Hermine.” “Oh, not the beautiful Maria’s?” “No. She is a present from you like all the rest. She is wonderful.” “She is just the girl you need, Steppenwolf—pretty, young, light hearted, an expert in love and not to be had every day. If you hadn’t to share her with others, if she weren’t always merely a fleeting guest, it would be another matter.” Yes, I had to concede this too. “And so have you really got everything you want now?” “No, Hermine. It is not like that. What I have got is very beautiful and delightful, a great pleasure, a great consolation. I’m really happy—” “Well then, what more do you want?” “I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.” “To be unhappy in fact? Well, you’ve had that and to spare, that time when you couldn’t go home because of the razor.” “No, Hermine, it is something else. That time, I grant you, I was very unhappy. But it was a stupid unhappiness that led to nothing.” “Why?” “Because I should not have had that fear of death when I wished for it all the same. The unhappiness that I need and long for is different. It is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and lust after death. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.” “I understand that. There we are brother and sister. But what have you got against the happiness that you have found now with Maria? Why aren’t you content?” “I have nothing against it. Oh, no, I love it. I’m grateful for it. It is as lovely as a sunny day in a wet summer. But I suspect that it can’t last. This happiness leads to nothing either. It gives content, but content is no food for me. It lulls the Steppenwolf to sleep and satiates him. But it is not a happiness to die for.” “So it’s necessary to be dead, Steppenwolf?” “I think so, yes. My happiness fills me with content and I can bear it for a long while yet. But sometimes when happiness leaves a moment’s leisure to look about me and long for things, the longing I have is not to keep this happiness forever, but to suffer once again, only more beautifully and less meanly than before. I long for the sufferings that make me ready and willing to die.” Hermine looked tenderly in my eyes with that dark look that could so suddenly come into her face. Lovely, fearful eyes! Picking her words one by one and piecing them together, and speaking slowly and so low that it was an effort to hear her, she said: “I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?” I nodded again and again. “You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him—the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints—is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money’s sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual—but it was the same road. Do you think I can’t understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours—” She looked down and fell into meditation. “Hermine,” I cried tenderly, “sister, how clearly you see! And yet you taught me the fox trot! But how do you mean that people like us with a dimension too many cannot live here? What brings it about? Is it only so in our days, or was it so always?” “I don’t know. For the honor of the world, I will suppose it to be in our time only—a disease, a momentary misfortune. Our leaders strain every nerve, and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates—in such a time the world must indeed cut a poor figure. Let us hope that other times were better, and will be better again, richer, broader and deeper. But that is no help to us now. And perhaps it has always been the same—” “Always as it is today? Always a world only for politicians, profiteers, waiters and pleasure-seekers, and not a breath of air for men?” “Well, I don’t know. Nobody knows. Anyway, it is all the same. But I am thinking now of your favorite of whom you have talked to me sometimes, and read me, too, some of his letters, of Mozart. How was it with him in his day? Who controlled things in his times and ruled the roost and gave the tone and counted for something? Was it Mozart or the business people, Mozart or the average man? And in what fashion did he come to die and be buried? And perhaps, I mean, it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.” “Nothing else?” “Yes, eternity.” “You mean a name, and fame with posterity?” “No, Steppenwolf, not fame. Has that any value? And do you think that all true and real men have been famous and known to posterity?” “No, of course not.” “Then it isn’t fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn’t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of truth. The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity.” “You are right.” “The pious,” she went on meditatively, “after all know most about this. That is why they set up the saints and what they call the communion of the saints. The saints, these are the true men, the younger brothers of the Savior. We are with them all our lives long in every good deed, in every brave thought, in every love. The communion of the saints, in earlier times it was set by painters in a golden heaven, shining, beautiful and full of peace, and it is nothing else but what I meant a moment ago when I called it eternity. It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for. And for that reason, Steppenwolf, we long for death. There you will find your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher, Philip of Neri and all. There are many saints who at first were sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin and vice. You will laugh at me, but I often think that even my friend Pablo might be a saint in hiding. Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.” With the last words her voice had sunk again and now there was a stillness of peace in the room. The sun was setting; it lit up the gilt lettering on the back of my books. I took Hermine’s head in my hands and kissed her on the forehead and leaned my cheek to hers as though she were my sister, and so we stayed for a moment. And so I should have liked best to stay and to have gone out no more that day. But Maria had promised me this night, the last before the great Ball. But on my way to join Maria I thought, not of her, but of what Hermine had said. It seemed to me that it was not, perhaps, her own thoughts but mine. She had read them like a clairvoyant, breathed them in and given them back, so that they had a form of their own and came to me as something new. I was particularly thankful to her for having expressed the thought of eternity just at this time. I needed it, for without it I could not live and neither could I die. The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of mine who taught me dancing. I was forced to recall my dream of Goethe and that vision of the old wiseacre when he laughed so inhumanly and played his joke on me in the fashion of the immortals. For the first time I understood Goethe’s laughter, the laughter of the immortals. It was a laughter without an object. It was simply light and lucidity. It was that which is left over when a true man has passed through all the sufferings, vices, mistakes, passions and misunderstandings of men and got through to eternity and the world of space. And eternity was nothing else than the redemption of time, its return to innocence, so to speak, and its transformation again into space. I went to meet Maria at the place where we usually dined. However, she had not arrived, and while I sat waiting at the table in the quiet and secluded restaurant, my thoughts still ran on the conversation I had had with Hermine. All these thoughts that had arisen between her and me seemed so intimate and well known, fashioned from a mythology and an imagery so entirely my own. The immortals, living their life in timeless space, enraptured, re-fashioned and immersed in a crystalline eternity like ether, and the cool starry brightness and radiant serenity of this world outside the earth—whence was all this so intimately known? As I reflected, passages of Mozart’s Cassations, of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier came to my mind and it seemed to me that all through this music there was the radiance of this cool starry brightness and the quivering of this clearness of ether. Yes, it was there. In this music there was a feeling as of time frozen into space, and above it there quivered a never-ending and superhuman serenity, an eternal, divine laughter. Yes, and how well the aged Goethe of my dreams fitted in too! And suddenly I heard this fathomless laughter around me. I heard the immortals laughing. I sat entranced. Entranced, I felt for a pencil in my waistcoat pocket, and looking for paper saw the wine card lying on the table. I turned it over and wrote on the back. I wrote verses and forgot about them till one day I discovered them in my pocket. They ran: THE IMMORTALS Ever reeking from the vales of earth Ascends to us life’s fevered surge, Wealth’s excess, the rage of dearth, Smoke of death meals on the gallow’s verge; Greed without end, imprisoned air; Murderers’ hands, usurers’ hands, hands of prayer; Exhales in fœtid breath the human swarm Whipped on by fear and lust, blood raw, blood warm, Breathing blessedness and savage heats, Eating itself and spewing what it eats, Hatching war and lovely art, Decking out with idiot craze Bawdy houses while they blaze, Through the childish fair-time mart Weltering to its own decay In the glare of pleasure’s way, Rising for each newborn and then Sinking for each to dust again. But we above you ever more residing In the ether’s star translumined ice Know not day nor night nor time’s dividing, Wear nor age nor sex for our device. All your sins and anguish self-affrighting, Your murders and lascivious delighting Are to us but as a show Like the suns that circling go, Changing not our day for night; On your frenzied life we spy, And refresh ourselves thereafter With the stars in order fleeing; Our breath is winter; in our sight Fawns the dragon of the sky; Cool and unchanging is our eternal being, Cool and star bright is our eternal laughter. Then Maria came and after a cheerful meal I accompanied her to our little room. She was lovelier that evening, warmer and more intimate than she had ever been. The love she gave me was so tender that I felt it as the most complete abandon. “Maria,” said I, “you are as prodigal today as a goddess. Don’t kill us both quite. Tomorrow after all is the Ball. Whom have you got for a cavalier tomorrow? I’m very much afraid it is a fairy prince who will carry you off and I shall never see you any more. Your love tonight is almost like that of good lovers who bid each other farewell for the last time.” She put her lips close to my ear and whispered: “Don’t say that, Harry. Any time might be the last time. If Hermine takes you, you will come no more to me. Perhaps she will take you tomorrow.” Never did I experience the feeling peculiar to those days, that strange, bitter-sweet alternation of mood, more powerfully than on that night before the Ball. It was happiness that I experienced. There was the loveliness of Maria and her surrender. There was the sweet and subtle sensuous joy of inhaling and tasting a hundred pleasures of the senses that I had only begun to know as an elderly man. I was bathed in sweet joy like a rippling pool. And yet that was only the shell. Within all was significant and tense with fate, and while, love-lost and tender, I was busied with the little sweet appealing things of love and sank apparently without a care in the caress of happiness, I was conscious all the while in my heart how my fate raced on at breakneck speed, racing and chasing like a frightened horse, straight for the precipitous abyss, spurred on by dread and longing to the consummation of death. Just as a short while before I had started aside in fear from the easy thoughtless pleasure of merely sensual love and felt a dread of Maria’s beauty that laughingly offered itself, so now I felt a dread of death, a dread, however, that was already conscious of its approaching change into surrender and release. Even while we were lost in the silent and deep preoccupation of our love and belonged more closely than ever we had to one another, my soul bid adieu to Maria, and took leave of all that she had meant to me. I had learned from her, once more before the end, to confide myself like a child to life’s surface play, to pursue a fleeting joy, and to be both child and beast in the innocence of sex, a state that (in earlier life) I had only known rarely and as an exception. The life of the senses and of sex had nearly always had for me the bitter accompaniment of guilt, the sweet but dread taste of forbidden fruit that puts a spiritual man on his guard. Now, Hermine and Maria had shown me this garden in its innocence, and I had been a guest there and thankfully. But it would soon be time to go on farther. It was too agreeable and too warm in this garden. It was my destiny to make another bid for the crown of life in the expiation of its endless guilt. An easy life, an easy love, an easy death—these were not for me. From what the girls told me I gathered that for the Ball next day, or in connection with it, quite unusual delights and extravagances were on foot. Perhaps it was the climax, and perhaps Maria’s suspicion was correct. Perhaps this was our last night together and perhaps the morning would bring a new unwinding of fate. I was aflame with longing and breathless with dread; I clung wildly to Maria; and there flared within me a last burst of wild desire … * * * I made up by day for the sleep I had lost at night. After a bath I went home dead tired. I darkened my bedroom and as I undressed I came on the verses in my pocket; but I forgot them again and lay down forthwith. I forgot Maria and Hermine and the Masked Ball and slept the clock round. It was not till I had got up in the evening and was shaving that I remembered that the Ball began in an hour and that I had to find a dress shirt. I got myself ready in very good humor and went out thereafter to have dinner. It was the first masked ball I was to participate in. In earlier days, it is true, I had now and again attended such festivities and even sometimes found them very entertaining, but I had never danced. I had been a spectator merely. As for the enthusiasm with which others had talked and rejoiced over them in my hearing, it had always struck me as comic. And now the day had come for me too to find the occasion one of almost painful suspense. As I had no partner to take, I decided not to go till late. This, too, Hermine had counseled me. I had seldom of late been to the Steel Helmet, my former refuge, where the disappointed men sat out their evenings, soaking in their wine and playing at bachelor life. It did not suit the life I had come to lead since. This evening, however, I was drawn to it before I was aware. In the mood between joy and fear that fate and parting imposed on me just now, all the stations and shrines of meditation in my life’s pilgrimage caught once more that gleam of pain and beauty that comes from things past; and so too had the little tavern, thick with smoke, among whose patrons I had lately been numbered and whose primitive opiate of a bottle of cheap wine had lately heartened me enough to spend one more night in my lonely bed and to endure life for one more day. I had tasted other specifics and stronger stimulus since then, and sipped a sweeter poison. With a smile I entered the ancient hostel. The landlady greeted me and so, with a nod, did the silent company of habitués. A roast chicken was commended and soon set before me. The limpid Elsasser sparkled in the thick peasant glass. The clean white wooden tables and the old yellow paneling had a friendly look. And while I ate and drank there came over me that feeling of change and decay and of farewell celebrations, that sweet and inwardly painful feeling of being a living part of all the scenes and all the things of an earlier life that has never yet been parted from, and from which the time to part has come. The modern man calls this sentimentality. He has lost the love of inanimate objects. He does not even love his most sacred object, his motorcar, but is ever hoping to exchange it as soon as he can for a later model. This modern man has energy and ability. He is healthy, cool and strenuous—a splendid type, and in the next war he will be a miracle of efficiency. But all that was no concern of mine. I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned one either. I had escaped time altogether, and went my way, with death at my elbow and death as my resolve. I had no objection to sentimentalities. I was glad and thankful to find a trace of anything like a feeling still remaining in my burned-out heart. So I let my memories of the old tavern and my attachment to the solid wooden chairs and the smell of smoke and wine and the air of use and wont and warmth and homeliness that the place had carry me away. There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness in their very tone. The hard seat was dear to me, and so was the peasant glass and the cool racy taste of the Elsasser and my intimacy with all and everything in this room, and the faces of the bent and dreaming drinkers, those disillusioned ones, whose brother I had been for so long. All this was bourgeois sentimentality, lightly seasoned with a touch of the old-fashioned romance of inns, a romance coming from my boyhood when inns and wine and cigars were still forbidden things—strange and wonderful. But no Steppenwolf rose before me baring his teeth to tear my sentiment to pieces. I sat there in peace in the glow of the past whose setting still shed a faint afterglow. A street seller came in and I bought a handful of roasted chestnuts. An old woman came in with flowers and I bought a bunch of violets and presented them to the landlady. It was not till I was about to pay my bill and felt in vain for the pocket of the coat I usually wore that I realized once more that I was in evening dress. The Masked Ball. And Hermine! It was still early enough, however. I could not convince myself to go to the Globe Rooms straight away. I felt too—as I had in the case of all the pleasures that had lately come my way—a whole array of checks and resistances. I had no inclination to enter the large and crowded and noisy rooms. I had a schoolboy’s shyness of the strange atmosphere and the world of pleasure and dancing. As I sauntered along I passed by a cinema with its dazzling lights and huge colored posters. I went on a few steps, then turned again and went in. There till eleven I could sit quietly and comfortably in the dark. Led by the usher’s flashlight I stumbled through the curtains into the darkened hall, found a seat and was suddenly in the middle of the Old Testament. The film was one of those that are nominally not shown for money. Much expense and many refinements are lavished upon them in a more sacred and nobler cause, and at midday even school-children are brought to see them by their religious teachers. This one was the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, with a huge crowd of men, horses, camels, palaces, splendors of the pharaohs and tribulations of the Jews in the desert. I saw Moses, whose hair recalled portraits of Walt Whitman, a splendidly theatrical Moses, wandering through the desert at the head of the Jews, with a dark and fiery eye and a long staff and the stride of a Wotan. I saw him pray to God at the edge of the Red Sea, and I saw the Red Sea parted to give free passage, a deep road between piled-up mountains of water (the confirmation classes conducted by the clergy to see this religious film could argue without end as to how the film people managed this). I saw the prophet and his awestruck people pass through to the other side, and behind them I saw the war chariots of Pharaoh come into sight and the Egyptians stop and start on the brink of the sea, and then, when they ventured courageously on, I saw the mountainous waters close over the heads of Pharaoh in all the splendor of his gold trappings and over all his chariots and all his men, recalling, as I saw it, Handel’s wonderful duet for two basses in which this event is magnificently sung. I saw Moses, further, climbing Sinai, a gloomy hero in a gloomy wilderness of rocks, and I looked on as Jehovah in the midst of storm and thunder and lightning imparted the Ten Commandments to him, while his worthless people set up the golden calf at the foot of the mountain and gave themselves over to somewhat roisterous celebrations. I found it so strange and incredible to be looking on at all this, to be seeing the sacred writ, with its heroes and its wonders, the source in our childhood of the first dawning suspicion of another world than this, presented for money before a grateful public that sat quietly eating the provisions brought with it from home. A nice little picture, indeed, picked up by chance in the huge wholesale clearance of culture in these days! My God, rather than come to such a pass it would have been better for the Jews and every one else, let alone the Egyptians, to have perished in those days and forthwith of a violent and becoming death instead of this dismal pretence of dying by inches that we go in for today. Yes indeed! My secret repressions and unconfessed fright in face of the Masked Ball were by no means lessened by the feelings provoked in me by the cinema. On the contrary, they had grown to uncomfortable proportions and I had to shake myself and think of Hermine before I could go to the Globe Rooms and dared to enter. It was late, and the Ball had been for a long time in full swing. At once before I had even taken off my things I was caught up, shy and sober as I was, in the swirl of the masked throng. I was accosted familiarly. Girls summoned me to the champagne rooms. Clowns slapped me on the back, and I was addressed on all sides as an old friend. I responded to none of it, but fought my way through the crowded rooms to the cloakroom, and when I got my cloakroom ticket I put it in my pocket with great care, reflecting that I might need it before very long when I had had enough of the uproar. Every part of the great building was given over to the festivities. There was dancing in every room and in the basement as well. Corridors and stairs were filled to overflowing with masks and dancing and music and laughter and tumult. Oppressed in heart I stole through the throng, from the Negro orchestra to the peasant band, from the large and brilliantly lighted principal room into the passages and on to the stairs, to bars, buffets and champagne parlors. The walls were mostly hung with wild and cheerful paintings by the latest artists. All the world was there, artists, journalists, professors, business men, and of course every adherent of pleasure in the town. In one of the orchestras sat Pablo, blowing with enthusiasm in his curved mouthpiece. As soon as he saw me he sang out a greeting. Pushed hither and thither in the crowd I found myself in one room after another, upstairs here and downstairs there. A corridor in the basement had been staged as hell by the artists and there a band of devils played furiously. After a while, I began to look for Hermine or Maria and strove time after time to reach the principal room; but either I missed my way or had to meet the current. By midnight I had found no one, and though I had not danced I was hot and giddy. I threw myself into the nearest chair among utter strangers and ordered some wine, and came to the conclusion that joining in such rowdy festivals was no part for an old man like me. I drank my glass of wine while I stared at the naked arms and backs of the women, watched the crowd of grotesquely masked figures drifting by and silently declined the advances of a few girls who wished to sit on my knee or get me to dance. “Old Growler,” one called after me; and she was right. I decided to raise my spirits with the wine, but even the wine went against me and I could scarcely swallow a second glass. And then the feeling crept over me that the Steppenwolf was standing behind me with his tongue out. Nothing pleased me. I was in the wrong place. To be sure, I had come wi	406,965
The Hermit (Rydahl Thomas) (Z-Library).epub	the-hermit-4 ‌ ‌ The Corpse ‌ 22 January–28 January ‌ 32 – Are you ready for Virgin del Carmen’s arrival? A loud voice down on the street cuts through Erhard’s sleep. He sits upright on the sofa and glances around the empty terrace. He recognizes that sound. It’s coming from a loudspeaker on the roof of an old Mazda that’s cruising the streets advertising the festival on 23 February. – Sign up for our events and help give our city and its tourists the island’s best party. To judge by the brightness of the sun, it’s past noon. The sun is a hot glowing ball in the middle of the sky, and all shadows have been pushed aside. The morning’s drinks are still on the table, stained a dark red, with dried-up lemons on the rims of the glasses. Beatriz and Raúl must still be asleep, since they didn’t wake him up. He gets to his feet and spots the washerwoman on the other roof staring at him. He waves at her, but she scurries through a door and leaves an empty clothesline. He pulls a Perrier from the fridge and unscrews the cap. He gulps it down, then descends the narrow stairwell to the balcony. The balcony door is open, the curtain fluttering. He walks into the kitchen and the living room, then returns to the balcony as if they might have appeared while he was inside. He turns around and goes back to the living room, then the dining room – a room he’s never set foot in – and onward to the office, which seems unused, and finally to the bedroom, where he pushes open the door with his foot. He pretty much expects to see Raúl on top of her or fucking her from behind, her breasts dangling free, Raúl angry and excitable as a donkey. But no. As if they’d been in a hurry to leave, the bed is unmade. He calls out for Raúl several times. Each time it sounds more and more bleak, as if someone’s clipping his speech, or as if the walls somehow swallow the sound. Raú. Ra. R. In the entranceway, he opens a small chest of drawers and rummages around inside. He searches for paper and a pen to scribble a note for when they return, probably very soon. He steps on something that’s sticking out from under the chest of drawers, a set of keys to a Mercedes along with some house keys – Raúl’s. He must have dropped them. Maybe someone drove him. Just as he bends down to pick up the keys, he hears a sound coming from the office. He hasn’t heard it before. If he heard that sound at home, he would know exactly what it was: the goats rubbing against the wall of the house when it’s raining or too windy. But here, in a three-year-old building thirty metres above the sea, you would hardly expect to find any goats or rats or other animals clawing or scratching so loudly. Perhaps a seagull has gotten into the flat looking for French fries or deep-fried shrimp or something else it’s developed a taste for down at the harbour. Cautiously, he enters the office: a dark space that’s in stark contrast to the style of the rest of the flat. It has Emanuel Palabras’s stamp all over it – a mahogany desk, reclining leather chair, two leaf-shaped shields wrapped in colourful skins. The sound has ceased, but must have come from the large, built-in wardrobe. One of the wardrobe’s doors is pushed a little to the side, leaving a black slit running from floor to ceiling like a colourless block. Erhard shoves the door aside. Inside, the shelves have fallen down. Clothes and boxes filled with CDs and computer cables are piled up. Every second or third month Raúl binges on whatever he can get his hands on. He doesn’t plan it that way; it’s how his mind operates. Just when everything’s going well between him and Beatriz, and him and the world, he shits on it all and starts taking whatever the pushers in Calle Mirage give him. Erhard has picked him up several times strung out some place, causing trouble at a party, or in his wretchedness just needing some company. But it’s not Raúl he sees at the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath the clothes and the shelves. It’s Beatriz’s hair, an ear, a large orange earring. He removes the clothes and the shelves, then lifts her out of the wardrobe and carries her into the bedroom, where he lays her on the bed. She doesn’t look heavy, but she’s not easy to carry. His back aches, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that now. – What happened? Where’s Raúl? Where the hell is that idiot? She doesn’t respond, of course. There’s blood on her nose and mouth and down the front of her blouse, and she has a horrible gash on her lip. Most of the blood appears to be coming from a deep wound below her hairline. She’s just staring at the ceiling, slowly blinking her eyes and breathing in wheezy gasps. The telephone is on the nightstand right beside Beatriz. He calmly punches 112 and hears someone answer. Then he looks at Beatriz. She’s staring directly into Erhard’s eyes. There’s something about her expression. It’s not pain or confusion or death. At first he believes that she’s dead, that her pupils are completely dilated because she has slipped life and found peace, but then he sees that her gaze is more insistent, almost commanding. Her pupils are tense from exertion. You mustn’t tell them. For Raúl’s sake. Let me go. – What? he says. On the other end of the line, Emergency Services repeats their questions, but Erhard doesn’t hear them. Beatriz closes her eyes and goes quiet. She’s somewhere far, far away. Emergency Services keeps asking Erhard what has happened, and where he is located. It’s a man’s voice, friendly. Erhard removes the telephone from his ear and presses the red button, ending the call. Her words – and he’s certain they are her words – turn everything upside down. Help me . Let me go . What the hell does that mean? The words reverberate and then seem to vanish into nothingness. And why didn’t she wish him to call an ambulance? Why was it for Raúl’s sake? Was there something she didn’t want him to get mixed up in? Raúl may be an arse in many ways, but Erhard has never seen him physically harm Beatriz. That’s not the kind of relationship they have. It’s not like him, either. Or Beatriz. It’s what makes her so modern, so lovely, so irritatingly unobtainable: her independence, pride, and strength. Whatever occurred in the flat, it wasn’t an accident or an ordinary domestic dispute. Something very bad happened. He checks Beatriz again. As part of his job, he has learned first aid and has kept his certificate up to date for years. He lowers his head to her chest and watches it rise and fall. He tilts her head back slightly, so she can breathe easier. His eyes wander from her mouth to her throat and down, down. Her bloodied robe is wide open, revealing her breasts and hairy vulva behind cotton knickers that appear rather cheap. He quickly cinches her robe and wraps her up in the bed sheet she’s lying on. He walks through all the rooms again, now searching for clues. Blood, overturned objects, feet sticking out from under the sofa, disembodied limbs. He notices nothing out of the ordinary. But some of the desk drawers in the office aren’t fully closed, and the bed appears messier than usual. And why is the bread knife in the middle of the kitchen table? It’s as though someone got it out to use it, then left it there. Help me . Let me go. He goes to the kitchen and cracks open a Dos Equis, gulping it down greedily. He pulls his notebook from his pocket. Although he has no system, he knows exactly where he’ll find the number. One evening in Puerto he wrote Michel Faliando’s name and telephone number with a blunt-tipped pencil. He doesn’t remember why he wrote it down. But Faliando is a member of the City Council – and, he remembers, a doctor. He grabs the wall telephone. First he tries Raúl. But his call goes immediately to voicemail. He doesn’t leave a message. He redials and gets the same response. Then he calls the doctor. – Michel Faliando? This is Erhard Jørgensen, Raúl Palabras’s friend. He doesn’t have the energy to explain, but it’s the only way. – Do you recall that we met at an event once in Puerto? Erhard explains that Beatriz has been hurt. She’s hit her head, badly, and requires immediate medical attention. – No, unfortunately I can’t ask anyone else, Erhard says. – It’s complicated. Silence on the other end of the line. – It’s Emanuel Palabras’s daughter-in-law, Erhard says, trying to get some leverage. Continued silence. – Is she unconscious? the doctor asks. – She’s breathing. – Are there drugs involved? – No, Erhard says automatically. – Is she a diabetic? – No, I don’t think so. – Irregular breathing? Wheezing? – Yeah, a little, maybe. – Is she lying on her back or in the recovery position? – On her back, Erhard says. Silence. The doctor says he can be there in two hours. Erhard doesn’t know what to say, so he just thanks him. Two hours. Hopefully she’ll survive for that long. He’ll do everything in his power to make sure she does. He’ll take care of her and feed her with a spoon and hold her head and… And then he remembers Alina. The drive to Majanicho takes fourteen minutes. And the entire time he’s certain that the whore despises him. She has now sat chained up for nearly a day, with no food for more than sixteen hours. Unless she’s managed to find something in the one cupboard she can reach. He steels himself to tell her what has happened, but he’s not sure whether or not he should tell her anything about Raúl Palabras or Beatriz. He’ll just say he was in a terrible car accident. Hell, his shirt is soaked with blood. At least he’s got the charger with him. The bundle of clothes, underwear, and charger are all on the passenger seat. He knows he needs to release her today. He quickly parks the car, leaps out, and hurries inside. She’s not on the mattress or in the kitchen. He glances warily around each corner, ready for her to jump him or throw something at his head. It makes sense that she would. – Alina? He peers in the shed. Empty. Then he remembers the chain. He inspects the ground and the floor inside the house, searching for it, but it’s nowhere to be found. Maybe she succeeded in breaking it and getting loose? But how far might she have gotten? And where is the rest of the chain? Cautiously he walks around the corner of the house and looks up at the metal ring the chain is fastened to. The ring is still there, but the chain’s not dangling down the wall as he would have expected if she’d pried it off her foot. Instead it runs in a taut line straight up the house before disappearing on the roof. Erhard turns towards the hill. Half-expecting to see her walking barefooted across the rocks. But she’s not up there. Just wind and dust. She must be on the roof. Erhard keeps the ladder around back, but now it’s lying at a ten-degree angle away from the house. She must have brought it over here. When she got up on the roof, she’d either pushed the ladder or accidentally knocked it over. He positions the ladder against the house and begins to climb. If she’s hiding up there, he should have seen her as he drove in. But maybe she’s lying down, fatigued by the blazing sun. Maybe napping, ready to attack him as soon as he peeks over the edge. The rooftop is a hotchpotch of various materials: plastic, corrugated cardboard, a tarpaulin drawn over a sheet of plywood, and chunks of rocks in the 1.5- to 2-stone range that are supposed to hold it all together against the wind. He peers over the roof’s edge. It’s empty. His gaze follows the taut chain running from the metal ring to the opposite side of the house, where it plunges over the roof between two large rocks. She’s thrown the chain over the house, he thinks. To confuse him. So she’ll have time to get away. That confirms what he’d suspected – also when he visited her flat. She’s smart. Maybe smarter than Erhard. He doesn’t feel like crawling across the roof. He’s not even sure it can support his weight. On his way down the ladder, he curses to himself. Then he hustles around the house to verify the broken chain. He scans the countryside, hoping to see her trotting away. But he sees nothing. Not even the goats. The bleached sun is three-fifths of the way across the horizon. The rocks are scorching hot. Any living thing in direct sunlight would be fried. What he sees when he turns the corner of the house makes him gag, because the girl’s face has gone. The chain is just short enough that she’s hanging with her foot against the wall, her hip and femur torn from their sockets, and yet long enough that her head and arms touch the ground, resting in a red pool of blood. When he nudges her with his foot, the corpse swings to one side and reveals her face. A swarm of irritating flies buzz away. Alina’s face is in fact gone, her round cheeks replaced by something that resembles grilled cheese. He raises his hand to his mouth and turns away in disgust. Maybe she was planning to attack Erhard, but stumbled over the rocks and fell to her death. Maybe she leaped off the roof on her own – to put an end to her misery or to break the chain. He can hardly stomach the thought. He’d not intended for this to happen. Not at all. Hell, he’d almost begun to like her. She couldn’t have been hanging there long. The blood’s not even dry. Erhard recalls the wild dogs that helped themselves to Bill Haji. The police won’t care for the true version of events. He knows what Bernal will think. He won’t believe Erhard’s story; he’ll think that Erhart kidnapped the whore, blackmailed her, and threw her off the roof. Witnesses have seen Erhard in her flat, and his fingerprints are all over that place. He needs to reconsider. He needs to think and think hard. He puts on a pair of work gloves and pulls out the tarpaulin, spreading it beneath Alina before cutting the chain with the bolt clippers. She tumbles onto the tarpaulin. A couple teeth, or what look like teeth, dislodge from her mouth along with a fresh gout of blood. He wraps her up and drags her into the shed. He shovels the dark-red soil into a bucket and spreads it across the stones five hundred metres from the house. With the backside of the shovel, he scrapes gravel over the pool of blood, then pours a few litres of water on the spot, so the gravel appears less arranged. Inside the house, he scrubs every surface Alina has touched, first with a wet rag and then a dry. The time is 2.20 p.m. He has forty minutes until the doctor shows up at Raúl’s place. As if he’s been flying in an airplane, he feels nauseated, and he pours cognac in a coffee mug, then drinks it standing in front of the house and staring down the trail. There are no sirens, no blinking police cars. Nothing. If he’d just let the girl go when she’d begged him. Now he’s got a dead woman whose body he somehow has to dispose of, an unconscious woman he has to hide, and a friend who has gone missing. At some point, people will start looking for all three. He doesn’t know how long he can keep things under wraps. If he’s caught, he’ll have a hard time explaining himself. No matter how he spins his story, it looks bad. It almost makes him laugh. But it’s not funny. If they find Bill Haji’s finger on the shelf, too, then it’ll look even worse. The Hermit. That twisted old geezer out near Majanicho. Majorero . The word hangs in the air, then fades. He stares at the girl’s ruined face, mouth, nose, and lips like a red slab. He goes inside and brings out the finger. It looks like a liquorice stick, the kind he used to eat as a child. The ring is still stuck tight, but it would come off if he broke the finger. No longer can he wear it as if it were a new finger. Which annoys him. Because it was a real treat for him to prop it in the empty slot on his hand, no matter how out-of-place and miscoloured it appeared to be. He recalls the afternoon that he drove several people, who all gave it no more than a passing glance, because it appeared to be nothing more than a sprained finger. They didn’t figure the taxi driver was riding around with a dead man’s digit, so they’d probably guessed he’d had an accident. Even though the finger looked different than the others, thinner and darker; some might have even thought it resembled a ring finger where the pinky should be. But no one stared at it or grew suspicious. They accepted the most logical explanation and overlooked any indications pointing to the opposite. What if? he thinks, returning the finger to its container and hiding it behind the books once again. When she was alive, he’d tried to hide Alina just like he had Bill Haji’s finger. But he doesn’t dare bury her out here. The dogs would smell her at a distance. Besides, the ground is solid, and a really strong man would have to dig for at least a day. Maybe he could rent a Bobcat or an excavator, or bribe a sexton to throw her into some other person’s grave. He could also drive her to the coast. There’s a vast ocean to heave her into. The doctor will arrive in thirty minutes. He considers postponing the appointment, but he doesn’t want to put Beatriz’s life in greater jeopardy. She should have already had medical attention. On the other hand, he doesn’t want Alina lying here in the shed if he needs to go anywhere with the doctor or do something else. His only alternative, no matter how foolish it might sound, is to put Alina in the car and figure out what to do with her later. After the doctor has gone. It’s a bigger risk, but he doesn’t dare do anything else. He doesn’t have any more time to consider alternatives. He puts on a pair of gardening gloves and carefully places Alina’s body in the boot. He wraps the tarpaulin up in an elastic cord, keeping her snug. Then he drives back downtown. There’s the usual Saturday traffic. He gives Muñoz and some colleagues parked at the giant HiperDino supermarket a quick wave. He continues down Calle del Muelle. By the time he noses down the ramp to the private car park under the building, only eight minutes remain until the doctor arrives. Although a construction crew is in the process of removing columns and laying more parking spaces, no one is currently working; the basement is empty and dark. A plastic sheet covers much of the small basement. Wheelbarrows, buckets with congealed cement, shovels, and a few strange orange machines that look like steam locomotives are scattered about. He parks next to the lift and cuts the engine, then glances around. It wouldn’t surprise him to find security cameras down here. He gets out of his car. Wind whips down the ramp and around the corners. He locates the camera on the ceiling, just to the left of the lift, but the plastic sheet is blocking it, so Erhard remains out sight. He presses the red UP button. He realizes that he still has Raúl’s keys in his pocket. The silver-grey Mercedes 500 SL is parked a short distance away. He backs his own car beside the Mercedes, arranging the boots of the two vehicles against one another. He checks for cameras, and doesn’t see one on this side of the lift. They might be located behind some large boards that are leaning against the wall, but this side of the basement is not under surveillance. He unlocks Raúl’s car and quickly transfers Alina’s body to Raúl’s boot, which appears to have never been used. Afterward, he parks his own car crosswise in a handicapped spot, then hustles to the stairwell that leads up to the sixth floor. When he reaches the flat, the doctor’s already at the door. Irritated at having to wait. – Buenas , Erhard says. – Someone let me in the front door, the doctor says. – I’m sorry. I had to run an errand. The doctor gives Erhard a concerned look. – You should probably sit down for a bit. Erhard shakes his head as he unlocks the door. – I just need some water. The doctor goes directly inside and glances around. – I’ve been here before. – This way, Erhard says. – Where did you find her? The office? – Yes. Erhard opens the bedroom door. Beatriz is lying in the same position as when he’d left. The doctor has brought an ordinary shoulder bag, the kind used for laptop computers. He quickly fits his stethoscope to his ears and listens. With a small penlight he illuminates her dark eyes. He runs his knuckles across her cervical vertebrae, right below her gold necklace and its amethyst eye, which stares into the air. He pinches her cheek too. For a moment Erhard thinks she’d dead. He holds his breath. The doctor continues to examine Beatriz. – How did she strike her head? Erhard describes how he found her. – Water, the doctor says suddenly. – Lukewarm water. Erhard fetches a bowl and a dry towel in the kitchen. The terrible-looking gash that progresses from her hairline and up underneath her hair is messy and red. The doctor dabs her with the towel, then inspects her throat, shoulders, ribs, belly, and thighs. Erhard feels as though he should turn away, but he can’t help but follow the doctor’s brown fingers gliding across Beatriz’s body. The doctor turns to Erhard. – I need to ask. May I be honest? – Of course. – The Palabrases aren’t exactly your average family. – What are you trying to say? The doctor nods at Beatriz. – Someone did this to her. – Did what? – A contusion. Someone pushed her and gave her a blow to the top of her head. A very powerful one at that. It’s a miracle she’s still alive. – Can she talk? I thought I heard her speak earlier. – Not likely. This appears to be acute swelling with possible brain damage. Moderate to severe head trauma. She’s comatose. – What does that mean? – That she’s suffered a brain injury. She’s lucky that she was operated on a few years ago. Someone bored into her cranium. He lifts her hair to show him something, but Erhard turns away. – See these holes. They’re bleeding, but they’ve reduced the pressure from the blow. Anyone else would be dead right now after being struck with such brute force. – What if she was pushed or something fell on her head, an accident? – It’s possible. If she ran into a barbell weighing four stone. Erhard doesn’t recall having seen any barbells on the floor next to the collapsed wardrobe. Or anything heavy for that matter. It was stuffed mostly with folders, cardboard boxes filled with photographs, and wooden shelves. The doctor lets go of Beatriz’s hair, and it falls across the darkened punctures, concealing them again. – Someone hit her with a blunt object, possibly a baseball bat, that doesn’t leave any evidence. This appears to be an assault committed in rage. – So you think it’s… You mean to say it’s… He can’t bring himself to utter the words. Even though he’d come to the same conclusion, he just can’t believe it. – Who else could’ve done it? I’ve known the Palabrases for many years. Raúl’s quite the party. I don’t think he’s mean-spirited, but he’s known for his benders and his outbursts. – No, it’s not possible. I can’t believe that. He loves her. The doctor makes an involuntary cluck with his throat. – I’m sorry, but love has many faces, and they’re not always of your Romeo-and-Juliet variety. Erhard tries to recall what Raúl said last night about their relationship. – What’s going to happen to her now? Why won’t she wake up? – She has swelling in her skull. And the pressure has increased so much that the blood-flow to her brain has ceased. She needs to be taken to the neurological centre in Puerto and put on a respirator as quickly as possible. – Will she wake up then? Will she be normal? Erhard asks the first questions that come to mind. – Maybe. Maybe in a few hours. Or days from now, weeks. But she needs to be on a respirator now. That’s the important thing. – Are there any painkillers for her or medicine? – She needs time. – What about… you know? – He will have to face his punishment. The doctor gathers his things and leaves. But before he goes, he pauses in the doorway. – Take her to the hospital. Now. Call if there’s anything I can do. By the grace of God. That last is a salutation Erhard can’t stand, but it’s meant kindly enough. Yet it sounds definitive and gloomy. Erhard heads straight to the cupboard and pours himself whatever he can find. A white rum. He gulps it and returns to the bedroom, sitting down beside Beatriz. Cautiously, as if each movement could cause the blood vessels in her head to burst like soap bubbles, he peels back one of her eyelids with his thumb. Her pupil is nearly as wide as her eyeball, but it’s still a pretty eye. Like a glass ball with neat patterns. He releases her eyelid and it glides shut. The gravity of the body is enough to make you cry. Her mind. Knocked out of her with one blow. If Raúl’s responsible, it is unforgivable. He knows Raúl did it, but the implications are too much for him now. Right now he can only focus on saving the body before him. He picks up the telephone, then hears the voice again. Help me . Let me go . He looks down at Beatriz, but this time her eyes are closed, and he knows he’s imagining the voice. It’s not real. Help me . Let me go. What do the words mean? Let her die? Get her away from Raúl? – Beatriz, he says out loud, his voice choking up uncontrollably. Take care of me . He calls her name again. He wants to shake her, but doesn’t dare touch her. – I need to call, he says, dropping his hand to the telephone. Por favor. That last makes him cry. He doesn’t recall when he last cried or even felt pain like this. He feels uncertainty, and he feels grief due to her condition, but most of all uncertainty. Is he imagining it? Or is it really her voice that he hears? It sounds like her. It sounds exactly like Beatriz. The same rusty voice, almost whispering, pleading. He lets go of the telephone and cries into her bathrobe, into her naked breast. ‌ 33 – Can you get me a respirator? – I told you she needs to go to… – I know, but I’m not going to do that. You’ll have to call. And report me. Silence. – Can you get me a respirator? – Yes, the doctor says simply. – How fast? – An hour. Maybe sooner. Erhard glances at the clock radio on Raúl’s side of the bed. – Meet me at 9 Via Majanicho at six o’clock. The little house at the end of a long path. – After Guzman? – Just before Guzman. – Are you moving her out there? – Yes, it’s peaceful there. – Are you sure? Is he really worth it? – No, but she is, Erhard says and hangs up. As he was talking to the doctor, an idea formed in his mind. How might he hide Beatriz and keep her alive, so that no one searches for her? How can he hide Alina’s body, so that no one finds it? Maybe the answers are the same. The two women have the same hair colour and are approximately the same size. Alina’s a little chubbier than Beatriz and has slightly larger breasts, but not everyone notices such things. Beatriz has no family here on the island, or anywhere else for that matter, so there’s no one to confirm her identity besides Erhard and possibly a few casual acquaintances whom Erhard doesn’t know. What he does know is that she has no close relations. She has often complained about that lack of intimacy. Someone to talk to. Every Tuesday or something she assists one of Raúl’s friend’s daughters, who runs a boutique down on High Street. But that’s only so the daughter can take a day off, not because they’re friends. And Alina. Like any whore on the island, no one will miss her. A few johns will call in vain. A pimp somewhere, maybe in Guisguey, will lose a little income. But no doubt he’ll think she went home to the mainland. No one will miss them. And no one will link the two women. But he’s all alone in this plan of his. He can’t involve the doctor any more than is necessary. Keeping Beatriz alive and out of the searchlights is one thing, but it’s quite another to rid himself of a body. The kind doctor wouldn’t go along with that. Erhard will have to take care of that himself. Under the sink he finds the kind of rubber gloves people use to clean. He grabs a red blanket from Raúl’s sofa and takes the lift to the car park. The lift is narrow, fitting at most two people. Erhard rarely uses it, because it’s usually too slow, and Raúl never uses it but trots down the stairs so fast that Erhard can’t keep up. Right now the lift is the only real choice. He sticks a wedge in the door, keeping it from going anywhere. He stares into the boot of Raúl’s Mercedes. At the strangely lifeless pupa. The easiest thing to do would be to drive her down to the harbour and heave her into the sea, or over to the construction site and toss her into one of the chutes. There are security cameras down there, too, probably. He quickly wraps the tarpaulin – with Alina inside – within the red blanket. It doesn’t look completely natural, but it’s not as suspicious as the tarpaulin, where the whore’s shoulder and hands are visible though the translucent fabric. Then he scoops her up and returns to the lift; the bundle is heavy and it takes him some time. In the lift he squeezes her tightly so she doesn’t slide out, and barely manages to push the button. The door closes. His back aches from the load, and he’s forced to brace her against the wall in order not to drop her. He keeps his eye on the numbers, –1, 0, 1, 2. Between each storey Erhard fears the lift will stop. Third. Fourth. Fifth. The door opens. He can’t hold her any more. His back can’t bear her weight. He drops her on the floor, then drags her to the flat and hauls her inside. He listens briefly in the entranceway, hears nothing. He slams the door and tugs her cautiously into the office and behind the desk. Blood has dripped onto the tarpaulin, but he unfolds it and pours the blood into a bowl from the kitchen. Using scissors, he cuts Alina out of her ripped tights. Because of her broken ankle, they’re impossible to remove. He removes two necklaces and a bracelet. Though he can’t wear gloves to do this fiddly job, it doesn’t matter. He throws the jewellery in the rubbish bin. It’s hard to look at the whore’s face; not all the blood has congealed yet. Alina’s lying in her underclothes. Apart from her face and her ankle that’s poking out to the side, her body resembles a mannequin, an advertisement for cheap lingerie. He walks into the bedroom. Before he touches Beatriz, he listens. Listens to her breathing; it’s rhythmic, but with a faint wheezing, like a plastic bag filling and emptying. He hears the air passing through her nostrils, soughing through her nose hairs. But he can’t hear any words. On the one hand, he’d like to hear the words again, but on the other, they make him nervous and uncomfortable. As he watches, he notices a hint of a scar above her mouth, as if she’s been operated on for a cleft lip. He’s never noticed that before. But it looks so healed and natural that it’s almost a joy to see. He carefully removes her arm from her robe and pulls the robe off underneath her back. He takes off her thick athletic socks, too, which probably belong to Raúl; they’re splattered with blood. And the pendant. He tilts her head slightly to the side; it’s hard to see just what he’s doing, but his fingers are familiar with this kind of jewellery, and finally he manages to open the tiny lock and remove the necklace. As he walks back to the office, he notices Beatriz’s fantastic nails. The one on her middle finger is dangling loose, revealing a pale, cracked nail underneath. He needs to remove them all. If he’s to turn Alina into Beatriz, those nails will have to be part of the ensemble. He twists the loose nail free, then begins to remove the others. They’re firmly attached, but he’s able to wriggle them off. Only the thumbnail requires a strenuous effort. In the bathroom he finds a special glue that looks just right for the job, and he affixes the nails on Alina’s fingers. One by one. Calm, thorough. He has never glued nails, but it reminds him of the model airplanes he used to build as a kid. After a few minutes, the nails are all fastened. Alina’s thumbs are a little too big for Beatriz’s nails, but the rest fit quite nicely. He arranges Beatriz on the passenger seat so that she looks like a sleeping customer. With pillows and a blanket, she’s packed in so tight that she won’t slump or slide to the floor. He drives slowly through the city and around Majanicho; he doesn’t dare take Alejandro’s Trail, which is too uneven and bumpy. It’ll take an extra ten minutes, but he still has time. He carries her into the living room and swaddles her in a blanket that he’s shaken free of dust and crumbs. At 6.15 p.m. he hears the doctor’s car and goes out to greet him and to help bring in the equipment, which isn’t much more than a mouthpiece connected to a small machine by a thin tube. The doctor fastens it to Beatriz’s mouth, then pulls an elastic band around her head. The device is already on, and Erhard sees Beatriz’s abdomen heaving unnaturally, like bagpipes. The doctor explains that she needs to hyperventilate to create rapid circulation in the damaged regions of her brain. Erhard just watches her belly rise and fall underneath the all-too-large t-shirt. The respirator inflates. It blinks and glows. Afterward, the doctor gives her a thorough examination and takes her blood pressure. At last he affixes a catheter to collect her urine in a bag, then instructs Erhard to change the bag as soon as it’s more than two-thirds full. – If we can’t bring her out of this coma in two or three days, we’ll need to insert intravenous nourishment, the doctor says. It’s important that Erhard keep an eye on her; it’s important that he call as soon as the machine beeps or something happens. – If she’s going to be here, you’ll need to be vigilant. The doctor acts peevish to make it clear that he disagrees with Erhard’s plan. Erhard glances nervously at the wall outlets, which throw sparks. He’ll need more power from the generator, and he’ll need to buy a new one, especially if more devices will be added. The doctor rejects Erhard’s offer of a beer, then walks out to his car, promising not to tell anyone. Erhard watches Beatriz for the next hour and a half. It occurs to him that the two women have already exchanged places. Alina’s story ends right in the place she’d always striven for. Beatriz’s story concludes right where – perhaps – she feared it would. He considers building a partition in the living room so that she can have her own room, then decides that if she’s still here in a week, he will do that. Maybe he could construct a private loft? It would be easy to take care of her that way, and easy to check the devices. He latches the backdoor, then puts an extra padlock on the front door. Something about the episode with Alina makes him worry that someone will pay him a visit. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and probably no one will stop by, but still. He drives out to Tindaya. The island is so small that he knows every nook and cranny. And he knows where Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo lives: a large yellow house that’s passed through five generations of doctors. Lorenzo married into the house via Adela, Dr Agosto’s eldest daughter. Together they have four adult sons, and a stable of horses in the fields behind their house. He parks on a small private road that skirts the grounds. Then he strolls around and up to the house, which is quiet, sealed off. When Adela opens the door, she seems ill. – We didn’t order a cab today, she says. – Happy New Year. I need to speak with Lorenzo. – He’s no longer practising. – I know. – One moment, she says, closing the door. Five minutes later Lorenzo opens it. – Yes, he says, perceptibly startled when he recognizes Erhard. – I need to speak with you. Alone. Lorenzo scrutinizes Erhard, possibly considering what will happen if he says no. Then he steps outside and follows Erhard. They walk onto the street. There are never any cars here, but the neighbours sometimes peer through their shutters. Erhard guides him up the narrow road where the car is parked. – How can I help you, Señor Jørgensen? the doctor says with a kind of affected highbrow manner that doesn’t match his typically vulgar style. – Let me be blunt. I’ve kept quiet about your little secrets for more than ten years. – Dios mío . What secrets are you referring to? Erhard gives him a look, but Lorenzo doesn’t notice, so Erhard has to explain: – All those times you showed up plastered at car accidents, or that incident down at the shipyard, when your blood-alcohol level was far above what it should’ve been. – That wasn’t unlawful. I rode in a taxi. – But it’s not good form, so far as I’m aware. And there’s probably a good reason you once gave me a 100-euro tip. – Are you complaining about tips now? – Only when they’re a type of payoff. – It was never a payoff. – What about the time I found you out near Molino? Lorenzo stares at Erhard in alarm. He doesn’t like to hear any mention of that episode. The doctor had crashed his car in the ditch early one morning, and he’d stood by the side of the road six miles from the closest village. On the backseat of his car was the naked body of an elderly person. Before Lorenzo called the mechanic to request a tow, he wanted Erhard to drive him and the body back to the Department of Forensic Medicine at the hospital in Puerto. It wasn’t the first time that Erhard had dealt with a body. But Lorenzo’s arrogance – as if it were part of Erhard’s job description to haul corpses – had made Erhard obstinate and sceptical, even though Lorenzo gave him a handsome tip. In the end, Bernal had saved Lorenzo from a police report. Though it probably would’ve been dismissed anyway, it would have ignited devastating rumours in the circles where Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo most wishes to be regarded as a respectable and brilliant official of the highest sort. Possessing a corpse in some godforsaken part of the island would’ve been awfully difficult to explain, and it would’ve called to mind some very unfortunate images. Lorenzo had understood that. – What do you want? Why do you come here with this? – Do we agree that you owe me a favour? Lorenzo stares unhappily at Erhard. – I thought I’d already demonstrated my gratitude. So what do you want, Señor Jørgensen? – I want to bring peace to a good friend. – I can’t do that. I’m not a murderer. – Lower your voice, Lorenzo. Nobody’s killing anyone. You just need to dispose of a body and pass it along quickly to the mortician, that’s all. Lorenzo glances around. – What do you mean? – Sometime in the next day, Beatrizia Colini’s body will be delivered to you for your examination. You need to report that her death was the result of a fall down a stairwell. You can note other small things, but you have to conclude that Beatrizia Colini died following an unfortunate tumble in which she struck her head. – What have you done, Señor Jørgensen? – I haven’t done anything. I’m just making sure that my friend Beatrizia’s reputation remains intact, and that the Palabras family isn’t involved unnecessarily in her death. As soon as Erhard utters the name Palabras, Lorenzo flinches as if he’s bitten a lime. It was exactly the effect Erhard was hoping for. – Lorenzo! Adela calls from the door. – Do we have an agreement? Erhard asks. – Can I trust that you will never visit me like this again? – If you do this, I will never come here again. Lorenzo turns and walks back to the house. – Coming, Adela, he says in a baritone voice. When the door front door closes, Erhard climbs in his car and collapses in the seat. Only now does he realize how nervous he has been during the entire conversation. He starts the engine and heads back towards the city. As soon as there’s some shade on the balcony, he carries Alina to the rooftop terrace. Halfway up the stairs he lets her slide headfirst out of the tarpaulin. He turns her around and lays her head on a pillow, so that he doesn’t have to look at her face. Rigor mortis has begun to set in. Erhard wipes the blood from the tarpaulin and the wooden balcony floor. Erhard is unsettled and indecisive, pacing between the balcony and the bedroom. He drinks the expensive coffee. The sun is red, and he gazes across the city and the beach at the kite surfers out near the Dunes. The city noise below makes him sad. Children shout when they leap off a buoy down in the harbour. One of the city’s many impatient lorry drivers honks as he squeezes his load of cucumbers or beer into some narrow alley. Erhard has always loved the city. This city. God only knows how much he hates other cities, particularly Copenhagen; no other city is so hyper-regulated and boxy with tower blocks as Copenhagen. But Corralejo is incomparably unique, marked by aridity, an excessive desire to please, and a population of inbreds. It’s just the place for Erhard. A provincial hole with long opening hours, a little city with a big city’s attractions. But even if he had the money, he’s not sure if he’d choose to live here. The noise, the smell, the nightlife, the bars, the friendly women, and city living as a whole – it would be the end of him. It has always been a pleasure to visit Raúl, to sit on the terrace with two attractive friends and enjoy the moment. Now he wishes, most of all, to go back to last summer, when they went to a fish restaurant near Morro Jable. That evening when they sat together in the car and laughed at the thunder. He calls Raúl’s number again. But he knows that he won’t answer. So he dials 112 and requests an ambulance. Then he waits on the street for it to arrive. The paramedics need to carry the stretcher up the stairs. As they climb, Erhard tells them how he found her, and how he kept his eye on her. His nerves are calmed when one of the paramedics seems unconcerned. As if picking up dead women is an everyday event. When the paramedics see her, they sit down and wait for the police and the doctor who’ll perform the post-mortem to arrive. Although Erhard has predicted this, it still makes him uncomfortable. He prepares coffee in the kitchen so they won’t notice his trembling hands. Five minutes later the doorbell chimes and he hopes it’s Bernal, whom he knows. But it turns out to be a young policeman, a tall, Arabic-looking man who might very well be a troublemaker. Erhard states his full name, but the officer just introduces himself as Hassib, then asks Erhard to tell him what happened. When Erhard tries to explain, Hassib doesn’t pay attention. Instead he stares at his mobile. Behind the policeman, a young, short-haired doctor in a suit enters the flat. The new health inspector. – The wealthy and their fucking lifestyles, Hassib says, watching the inspector as he pulls back the plastic sheet they’ve covered Alina with. He examines her without touching her; he photographs her, close up and from a distance, then rolls her over and repeats the procedure. He also takes photos of the stairwell. He sees a tooth on the floor and photographs that, too. Erhard observes everything while he drinks his coffee. The officer speaks with the doctor briefly and in a hushed voice, then they strap Alina to the stretcher and begin carrying her downstairs. The inspector asks Erhard for the name of Beatriz’s doctor, but Erhard doesn’t know. Ask Emanuel Palabras, he finally says. The inspector thanks him and hands Erhard his business card, which is printed on cheap paper, before he exits the room, his mobile phone stuck to his ear. Hassib walks around the flat, circling Erhard until at last he’s standing beside him in the kitchen. – So when did you find her? – Around eleven o’clock. We’d gone out and had a few drinks, and I slept here. When I woke up, I found her. Then… – Eleven o’clock? Why didn’t you call earlier? – She cried out in ways I didn’t understand, so I thought she was just hurt. When she was better, I was going to drive her to the emergency room. – Emergency room? That woman is a mess. – I thought she’d get better. – But she’s dead, don’t you get it? Someone may have pushed her. Since Raúl Palabras hasn’t turned up yet, he might be our man. – It’s not him. He would never do that to her. It must’ve been an accident. – Where did you say he went? – I didn’t say. I don’t know where he is. I’ve called him, but he doesn’t answer. – If you know where he is, you need to tell me now. If we don’t get any more information, we’ll have to charge you. They would do something like that, Erhard thinks. Take the first and best suspect. – All I did was sleep here, he says. – If you talk to your friend, tell him he’s better off turning himself in. Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He plucks a sour grape from a bunch on the table. – Where did you say you slept? – I didn’t say. In the bedroom, Erhard says, pointing. To his amazement, the policeman strides through the living room and into the bedroom, then snaps on the light and looks around. – Where did Palabras sleep? – I don’t know. I was pissed. We sat up on the terrace this morning drinking Bloody Marys and talking. I got really tired and pissed and wanted to go home, but they asked me to sleep down here. So I did. When I woke up, Raúl was gone and… Erhard notices that the policeman is not writing anything down. He’s investigating the crime scene because that’s what he’s supposed to do, but he doesn’t actually care. – How much did she drink? The girlfriend. – Not much, I don’t think. We woke her up when we arrived, and she came out to the terrace with us. But she was tired and yawned the whole time. Erhard’s surprised at how well he’s lying. All he has to do is recall the events of the morning and alter them slightly. – How long have they lived together? – Eight or ten years, maybe. Eight. – They were happy together? – Yes. He was crazy about her. And vice versa. Erhard considers the words she’d uttered: Help me . Let me go. Do they mean anything? Are they just something Erhard imagined? He hopes not. Now that he’s set everything into motion so that he can hide Beatriz. To save her from someone who wishes to do her harm. It can’t be Raúl. – But why did you sleep down here? asks the policeman. He rounds the bed and opens the wardrobe. – How should I know? Hospitality, I guess. That’s the way Raúl is. – Where did they sleep? The policeman riffles through Raúl’s collection of suits. – Maybe on the sofa. Or up on the terrace. – Have you ever witnessed Raúl Palabras abusing Beatrizia Colini? – Abusing? – You know, hitting her? Slapping her around? – Never. The policeman goes to the living room. On the way he peers through the half-open door into the office. – What did you say was in here? – The office. They never use that room. The policeman switches on the office lights, and a twinge of misgiving runs through Erhard: Did he remember to clean up in there? For some reason, he hadn’t thought the police would spend any time searching inside the flat if the body was discovered on the balcony. Hassib walks around the desk and strokes the closed laptop. – Whose is this? – I don’t know. Maybe Raúl’s? – I’ll take it with me, the policeman says. He picks up the computer and the attached cord. – What’s going to happen now? Erhard follows the police officer into the living room and onto the balcony. The red stains on the stairwell and the woodwork are still there. – What will happen to her? Will she be taken to forensics now? – We have to find her family. Do you know where they live? – She doesn’t have any family here on the island. Maybe on Gran Canaria. – Girlfriends? Ex-boyfriends? – Not as far as I’m aware. It was always just Raúl. – Work? – A few days a week. Down at the boutique on Señora del Carmen. The one with the elephant. She’d just started. – Does she have a mobile anywhere? – I’ve looked, but I haven’t found it. – Let’s give Señor Pérez-Lúñigo some peace and quiet to find out what happened to your friend. Anyway, we’ll seal off the flat. What is your name and address? We’ll need to speak with you again, I’m sure. He unwraps a long white stick of chewing gum and folds the stick three times before popping it into his mouth. – And we’ve got to find that bastard Raúl Palabras. ‌ 34 He’s hardly able to breathe until they’ve gone. He stands listening, his ear pressed to the door, as the paramedics and the police officer chat all the way to the lift. He hears the lift rattling down the shaft. The corridor falls silent. Sitting at the dining table, he stares at the front door, anticipating the policeman’s return. But he doesn’t return. Evening comes. He loves the evening. Aromas swirl up from the street: cinnamon, caramel, urine, sea. He has to save Beatriz. When she opens her eyes, when she wakes up in a few days, she can tell him what happened. Maybe she can tell him where Raúl is. Erhard can save both of his friends. Suddenly Emanuel Palabras comes to mind. Maybe Raúl called him? Or maybe Raúl’s at his place? He decides to drive home and give him a call. It’s time for a Lumumba. The house is darker than usual. Knowing that Alina died at his house, right around the corner where the field begins, makes everything feel unsafe and barren. More than ever. He checks the generator and snaps on the light, then brings pillows from the sofa and a dining room chair into the bedroom and sits watching Beatriz’s body fill with air, empty, and fill again. The rattle of the wind, a tug and pull, hypnotic and exhausting. But he doesn’t sleep. He sits rigidly, like a night watchman, and listens to Beatriz’s inhalations, thinking of Raúl the entire time, that he’s dead, and thinking of the little slit in the blanket through which he can insert his hand and feel her vagina. It’s terribly wrong of him, but even now, after having been unconscious for more than twelve hours, she still smells of juice and cinnamon and warm raisins. Just because there are no other women in his life. If there were, his sexual fantasies wouldn’t be about Beatriz. He tries to imagine Emanuel’s Maasai girl and her little ass, which he	919,552
The Monk (Matthew Gregory Lewis) (Z-Library).epub	The Monk V OLUME I The Monk Suggested Reading Botting, Fred. Gothic . London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Bruhm, Steven. Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Cavaliero, Glen. The Supernatural and English Fiction . New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Clery, E. J. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 . Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Conger, Syndy M. Matthew G. Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin and the Germans: An Interpretive Study of the Influence of German Literature on Two Gothic Novels . New York: Arno Press, 1980. Frank, Frederick S., ed. Special Issue on Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Romanticism on the Net 8 (Nov. 1997) http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mirrors/romnet/guest2.html . Haggerty, George E. Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form . University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. Howard, Jacqueline. Reading Gothic Fiction: A Bakhtinian Approach . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Irwin, Joseph James. M. G. “Monk” Lewis . New York: Twayne, 1976. Kilgour, Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel . London and New York: Routledge, 1995. MacDonald, David Lorne. Monk Lewis: A Critical Biography . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Parreaux, André. The Publication of the Monk: A Literary Event 1796–1798 . Paris: M. Didier, 1960. Peck, Louis F. A Life of Matthew G. Lewis . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961. Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fiction from 1765 to the Present Day . Revised ed. 2 vols. London and New York: Longman, 1996. Reno, Robert Princeton. The Gothic Visions of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis . New York: Arno Press, 1980. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions . New York: Arno Press, 1980. The Monk The Monk T HE M ODERN L IBRARY E DITORIAL B OARD Maya Angelou • Daniel J. Boorstin • A. S. Byatt • B. Caleb Carr • Christopher Cerf • Ron Chernow • Shelby Foote • Stephen Jay Gould • Vartan Gregorian • Richard Howard • Charles Johnson • Jon Krakauer • Edmund Morris • Joyce Carol Oates • Elaine Pagels • John Richardson • Salman Rushdie • Oliver Sacks • Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. • Carolyn See • William Styron • Gore Vidal The Monk M ATTHEW L EWIS Matthew Gregory Lewis, born in London on July 9, 1775, led a short but full life as a novelist, playwright, translator, poet, and humanitarian that was often clouded by his notorious and sensational talent for gothic romance. After his parents separated, Lewis was raised by his father, a War Office secretary who owned plantations in Jamaica. Although his mother encouraged young Lewis’s writing abilities from afar, later acting as his literary agent, his father sought a diplomatic career for him. After following in his father’s footsteps through Westminster School and Christ Church College at Oxford, and traveling to Paris and Weimar, Germany, the multilingual Lewis became an attaché to the British Embassy in Holland in 1794. During his travels, Lewis had already begun to write songs and plays, some of which would not be published for years, in an effort to financially support his mother. Lewis later claimed that, at nineteen, bored by his work at The Hague, he wrote The Monk in ten weeks; he later wrote of the novel, “I am myself so much pleased with it that, if the booksellers will not buy it, I shall publish it myself.” When he returned to England in late 1794, his father tried, unsuccessfully, to get him appointed to the War Office; meanwhile, he continued to write. The Monk was published in 1796, anonymously in the first edition, just as Lewis entered the House of Commons. Later editions acknowledged Lewis as the author of this frightening tale of a monk gone astray, and the book brought him wealth, fame, and a nickname: “Monk” Lewis. Many critics, however, most notably Samuel Coleridge, found Lewis’s debut—which blends sex and religious scandal—guilty of immorality, blasphemy, and plagiarism. While The Monk did not directly affect Lewis’s political career, he was more interested in his role as a literary socialite and was ineffectual during his six years in Parliament. Those years were perhaps well spent in penning plays that reinforced Lewis’s reputation for macabre writing. Between 1796 and 1802, a host of his dramas were published and/or produced for stage at the Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, including Village Virtues: A Dramatic Satire, The Minister: A Tragedy, The Castle Spectre: A Drama, The Twins; or, Is It He, or His Brother?, The East Indian, Rolla; or, The Peruvian Hero, Adelmorn, the Outlaw: A Romantic Drama , and Alfonso, King of Castile: A Tragedy . The plays, some of which were translations, often reflected a gothic sensibility, especially the widely popular The Castle Spectre . During those years, Lewis also dabbled in poetry, a form he had successfully incorporated into the narrative of The Monk . In 1799, he published a satire, The Love of Gain: A Poem , and in 1801, he combined original and translated poems of supernatural subject matter by himself and other authors, such as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, in an anthology titled Tales of Wonder . Critics continued to praise Lewis’s poetry, but his poor attribution skills led some to charge him as a plagiarist once again. Although Lewis endured the death of his brother and a break with his father in the early 1800s, he continued to compose plays, poetry, and prose, to mixed reviews. His gruesome play The Captive: A Scene in a Private Mad-House was performed at Covent Garden in 1803, followed by a reincarnation of The Minister as The Harper’s Daughter; or, Love and Ambition. Rugantino; or the Bravo of Venice , a translation, played to favorable audiences at Covent Garden in 1805. In April 1807, two dramas were produced at Drury Lane: The Wood Daemon; or, “The Clock Has Struck” (a scenic romance whose title was later changed to One O’Clock: or, the Knight and the Wood Daemon) and Adelgitha; or, The Fruits of a Single Error: A Tragedy , a historical play that was successful both in publication and on stage. Lewis’s translation of a terrifying French play involving monks and nuns, Venoni; or, The Novice of St. Mark’s: A Drama , was produced at Drury Lane in 1808. His elaborately staged Timour the Tartar; A Grand Romantic Melo-Drama in Two Acts was well liked by audiences in 1811. Much of his other writing during this period consisted of translations, rewrites, and ephemeral ballads. The year 1812 marked a turning point for Lewis. His collection of sentimental poetry, simply titled Poems , was published then; he had resolved to give up fiction writing. That same year, the death of his father brought about major changes in his life. In particular, a large inheritance made Lewis, who advocated abolition, a wealthy owner of land and slaves in Jamaica and set the stage for his remaining years. Lewis took his first journey to Jamaica in 1815 to inspect his estate, and during the two-month voyage, he began a journal that surveyed the land and people of the island. He stayed in Jamaica for more than a year before sailing back to England, at which time he completed a gothic poem, “The Isle of Devils.” He traveled farther on to Italy, where he socialized with family and literary friends Percy and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. His concern for the treatment of his slaves, however, grew more intense, and Lewis returned to Jamaica in 1817 to set in motion a list of reforms. Lewis continued to keep his journal, a perceptive and lively account of his voyages and estate life, which he hoped to publish back in England. Sadly, he contracted yellow fever just before he set sail for home and died and was buried at sea on May 14, 1818. His memoir was finally published fifteen years later, as Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica . It was much praised. Showcasing Lewis’s range in two vastly different styles, The Monk and the Journal are now considered his greatest contributions to literature— The Monk as a significant novel in the English gothic movement, and the Journal as an important social and humanitarian document. The Monk C HAP . X. Oh! could I worship aught beneath the skies , That earth hath seen, or fancy could devise , Thine altar, sacred Liberty, should stand , Built by no mercenary vulgar hand , With fragrant turf, and flowers as wild and fair , As ever dressed a bank, or scented summer air . C OWPER . His whole attention bent upon bringing to justice the assassins of his sister, Lorenzo little thought how severely his interest was suffering in another quarter. As was before mentioned, he returned not to Madrid till the evening of that day on which Antonia was buried. Signifying to the Grand Inquisitor the order of the cardinal-duke (a ceremony not to be neglected when a member of the church was to be arrested publicly), communicating his design to his uncle and Don Ramirez, and assembling a troop of attendants sufficient to prevent opposition, furnished him with full occupation during the few hours preceding midnight. Consequently he had no opportunity to enquire about his mistress, and was perfectly ignorant both of her death and her mother’s. The marquis was by no means out of danger: his delirium was gone, but had left him so much exhausted, that the physicians declined pronouncing upon the consequences likely to ensue. As for Raymond himself, he wished for nothing more earnestly than to join Agnes in the grave. Existence was hateful to him: he saw nothing in the world deserving his attention; and he hoped to hear that Agnes was revenged and himself given over in the same moment. Followed by Raymond’s ardent prayers for success, Lorenzo was at the gates of St. Clare a full hour before the time appointed by the Mother St. Ursula. He was accompanied by his uncle, by Don Ramirez de Mello, and a party of chosen archers. Though in considerable numbers, their appearance created no surprise: a great crowd was already assembled before the convent-doors, in order to witness the procession. It was naturally supposed, that Lorenzo and his attendants were conducted thither by the same design. The duke of Medina being recognised, the people drew back, and made way for his party to advance. Lorenzo placed himself opposite to the great gate, through which the pilgrims were to pass. Convinced that the prioress could not escape him, he waited patiently for her appearance, which she was expected to make exactly at midnight. The nuns were employed in religious duties established in honour of St. Clare, and to which no prophane was ever admitted. The chapel-windows were illuminated. As they stood on the outside, the auditors heard the full swell of the organ, accompanied by a chorus of female voices, rise upon the stillness of the night. This died away, and was succeeded by a single strain of harmony: it was the voice of her who was destined to sustain in the procession the character of St. Clare. For this office the most beautiful virgin of Madrid was always selected, and she upon whom the choice fell, esteemed it as the highest of honours. While listening to the music, whose melody distance only seemed to render sweeter, the audience was wrapped up in profound attention. Universal silence prevailed through the crowd, and every heart was filled with reverence for religion—every heart but Lorenzo’s. Conscious that among those who chaunted the praises of their God so sweetly there were some who cloaked with devotion the foulest sins, their hymns inspired him with detestation at their hypocrisy. He had long observed with disapprobation and contempt the superstition which governed Madrid’s inhabitants. His good sense had pointed out to him the artifices of the monks, and the gross absurdity of their miracles, wonders, and suppositious reliques. He blushed to see his countrymen the dupes of deceptions so ridiculous, and only wished for an opportunity to free them from their monkish fetters. That opportunity, so long desired in vain, was at length presented to him. He resolved not to let it slip, but to set before the people, in glaring colours, how enormous were the abuses but too frequently practised in monasteries, and how unjustly public esteem was bestowed indiscriminately upon all who wore a religious habit. He longed for the moment destined to unmask the hypocrites, and convince his countrymen, that a sanctified exterior does not always hide a virtuous heart. The service lasted till midnight was announced by the convent-bell. That sound being heard, the music ceased: the voices died away softly, and soon after the lights disappeared from the chapel-windows. Lorenzo’s heart beat high, when he found the execution of his plan to be at hand. From the natural superstition of the people he had prepared himself for some resistance: but he trusted that the Mother St. Ursula would bring good reasons to justify his proceeding. He had force with him to repel the first impulse of the populace, till his arguments should be heard: his only fear was, lest the domina, suspecting his design, should have spirited away the nun on whose deposition every thing depended. Unless the Mother St. Ursula should be present, he could only accuse the prioress upon suspicion; and this reflection gave him some little apprehension for the success of his enterprise. The tranquillity which seemed to reign through the convent, in some degree re-assured him: still he expected the moment eagerly, when the presence of his ally should deprive him of the power of doubting. The abbey of Capuchins was only separated from the convent by the garden and cemetery. The monks had been invited to assist at the pilgrimage. They now arrived, marching two by two with lighted torches in their hands, and chaunting hymns in honour of St. Clare. Father Pablos was at their head, the abbot having excused himself from attending. The people made way for the holy train, and the friars placed themselves in ranks on either side of the great gates. A few minutes sufficed to arrange the order of the procession. This being settled, the convent-doors were thrown open, and again the female chorus sounded in full melody. First appeared a band of choristers. As soon as they had passed, the monks fell in two by two, and followed with steps slow and measured: next came the novices: they bore no tapers, as did the professed, but moved on with eyes bent downwards, and seemed to be occupied by telling their beads. To them succeeded a young and lovely girl, who represented St. Lucia: she held a golden bason, in which were two eyes: her own were covered by a velvet bandage, and she was conducted by another nun habited as an angel. She was followed by St. Catherine, a palm-branch in one hand, a flaming sword in the other: she was robed in white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry devils greatly entertained the spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated bursts of laughter. The prioress had been careful to select a nun whose disposition was naturally solemn and saturnine. She had every reason to be satisfied with her choice: the drolleries of the imps were entirely thrown away, and St. Genevieve moved on without discomposing a muscle. Each of these saints was separated from the other by a band of choristers, exalting her praise in their hymns, but declaring her to be very much inferior to St. Clare, the convent’s avowed patroness. These having passed, a long train of nuns appeared, bearing like the choristers each a burning taper. Next came the reliques of St. Clare, inclosed in vases equally precious for their materials and workmanship: but they attracted not Lorenzo’s attention. The nun who bore the heart occupied him entirely. According to Theodore’s description, he doubted not her being the Mother St. Ursula. She seemed to look round with anxiety. As he stood foremost in the rank by which the procession passed, her eye caught Lorenzo’s. A flush of joy overspread her till then pallid cheek. She turned to her companion eagerly. “We are safe,” he heard her whisper, “ ’Tis her brother.” His heart being now at ease, Lorenzo gazed with tranquillity upon the remainder of the show. Now appeared its most brilliant ornament: it was a machine fashioned like a throne, rich with jewels, and dazzling with light. It rolled onwards upon concealed wheels, and was guided by several lovely children dressed as seraphs. The summit was covered with silver clouds, upon which reclined the most beautiful form that eyes ever witnessed. It was a damsel representing St. Clare: her dress was of inestimable price, and round her head a wreath of diamonds formed an artificial glory: but all these ornaments yielded to the lustre of her charms. As she advanced, a murmur of delight ran through the crowd. Even Lorenzo confessed secretly, that he never beheld more perfect beauty; and had not his heart been Antonia’s, it must have fallen a sacrifice to this enchanting girl. As it was, he considered her only as a fine statue: she obtained from him no tribute save cold admiration; and when she had passed him, he thought of her no more. “Who is she?” asked a by-stander in Lorenzo’s hearing. “One whose beauty you must often have heard celebrated. Her name is Virginia de Villa-Franca: she is a pensioner of St. Clare’s convent, a relation of the prioress, and has been selected with justice as the ornament of the procession.” The throne moved onwards. It was followed by the prioress herself: she marched at the head of the remaining nuns with a devout and sanctified air, and closed the procession. She moved on slowly: her eyes were raised to heaven: her countenance, calm and tranquil, seemed abstracted from all sublunary things, and no feature betrayed her secret pride at displaying the pomp and opulence of her convent. She passed along, accompanied by the prayers and benedictions of the populace: but how great was the general confusion and surprise when Don Ramirez, starting forward, challenged her as his prisoner! For a moment amazement held the domina silent and immoveable: but no sooner did she recover herself, than she exclaimed against sacrilege and impiety, and called upon the people to rescue a daughter of the church. They were eagerly preparing to obey her; when Don Ramirez, protected by the archers from their rage, commanded them to forbear, and threatened them with the severest vengeance of the Inquisition. At that dreaded word every arm fell, every sword shrunk back into its scabbard. The prioress herself turned pale, and trembled. The general silence convinced her that she had nothing to hope but from innocence, and she besought Don Ramirez in a faultering voice, to inform her of what crime she was accused. “That you shall know in time,” replied he; “but first I must secure the Mother St. Ursula.” “The Mother St. Ursula?” repeated the domina faintly. At this moment casting her eyes round, she saw Lorenzo and the duke, who had followed Don Ramirez. “Ah! great God!” she cried, clasping her hands together with a frantic air, “I am betrayed.” “Betrayed?” replied St. Ursula, who now arrived conducted by some of the archers, and followed by the nun her companion in the procession: “not betrayed, but discovered. In me recognise your accuser: you know not how well I am instructed in your guilt:—Segnor,” she continued, turning to Don Ramirez, “I commit myself to your custody. I charge the prioress of St. Clare with murder, and stake my life for the justice of my accusation.” A general cry of surprise was uttered by the whole audience, and an explanation was loudly demanded. The trembling nuns, terrified at the noise and universal confusion, had dispersed, and fled different ways. Some regained the convent: others sought refuge in the dwellings of their relations; and many, only sensible of their present danger, and anxious to escape from the tumult, ran through the streets, and wandered they knew not whither. The lovely Virginia was one of the first to fly. And in order that she might be better seen and heard, the people desired that St. Ursula should harangue them from the vacant throne. The nun complied: she ascended the glittering machine, and then addressed the surrounding multitude as follows: “However strange and unseemly may appear my conduct, when considered to be adopted by a female and a nun, necessity will justify it most fully. A secret, an horrible secret weighs heavy upon my soul: no rest can be mine till I have revealed it to the world, and satisfied that innocent blood which calls from the grave for vengeance. Much have I dared, to gain this opportunity of lightening my conscience. Had I failed in my attempt to reveal the crime, had the domina but suspected that the mystery was none to me, my ruin was inevitable. Angels who watch unceasingly over those who deserve their favour, have enabled me to escape detection. I am now at liberty to relate a tale, whose circumstances will freeze every honest soul with horror. Mine is the task to rend the veil from hypocrisy, and shew misguided parents to what dangers the woman is exposed, who falls under the sway of a monastic tyrant. “Among the votaries of St. Clare, none was more lovely, none more gentle, than Agnes de Medina. I knew her well: she entrusted to me every secret of her heart: I was her friend and confidante, and I loved her with sincere affection. Nor was I singular in my attachment. Her piety unfeigned, her willingness to oblige, and her angelic disposition, rendered her the darling of all that was estimable in the convent. The prioress herself, proud, scrupulous and forbidding, could not refuse Agnes that tribute of approbation which she bestowed upon no one else. Every one has some fault. Alas! Agnes had her weakness: she violated the laws of our order, and incurred the inveterate hate of the unforgiving domina. St. Clare’s rules are severe: but grown antiquated and neglected, many of late years have either been forgotten, or changed by universal consent into milder punishments. The penance adjudged to the crime of Agnes was most cruel, most inhuman. The law had been long exploded. Alas! it still existed, and the revengeful prioress now determined to revive it. This law decreed, that the offender should be plunged into a private dungeon, expressly constituted to hide from the world for ever the victim of cruelty and tyrannic superstition. In this dreadful abode she was to lead a perpetual solitude, deprived of all society, and believed to be dead by those, whom affection might have prompted to attempt her rescue. Thus was she to languish out the remainder of her days, with no other food than bread and water, and no other comfort than the free indulgence of her tears.” The indignation created by this account was so violent, as for some moments to interrupt St. Ursula’s narrative. When the disturbance ceased, and silence again prevailed through the assembly, she continued her discourse, while at every word the domina’s countenance betrayed her increasing terrors. “A council of the twelve elder nuns was called: I was of the number. The prioress in exaggerated colours described the offence of Agnes, and scrupled not to propose the revival of this almost forgotten law. To the shame of our sex be it spoken, that either so absolute was the domina’s will in the convent, or so much had disappointment, solitude, and self-denial hardened their hearts and soured their tempers, that this barbarous proposal was assented to by nine voices out of the twelve. I was not one of the nine. Frequent opportunities had convinced me of the virtues of Agnes, and I loved and pitied her most sincerely. The mothers Bertha and Cornelia joined my party: we made the strongest opposition possible, and the superior found herself compelled to change her intention. In spite of the majority in her favour, she feared to break with us openly. She knew that, supported by the Medina family, our forces would be too strong for her to cope with: and she also knew that, after being once imprisoned, and supposed dead, should Agnes be discovered, her ruin would be inevitable; she therefore gave up her design, though with much reluctance. She demanded some days to reflect upon a mode of punishment, which might be agreeable to the whole community; and she promised, that as soon as her resolution was fixed, the same council should be again summoned. Two days passed away: on the evening of the third it was announced, that on the next day Agnes should be examined; and that according to her behaviour on that occasion her punishment should be either strengthened or mitigated. “On the night preceding this examination, I stole to the cell of Agnes at an hour when I supposed the other nuns to be buried in sleep. I comforted her to the best of my power: I bade her take courage, told her to rely upon the support of her friends, and taught her certain signs, by which I might instruct her to answer the domina’s questions by an assent or negative. Conscious that her enemy would strive to confuse, embarrass, and daunt her, I feared her being ensnared into some confession prejudicial to her interests. Being anxious to keep my visit secret, I stayed with Agnes but a short time. I bade her not to let her spirits be cast down. I mingled my tears with those which streamed down her cheek, embraced her fondly, and was on the point of retiring, when I heard the sound of steps approaching the cell. I started back. A curtain which veiled a large crucifix offered me a retreat, and I hastened to place myself behind it. The door opened. The prioress entered, followed by four other nuns. They advanced towards the bed of Agnes. The superior reproached her with her errors in the bitterest terms. She told her, that she was a disgrace to the convent, that she was resolved to deliver the world and herself from such a monster, and commanded her to drink the contents of a goblet now presented to her by one of the nuns. Aware of the fatal properties of the liquor, and trembling to find herself upon the brink of eternity, the unhappy girl strove to excite the domina’s pity by the most affecting prayers. She sued for life in terms which might have melted the heart of a fiend. She promised to submit patiently to any punishment, to shame, imprisonment, and torture, might she but be permitted to live! Oh! might she but live another month, or week, or day! Her merciless enemy listened to her complaints unmoved: she told her, that at first she meant to have spared her life, and that if she had altered her intention, she had to thank the opposition of her friends. She continued to insist upon her swallowing the poison: she bade her recommend herself to the Almighty’s mercy, not to hers; and assured her that in an hour she would be numbered with the dead. Perceiving that it was vain to implore this unfeeling woman, she attempted to spring from her bed, and call for assistance: she hoped, if she could not escape the fate announced to her, at least to have witnesses of the violence committed. The prioress guessed her design: she seized her forcibly by the arm, and pushed her back upon her pillow; at the same time drawing a dagger, and placing it at the breast of the unfortunate Agnes, she protested that if she uttered a single cry, or hesitated a single moment to drink the poison, she would pierce her heart that instant. Already half-dead with fear, she could make no further resistance. The nun approached with the fatal goblet; the domina obliged her to take it, and swallow the contents. She drank, and the horrid deed was accomplished. The nuns then seated themselves round the bed; they answered her groans with reproaches; they interrupted with sarcasms the prayers in which she recommended her parting soul to mercy: they threatened her with heaven’s vengeance and eternal perdition: they bade her despair of pardon, and strowed with yet sharper thorns death’s painful pillow. Such were the sufferings of this young unfortunate, till released by fate from the malice of her tormentors. She expired in horror of the past, in fears for the future; and her agonies were such as must have amply gratified the hate and vengeance of her enemies. As soon as her victim ceased to breathe, the domina retired, and was followed by her accomplices. “It was now that I ventured from my concealment. I dared not to assist my unhappy friend, aware that, without preserving her, I should only have brought on myself the same destruction. Shocked and terrified beyond expression at this horrid scene, scarcely had I sufficient strength to regain my cell. As I reached the door of that of Agnes, I ventured to look towards the bed on which lay her lifeless body, once so lovely and so sweet! I breathed a prayer for her departed spirit, and vowed to revenge her death by the shame and punishment of her assassins. With danger and difficulty I have kept my oath. I unwarily dropped some words at the funeral of Agnes, while thrown off my guard by excessive grief, which alarmed the guilty conscience of the prioress. My every action was observed; my every step was traced. I was constantly surrounded by the superior’s spies. It was long before I could find the means of conveying to the unhappy girl’s relations an intimation of my secret. It was given out, that Agnes had expired suddenly: this account was credited not only by her friends in Madrid, but even by those within the convent. The poison had left no marks upon her body: no one suspected the true cause of her death, and it remained unknown to all, save the assassins and myself. “I have no more to say; for what I have already said, I will answer with my life. I repeat, that the prioress is a murderess; that she has driven from the world, perhaps from heaven, an unfortunate, whose offence was light and venial; that she has abused the power intrusted to her hands, and has been a tyrant, a barbarian, and an hypocrite. I also accuse the four nuns, Violante, Camilla, Alix, and Mariana, as being her accomplices, and equally criminal.” Here St. Ursula ended her narrative. It created horror and surprise throughout; but when she related the inhuman murder of Agnes, the indignation of the mob was so audibly testified, that it was scarcely possible to hear the conclusion. This confusion increased with every moment. At length a multitude of voices exclaimed, that the prioress should be given up to their fury. To this Don Ramirez positively refused to consent. Even Lorenzo bade the people remember, that she had undergone no trial, and advised them to leave her punishment to the Inquisition. All representations were fruitless; the disturbance grew still more violent, and the populace more exasperated. In vain did Ramirez attempt to convey his prisoner out of the throng. Wherever he turned, a band of rioters barred his passage, and demanded her being delivered over to them more loudly than before. Ramirez ordered his attendants to cut their way through the multitude. Oppressed by numbers, it was impossible for them to draw their swords. He threatened the mob with the vengeance of the Inquisition: but, in this moment of popular phrensy, even this dreadful name had lost its effect. Though regret for his sister made him look upon the prioress with abhorrence, Lorenzo could not help pitying a woman in a situation so terrible: but in spite of all his exertions and those of the duke, of Don Ramirez and the archers, the people continued to press onwards. They forced a passage through the guards who protected their destined victim, dragged her from her shelter, and proceeded to take upon her a most summary and cruel vengeance. Wild with terror, and scarcely knowing what she said, the wretched woman shrieked for a moment’s mercy: she protested that she was innocent of the death of Agnes, and could clear herself from the suspicion beyond the power of doubt. The rioters heeded nothing but the gratification of their barbarous vengeance. They refused to listen to her: they shewed her every sort of insult, loaded her with mud and filth, and called her by the most opprobrious appellations. They tore her one from another, and each new tormentor was more savage than the former. They stifled with howls and execrations her shrill cries for mercy, and dragged her through the streets, spurning her, trampling her, and treating her with every species of cruelty which hate or vindictive fury could invent. At length a flint, aimed by some well-directing hand, struck her full upon the temple. She sank upon the ground bathed in blood, and in a few minutes terminated her miserable existence. Yet though she no longer felt their insults, the rioters still exercised their impotent rage upon her lifeless body. They beat it, trod upon it, and ill-used it, till it became no more than a mass of flesh, unsightly, shapeless, and disgusting. Unable to prevent this shocking event, Lorenzo and his friends had beheld it with the utmost horror: but they were roused from their compelled inactivity, on hearing that the mob was attacking the convent of St. Clare. The incensed populace, confounding the innocent with the guilty, had resolved to sacrifice all the nuns of that order to their rage, and not to leave one stone of the building upon another. Alarmed at this intelligence, they hastened to the convent, resolved to defend it if possible, or at least to rescue the inhabitants from the fury of the rioters. Most of the nuns had fled, but a few still remained in their habitation. Their situation was truly dangerous. However, as they had taken the precaution of fastening the inner gates, with this assistance Lorenzo hoped to repel the mob, till Don Ramirez should return to him with a more sufficient force. Having been conducted by the former disturbance to the distance of some streets from the convent, he did not immediately reach it. When he arrived, the throng surrounding it was so excessive, as to prevent his approaching the gates. In the interim, the populace besieged the building with persevering rage: they battered the walls, threw lighted torches in at the windows, and swore that by break of day not a nun of St. Clare’s order should be left alive. Lorenzo had just succeeded in piercing his way through the crowd, when one of the gates was forced open. The rioters poured into the interior part of the building, where they exercised their vengeance upon every thing which found itself in their passage. They broke the furniture into pieces, tore down the pictures, destroyed the reliques, and in their hatred of her servant forgot all respect to the saint. Some employed themselves in searching out the nuns, others in pulling down parts of the convent, and others again in setting fire to the pictures and valuable furniture which it contained. These latter produced the most decisive desolation. Indeed the consequences of their action were more sudden than themselves had expected or wished. The flames rising from the burning piles caught part of the building, which being old and dry, the conflagration spread with rapidity from room to room. The walls were soon shaken by the devouring element. The columns gave way, the roofs came tumbling down upon the rioters, and crushed many of them beneath their weight. Nothing was to be heard but shrieks and groans. The convent was wrapped in flames, and the whole presented a scene of devastation and horror. Lorenzo was shocked at having been the cause, however innocent, of this frightful disturbance: he endeavoured to repair his fault by protecting the helpless inhabitants of the convent. He entered it with the mob, and exerted himself to repress the prevailing fury, till the sudden and alarming progress of the flames compelled him to provide for his own safety. The people now hurried out as eagerly as they had before thronged in; but their numbers clogging up the door-way, and the fire gaining upon them rapidly, many of them perished ere they had time to effect their escape. Lorenzo’s good fortune directed him to a small door in a farther aisle of the chapel. The bolt was already undrawn: he opened the door, and found himself at the foot of St. Clare’s sepulchre. Here he stopped to breathe. The duke and some of his attendants had followed him, and thus were in security for the present. They now consulted what steps they should take to escape from this scene of disturbance; but their deliberations were considerably interrupted by the sight of volumes of fire rising from amidst the convent’s massy walls, by the noise of some heavy arch tumbling down in ruins, or by the mingled shrieks of the nuns and rioters, either suffocating in the press, perishing in the flames, or crushed beneath the weight of the falling mansion. Lorenzo enquired, whither the wicket led? He was answered, to the garden of the Capuchins; and it was resolved to explore an outlet upon that side. Accordingly the duke raised the latch, and passed into the adjoining cemetery. The attendants followed without ceremony. Lorenzo, being the last, was also on the point of quitting the colonnade, when he saw the door of the sepulchre opened softly. Some one looked out, but on perceiving strangers uttered a loud shriek, started back again, and flew down the marble stairs. “What can this mean?” cried Lorenzo: “Here is some mystery concealed. Follow me without delay!” Thus saying, he hastened into the sepulchre, and pursued the person who continued to fly before him. The duke knew not the cause of this exclamation, but supposing that he had good reasons for it, followed him without hesitation. The others did the same, and the whole party soon arrived at the foot of the stairs. The upper door having been left open, the neighbouring flames darted from above a sufficient light to enable Lorenzo’s catching a glance of the fugitive running through the long passages and distant vaults; but when a sudden turn deprived him of this assistance, total darkness succeeded, and he could only trace the object of his enquiry by the faint echo of retiring feet. The pursuers were now compelled to proceed with caution: as well as they could judge, the fugitive also seemed to slacken pace, for they heard the steps follow each other at longer intervals. They at length were bewildered by the labyrinth of passages, and dispersed in various directions. Carried away by his eagerness to clear up this mystery, and to penetrate into which he was impelled by a movement secret and unaccountable, Lorenzo heeded not this circumstance till he found himself in total solitude. The noise of foot-steps had ceased, all was silent around, and no clue offered itself to guide him to the flying person. He stopped to reflect on the means most likely to aid his pursuit. He was persuaded that no common cause would have induced the fugitive to seek that dreary place at an hour so unusual: the cry which he had heard, seemed uttered in a voice of terror; and he was convinced that some mystery was attached to this event. After some minutes passed in hesitation, he continued to proceed, feeling his way along the walls of the passage. He had already passed some time in this slow progress, when he descried a spark of light glimmering at a distance. Guided by this observation, and having drawn his sword, he bent his steps towards the place whence the beam seemed to be emitted. It proceeded from the lamp which flamed before St. Clare’s statue. Before it stood several females; their white garments streaming in the blast as it howled along the vaulted dungeons. Curious to know what had brought them together in this melancholy spot, Lorenzo drew near with precaution. The strangers seemed earnestly engaged in conversation. They heard not Lorenzo’s steps, and he approached unobserved, till he could hear their voices distinctly. “I protest,” continued she who was speaking when he arrived, and to whom the rest were listening with great attention; “I protest, that I saw them with my own eyes. I flew down the steps, they pursued me, and I escaped falling into their hands with difficulty. Had it not been for the lamp, I should never have found you.” “And what could bring them hither?” said another in a trembling voice; “do you think that they were looking for us?” “God grant that my fears may be false,” rejoined the first; “but I doubt they are murderers! If they discover us, we are lost! As for me, my fate is certain. My affinity to the prioress will be a sufficient crime to condemn me; and though till now these vaults have afforded me a retreat……” Here looking up, her eye fell upon Lorenzo, who had continued to approach slowly. “The murderers!” she cried. She started away from the statue’s pedestal on which she had been seated, and attempted to escape by flight. Her companions at the same moment uttered a terrified scream, while Lorenzo arrested the fugitive by the arm. Frightened and desperate, she sank upon her knees before him. “Spare me!” she exclaimed; “for Christ’s sake, spare me! I am innocent, indeed, I am!” While she spoke, her voice was almost choaked with fear. The beams of the lamp darting full upon her face, which was unveiled, Lorenzo recognized the beautiful Virginia de Villa-Franca. He hastened to raise her from the ground, and besought her to take courage. He promised to protect her from the rioters, assured her that her retreat was still a secret, and that she might depend upon his readiness to defend her to the last drop of his blood. During this conversation, the nuns had thrown themselves into various attitudes: one knelt, and addressed herself to Heaven; another hid her face in the lap of her neighbour; some listened motionless with fear to the discourse of the supposed assassin; while others embraced the statue of St. Clare, and implored her protection with frantic cries. On perceiving their mistake, they crowded round Lorenzo, and heaped benedictions on him by dozens. He found that on hearing the threats of the mob, and terrified by the cruelties which from the convent towers they had seen inflicted on the superior, many of the pensioners and nuns had taken refuge in the sepulchre. Among the former was to be reckoned the lovely Virginia, nearly related to the prioress. She had more reason than the rest to dread the rioters, and now besought Lorenzo earnestly not to abandon her to their rage. Her companions, most of whom were women of noble family, made the same request, which he readily granted: he promised not to quit them till he had seen each of them safe in the arms of her relations. But he advised their deferring to quit the sepulchre for some time longer, when the popular fury should be somewhat calmed, and the arrival of military force have dispersed the multitude. “Would to God,” cried Virginia, “that I were already safe in my mother’s embraces! How say you, Segnor? will it be long ere we may leave this place? Every moment that I pass here, I pass in torture!” “I hope, not long,” said he; “but till you can proceed with security, this sepulchre will prove an impenetrable asylum. Here you run no risque of a discovery, and I would advise your remaining quiet for the next two or three hours.” “Two or three hours?” exclaimed sister Helena: “If I stay another hour in these vaults, I shall expire with fear! Not the wealth of worlds should bribe me to undergo again what I have suffered since my coming hither. Blessed Virgin! To be in this melancholy place in the middle of night, surrounded by the mouldering bodies of my deceased companions, and expecting every moment to be torn in pieces by their ghosts who wander about me, and complain, and groan, and wail in accents that make my blood run cold.… Christ Jesus! It is enough to drive me to madness!” “Excuse me,” replied Lorenzo, “if I am surprised, that while menaced by real woes you are capable of yielding to imaginary dangers. These terrors are puerile and groundless: combat them, holy sister; I have promised to guard you from the rioters, but against the attacks of superstition you must depend for protection upon yourself. The idea of ghosts is ridiculous in the extreme; and if you continue to be swayed by ideal terrors……” “Ideal?” exclaimed the nuns with one voice: “Why we heard it ourselves, Segnor! Every one of us heard it! It was frequently repeated, and it sounded every time more melancholy and deep. You will never persuade me that we could all have been deceived. Not we, indeed; no, no; had the noise been merely created by fancy.…” “Hark! hark!” interrupted Virginia, in a voice of terror; “God preserve us! There it is again!” The nuns clasped their hands together, and sank upon their knees. Lorenzo looked round him eagerly, and was on the point of yielding to the fears which already had possessed the women. Universal silence prevailed. He examined the vault, but nothing was to be seen. He now prepared to address the nuns, and ridicule their childish apprehensions, when his attention was arrested by a deep and long-drawn groan. “What was that?” he cried, and started.—— “There, Segnor!” said Helena: “Now you must be convinced! You have heard the noise yourself! Now judge whether our terrors are imaginary. Since we have been here, that groaning has been repeated almost every five minutes. Doubtless it proceeds from some soul in pain who wishes to be prayed out of purgatory: but none of us dare ask it the question. As for me, were I to see an apparition, the fright, I am very certain, would kill me out of hand.” As she said this, a second groan was heard yet more distinctly. The nuns crossed themselves, and hastened to repeat their prayers against evil spirits. Lorenzo listened attentively. He even thought that he could distinguish sounds as of one speaking in complaint, but distance rendered them inarticulate. The noise seemed to come from the midst of the small vault in which he and the nuns then were, and which a multitude of passages branching out in various directions formed into a sort of star. Lorenzo’s curiosity, which was ever awake, made him anxious to solve this mystery. He desired that silence might be kept. The nuns obeyed him. All was hushed till the general stillness was again disturbed by the groaning, which was repeated several times successively. He perceived it to be most audible, when upon following the sound he was conducted close to the shrine of St. Clare. “The noise comes from hence,” said he: “Whose is this statue?” Helena, to whom he addressed the question, paused for a moment. Suddenly she clapped her hands together. “Aye!” cried she, “it must be so. I have discovered the meaning of these groans.” The nuns crowded round her, and besought her eagerly to explain herself. She gravely replied, that for time immemorial the statue had been famous for performing miracles. From this she inferred, that the saint was concerned at the conflagration of a convent which she protected, and expressed her grief by audible lamentations. Not having equal faith in the miraculous saint, Lorenzo did not think this solution of the mystery quite so satisfactory, as the nuns, who subscribed to it without hesitation. In one point ’Tis true that he agreed with Helena. He suspected that the groans proceeded from the statue: the more he listened the more was he confirmed in this idea. He drew nearer to the image, designing to inspect it more closely: but perceiving his intention, the nuns besought him for God’s sake to desist, since, if he touched the statue, his death was inevitable. “And in what consists the danger?” said he. “Mother of God! In what?” replied Helena, ever eager to relate a miraculous adventure: “If you had only heard the hundredth part of those marvellous stories about this statue, which the domina used to recount! She assured us often and often, that if we only dared to lay a finger upon it, we might expect the most fatal consequences. Among other things she told us, that a robber having entered these vaults by night, he observed yonder ruby, whose value is inestimable. Do you see it, Segnor? It sparkles upon the third finger of the hand in which she holds a crown of thorns. This jewel naturally excited the villain’s cupidity. He resolved to make himself master of it. For this purpose he ascended the pedestal; he supported himself by grasping the saint’s right arm, and extended his own towards the ring. What was his surprise, when he saw the statue’s hand raised in a posture of menace, and heard her lips pronounce his eternal perdition! Penetrated with awe and consternation, he desisted from his attempt, and prepared to quit the sepulchre. In this he also failed. Flight was denied him. He found it impossible to disengage the hand which rested upon the right arm of the statue. In vain did he struggle: he remained fixed to the image, till the insupportable and fiery anguish which darted itself through his veins, compelled his shrieking for assistance. The sepulchre was now filled with spectators. The villain confessed his sacrilege, and was only released by the separation of his hand from his body. It has remained ever since fastened to the image. The robber turned hermit, and led ever after an exemplary life. But yet the saint’s decree was performed; and tradition says, that he continues to haunt this sepulchre, and implore St. Clare’s pardon with groans and lamentations. Now I think of it, those which we have just heard, may very possibly have been uttered by the ghost of this s	823,248
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) (Z-Library).epub	Cover Unknown The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway Unknown To Charlie Shribner And To Max Perkins He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat. The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its [9] reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. “Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. “I could go with you again. We’ve made some money.” The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. “No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.” “But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.” “I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.” “It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.” “I know,” the old man said. “It is quite normal.” “He hasn’t much faith.” [10] “No,” the old man said. “But we have. Haven’t we?” “Yes,” the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home.” “Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.” They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting. When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there [11] was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace. “Santiago,” the boy said. “Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago. “Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?” “No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net.” “I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you. I would like to serve in some way.” “You bought me a beer,” the old man said. “You are already a man.” “How old was I when you first took me in a boat?” “Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?” “I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.” [12] “Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?” “I remember everything from when we first went together.” The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes. “If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.” “May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too.” “I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box.” “Let me get four fresh ones.” “One,” the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises. “Two,” the boy said. “Two,” the old man agreed. “You didn’t steal them?” “I would,” the boy said. “But I bought these.” “Thank you,” the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he [13] knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride. “Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,” he said. “Where are you going?” the boy asked. “Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light.” “I’ll try to get him to work far out,” the boy said. “Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid.” “He does not like to work too far out.” “No,” the boy said. “But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin.” “Are his eyes that bad?” “He is almost blind.” “It is strange,” the old man said. “He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes.” “But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.” “I am a strange old man” “But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?” “I think so. And there are many tricks.” [14] “Let us take the stuff home,” the boy said. “So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines.” They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden boat with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat. They walked up the road together to the old man’s shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered [15] guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt. “What do you have to eat?” the boy asked. “A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?” “No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?” “No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.” “May I take the cast net?” “Of course.” There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too. “Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man said. “How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?” “I’ll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?” [16] “Yes. I have yesterday’s paper and I will read the baseball.” The boy did not know whether yesterday’s paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed. “Perico gave it to me at the bodega,” he explained. “I’ll be back when I have the sardines. I’ll keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you can tell me about the baseball.” “The Yankees cannot lose.” “But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.” “Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.” “I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.” “Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sax of Chicago.” “You study it and tell me when I come back.” “Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-five? Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day.” “We can do that,” the boy said. “But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?” [17] “It could not happen twice. Do you think you can find an eighty-five?” “I can order one. “One sheet. That’s two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?” “That’s easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half.” “I think perhaps I can too. But I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.” “Keep warm old man,” the boy said. “Remember we are in September.” “The month when the great fish come,” the old man said. “Anyone can be a fisherman in May.” “I go now for the sardines,” the boy said. When the boy came back the old man was asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man’s shoulders. They were strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and the neck was still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen forward. His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun. The [18] old man’s head was very old though and with his eyes closed there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his knees and the weight of his arm held it there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted. The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep. “Wake up old man,” the boy said and put his hand on one of the old man’s knees. The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. Then he smiled. “What have you got?” he asked. “Supper,” said the boy. “We’re going to have supper.” “I’m not very hungry.” “Come on and eat. You can’t fish and not eat.” “I have,” the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started to fold the blanket. “Keep the blanket around you,” the boy said. “You’ll not fish without eating while I’m alive.” “Then live a long time and take care of yourself,” the old man said. “What are we eating?” “Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew.” [19] The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set. “Who gave this to you?” “Martin. The owner.” “I must thank him.” “I thanked him already,” the boy said. “You don’t need to thank him.” “I’ll give him the belly meat of a big fish,” the old man said. “Has he done this for us more than once?” “I think so.” “I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us.” “He sent two beers.” “I like the beer in cans best.” “I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the bottles.” “That’s very kind of you,” the old man said. “Should we eat?” “I’ve been asking you to,” the boy told him gently. “I have not wished to open the container until you were ready.” [20] “I’m ready now,” the old man said. “I only needed time to wash.” Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket. “Your stew is excellent,” the old man said. “Tell me about the baseball,” the boy asked him. “In the American League it is the Yankees as I said,” the old man said happily.” “They lost today,” the boy told him. “That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again.” “They have other men on the team.” “Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives In the old park.” “There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen.” “Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace?” [21] “I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid.” “I know. It was a great mistake. He might have gone with us. Then we would have that for all of our lives.” “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing,” the old man said. “They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.” “The great Sisler’s father was never poor and he, the father, was playing in the Big Leagues when he was my age.” “When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening.” “I know. You told me.” “Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?” “Baseball I think,” the boy said. “Tell me about the great John J. McGraw.” He said Jota for J. “He used to come to the Terrace sometimes too in the older days. But he was rough and harsh-spoken and difficult when he was drinking. His mind was on horses as well as baseball. At least he carried lists of [22] horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of horses on the telephone.” “He was a great manager,” the boy said. “My father thinks he was the greatest.” “Because he came here the most times,” the old man said. “If Durocher had continued to come here each year your father would think him the greatest manager.” “Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?” “I think they are equal.” “And the best fisherman is you.” “No. I know others better.” “Que Va,” the boy said. “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you.” “Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.” “There is no such fish if you are still strong as you say.” “I may not be as strong as I think,” the old man said. “But I know many tricks and I have resolution.” “You ought to go to bed now so that you will be fresh in the morning. I will take the things back to the Terrace.” [23] “Good night then. I will wake you in the morning.” “You’re my alarm clock,” the boy said. “Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?” “I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.” “I can remember it,” the old man said. “I’ll waken you in time.” “I do not like for him to waken me. It is as though I were inferior.” “I know.” “Sleep well old man.” The boy went out. They had eaten with no light on the table and the old man took off his trousers and went to bed in the dark. He rolled his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the newspaper inside them. He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers that covered the springs of the bed. He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats [24] come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning. Usually when he smelled the land breeze he woke up and dressed to go and wake the boy. But tonight the smell of the land breeze came very early and he knew it was too early in his dream and went on dreaming to see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he dreamed of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands. He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing. The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly with his [25] bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on the bed, pulled them on. The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.” “Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.” They walked down the road to the old man’s shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot men were moving, carrying the masts of their boats. When they reached the old man’s shack the boy took the rolls of line in the basket and the harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast with the furled sail on his shoulder. “Do you want coffee?” the boy asked. “We’ll put the gear in the boat and then get some.” They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served fishermen. “How did you sleep old man?” the boy asked. He [26] was waking up now although it was still hard for him to leave his sleep. “Very well, Manolin,” the old man said. “I feel confident today.” “So do I,” the boy said. “Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits. He brings our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything.” “We’re different,” the old man said. “I let you carry things when you were five years old.” “I know it,” the boy said. “I’ll be right back. Have another coffee. We have credit here.” He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where the baits were stored. The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day. The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into the water. [27] “Good luck old man.” “Good luck,” the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them now the moon was below the hills. Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them. In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought [29] when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought. He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current. He was letting the current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he was already further out than he had hoped to be at this hour. I worked the deep wells for a week and did nothing, he thought. Today I’ll work out where the schools of bonito and albacore are and maybe there will be a big one with them. Before it was really light he had his baits out and was drifting with the current. One bait was down forty fathoms. The second was at seventy-five and the third and fourth were down in the blue water at one [30] hundred and one hundred and twenty-five fathoms. Each bait hung head down with the shank of the hook inside the bait fish, tied and sewed solid and all the projecting part of the hook, the curve and the point, was covered with fresh sardines. Each sardine was hooked through both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the projecting steel. There was no part of the hook that a great fish could feel which was not sweet smelling and good tasting. The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hung on the two deepest lines like plummets and, on the others, he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before; but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and attractiveness. Each line, as thick around as a big pencil, was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were necessary, a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line. Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the skiff and rowed gently to keep the [31] lines straight up and down and at their proper depths. It was quite light and any moment now the sun would rise. The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats, low on the water and well in toward the shore, spread out across the current. Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then, as it rose clear, the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it. He looked down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into the dark of the water. He kept them straighter than anyone did, so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there. Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred. But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready. The sun was two hours higher now and it did not [32] hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore. All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful. Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him. He made a quick drop, slanting down on his back-swept wings, and then circled again. “He’s got something,” the old man said aloud. “He’s not just looking.” He rowed slowly and steadily toward where the bird was circling. He did not hurry and he kept his lines straight up and down. But he crowded the current a little so that he was still fishing correctly though faster than he would have fished if he was not trying to use the bird. The bird went higher in the air and circled again, his wings motionless. Then he dove suddenly and the old man saw flying fish spurt out of the water and sail desperately over the surface. [33] “Dolphin,” the old man said aloud. “Big dolphin.” He shipped his oars and brought a small line from under the bow. It had a wire leader and a medium-sized hook and he baited it with one of the sardines. He let it go over the side and then made it fast to a ring bolt in the stern. Then he baited another line and left it coiled in the shade of the bow. He went back to rowing and to watching the long-winged black bird who was working, now, low over the water. As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and then swinging them wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying fish. The old man could see the slight bulge in the water that the big dolphin raised as they followed the escaping fish. The dolphin were cutting through the water below the flight of the fish and would be in the water, driving at speed, when the fish dropped. It is a big school of dolphin, he thought. They are widespread and the flying fish have little chance. The bird has no chance. The flying fish are too big for him and they go too fast. He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual movements of the bird. That school has gotten away from me, he thought. They are moving out too fast and too far. But perhaps I will pick up [34] a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them. My big fish must be somewhere. The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating dose beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water. “Agua mala,” the man said. “You whore.” From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that [35] were coloured like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted. They were immune to its poison. But men were not and when same of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give. But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash. The iridescent bubbles were beautiful. But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them. The turtles saw them, approached them from the front, then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments and all. The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet. He loved green turtles and hawk-bills with their elegance and speed and their great value and he had a friendly contempt for the huge, stupid loggerheads, yellow in their armour-plating, strange in their [36] love-making, and happily eating the Portuguese men-of-war with their eyes shut. He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many years. He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs. He ate the white eggs to give himself strength. He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish. He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in the shack where many of the fishermen kept their gear. It was there for all fishermen who wanted it. Most fishermen hated the taste. But it was no worse than getting up at the hours that they rose and it was very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes. Now the old man looked up and saw that the bird was circling again. “He’s found fish,” he said aloud. No flying fish broke the surface and there was no scattering of bait [37] fish. But as the old man watched, a small tuna rose in the air, turned and dropped head first into the water. The tuna shone silver in the sun and after he had dropped back into the water another and another rose and they were jumping in all directions, churning the water and leaping in long jumps after the bait. They were circling it and driving it. If they don’t travel too fast I will get into them, the old man thought, and he watched the school working the water white and the bird now dropping and dipping into the bait fish that were forced to the surface in their panic. “The bird is a great help,” the old man said. Just then the stern line came taut under his foot, where he had kept a loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt tile weight of the small tuna’s shivering pull as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in. The shivering increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in the water and the gold of his sides before he swung him over the side and into the boat. He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering strokes of his neat, fast-moving [38] tail. The old man hit him on the head for kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of the stern. “Albacore,” he said aloud. “He’ll make a beautiful bait. He’ll weigh ten pounds.” He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself. He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not remember. When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was necessary. They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad weather. It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they could annoy. “If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy,” he said aloud. “But since I am not crazy, I do not care. And the rich have radios to talk to them in their boats and to bring them the baseball.” [39] Now is no time to think of baseball, he thought. Now is the time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for. There might be a big one around that school, he thought. I picked up only a straggler from the albacore that were feeding. But they are working far out and fast. Everything that shows on the surface today travels very fast and to the north-east. Can that be the time of day? Or is it some sign of weather that I do not know? He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep. The tuna, the fishermen called all the fish of that species tuna and only distinguished among them by their proper names when they came to sell them or to trade them for baits, were down again. The sun was [40] hot now and the old man felt it on the back of his neck and felt the sweat trickle down his back as he rowed. I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well. Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply. “Yes,” he said. “Yes,” and shipped his oars without bumping the boat. He reached out for the line and held it softly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He felt no strain nor weight and he held the line lightly. Then it came again. This time it was a tentative pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was. One hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected from the head of the small tuna. The old man held the line delicately, and softly, with his left hand, unleashed it from the stick. Now he could let it run through his fingers without the fish feeling any tension. This far out, he must be huge in this month, he thought. Eat them, fish. Eat them. Please eat them. [41] How fresh they are and you down there six hundred feet in that cold water in the dark. Make another turn in the dark and come back and eat them. He felt the light delicate pulling and then a harder pull when a sardine’s head must have been more difficult to break from the hook. Then there was nothing. “Come on,” the old man said aloud. “Make another turn. Just smell them. Aren’t they lovely? Eat them good now and then there is the tuna. Hard and cold and lovely. Don’t be shy, fish. Eat them.” He waited with the line between his thumb and his finger, watching it and the other lines at the same time for the fish might have swum up or down. Then came the same delicate pulling touch again. “He’ll take it,” the old man said aloud. “God help him to take it.” He did not take it though. He was gone and the old man felt nothing. “He can’t have gone,” he said. “Christ knows he can’t have gone. He’s making a turn. Maybe he has been hooked before and he remembers something of it. [42] Then he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy. “It was only his turn,” he said. “He’ll take it.” He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve coils. As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man’s fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible. “What a fish,” he said. “He has it sideways in his mouth now and he is moving off with it.” Then he will turn and swallow it, he thought. He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen. He knew what a huge fish this was and he thought of him moving away in the darkness with the tuna held crosswise in his mouth. At that moment he felt him stop moving but the weight was still there. Then the weight increased and he gave more line. He tightened the pressure of his thumb and finger for a moment and the weight increased and was going straight down. [43] “He’s taken it,” he said. “Now I’ll let him eat it well.” He let the line slip through his fingers while he reached down with his left hand and made fast the free end of the two reserve coils to the loop of the two reserve coils of the next line. Now he was ready. He had three forty-fathom coils of line in reserve now, as well as the coil he was using. “Eat it a little more,” he said. “Eat it well.” Eat it so that the point of the hook goes into your heart and kills you, he thought. Come up easy and let me put the harpoon into you. All right. Are you ready? Have you been long enough at table? “Now!” he said aloud and struck hard with both hands, gained a yard of line and then struck again and again, swinging with each arm alternately on the cord with all the strength of his arms and the pivoted weight of his body. Nothing happened. The fish just moved away slowly and the old man could not raise him an inch. His line was strong and made for heavy fish and he held it against his hack until it was so taut that beads of water were jumping from it. Then it began to make a slow hissing sound in the water and he still held it, bracing [44] himself against the thwart and leaning back against the pull. The boat began to move slowly off toward the north-west. The fish moved steadily and they travelled slowly on the calm water. The other baits were still in the water but there was nothing to be done. “I wish I had the boy” the old man said aloud. “I’m being towed by a fish and I’m the towing bitt. I could make the line fast. But then he could break it. I must hold him all I can and give him line when he must have it. Thank God he is travelling and not going down.” What I will do if he decides to go down, I don’t know. What I’ll do if he sounds and dies I don’t know. But I’ll do something. There are plenty of things I can do. He held the line against his back and watched its slant in the water and the skiff moving steadily to the north-west. This will kill him, the old man thought. He can’t do this forever. But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back. [45] “It was noon when I hooked him,” he said. “And I have never seen him.” He had pushed his straw hat hard down on his head before he hooked the fish and it was cutting his forehead. He was thirsty too and he got down on his knees and, being careful not to jerk on the line, moved as far into the bow as he could get and reached the water bottle with one hand. He opened it and drank a little. Then he rested against the bow. He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure. Then he looked behind him and saw that no land was visible. That makes no difference, he thought. I can always come in on the glow from Havana. There are two more hours before the sun sets and maybe he will come up before that. If he doesn’t maybe he will come up with the moon. If he does not do that maybe he will come up with the sunrise. I have no cramps and I feel strong. It is he that has the hook in his mouth. But what a fish to pull like that. He must have his mouth shut tight on the wire. I wish I could see him. I wish I could see him only once to know what I have against me. The fish never changed his course nor his direction [46] all that night as far as the man could tell from watching the stars. It was cold after the sun went down and the old man’s sweat dried cold on his back and his arms and his old legs. During the day he had taken the sack that covered the bait box and spread it in the sun to dry. After the sun went down he tied it around his neck so that it hung down over his back and he cautiously worked it down under the line that was across his shoulders now. The sack cushioned the line and he had found a way of leaning forward against the bow so that he was almost comfortable. The position actually was only somewhat less intolerable; but he thought of it as almost comfortable. I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me, he thought. Not as long as he keeps this up. Once he stood up and urinated over the side of the skiff and looked at the stars and checked his course. The line showed like a phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders. They were moving more slowly now and the glow of Havana was not so strong, so that he knew the current must be carrying them to the eastward. If I lose the glare of Havana we must be going more to the eastward, he thought. For if the fish’s course held true I must see it for many more [47] hours. I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand leagues today, he thought. It would be wonderful to do this with a radio. Then he thought, think of it always. Think of what you are doing. You must do nothing stupid. Then he said aloud, “I wish I had the boy. To help me and to see this.” No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable. I must remember to eat the tuna before he spoils in order to keep strong. Remember, no matter how little you want to, that you must eat him in the morning. Remember, he said to himself. During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female. “They are good,” he said. “They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish.” Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or [48] by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am? He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and dubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, [49] the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed. That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly. “I wish the boy was here,” he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen. When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought. His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us. Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light. [50] Some time before daylight something took one of the baits that were behind him. He heard the stick break and the line begin to rush out over the gunwale of the skiff. In the darkness he loosened his sheath knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his left shoulder he leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale. Then he cut the other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends of the reserve coils fast. He worked skillfully with the one hand and put his foot on the coils to hold them as he drew his knots tight. Now he had six reserve coils of line. There were two from each bait he had severed and the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all connected. After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cardel and the hooks and leaders. That can be replaced. But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off? I don’t know what that fish was that took the bait just now. It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark. I never felt him. I had to get rid of him too fast. Aloud he said, “I wish I had the boy.” [51] But you haven’t got the boy, he thought. You have only yourself and you had better work back to the last line now, in the dark or not in the dark, and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils. So he did it. It was difficult in the dark and once the fish made a surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye. The blood ran down his cheek a little way. But it coagulated and dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and rested against the wood. He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the line so that it came across a new part of his shoulders and, holding it anchored with his shoulders, he carefully felt the pull of the fish and then felt with his hand the progress of the skiff through the water. I wonder what he made that lurch for, he thought. The wire must have slipped on the great hill of his back. Certainly his back cannot feel as badly as mine does. But he cannot pull this skiff forever, no matter how great he is. Now everything is cleared away that might make trouble and I have a big reserve of line; all that a man can ask. “Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.” [52] He’ll stay with me too, I suppose, the old man thought and he waited for it to be light. It was cold now in the time before daylight and he pushed against the wood to be warm. I can do it as long as he can, he thought. And in the first light the line extended out and down into the water. The boat moved steadily and when the first edge of the sun rose it was on the old man’s right shoulder. “He’s headed north,” the old man said. The current will have set us far to the eastward, he thought. I wish he would turn with the current. That would show that he was tiring. When the sun had risen further the old man realized that the fis	137,626
The Solitude of Prime Numbers A Novel (Paolo Giordano) (Z-Library).epub	The Solitude of Prime Numbers Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgements Epigraph SNOW ANGEL - 1983 Chapter 1 THE ARCHIMEDES PRINCIPLE - 1984 Chapter 2 ON THE SKIN AND JUST BEHIND IT - 1991 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 THE OTHER ROOM - 1995 Chapter 20 IN AND OUT OF THE WATER - 1998 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 GETTING THINGS IN FOCUS - 2003 Chapter 30 WHAT REMAINS - 2007 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. * Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) * Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) * Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India * Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) * Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Translation copyright (c) Shaun Whiteside, 2009 All rights reserved A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking Originally published in Italian as La Solitudine dei Numberi Primi by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan. Copyright (c) 2008 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A. This English translation published by arrangement with Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group Limited. "Grey Room" Testo e Musica di Damien Rice (c) 2006 by Warner Chappell Music Publishing Ltd. PUBLISHER'S NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Giordano, Paolo, 1982- [Solitudine dei numeri primi. English] The solitude of prime numbers : a novel / Paolo Giordano. p. cm. eISBN : 978-1-101-19002-9 1. Life change events--Psychological aspects--Fiction. 2. Solitude--Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title. PQ4907.I57S6513 2010 853'.92--dc22 2009041165 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. http://us.penguingroup.com To Eleonora, because in silence I promised it to you Acknowledgments T his book wouldn't have existed without Raffaella Lops. I would like to thank, in no particular order, Antonio Franchini, Joy Terekiev, Mario Desiati, Giulia Ichino, Laura Cerutti, Cecilia Giordano, my parents, Giorgio Mila, Roberto Castello, Emiliano Amato, Pietro Grossi, and Nella Re Rebaudengo. Each of them knows why. Her old aunt's elaborately trimmed dress was a perfect fit for Sylvie's slender figure, and she asked me to lace it up for her. "The sleeves are plain; how ridiculous!" she said. --Gerard de Nerval, Sylvie, 1853 SNOW ANGEL 1983 1 A lice Della Rocca hated ski school. She hated getting up at seven-thirty, even during Christmas vacation. She hated her father staring at her over breakfast, his leg dancing nervously under the table as if to say hurry up, get a move on. She hated the woolen tights that made her thighs itch, the mittens that kept her from moving her fingers, the helmet that squashed her cheeks, and the big, too tight boots that made her walk like a gorilla. "Are you going to drink that milk or not?" her father insisted again. Alice gulped down three inches of boiling milk, burning her tongue, throat, and stomach. "Good, today you can show us what you're really made of." What's that? Alice wondered. He shoved her out the door, mummified in a green ski suit dotted with badges and the fluorescent logos of the sponsors. It was 14 degrees and a gray fog enveloped everything. Alice felt the milk swirling around in her stomach as she sank into the snow. Her skis were over her shoulder, because you had to carry your skis yourself until you got good enough for someone to carry them for you. "Keep the tips facing forward or you'll kill someone," her father said. At the end of the season the Ski Club gave you a pin with little stars on it. A star a year, from when you were four years old and just tall enough to slip the little disk of the ski lift between your legs until you were nine and you managed to grab the disk all by yourself. Three silver stars and then another three in gold: a pin a year, a way of saying you'd gotten a little better, a little closer to the races that terrified Alice. She was already worried about them even though she had only three stars. They were to meet at the ski lift at eight-thirty sharp, right when it opened. The other kids were already there, standing like little soldiers in a loose circle, bundled up in their uniforms, numb with sleep and cold. They planted their ski poles in the snow and wedged the grips in their armpits. With their arms dangling, they looked like scarecrows. No one felt like talking, least of all Alice. Her father rapped twice on her helmet, too hard, as if trying to pound her into the snow. "Pull out all the stops," he said. "And remember: keep your body weight forward, okay? Body weight forward." "Body weight forward," echoed the voice in Alice's head. Then he walked away, blowing into his cupped hands. He'd soon be home again, reading the paper in the warmth of their house. Two steps and the fog swallowed him up. Alice clumsily dropped her skis on the ground and banged her boots with a ski pole to knock off the clumps of snow. If her father had seen her he would have slapped her right there, in front of everyone. She was already desperate for a pee; it pushed against her bladder like a pin piercing her belly. She wasn't going to make it today either. Every morning it was the same. After breakfast she would lock herself in the bathroom and push and push, trying to get rid of every last drop, contracting her abdominal muscles till her head ached and her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. She would turn the tap full blast so that her father wouldn't hear the noises as she pushed and pushed, clenching her fists, to squeeze out the very last drop. She would sit there until her father pounded on the door and yelled so, missy, are we going to be late again today? But it never did any good. By the time they reached the top of the first ski lift she would be so desperate that she would have to crouch down in the fresh snow and pretend to tighten her boots in order to take a pee inside her ski suit while all her classmates looked on, and Eric, the ski instructor, would say we're waiting for Alice, as usual. It's such a relief, she thought each time, as the lovely warmth trickled between her shivering legs. Or it would be, if only they weren't all there watching me. Sooner or later they're going to notice. Sooner or later I'm going to leave a yellow stain in the snow and they'll all make fun of me. One of the parents went up to Eric and asked if the fog wasn't too thick to go all the way to the top that morning. Alice pricked up her ears hopefully, but Eric unfurled his perfect smile. "It's only foggy down here," he said. "At the top the sun is blinding. Come on, let's go." On the chairlift Alice was paired with Giuliana, the daughter of one of her father's colleagues. They didn't say a word the whole way up. Not that they particularly disliked each other, it was just that, at that moment, neither of them wanted to be there. The sound of the wind sweeping the summit of the mountain was punctuated by the metallic rush of the steel cable from which Alice and Giuliana were hanging, their chins tucked into the collars of their jackets so as to warm themselves with their breath. It's only the cold, you don't really need to go, Alice said to herself. But the closer she got to the top, the more the pin in her belly pierced her flesh. Maybe she was seriously close to wetting herself. Then again, it might even be something bigger. No, it's just the cold, you don't really need to go again, Alice kept telling herself. Alice suddenly regurgitated rancid milk. She swallowed it down with disgust. She really needed to go; she was desperate. Two more chairlifts before the shelter. I can't possibly hold it in for that long. Giuliana lifted the safety bar and they both shifted their bottoms forward to get off. When her skis touched the ground Alice shoved off from her seat. You couldn't see more than two yards ahead of you, so much for blinding sun. It was like being wrapped in a sheet, all white, nothing but white, above, below, all around you. It was the exact opposite of darkness, but it frightened Alice in precisely the same way. She slipped off to the side of the trail to look for a little pile of fresh snow to relieve herself in. Her stomach gurgled like a dishwasher. When she turned around, she couldn't see Giuliana anymore, which meant that Giuliana couldn't see her either. She herringboned a few yards up the hill, just as her father had made her do when he had gotten it into his head to teach her to ski. Up and down the bunny slope, thirty, forty times a day, sidestep up and snowplow down. Buying a ski pass for just one slope was a waste of money, and this way you trained your legs as well. Alice unfastened her skis and took a few more steps, sinking halfway up her calves in the snow. Finally she could sit. She stopped holding her breath and relaxed her muscles. A pleasant electric shock spread through her whole body, finally settling in the tips of her toes. It must have been the milk, of course. That and the fact that her bum was freezing from sitting in the snow at six thousand feet. It had never happened before, at least not as far as she could remember. Never, not even once. But this time it wasn't pee. Or, not only. As she leaped to her feet she felt something heavy in the seat of her pants and instinctively touched her bottom. She couldn't feel a thing through her gloves, but it didn't matter--she had already realized what had happened. Now what, she wondered. Eric called her but Alice didn't reply. As long as she stayed up there, the fog would hide her. She could pull down her ski pants and clean herself up as best she could, or go down and whisper in Eric's ear what had happened. She could tell him she had to go back to the lodge, that her knees hurt. Or she could just not worry about it and keep skiing, making sure to always be last in line. Instead she simply stayed where she was, careful not to move a muscle, shielded by the fog. Eric called her again. Louder now. "She must have gone to the ski lift already, silly girl," a little boy said. Alice could hear them talking. Someone said let's go and someone else said I'm cold from standing here. They could be just below her, a few yards away, or up at the ski lift. Sounds are deceptive: they rebound off the mountains and sink in the snow. "Damn . . . let's go see," Eric said. Alice slowly counted to ten, suppressing her urge to vomit as she felt something slither down her thighs. When she got to ten, she started over again, this time counting to twenty. Now all was silent. She picked up her skis and carried them under her arm to the trail. It took her a little while to work out how to position them at right angles to the fall line. With fog that thick you can't even tell which way you're facing. She clipped into her skis and tightened the bindings. She took off her goggles and spat inside them because they had misted up. She could ski down to the lodge all on her own. She didn't care that Eric was looking for her at the top of the mountain. With her pants caked in shit, she didn't want to stay up there a second longer than she absolutely had to. She went over the descent in her head. She had never done it alone, but, after all, they had gone only as far as the first ski lift, and she'd been down this slope dozens of times. She began to snowplow. Just the day before, Eric had said if I see you doing one more snowplow turn, I swear I'm going to tie your ankles together. Eric didn't like her, she was sure of it. He thought she was a scaredy-pants and, as it turned out, events had proved him right. Eric didn't like her father either, because every day, at the end of the lesson, he pestered him with endless questions. So how is our Alice coming along, are we getting better, do we have a little champion on our hands, when are we going to start racing, on and on. Eric always stared at a spot somewhere behind her father and answered yes, no, well . . . Alice saw the whole scene superimposed on her foggy goggles as she gently edged her way down, unable to make out anything beyond the tips of her skis. Only when she ended up in the fresh snow did she understand that it was time to turn. She started singing to herself to feel less alone. From time to time she wiped away her snot with her glove. Keep your weight uphill, plant your pole, turn. Lean on your boots. Now shift your body weight forward, okay? Bo-dy weight for-ward. The voice was partly Eric's and partly her father's. Her father would probably fly into a rage. She had to come up with a lie, a story that would stand up, no holes or contradictions. She didn't even dream of telling him what had really happened. The fog, that was it, blame it on the fog. She was following the others onto the big slope when her ski pass had come off her jacket. No, that's no good, no one's ski pass ever blew away. You'd have to be a real idiot to lose it. My scarf. My scarf blew away and I went back to find it, but the others didn't wait for me. I called them a hundred times but there was no sign of them; they had disappeared into the fog and so I went down to look for them. And why didn't you go back up? her father would ask. Of course, why hadn't she? On second thought, it was better if she lost her ski pass. She hadn't gone back up because she'd lost her ski pass and the man at the ski lift wouldn't let her. Alice smiled, pleased with her story. It was flawless. She didn't even feel all that dirty anymore. She would spend the rest of the day in front of the TV. She would take a shower and put on clean clothes and slip her feet into her furry slippers. She would stay inside, in the warmth, all day. Or she would have, if only she'd looked up from her skis long enough to see the orange tape with the words TRAIL CLOSED. Her father was always telling her look where you're going. If only she'd remembered that in fresh snow you shouldn't put your body weight forward and if only Eric, a few days before, had adjusted her bindings better, and her father had been more insistent in saying but Alice weighs sixty pounds, won't they be too tight like that? The drop wasn't very high. A few yards, just long enough to feel a slight void in your stomach and nothing beneath your feet. And then Alice was facedown in the snow, her skis pointing straight up in the air, and her fibula broken. She didn't really feel that bad. To tell the truth, she didn't feel a thing. Only the snow that had slipped under her scarf and into her helmet and burned her skin. The first thing she did was move her arms. When she was little and woke up to find it had snowed, her father would wrap her up tight and carry her downstairs. They would walk to the center of the courtyard and, hand in hand, would count to three and fall backward like a deadweight. Then her father would say make an angel, and Alice would move her arms up and down. When she got up and looked at her outline sculpted in the white, it really did look like the shadow of an angel with outspread wings. Alice made a snow angel, just like that, for no reason, just to prove to herself that she was still alive. She managed to turn her head to one side and start breathing again, even though it felt as if the air wasn't going where it was supposed to. She had the strange sensation of not knowing which way her legs were turned. The very strange sensation of no longer having legs at all. She tried to get up, but she couldn't. If it weren't for the fog, someone might have seen her from above, a green stain splayed at the bottom of a gully, a few steps from the spot where a little waterfall would start flowing again in the spring, where, with the first warmth, wild strawberries would grow, and if you waited long enough they'd ripen, as sweet as candy, and you could pick a basketful in a day. Alice cried for help, but her thin voice was swallowed up by the fog. She tried to get up again, or at least to turn over, but it was no use. Her father had told her that people who freeze to death feel very hot and, just before dying, have an urge to get undressed. Almost everyone who dies of cold is found in their underwear. And hers were dirty. She was starting to lose feeling in her fingers as well. She took off her glove, blew into it, and then put it back on her clenched fist, to warm it up. She did the same with her other hand. She repeated this ludicrous gesture two or three times. It's your extremities that get you, her father always said. Your toes and fingers, your nose and ears. Your heart does everything in its power to keep the blood to itself, leaving the rest to freeze. Alice imagined her fingers turning blue and then, slowly, her arms and her legs. She thought about her heart pumping harder and harder, trying to keep in all the remaining warmth. She would go so stiff that if a wolf passed by it would snap off one of her arms just by stepping on it. They must be looking for me. I wonder if there really are any wolves around here. I can't feel my fingers anymore. If only I hadn't drunk that milk. Bo-dy weight for-ward. Of course not, wolves would be hibernating now. Eric will be furious. I don't want to race. Don't be stupid, you know very well that wolves don't hibernate. Her thoughts were growing more and more circular and illogical. The sun sank slowly behind Mount Chaberton as if nothing was the matter. The shadow of the mountains spread over Alice and the fog turned completely black. THE ARCHIMEDES PRINCIPLE 1984 2 When the twins were small and Michela was up to one of her tricks, like throwing herself downstairs in her baby walker or sticking a pea up one of her nostrils, so that she had to be taken to the emergency room to have it removed with special tweezers, their father would always say to Mattia, the firstborn, that his mother's womb was too small for both of them. "God only knows what the two of you got up to in there," he said. "I reckon all those kicks you gave your sister did her some serious damage." Then he laughed, even though it was no laughing matter. He lifted Michela in the air and buried his beard in her soft cheeks. Mattia would watch from below. He would laugh too, letting his father's words filter through him by osmosis, without really understanding them. He let them settle at the bottom of his stomach, forming a thick, sticky layer, like the sediment of wine that has aged for a long time. His father's laughter turned into a strained smile when, at two and a half, Michela still couldn't utter a single word. Not even mommy or poo-poo or sleepy or woof. Her inarticulate little cries rose from such a solitary, deserted place that they made their father shiver every time. When she was five and a half a speech therapist with thick glasses sat Michela down in front of a board with four different shapes cut out--a star, a circle, a square, and a triangle--and the corresponding colored pieces to place into the holes. Michela looked at them with wonder. "Where does the star go, Michela?" asked the speech therapist. Michela stared at the puzzle but didn't touch anything. The doctor put the yellow star in her hand. "Where does this go, Michela?" she asked. Michela looked everywhere and nowhere. She put one of the points in her mouth and began to chew on it. The speech therapist took the object out of her mouth and asked the question yet again. "Michela, do what the doctor tells you, for God's sake," snarled her father, who couldn't quite manage to stay seated, as he'd been told. "Signor Balossino, please," the doctor said in a conciliatory voice. "Children need time." And Michela took her time. A whole minute. Then she let out a heartrending groan that might have been of joy or of despair, and resolutely jammed the star in the square hole. In case Mattia had not already figured out for himself that something was not right with his sister, his classmates didn't hesitate to point it out to him. Simona Volterra, for example, during the first year of school. When the teacher said Simona, you're going to sit next to Michela this month, she refused, crossing her arms, and said I don't want to sit next to her. Mattia let Simona and the teacher argue for a while, and then said Miss, I can sit next to Michela again. Everyone had looked relieved: Michela, Simona, the teacher. Everyone except Mattia. The twins sat in the front row. Michela spent the whole day coloring, meticulously going outside the lines and picking colors at random. Blue children, red skies, all the trees yellow. She gripped the pencil like a meat pounder, pressing down so hard that she often tore the page. At her side Mattia learned to read and write, to add and subtract, and was the first in the class to master long division. His brain seemed to be a perfect machine, in the same mysterious way that his sister's was so defective. Sometimes Michela would start squirming on her chair, waving her arms around crazily, like a trapped moth. Her eyes would grow dark and the teacher, more frightened than she was, would stand and look at her, vaguely hoping that the retard really might fly away one day. Someone in the back row would giggle, someone else would go shhh. So Mattia would get up, picking up his chair so that it wouldn't scrape on the floor, and stand behind Michela, who by now was rolling her head from side to side and flailing her arms about so fast that he was afraid they would come off. Mattia would take her hands and delicately wrap her arms around her chest. "There, you don't have wings anymore," he'd whisper in her ear. It took Michela a few seconds before she stopped trembling. She'd stare into the distance for a few seconds, and then go back to tormenting her drawings as if nothing had happened. Mattia would sit back down, head lowered and ears red with embarrassment, and the teacher would go on with the lesson. In the third year of primary school the twins still hadn't been invited to any of their classmates' birthday parties. Their mother noticed and thought she could solve the issue by throwing the twins a birthday party. At dinner, Mr. Balossino had rejected the suggestion out of hand. For heaven's sake, Adele, it's already embarrassing enough as it is. Mattia sighed with relief and Michela dropped her fork for the tenth time. It was never mentioned again. Then, one morning in January, Riccardo Pelotti, a kid with red hair and baboon lips, came over to Mattia's desk. "Hey, my mom says you can come to my birthday party," he blurted, looking at the blackboard. "So can she," he added, pointing to Michela, who was carefully smoothing the surface of the desk as if it were a bedsheet. Mattia's face went red with excitement. He said thank you, but Riccardo, having gotten the weight off his chest, had already left. The twins' mother immediately became anxious and took them both to Benetton for new clothes. They went to three toy shops, but Adele couldn't make up her mind. "What sort of things is Riccardo interested in? Would he like this?" she asked Mattia, holding up a jigsaw puzzle. "How would I know?" her son replied. "He's a friend of yours. You must know what games he likes." Mattia didn't think that Riccardo was a friend of his, but he couldn't explain that to his mother. So he simply shrugged. In the end Adele opted for the Lego spaceship, the biggest and most expensive toy in the store. "Mom, it's too much," her son protested. "Nonsense. And besides, there are two of you. You don't want to make a bad impression." Mattia knew all too well that, Lego or no Lego, they would make a bad impression. With Michela, anything else was impossible. He knew that Riccardo had invited them only because he'd been told to. Michela would cling to him the whole time, spill orange juice on herself, and then start whining, as she always did when she was tired. For the first time Mattia thought it might be better to stay at home. Or rather, he thought it might be better if Michela stayed at home. "Mom," he began uncertainly. Adele was looking in her bag for her wallet. "Yes?" Mattia took a breath. "Does Michela really have to come to the party?" Adele suddenly froze and stared into her son's eyes. The cashier observed the scene indifferently, her hand open on the conveyor belt, waiting for the money. Michela was mixing up the candy on the rack. Mattia's cheeks burned, ready to receive a slap that never came. "Of course she's coming," his mother said, and that was that. Riccardo's house was less than a ten-minute walk away, and they were allowed to go on their own. At three o'clock on the dot Adele pushed the twins out the door. "Go on, or you'll be late. Remember to thank his parents," she said. Then she turned to Mattia. "Take care of your sister. You know she shouldn't eat junk." Mattia nodded. Adele kissed them both on the cheek, Michela for longer. She tidied Michela's hair under her hair band and said enjoy yourselves. On the way to Riccardo's house, Mattia's thoughts kept time with the Lego pieces, which shifted back and forth inside the box like the tide. Michela, tagging a few feet behind him, stumbled as she tried to keep up, dragging her feet through the mush of dead leaves stuck to the pavement. The air was still and cold. She's going to drop her potato chips on the rug, thought Mattia. She'll grab the ball and she won't want to give it back. "Will you hurry up?" he said, turning to his twin sister, who had suddenly crouched down in the middle of the pavement and was torturing a long worm with her finger. Michela looked at her brother as if seeing him for the first time in ages. She smiled and ran to him, clutching the worm between her fingers. "You're disgusting. Throw it away," Mattia ordered, recoiling. Michela looked at the worm again for a moment and seemed to be wondering how it had ended up in her hand. Then she dropped it and launched into a lopsided run to join her brother, who had already walked on ahead. She'll grab the ball and won't want to give it back, just like at school, he thought to himself. Mattia looked at his twin, who had his same eyes, same nose, same color hair, and a brain that belonged in the trash, and for the first time he felt genuine hatred. He took her hand to cross the street, because the cars were going fast, and it was then that the idea came to him. He let go of Michela's hand in its woolen glove, instantly thinking that it wasn't right. Then, as they were walking by the park, he changed his mind again and convinced himself that no one would ever find out. Just for a few hours, he thought. Just this once. He abruptly changed direction, dragging Michela by an arm, and entered the park. The grass was still damp from the night's frost. Michela trotted behind him, muddying her brand-new white suede boots. There was no one in the park; it was so cold that no one would have felt like going for a walk. The twins came to an area with trees, three wooden tables, and a barbecue. They had eaten lunch there once, in year one, when the teachers had taken them to collect dry leaves from which they made ugly table decorations to give to their grand-parents for Christmas. "Michela, listen to me," said Mattia. "Are you listening?" With Michela you always had to check that her narrow channel of communication was open. Mattia waited for his sister to nod. "Good. So, I have to go away for a little while, okay? But I won't be long, just half an hour," he explained. There was no reason to tell the truth, since to Michela there was little difference between half an hour and a whole day. The doctor had said that her spatiotemporal perception development had been arrested at a preconscious stage, and Mattia understood perfectly well what that meant. "You sit here and wait for me," he said to his twin. Michela stared gravely at her brother and didn't reply, because she didn't know what to say. She gave no sign of having really understood, but her eyes lit up for a moment, and for the rest of his life when Mattia thought of those eyes he thought of fear. He took a few steps away from his sister, walking backward to make sure she didn't follow him. Only prawns walk like that, his mother had yelled at him once, and they always end up crashing into something. He was about fifteen yards away and Michela had already stopped looking at him, engrossed in trying to pull a button off her woolen coat. Mattia turned around and started to run, tightly clutching the bag with the present. Inside the box more than two hundred little plastic blocks crashed into one another. It was as if they were trying to tell him something. "Hi, Mattia," Riccardo Pelotti's mother said as she opened the door. "Where's your little sister?" "She has a temperature," Mattia lied. "A mild one." "Oh, what a shame," the woman said, not seeming displeased in the slightest. She stepped aside to let him in. "Ricky, your friend Mattia is here. Come and say hello," she called, turning toward the hall. Riccardo appeared, sliding along the floor, an unpleasant expression on his face. He stopped for a second to glance at Mattia and look for traces of the retard. Relieved, he said hi. Mattia waved the bag with the present under the woman's nose. "Where shall I put this?" he asked. "What is it?" Riccardo asked suspiciously. "Legos." Riccardo grabbed the bag and disappeared down the hall. "Go with him," Mrs. Pelotti said, pushing Mattia. "The party's down there." The Pelottis' living room was decorated with bunches of balloons. On a table covered by a red paper tablecloth were bowls of popcorn and chips, a tray of dry pizza cut into squares, and a row of still unopened soda bottles of various colors. Some of Mattia's classmates had already arrived and were standing in the middle of the room guarding the table. Mattia took a few steps toward the others and then stopped a few yards away, like a satellite that doesn't want to take up too much room in the sky. No one paid him any attention. When the room was full of children, an entertainer with a red plastic nose and a clown's bowler hat made them play blindman's buff and pin the tail on the donkey. Mattia won first prize, which consisted of an extra handful of candy, but only because he could see out from under the blindfold. Everyone shouted boo, you cheated, as he shamefacedly slipped the candy into his pocket. Then, when it was dark outside, the clown turned out the lights, made them sit in a circle, and began to tell a horror story. He held a flashlight under his chin. Mattia didn't think the story was all that scary, but the face, lit up like that, sure was. The light shining from below turned it all red and revealed terrifying shadows. Mattia looked out the window to keep from looking at the clown and remembered Michela. He hadn't ever really forgotten about her, but now for the first time he imagined her all alone among the trees, waiting for him, and rubbing her face with her white gloves to warm up a bit. He got to his feet just as Riccardo's mother came into the dark room carrying a cake covered with candles, and everyone started clapping, partly for the story and partly for the cake. "I've got to go," Mattia said to her, without even giving her time to set the cake down on the table. "Right now? But the cake." "Yes, now. I've got to go." Riccardo's mother looked at him from over the candles. Lit up like that, her face was full of threatening shadows, just like the clown's. The other kids fell silent. "Okay," the woman said uncertainly. "Ricky, walk your friend to the door." "But I've got to blow out the candles." "Do as I say," his mother ordered, still staring at Mattia. "You're such a drag, Mattia." Someone started laughing. Mattia followed Riccardo to the front door, pulled his jacket from the pile, and said thanks, bye. Riccardo didn't even reply, quickly shutting the door behind him to run back to his cake. In the courtyard of Riccardo's building, Mattia glanced back at the lit window. His classmates' muffled cries filtered out like the reassuring hum of the television in the living room when his mother sent him and Michela to bed in the evening. The gate closed behind him with a metallic click and he began to run. He entered the park, but after ten yards or so the light from the street lamps was no longer enough for him to make out the gravel path. The bare branches of the trees where he had left Michela were no more than slightly darker scratches against the black sky. Seeing them from a distance, Mattia was filled with the clear and inexplicable certainty that his sister was no longer there. He stopped a few yards from the bench where Michela had been sitting a few hours before, busily ruining her coat. He stopped and listened, catching his breath, as if at any moment his sister were bound to pop out from behind a tree saying peekaboo and then run toward him, fluttering along with her crooked gait. Mattia called Michela and was startled by his own voice. He called again, more quietly. He walked over to the wooden tables and laid a hand on the spot where Michela had been sitting. It was as cold as everything else. She must have gotten bored and gone home, he thought. But if she doesn't even know the way? And she can't cross the road on her own either. Mattia looked at the park, which disappeared into the darkness. He didn't even know where it ended. He thought that he didn't want to go deeper and that he didn't have a choice. He walked on tiptoes to keep from crunching the leaves under his feet, turning his head from side to side in the hopes of spotting Michela crouching behind a tree to ambush a beetle or who knows what. He walked into the playground. He tried to remember the colors of the slide in the Sunday afternoon light, when his mother gave in to Michela's cries and let her have a few goes, even though she was too old for it. He walked along the hedge as far as the public toilets, but wasn't brave enough to go inside. He found his way back to the path, which was now just a thin strip of dirt marked by the coming and going of families. He followed it for a good ten minutes until he no longer knew where he was. Then he started crying and coughing at the same time. "You're so stupid, Michela," he said under his breath. "A stupid retard. Mom told you a thousand times to stay where you are if you get lost. . . . But you never understand anything. . . . Nothing at all." He went up a slight slope and found himself looking at the river that cut through the park. His father had told him its name loads of times, but Mattia could never remember it. A bit of light from who knows where was reflected on the water and quivered in his teary eyes. He went over to the riverbank and sensed that Michela must be somewhere close by. She liked the water. His mother always told how when they were little and she gave them a bath together, Michela would shriek like mad because she didn't want to get out, even once the water was cold. One Sunday his father had taken them to the riverbank, perhaps even to this very spot, and taught him to skip stones across the water. As he was showing him how to use his wrist to spin the stone, Michela leaned forward and slipped in up to her waist before their father caught her by the arm. He smacked her and she started whining, and then all three of them went home in silence, with long faces. The image of Michela playing with a twig and breaking up her own reflection in the water before sliding into it like a sack of potatoes ran through his head with the force of an electric shock. Exhausted, he sat down a couple of feet from the river's edge. He turned around to look behind him and saw the darkness that would last for many hours to come. He stared at the gleaming black surface of the river. Again he tried to remember its name, but couldn't. He plunged his hands into the cold earth. On the bank the dampness made it softer. He found a broken bottle, a sharp reminder of some nighttime festivity. The first time he stuck it into his hand it didn't hurt, perhaps he didn't even notice. Then he started twisting it into his flesh, digging deeper, without ever taking his eyes off the water. He expected Michela to rise to the surface from one minute to the next, and in the meantime he wondered why some things float while others don't. ON THE SKIN AND JUST BEHIND IT 1991 3 The horrible white ceramic vase, with a complicated gold floral motif, which had always occupied a corner of the bathroom, had been in the Della Rocca family for five generations, but no one really liked it. On several occasions Alice had felt an urge to hurl it to the floor and throw the countless tiny fragments in the trash can in front of the house, along with the Tetra Pak mashed-potato containers, used sanitary napkins--although certainly not used by her--and empty packets of her father's antidepressants. Alice ran a finger along the rim and thought how cold, smooth, and clean it was. Soledad, the Ecuadorean housekeeper, had become more meticulous over the years, because in the Della Rocca household details mattered. Alice was only six when she first arrived, and she had eyed her suspiciously from behind her mother's skirt. Soledad had crouched down and looked at her with wonder. What pretty hair you have, she had said, can I touch it? Alice had bit her tongue to keep from saying no and Soledad had lifted one of her chestnut curls as if it were a swatch of silk and then let it fall back. She couldn't believe that hair could be so fine. Alice held her breath as she slipped off her camisole and closed her eyes tightly for a moment. When she opened them again she saw herself reflected in the big mirror above the sink and felt a pleasurable sense of disappointment. She rolled down the elastic of her underpants a few times, so that they came just above her scar, and were stretched tightly enough to leave a little gap between the edge and her belly, forming a bridge between the bones of her pelvis. There wasn't quite room for her index finger; but being able to slip her little finger in made her crazy. There, it should blossom right there, she thought. A little blue rose, like Viola's. Alice turned to stand in profile, her right side, the good one, as she would tell herself. She brushed all her hair forward, thinking it made her look like a child possessed by demons. She pulled it up in a ponytail and then scooped it higher up on her head, the way Viola wore hers, which everyone always liked. That didn't work either. She let her hair fall on her shoulders and with her usual gesture pinned it behind her ears. She rested her hands on the sink and pushed her face toward the mirror so quickly that her eyes seemed to form one single, terrifying Cyclops eye. Her hot breath formed a halo on the glass, covering part of her face. She just couldn't figure out where Viola and her friends got those looks they went around with, breaking boys' hearts. Those merciless, captivating looks that could make or break you with a single, imperceptible flicker of the eyebrow. Alice tried to be provocative with the mirror, but saw only an embarrassed girl clumsily shaking her shoulders and looking as if she were anesthetized. The real problem was her cheeks: too puffy and blotchy. They suffocated her eyes, when all the while she wanted her gaze to land like a dagger in the stomachs of the boys whose eyes it met. She wanted her gaze to spare no one, to leave an indelible mark. Instead only her belly, bum, and tits got slimmer, while her cheeks were still like two round pillows, baby cheeks. Someone knocked at the bathroom door. "Alice, it's ready," her father's hateful voice rang out through the frosted glass. Alice didn't reply and sucked in her cheeks to see how much better she would be like that. "Alice, are you in there?" her father called. Alice puckered her lips and kissed her reflection. She brushed her tongue against its image in the cold glass. Then she closed her eyes and, as in a real kiss, swayed her head back and forth, but too regularly to be believable. She still hadn't found the kiss she really wanted on anyone's mouth. Davide Poirino had been the first to use his tongue, in the third year of secondary school. He'd lost a bet. He had rolled it mechanically around Alice's tongue three times, clockwise, and then turned to his friends and said okay? They had burst out laughing and someone had said you kissed the cripple, but Alice was happy just the same, she had given her first kiss and Davide wasn't bad at all. There had been others after that. Her cousin Walter at their grandmother's party, and a friend of Davide's whose name she didn't even know, and who had asked her in secret if he could please have a turn too. In a hidden corner of the school playground they had pressed their lips together for a few minutes, neither of them daring to move a muscle. When they had drawn apart, he had said thank you and walked off with his head held high and the springy step of a real man. But now she was lagging behind. Her classmates talked about positions, love bites, and how to use your fingers, and whether it was better with or without a condom, while Alice's lips still bore the insipid memory of a mechanical kiss in third year. "Alice? Can you hear me?" her father called again, louder this time. "Ugh. Of course I hear you," Alice replied irritably, her voice barely audible on the other side of the door. "Dinner's ready," her father repeated. "I heard you, damn it," Alice said. Then, under her breath, she added, "Pain in the ass." Soledad knew that Alice threw away her food. At first, when Alice started leaving her dinner on her plate, she said mi amorcito, eat it all up, in my country children are dying of hunger. One evening Alice, furious, looked her straight in the eyes. "Even if I stuff myself till I burst, the children in your country aren't going to stop dying of hunger," she said. So now Soledad said nothing, but put less and less food on her plate. But it didn't make any difference. Alice was quite capable of weighing up her food with her eyes and choosing her three hundred calories for dinner. The rest she got rid of, somehow or other. She ate with her right hand resting on her napkin. In front of the plate she put her wineglass, which she asked to be filled but never drank, and her water glass in such a way as to form a glass barricade. Then, during dinner, she strategically positioned the saltshaker and the oil cruet too. She waited for her family to be distracted, each absorbed in the laborious task of mastication. At that point she very carefully pushed her food, cut into small pieces, off the plate and into her napkin. Over the course of a dinner she made at least three full napkins disappear into the pockets of her sweatpants. Before brushing her teeth she emptied them into the toilet and watched the little pieces of food disappear down the drain. With satisfaction she ran a hand over her stomach and imagined it as empty and clean as a crystal vase. "Sol, damn it, you put cream in the sauce again," her mother complained. "How many times do I have to tell you that I can't digest it?" Alice's mother pushed her plate away in disgust. Alice had come to the table with a towel wrapped like a turban around her head in order to justify all the time she had spent locked away in the bathroom. She had thought for a long time whether to ask them for it. But she'd do it anyway. She wanted it too much. "I'd like to get a tattoo on my belly," she began. Her father pulled his glass away from his mouth. "Excuse me?" "You heard," said Alice, defying him with her eyes. "I want to get a tattoo." Alice's father ran his napkin over his mouth and eyes, as if to erase an ugly image that had run through his mind. Then he carefully refolded it and put it back on his knees. He picked up his fork again, trying to put on all his irritating self-control. "I don't even know how you get these ideas into your head," he said. "And what kind of tattoo would you like? Let's hear," her mother broke in, the irritable expression on her face probably due more to the cream in the sauce than to her daughter's request. "A rose. Tiny. Viola's got one." "Forgive me, but who might Viola be?" her father asked with a bit too much irony. Alice shook her head, stared at the middle of the table, and felt insignificant. "Viola's a classmate of hers," Fernanda replied emphatically. "She must have mentioned her a million times. You're not really with it, are you?" Mr. Della Rocca looked disdainfully at his wife, as if to say no one asked you. "Well, pardon me, but I don't think I'm all that interested in what Alice's classmates get tattooed on them," he pronounced at last. "At any rate you're not getting a tattoo." Alice pushed another forkful of spaghetti into her napkin. "It's not like you can stop me," she ventured, still staring at the vacant center of the table. Her voice cracked with a hint of insecurity. "Could you repeat that?" her father asked, without altering the volume and calm of his own voice. "Could you repeat that?" he asked more slowly. "I said you can't stop me," replied Alice, looking up, but she was unable to endure her father's deep, chilly eyes for more than half a second. "Is that so? As far as I know, you're fifteen years old and this binds you to the decisions of your parents for--the calculation is a very simple one--another three years," the lawyer intoned. "At the end of which you will be free to, how shall I put it, adorn your skin with flowers, skulls, or whatever you so desire." The lawyer smiled at his plate and slipped a carefully rolled forkful of spaghetti into his mouth. There was a long silence. Alice ran her thumb and forefinger along the edge of the tablecloth. Her mother nibbled on a bread stick and allowed her eyes to wander around the dining room. Her father pretended to eat heartily. He chewed with rolling motions of his jaw, and at the first two seconds of each mouthful he kept his eyes closed, in ecstasy. Alice chose to deliver the blow because she really detested him, and seeing him eat like that made even her good leg go stiff. "You don't give a damn if no one likes me," she said. "If no one will ever like me." Her father looked at her quizzically, then returned to his dinner, as if no one had spoken. "You don't care if you've ruined me forever." Mr. Della Rocca's fork froze in midair. He looked at his daughter for a few seconds, seemingly distressed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, a slight quaver to his voice. "You know perfectly well," Alice said. "You know it'll be all your fault if I'm like this forever." Alice's father rested his fork on the edge of his plate. He covered his eyes with one hand, as if thinking deeply about something. Then he got up and left the room, his heavy footsteps echoing across the gleaming marble hallway. Fernanda said, oh Alice, with neither compassion nor reproach, just a resigned shake of the head. Then she followed her husband into the next room. Alice went on staring at her full plate for about two minutes, while Soledad cleared the table, silent as a shadow. Then she stuffed the napkin filled with food into her pocket and locked herself in the bathroom. 4 P ietro Balossino had stopped trying to penetrate his son's obscure universe long ago. When he would accidentally catch sight of Mattia's arms, devastated by scars, he would think back to th	408,289
The Stranger in the Woods (Michael Finkel) (Z-Library).epub	The Stranger in the Woods The Stranger in the Woods ‘ The Stranger in the Woods is a wry meditation on one man’s attempt to escape life’s distractions and look inwards, to find meaning not by doing, but by being’ Martin Sixsmith, bestselling author of Philomena ‘Michael Finkel has somehow found a story that takes the two primary human relationships – to nature and to one another – and deftly upends our assumptions about both. His subject, Christopher Knight, survived alone for decades. In Finkel’s hands, that story assumes the power and dignity of parable and feels as if we have having been waiting our whole lives to hear what someone like Knight might say about us. This was a breath-taking book to read and many weeks later I am still thinking about the implications for our society and – by extension – for my own life’ Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging ‘Michael Finkel has done something magical with this profound book: He’s written a gripping modern parable about how one man did the unthinkable, walked away from life as we know it to find a sort of happiness in isolation and silence. His investigation runs deep, summoning not only his surprising, poignant friendship with the book’s protagonist, but also the human history of our own attempts to find meaning in a noisy world. In some sacred forest place the hermit waits for us: he is us. This book’s promise is simple: If we’re lucky enough to find him, we may find ourselves one step closer to perfection’ Michael Paterniti, bestselling author of The Telling Room and Driving Mr Albert ‘I burned through this haunting tale in one rapt sitting. Chris Knight is an American original, a man who kept himself hidden from all other humans for more than a quarter of a century. Every life choice we make comes with a price, and Knight’s can be tallied in moments of serenity and winters survived, or in break-ins and stolen propane tanks – the final calculus, astonishing, poignant, and vexing as it is, falls to us’ John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger ‘As ever, Michael Finkel’s voice in this fresh new chronicle is clean, clear, lucid – his attention fair and compassionate. The Stranger in the Woods is an altogether surprising page-turner that helps us to see his twisted saint’s essential sanity, and in so doing to question our own’ Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder and Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists ‘A fascinating account of Knight’s renunciation of humanity . . . Deeply compelling’ Publishers Weekly The Stranger in the Woods The Stranger in the Woods The Stranger in the Woods In memory of Eileen Myrna Baker Finkel The Stranger in the Woods How many things there are that I do not want. — SOCRATES , CIRCA 425 B.C. The Stranger in the Woods The Stranger in the Woods The Stranger in the Woods 1 The trees are mostly skinny where the hermit lives, but they’re tangled over giant boulders with deadfall everywhere like pick-up sticks. There are no trails. Navigation, for nearly everyone, is a thrashing, branch-snapping ordeal, and at dark the place seems impenetrable. This is when the hermit moves. He waits until midnight, shoulders his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and sets out from camp. A penlight is clipped to a chain around his neck, but he doesn’t need it yet. Every step is memorized. He threads through the forest with precision and grace, twisting, striding, hardly a twig broken. On the ground there are still mounds of snow, sun-cupped and dirty, and slicks of mud—springtime, central Maine—but he avoids all of it. He bounds from rock to root to rock without a bootprint left behind. One print, the hermit fears, might be enough to give him away. Secrecy is a fragile state, a single time undone and forever finished. A bootprint, if you’re truly committed, is therefore not allowed, not once. Too risky. So he glides like a ghost between the hemlocks and maples and white birches and elms until he emerges at the rocky shoreline of a frozen pond. It has a name, Little Pond, often called Little North Pond, though the hermit doesn’t know it. He’s stripped the world to his essentials, and proper names are not essential. He knows the season, intimately, its every gradation. He knows the moon, a sliver less than half tonight, waning. Typically, he’d await the new moon—darker is better—but his hunger had become critical. He knows the hour and minute. He’s wearing an old windup watch to ensure that he budgets enough time to return before daybreak. He doesn’t know, at least not without calculating, the year or the decade. His intention is to cross the frozen water, but this plan is fast abandoned. The day had been relatively warm, a couple of ticks above freezing—the temperature he knows—and while he’d hunkered in his camp, the weather had worked against him. Solid ice is a gift to trackless stealth, but this touch of softness will emboss every footfall. So the long way it is, back in the trees with the roots and the rocks. He knows the whole hopscotch for miles, all around Little North Pond and then to the farthest reaches of North Pond itself. He passes a dozen cabins, modest wood-sided vacation homes, unpainted, shut tight for the off-season. He’s been inside many of them, but now is not the time. For nearly an hour he continues, still attempting to avoid footprints or broken branches. Some roots he’s stepped on so often that they’re worn smooth from repetition. Even knowing this, no tracker could ever find him. He stops just before reaching his destination, the Pine Tree summer camp. The camp isn’t open, but maintenance has been around, and they’ve probably left some food in the kitchen, and there’s likely leftovers from last season. From the shadow of the forest he observes the Pine Tree property, scanning the bunkhouses, the tool shop, the rec center, the dining hall. No one. A couple of cars are in the lot, as usual. Still, he waits. You can never be too cautious. Eventually he’s ready. Motion-detecting floodlights and cameras are scattered around the Pine Tree grounds, installed chiefly because of him, but these are a joke. Their boundaries are fixed—learn where they are and keep away. The hermit zigzags across the camp and stops at a specific rock, turns it over, grabs the key hidden beneath, and pockets it for later use. Then he climbs a slope to the parking lot and tests each vehicle’s doors. A Ford pickup opens. He clicks on his penlight and peeks inside. Candy! Always good. Ten rolls of Smarties, tossed in the cup holders. He stuffs them in another pocket. He also takes a rain poncho, unopened in its packaging, and a silver-colored Armitron analog watch. It’s not an expensive watch—if it looks valuable, the hermit will not steal it. He has a moral code. But extra watches are important; when you live outside with rain and snow, breakage is inevitable. He vectors past a few more motion cameras to a back door of the dining hall. Here he sets down his canvas gym bag of break-in tools and unzips it. Inside is a pair of putty knives, a paint scraper, a Leatherman multi-tool, several long-necked flathead screwdrivers, and three backup flashlights, among other items. He knows this door—it’s already slightly scraped and dented from his work—and he selects a screwdriver and slots it into the gap between the door and frame, near the knob. One expert twist and the door pops open, and he slips inside. Penlight on, clamped in his mouth. He’s in the large camp kitchen, light flashing over stainless steel, a ceiling rack of sleeping ladles. Right turn, five paces, and to the pantry. He removes his backpack and scans the metal shelves. He grabs two tubs of coffee and drops them into his pack. Also some tortellini, a bag of marshmallows, a breakfast bar, and a pack of Humpty Dumpty potato chips. What he really desires is at the other end of the kitchen, and he heads there now, takes out the key he’d collected from beneath the rock, and inserts it into the handle of the walk-in freezer. The key is attached to a plastic four-leaf-clover key chain with one of the leaves partially broken off. A three-and-a-half-leaf clover, perhaps still lucky yet. The handle turns and he enters the freezer, and the evening’s entire mission, all the meticulous effort, feels immediately rewarded. He is deeply, almost dangerously hungry. Back at his tent, his edible supplies are a couple of crackers, some ground coffee, and a few packets of artificial sweetener. That’s it. If he’d waited much longer, he would have risked becoming tent-bound from weakness. He shines his light on boxes of hamburger patties and blocks of cheese, bags of sausage and packs of bacon. His heart leaps and his stomach calls and he sets upon the food, loading it into his backpack; smorgasbord. The Stranger in the Woods 2 Terry Hughes’s wife nudges him awake and he hears the beeps and he’s out of bed like a spring uncoiled, game on. Quick check of the monitor then a dash down the stairs, where everything’s in place: gun, flashlight, cell phone, handcuffs, sneakers. Duty belt. Duty belt? No time, forget the belt, now jump in the truck and head off. A right onto Oak Ridge, then left in a half mile, accelerating down the long driveway to the Pine Tree Camp. Headlights are off but the truck’s still noisy, so he throws it in park and vaults out of the cab. He continues on foot, fast as he can though less agile than usual. The lack of a belt means his hands are encumbered with gear. Even so, it’s full speed toward the dining hall, hurdling boulders, dodging trees, then a crouching scuttle to an exterior window. Heart pulsing like a hummingbird’s; from his bed to the window in four minutes flat. Hughes takes a breath. Then he cautiously lifts his head and steals a peek through the window, straining his eyes against the dimness of the Pine Tree kitchen. And he sees it: a person carrying a flashlight, the pale beam emanating from the open door of the walk-in freezer. Could this really, after all these years, be him? It must be. Hughes is still in his pajama pants, and he pats the clip-on holster on his waistband to make sure—yes, his weapon’s there, a little Glock .357 Sig. Loaded. No safety switch. The beam brightens and Hughes tenses and out of the freezer steps a man, hauling a backpack. He’s not quite what Hughes expected. The man is bigger, for one thing, and cleaner, his face freshly shaved. He’s wearing large nerdy eyeglasses and a wool ski cap; he roams the kitchen, seemingly unconcerned, selecting items as if in a grocery store. Hughes permits himself a flicker of satisfaction. There are rare perfect moments in law enforcement, as Sergeant Hughes well knows. He’s been a Maine game warden for eighteen years, and before that, for nearly a decade, he was a U.S. Marine. You might as well award him a PhD in grunt work, dead ends, and paper filing. But once in a beautiful while, wisdom gained through frustration pays dividends. A few weeks previous, Hughes had resolved to end the reign of the hermit. He knew that none of the usual police methods were likely to work. After a quarter century of intermittent investigations, including foot searches, flyovers, and fingerprint dusting, conducted by four separate law enforcement agencies—two county sheriff’s departments, the state police, and the game warden service—no one had even figured out the hermit’s name. So Hughes questioned experts in high-tech surveillance, he brainstormed with private detectives, he spitballed ideas with friends from the military. Nothing they came up with felt right. He phoned some acquaintances working border patrol up at Rangeley, near the Maine-Quebec crossing. It turned out that one of the guys had just returned from a training camp in which new Homeland Security equipment had been introduced—devices that offered a better method of tracking people who tried to sneak across borders. This was closely guarded technology, Hughes was told, far too sophisticated for anything a game warden might need. It sounded ideal. Hughes vowed to keep quiet about the specifics, and soon three border patrol agents were tromping around the Pine Tree kitchen. They hid one sensor behind the ice machine, another on the juice dispenser. The data-receiving unit was installed in Hughes’s home, at the top of the stairs, so that the alarm beeps would be audible in every room. Hughes devoted himself to learning the system until operating the device felt intuitive. This was not enough. To trap the hermit, he could afford little margin for sloppiness. An errant noise while Hughes approached, an inadvertent glint from his flashlight, and his plan would probably fail. He memorized the motion lights, located the best spot to ditch his truck, and rehearsed every move from his house to the camp, shaving off seconds with each practice run. He made it a nightly habit to set out all his gear; the duty-belt oversight only proved he was human. Then he waited. It took two weeks. The beeps—first heard by his wife, Kim—came shortly after one o’clock in the morning. All that, plus luck, for this perfect law enforcement moment. Hughes spies through the window as the burglar methodically fills his pack. No gray areas here; no circumstantial evidence. He has him dead to rights. And at the Pine Tree Camp, no less. Pine Tree caters to children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities—it’s a nonprofit organization, run off donations. Hughes is a longtime volunteer. He sometimes fishes with the campers on North Pond, catching bass and white perch. What kind of a guy breaks into a summer camp for disabled people, over and over? Hughes eases away from the building, keeping his head low, and quietly makes a cell-phone call. Game wardens don’t typically work burglary cases—usually it’s more illegal hunters or lost hikers—and this effort has been chiefly a spare-time obsession. He asks the dispatch office of the Maine State Police to alert Trooper Diane Vance, who has also been chasing the hermit. They’ve been colleagues forever, Hughes and Vance, both graduating from their respective academies the same year, then working together on and off for nearly two decades. His idea is to let Vance handle the arrest. And the paperwork. He returns to the window to keep guard. As Hughes watches, the man cinches his pack and heaves it to his shoulders. He departs the kitchen and disappears from Hughes’s view, into the vast empty dining room. He’s moving toward an exit, Hughes surmises, a different one from the door he’d pried open. Instinctively, Hughes maneuvers around the building to the spot where the man seems to be headed. This exterior door, like all the ones to the Pine Tree dining hall, is painted cherry red, trimmed with a green wooden frame. Hughes is without help, deep in the night, seconds away from a potentially violent encounter. It’s a complicated instant, a fraught decision. He is as prepared as possible for whatever might happen, fistfight to shoot-out. Hughes is forty-four years old but still as strong as a rookie, with a jarhead haircut and a paper-crease jawline. He teaches hand-to-hand defensive tactics at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. No way he’s going to step aside and let the intruder go. The opportunity to disrupt a felony in progress overrides all concerns. The burglar, Hughes thinks, is probably a military vet, and therefore likely armed. Maybe this guy’s combat ability is as good as his forest skills. Hughes holds his position by the cherry-red door, Glock in his right hand, flashlight in his left, his back against the building’s wall. He waits, running the contingencies through his mind, until he hears a small clink and sees the door handle turning. The burglar steps out of the dining hall and Hughes flips on his Maglite, blazing it directly in the man’s eyes, and trains the .357 square in the center of his nose, steadying his gun hand atop his flashlight hand, both arms extended. The two men are maybe a body’s length apart, so Hughes hops back a few feet—he doesn’t want the guy lunging at him—while ferociously bellowing a single phrase: “Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” The Stranger in the Woods 3 As Diane Vance drives through the dark toward the Pine Tree Camp, all she knows is that Terry Hughes is in a risky situation, without backup, pursuing a man with an amazing ability to disappear. She’s pretty certain that by the time she gets there, the guy will be gone. Or worse. He could have a gun; he could use it. This is why she’s wearing a bulletproof vest. Hughes, she’s aware, is not. Vance drives past the forest-green Maine Warden Service truck stashed beside the Pine Tree driveway and heads directly to the dining hall. There’s no sign of anyone. She steps from her squad car, wary, and calls out, “Sergeant Hughes? Sergeant Hughes?” “I’m ten forty-six!” comes his response—Maine State Police code for suspect in custody—and Vance’s concern promptly eases. Around a corner of the building she sees a scattered mess of food and a man lying on his stomach, arms behind his back. Upon being confronted by Hughes, the thief, stunned, had dropped to the cold cement without resistance. Only he’s not completely in custody. The man is wearing a thick winter jacket, and the sleeves are interfering with Hughes’s attempts to secure the handcuffs. Vance swoops in and restrains the suspect with her own set of cuffs, and now he’s fully ten forty-six. The officers guide the man into a sitting position, then help him to his feet. They pull everything out of his pockets—a pile of Smarties, the Armitron watch, the clover key chain—and check his backpack and gym bag for weapons. He could be a bomber, a terrorist, a murderer; the officers have no idea. They find only a Leatherman. The tool is engraved, commemorating the Pine Tree Camp overnight of 2000, thirteen years earlier. The man is obeying the officers’ commands but is not answering questions. He avoids eye contact. During their pat-down and search, the officers were unable to locate any identification. He did have a wallet on him, camo-patterned with a velcro closure, but inside is only a sheaf of cash. The money is clearly very old, some of it moldy. It’s late, two a.m., but Hughes phones the Pine Tree Camp’s facilities director, Harvey Chesley, who says he’ll be on his way. Hughes has a master key that allows him access to the dining hall—Chesley had given it to him, with his blessing; anything to catch the hermit—and he unlocks a door, flips on the lights, and he and Vance escort the suspect back inside the place he just burglarized. The dining room is cavernous and echoey, an expanse of blue linoleum beneath a vaulted ceiling of immense spruce rafters. It’s the off-season, and all the tables and chairs are stacked against the walls. There is a row of windows on the pond side of the hall, but there’s nothing to see in the dark. Hughes and Vance drag a metal-framed chair with a maroon plastic seat into the center of the room, and they sit the suspect down, hands still locked behind his back. The officers slide a folding table in front of him, then Vance also sits down, while Hughes remains standing. The man is still not speaking. The expression on his face appears blank and calm. It’s unsettling; a person who has just been arrested after a sudden encounter should not be silent and impassive. Hughes wonders if he’s insane. The man is wearing new-looking blue jeans, a hooded gray sweatshirt beneath a nice Columbia jacket, and sturdy work boots. It’s like he has just gone shopping at the mall. His backpack is from L. L. Bean. Only his eyeglasses, with chunky plastic frames, seem outdated. There’s no dirt on him anywhere, and little more than a shading of stubble on his chin. He has no noticeable body odor. His thinning hair, mostly covered by his wool cap, is neatly cropped. His skin is strangely pale, with several scabs on his wrists. He’s a little over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, maybe one hundred and eighty pounds. Vance, like many officers who’ve searched for the hermit, always suspected that most of the story was mythical. Now she feels more certain. No way did this guy emerge from the woods. He has a home somewhere, or a hotel room, and was just coming around to burglarize places. The camp facilities director, Chesley, soon arrives, as do the camp’s maintenance man and, later, another game warden. Chesley immediately identifies the watch the officers had removed from the suspect’s pocket. It belongs to his son, Alex, who’d left it in his truck, parked in the Pine Tree lot. The timepiece was not valuable but did have sentimental meaning; it had been a gift to Alex from his grandfather. The watch on the suspect’s wrist, meanwhile, is claimed by the maintenance man, Steve Treadwell—it had been given to him by the Sappi Fine Paper Company, marking his twenty-fifth year of working at the Skowhegan plant. There’s a lot of commotion in the room, and the suspect’s composure starts to fade. He remains seated and quiet but is soon visibly suffering, his arms shaking. Then Hughes has an idea. His confrontation with the man had been threatening and traumatic, but perhaps Vance can create a calmer atmosphere. Hughes herds all the men through a swinging door into the kitchen, leaving Vance alone with the suspect. For a little while, she lets the air in the dining hall settle. She’s followed this case, intrigued and bemused, for the entirety of her eighteen years on the force. She switches the handcuffs so the man’s arms are in front and he can sit more comfortably. Hughes comes out with bottles of water and a plate of cookies, then retreats to the kitchen. Vance removes the handcuffs completely. The man takes a drink. He’s been in custody for more than an hour and a half. Perhaps he’s realized there will be no disappearing this time. Calmly, evenly, Vance reads him his rights. He has the right to remain silent. She asks for his name. “My name is Christopher Thomas Knight,” says the hermit. The Stranger in the Woods 4 “Date of birth?” “December 7, 1965.” The sounds passing through his mouth are stuttery and clanky, an old engine struggling to turn over, each syllable a chore. But at least it seems he’s being understood; Vance is jotting things down. “Age?” The man is quiet again. His name and his birthday are durable relics, lodged in his brain. Much as you’d like, you apparently can’t forget everything. Years, he’s proven, are disposable. So he starts doing the math, uncurling his fingers to keep track. Okay, but what year is it now? They solve the problem together, he and Vance. It’s 2013. Thursday, April 4. Christopher Knight is forty-seven years old. “Address?” asks Vance. “None,” answers Knight. “Where is your mail sent?” “No mail.” “What address do you put on your tax return?” “No tax returns.” “Where are your disability checks sent?” “No checks.” “Where is your vehicle?” “No vehicle.” “Who do you live with?” “No one.” “Where do you live?” “The woods.” This is not the appropriate time, Vance understands, to initiate a debate about the veracity of these claims. Best to let the man continue. “How long,” she asks, “have you been living in the woods?” “Decades,” he says. Vance would prefer something more specific. “Since what year?” she presses. Once more with the years. He has made the decision to talk, and it’s important to him to speak strictly the truth. Anything else would be wasting words. He concentrates for a time, gazing toward the windows, still black. He remembers something. “What year,” he asks, “was the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster?” As soon as he says it, he wishes he hadn’t. The police officer is going to think he’s some lunatic environmental activist. It’s really just a news event he happened to recall. But assembling all the language needed to clarify this seems impossible, so he lets it go. Vance thumbs her phone: Chernobyl was in 1986. “That’s when I took to the woods,” says Knight. Twenty-seven years ago. He was not long out of high school, and now he’s a middle-aged man. He says he passed the time living in a tent. “Where?” asks Vance. “Somewhere in the woods a distance away,” says Knight. He never learned the name of his backyard pond, so naturally he doesn’t know what township he’s in: Rome, Maine; population one thousand and ten. He can, however, recite the name of every species of tree in his patch of forest, and in many cases describe the particular pattern of branches on those trees. “Where did you stay during winter?” Vance asks. He remained in his small nylon tent, he insists, and did not once in all those winters light a fire. Smoke might give his campsite away. Each autumn, he says, he stockpiled food at his camp, then didn’t leave for five or six months, until the snow had melted enough for him to walk through the forest without leaving prints. Vance needs a moment to consider this. Winters in Maine are long and intensely cold—a wet, windy cold, the worst kind of cold. A week of winter camping is impressive. An entire season is practically unheard of. She excuses herself and heads through the swinging door to the kitchen. The men are drinking coffee, keeping watch on Knight through the large rectangular window in the door. Vance fills them in on what he said. No one is quite sure how much to believe. It’s important, Hughes notes, before the man stops talking, to learn what he has to say about the break-in. Vance returns to Knight, and Hughes, curious, props opens the door a little to hear. Virtually all criminals, he knows, will dispute any wrongdoing—they’ll swear to God they didn’t do it, even if you’ve just watched them do it. “Do you want to tell me,” Vance says to Knight, “how you got into this building?” “I pried open a door with a screwdriver,” says Knight. To enter the freezer, he adds, he used a key he’d stolen several seasons before. He points to the three-and-a-half-leaf-clover key chain among the items strewn on the table in front of him. “Where did the money come from?” asks Vance, referring to the stack of cash, a total of $395, she’d removed from his wallet. “I gathered it over the years,” says Knight. A few bills here and there, mostly singles, from various places he broke into. He thought there might come a point when he’d have to walk into town to purchase something, but that did not happen. He says he spent no money the entire time he lived in the woods. Vance asks Knight to estimate how many times he burglarized cabins or houses or camps. There’s a protracted silence while Knight seems to be calculating. “Forty times a year,” he eventually says. Over each of the last twenty-seven years. Now it is Vance’s turn to do the math. The total’s more than a thousand—one thousand and eighty, to be exact. Each of them felonies. It’s almost certainly the biggest burglary case in the history of Maine. Possibly, in terms of the number of separate break-ins, the largest in the country. Maybe the world. Knight explains that he entered places strictly at night, after carefully trying to ensure that nobody was home. He never stole from anyone’s full-time residence, where it was more likely someone could unexpectedly show up. Instead, he burglarized only summer cabins and the Pine Tree Camp. Sometimes the cabins were unlocked; sometimes he jimmied a window or forced open a door. Pine Tree alone he broke into perhaps a hundred times. He always took all he could carry, but it wasn’t a lot, so he had to keep coming back. Vance explains that he will have to forfeit all the stolen material he possesses. She asks Knight to claim what is his. “Everything is stolen,” he says. His backpack, his boots, his break-in tools, the entirety of his campsite, and all the clothes he is wearing, right down to his underwear. “The only thing I can honestly say is mine,” he states, “are my eyeglasses.” Vance asks if he has any family in the area. “I would rather not answer that,” he says. He doesn’t know if his parents are alive or dead—he has not been in contact with anyone—but if they are alive, he hopes they never learn that he’s been found. Vance asks why, and Knight says that he wasn’t raised to be a thief. He says that he is ashamed. Knight does admit that he grew up in central Maine. He was never in the military. He says that he graduated from Lawrence High School, class of 1984. The Pine Tree Camp facilities director, Chesley, mentions that his wife also went to Lawrence, in the nearby town of Fairfield, graduating two years later. They might still have the 1984 yearbook at their house. Hughes asks Chesley to drive home and try to find it. Vance calls dispatch and runs a check on Knight. He has no criminal record; there are no warrants for his arrest. He is not listed as a missing person. His driver’s license expired on his birthday in 1987. Chesley comes back with the yearbook, the Lawrence Lyre, its navy blue cover stamped with a big silver “84.” The senior picture for Chris Knight, as he’s called, shows a kid with dark tousled hair and thick-framed eyeglasses, arms crossed, leaning back slightly against a tree, wearing a blue polo shirt with two breast pockets. He looks healthy and strong. There’s less a smile than a wry sort of smirk. He’s not pictured with any sports team or school club or anywhere else. It’s hard to tell if the same person is now sitting in the Pine Tree dining hall. Knight says that he hasn’t seen an image of himself in years, except maybe a blurry reflection in the water. There’s no mirror at his campsite, he mentions. “How do you shave?” asks Vance. “Without a mirror,” he says. He no longer knows what he looks like. He stares at the photo, squinting. His eyeglasses have been pushed up on his forehead, but now he moves them back to his nose. And this is the moment, both Hughes and Vance agree, when they suddenly feel certain—they just sense in their guts—that everything they’ve heard tonight is true. The color of the frames may have faded over the decades, but the boy in the photo and the man in the dining hall are wearing similar pairs of glasses. It’s not long before dawn now; the darkness has crested. Knight, as Vance knows, will soon be swallowed by the legal system, and perhaps never speak freely again. She’d like an explanation—why leave the rest of the world behind?—but Knight says he can’t give her a definitive reason. She points to the scabs on his wrists. “What did you do for medicine?” she asks. “Or doctors?” “I took no medications and never went to a doctor,” says Knight. As he grew older, he says, cuts and bruises healed more slowly, but he did not once suffer a serious injury. “Have you ever been sick?” asks Vance. “No,” says Knight. “You need to have contact with other humans to get sick.” “When is the last time you had contact with another human?” He never had physical contact, Knight answers, but sometime in the 1990s, he encountered a hiker while walking in the woods. “What did you say?” asks Vance. “I said, ‘Hi,’ ” Knight replies. Other than that single syllable, he insists, he had not spoken with or touched another human being, until this evening, for twenty-seven years. The Stranger in the Woods 5 Flashlights, for some families, were the first items to vanish. For others, it was a spare propane tank. Or books on a bedside table, or steaks you’d put in the freezer. In one cabin it was a cast-iron frying pan, a paring knife, and a coffeepot. Batteries, for sure, were missing—often every battery in the house. It wasn’t funny enough to be a joke, and it wasn’t serious enough to be a crime. It occupied some unsettling place between. Maybe your kids took the flashlights. You did put those steaks in the freezer, didn’t you? After all, your TV was still there, as was your computer, your camera, your stereo, and your jewelry. No windows or doors were broken. Do you call the police and tell them there’s been a burglary, that all your D batteries and your Stephen King novel are gone? You do not. But then you return to your cabin the following spring and the front door is unlocked. Or the dead bolt is undone. Or, in one case, the hot-water knob on the kitchen sink breaks off in your hand—easily, as though it has just been balanced there—and you examine the sink, then the window over the sink, and you see on the sill a few tiny white curls that look like file shavings. Then you notice that the metal lock on the window is open, and that the frame around the lock has been slightly scraped away. Holy crap, someone has been inside—and probably stepped on your faucet while wriggling through the window, then made it look like nothing was broken. Again no valuables are missing, but this time you do call the police. The police say they already know about the hermit and hope to have the case quickly solved. All summer, at barbecues and campfires, you hear a dozen similar tales. Propane tanks, batteries, and books are the constants, but also lost are an outdoor thermometer, a garden hose, a snow shovel, and a case of Heineken beer. One couple opened their place for the season and discovered that there was no mattress on one of the bunk beds. This was baffling. You couldn’t push a mattress out any of the cabin’s windows, not even close. But the front door, the only door, had been bolted and padlocked for winter. The door had been sealed when they’d arrived, the lock untouched; there was no damage anywhere. The kitchen window, however, had been jimmied open. The only idea that made even a sliver of sense was that the thief came in through the window, pried the pins out of the front door’s hinges, forced the door open from the hinge side, slid the mattress out, put the door back together, then exited through the window. It was the Pine Tree Camp, everyone learned, that was the primary target, the thief’s own private Costco. In every break-in, the damage was minimal—no broken glass, no ransacking. He was a thief, not a vandal. If he removed a door, he took the time to reattach it. Expensive items didn’t seem to interest him. Or her. Or them. Nobody knew. Because of the type of articles that were stolen, one family called him the Mountain Man, but that frightened their children, so they changed it to the Hungry Man. Most people, including the police, began referring the intruder simply as the hermit, or the North Pond hermit, or, more formally, the hermit of North Pond. Some police reports mentioned “the legend of the hermit,” and on others, where a suspect’s full name was requested, he was recorded as Hermit Hermit. Many North Pond residents were convinced that the hermit was actually a neighbor. North and Little North Ponds are in central Maine, away from the summer-congested coast and its moneyed enclaves. The roads that twist along their shorelines are mostly unpaved and bumpy, with about three hundred cabins scattered around the roughly twelve-mile circumference of the two ponds, the majority occupied only in warm weather. A few of the cabins still don’t have electricity. Neighbors tend to know one another; there’s not a lot of turnover. Some families have owned the same plot for a century. Maybe, people speculated, the break-ins were carried out by a group of local teens—a gang initiation, a prank. Or, some locals guessed, it could have been the work of an antisocial Vietnam vet. More likely, others thought, it was an inside job at Pine Tree. There were also these suspicious-looking deer hunters who came from out of state. It might’ve been one of those airplane hijackers from the 1970s, still on the run. Possibly a serial killer. And what about that guy who was always fishing by himself—had anybody been inside his cabin? Perhaps you’d find your mattress there. One summer, a family had an idea. They taped a pen on a string to their front door along with a handwritten note: “Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you.” This sparked a small fad, and soon a half dozen cabins had notes fluttering from their doors. Other residents hung shopping bags of books on their doorknobs, like donations to a school fund-raiser. There was no reply to the notes; none of the shopping bags were touched. The break-ins continued: a sleeping bag, an insulated snowmobile suit, a year’s worth of National Geographic magazines. Batteries and more batteries, including the blocky ones from cars and boats and ATVs. The same couple who lost their mattress had a backpack stolen, which triggered a panic—that was where they’d hidden their passports. Then they saw that the burglar had removed the passports and placed them in a closet before departing with the pack. Many families eventually decided to reinforce their cabins. They installed alarm systems, motion lights, stronger windows, sturdier doors. Some spent thousands of dollars. A new phrase joined the lexicon of the lakes—“hermit-proofing”—and an unfamiliar tinge of distrust settled over the community. Families that never locked their doors began locking them. Two cousins, who own nearby cabins, each thought the other was taking his propane. Several people blamed themselves for constantly misplacing items and half-jokingly worried that they were beginning to lose their minds. One man suspected his own son of burglary. The mattress-and-backpack couple decided that every time they left their cabin, even for an hour, they had to latch all the windows and set the bolt, no matter how stuffy it got inside. At the end of summer, one man returned from the hardware store with fifty sheets of plywood and a Makita screw gun, and used every one of his thousand screws to entomb his cabin for winter. The thousand screws worked, but nothing else did. Gone from other cabins were pillows and blankets, toilet paper and coffee filters, plastic coolers and Game Boys. Some families were burglarized so frequently that they learned the hermit’s tastes: peanut butter rather than tuna fish, Bud over Bud Light, briefs not boxers. He had a major sweet tooth. One kid lost all his Halloween candy; the Pine Tree Camp was short an industrial-sized tub of fudge. Early in the lake season, before Memorial Day, there was usually a rash of break-ins, then another flurry late, after Labor Day. Otherwise it was always midweek, particularly on a rainy night. None of the full-time residents ever seemed to be victimized, and he didn’t steal food items that had already been opened. One family had a running joke—“He won’t date the skinny girl”—because no matter how many times their liquor cabinet was raided, he never touched the Skinnygirl margarita drink. Ten years passed. It was the same story: almost no one could stop him, and the police couldn’t catch him. He seemed to haunt the forest. Families returned from a quick trip into town wondering if they were going to encounter a burglar. They feared he was waiting in the woods, watching. He searched your cupboards and rummaged through your drawers. Every walk to the woodpile provoked a goose-bumpy feeling that someone was lurking behind a tree. All the normal night sounds became the noises of an intruder. A few friends quietly discussed putting rat poison in food and leaving bear traps in the leaves, though they never went through with these ideas. Others said it was obvious that the hermit was harmless—just let him have your spatula and milk crates. He was hardly more trouble than the seasonal houseflies. Maine has always been a quirky place, stocked with odd characters, and now North Pond had its own folklore of a mysterious hermit. At least two kids wrote school papers about the legend. But then the crimes became more brazen. One family loaded frozen chickens in a freezer for a party and lost them all at once. At a North Pond home owners’ meeting in 2004, nearly fifteen years into the mystery, the hundred people present were asked who had suffered break-ins. At least seventy-five raised their hands. Then, at last, there was seemingly a breakthrough. As the price and size of motion-sensing security cameras decreased, several families installed them. At one cabin, where the camera was hidden in a smoke detector, there was success: the hermit was captured on film, peering into a refrigerator. The images were confusing. The thief’s face wasn’t in focus, but they appeared to show a clean, well-dressed man who was neither emaciated nor bearded—highly unlikely to have been roughing it in the woods. He didn’t appear nimble, or strong, or even outdoorsy. “Mr. Ordinary,” one person called him. It was probable, people deduced, that this so-called hermit had been a neighbor all along. No matter. With these first photos, and then others, the police were confident that capture was imminent. The images were hung in shops, post offices, town halls. A couple of officers went from cabin to cabin. Maddeningly, nobody could identify the man pictured, and the burglaries continued. Another decade elapsed. The break-ins at Pine Tree increased in both frequency and quantity of goods stolen. By this point, a quarter century in, the whole thing was absurd. There was the Loch Ness monster, the Himalayan yeti, and the North Pond hermit. One man, desperate for an answer, spent fourteen nights over the course of two summers hiding in his cabin, in the dark, holding a .357 Magnum and waiting for the hermit to break in. No luck. The general consensus was that the original thief must be retired or dead and the latest break-ins were copycat crimes. Maybe there was a second generation of that teenage gang, or a third. Kids who’d grown up with the hermit now had kids of their own. Most people resigned themselves to the idea that this was the way it would be; you’d just replace your boat battery and propane tank each summer, and go about your life. The couple who’d lost the backpack and mattress was now missing a new pair of Lands’ End blue jeans—thirty-eight-inch waist, with a brown leather belt. Finally, the most unexpected thing of all happened. The Loch Ness monster didn’t emerge from the lake; the yeti wasn’t caught strolling around Mount Everest. There are no little green men from Mars. But the North Pond hermit, it turns out, was real. When he was captured by Sergeant Hughes, he was wearing Lands’ End jeans, size thirty-eight, cinched with a brown leather belt. The Stranger in the Woods 6 Christopher Knight was arrested, charged with burglary and theft, and transported to the Kennebec County Correctional Facility, in the state capital of Augusta. For the first time in nearly ten thousand nights, he slept indoors. The Kennebec Journal broke the story, and the news elicited some strong and curious reactions. The jail was inundated with letters and phone calls and visitors; “a circus,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Ryan Reardon called it. A carpenter from Georgia volunteered to repair any cabin Knight had damaged. A woman wanted to propose marriage. One person offered Knight land to live on, rent-free, while another pledged a room in his house. People sent checks and cash. A poet sought biographical details. According to Chief Deputy Sheriff Reardon, two men, one from New York and another from New Hampshire, arrived at the jail with $5,000 in cash, Knight’s total bail. Knight was soon deemed a flight risk, and his bail was raised to $250,000. Five songs were recorded: “We Don’t Know the North Pond Hermit,” “The Hermit of North Pond,” “The North Pond Hermit,” “A Hermit’s Voice,” and “North Pond Hermit”—bluegrass, folk, alt-rock, dirge, ballad. Big G’s Deli, an iconic Maine eatery, offered a roast beef, pastrami, and onion ring sandwich called the Hermit, advertised as containing “all locally stolen ingredients.” A Dutch artist created a series of oil paintings based on Knight’s story and showed them in a gallery in Germany. Hundreds of journalists, across the United States and the world, attempted to contact him. The New York Times compared him to Boo Radley, the recluse in To Kill a Mockingbird. TV talk shows solicited his presence. A documentary film team arrived in town. Every coffee shop and barroom in central Maine, it seemed, was host to a hermit debate. In many cultures hermits have long been considered founts of wisdom, explorers of life’s great mysteries. In others they’re seen as cursed by the devil. What did Knight wish to tell us? What secrets had he uncovered? Or was he just crazy? What punishment, if any, should he receive? How had he survived? Was his story even true? And if so, why would a man remove himself so profoundly from society? The Kennebec County district attorney, Maeghan Maloney, said that Knight, who apparently wished to spend his entire life anonymous, had become “the most famous person in the state of Maine.” Knight himself, the hub of the commotion, resumed his silence. He did not issue a single word publicly. He accepted no offers—no bail, no wife, no poem, no cash. The five hundred or so dollars sent to him were placed in a restitution fund for victims of his thefts. Before his arrest the hermit had seemed completely inexplicable, but to most people his capture only enhanced the puzzle. The truth felt stranger than the myth. The Stranger in the Woods 7 I learned about Christopher Knight while scanning the news on my phone one morning, amid the din and spilled orange juice of my children. The story grabbed me. I’ve slept hundreds of nights in the wild, most of them before my wife and I had three babies in three years, an experience that bestows various blessings, though not one permitting much quiet time in the forest. I wasn’t jealous of Knight’s feat—the no-campfire rule is too brutal—but I did feel some degree of respect and a great deal of astonishment. I like being alone. My preferred exercise is solo long-distance running, and my job, as a journalist and writer, is often asocial. When life becomes overwhelming, my first thought—my fantasy—is to head for the woods. My house is a testament to runaway consumerism, but what I crave most is simplicity and freedom. Once, when my kids were all in diapers and the chaos and sleeplessness had turned poisonous, I did quit the world, albeit briefly and formally, and with the grudging consent of my wife. I fled to India and enrolled in a ten-day silent retreat, hoping that a large dose of alone time would settle my nerves. It didn’t. The retreat was secular, though heavy on meditation—we were taught an ancient style of self-contemplation known as Vipassana—and I found it grueling. It was more monastic than eremitic, with hundreds of other attendees, but we were not allowed to talk or gesture or make eye contact. The desire to socialize never left me, and simply sitting still was a physical struggle. Still, the ten days were enough for me to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully into your inner depths might be both profound and disturbing. I didn’t dare—scrutinizing oneself that candidly seemed to require bravery and fortitude I didn’t possess, as well as a tremendous amount of free time. But I never stopped thinking about what might reside down there, what insights, what truth. There were people at the retreat in India who had completed months of silent withdrawal, and the calmness and placidity they radiated made me envious. Knight had seemingly surpassed all boundaries, plunging to the bottom of the well, to the mysterious deep. Then there was the matter of books. Knight clearly loved to read. He stole, according to news reports, a lot of science fiction and spy novels and best sellers and even Harlequin romances—whatever was available in the cabins of North Pond—but one person also lost a finance textbook, a scholarly World War II tome, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. During his arrest, Knight mentioned his admiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe lived on his island almost exactly as long as Knight lived in the woods, though he had his man Friday for several years. Also, the story’s fictitious. Maeghan Maloney, the local DA, said that Knight was now reading Gulliver’s Travels in jail. Two of life’s greatest pleasures, by my reckoning, are camping and reading—most gloriously, both at once. The hermit appeared to have the same passions on an exponentially grander scale. I thought about Knight as I vacuumed the breakfast crumbs, and I thought about him as I paid bills in my office. I worried that someone with no immunity to our lifestyle, physically or mentally, was now being exposed to all our germs. And more than anything, I was eager to hear what he’d reveal. Nothing, it turned out. The reporters moved on to other matters, and the documentary team packed up and went home. My mind still swirled, my curiosity kindled. Two months after his arrest, in the late-evening calm of a house filled with sleepers, I sat at my desk and harnessed my thoughts. I took out a yellow pad of lined paper and a smooth-rolling pen. “Dear Mr. Knight,” I began. “I’m writing to you from western Montana, where I have lived for nearly twenty-five years. I’ve read a few newspaper stories about you, and I felt strongly compelled to write you a letter.” Everything I’d learned about him, I continued, had only triggered more questions. I added that I was an avid outdoorsman and that we were both in the same middle-aged part of life—I was forty-four years old, three years younger than him. I informed Knight that I was a journalist, and I photocopied a few of my recent magazine articles, including a piece on a hunter-gatherer tribe in remote East Africa whose isolation I thought might appeal to him. I mentioned my love of books and divulged that Ernest Hemingway was one of my favorites. “I hope you are coping okay in your new situation,” I wrote i	296,419
Tracks (Robyn Davidson) (Z-Library).epub	Tracks Acknowledgements I SHOULD LIKE TO thank my friend, Rick Smolan, for the photographs in this edition. I would also like to thank Janine Roberts for allowing me to use the research and several quotes from her book From Massacres to Mining. Tracks 4 M Y DEPRESSION OVER THE shooting of Kate was compounded by my escalating terror of Kurt. He seemed so out of control, so close to the edge, that I believed he had the capacity to kill, if not me and Gladdy, then at least my animals. So I had to play his game. Had to let him believe I was no threat — not worth bothering about. He thought Gladdy and I were plotting something, but he didn’t ever say as much; his mind turning over like a mill, machinating ways and means of thwarting whatever plans we were concocting. This debilitating fear, this recognition of the full potential of Kurt’s hatred of me, and the knowledge that Kurt could and would hurt me very badly if I displeased him enough, was the catalyst which transformed my vague misery and sense of defeat into an overwhelming reality. The Kurts of this world would always win — there was no standing up to them — no protection from them. With this realization came a collapse. Everything I had been doing or thinking was meaningless, trivial, in the face of the existence of Kurt. The fear was like a fungus that slowly grew over me and defeated me in the weeks that followed. I went down down down to that state that I had long since forgotten existed. I would stare for hours out of my kitchen window, unable to act. I would pick up objects, stare at them, turn them over in my hand, then put them down and wander back to the window. I slept too much, I ate too much. Tiredness overwhelmed me. I waited for the sound of a car, a voice — anything. And I tried to shake myself, slap myself, but the energy and strength that I had so taken for granted had leaked out through my fear. Yet the strange thing was I snapped out of this melancholy the moment a friend arrived. I tried to tell them about it, but the language to describe such a thing belonged to that feeling, so I joked about it instead. Yet I desperately wanted them to understand. They were evidence that reason and sanity still existed and I clung to them as if I were drowning. Kurt went away on holiday and Gladdy decided to leave while the going was good. I was happy for her; she looked better already. But I knew how much I was going to miss her, and I was frightened of being left on my own with her husband. One night I was up staying with her, as often happened these days when Kurt was away, and Katie’s ghost was still inhabiting my room at Basso’s. We had both gone to bed hours before but I could not sleep. I was again overcome by a sense of failure. Not just of the trip but a kind of personal failure — the absolute impossibility of ever winning against brute force and domination. I was worrying it over and over, trying to seek a solution, impossible in that state of mind because of its very nature. And then I thought: of course, the perfect way out — suicide. Now, this was not the ordinary chest-beating, why-are-we-born-to-suffer-and-die syndrome, this was something new. It was rational, unemotional. And I wonder now if that’s how people usually come to it. Coldly. It was so simple really. I would walk way out bush, sit myself down somewhere, and calmly put a bullet in my brain. No mess, no fuss. Just nice clean simple exit. Because no life was better than half-life. I was planning it out, the best place, the best time, when suddenly Gladdy sat bolt upright in the bed opposite me and said, ‘Rob, are you all right? Do you want a cup of coffee?’ It was the equivalent of a bucket of iced water thrown over someone in hysteria, waking me to the horror of what I was thinking, the enormity of it. I had never been to that point before, and don’t think I shall ever have to again. I worked something out that night in my shaky way. She left a few days later. I inherited her old dog Blue, a cattle dog whom she had saved from a pound a few weeks before. As we hugged goodbye, she said, ‘You know, the moment I saw you, I knew you were going to play some important part in my life. Odd, isn’t it?’ Kurt returned shortly afterwards, and his vengeance was matchless. He now had me so terrorized that I slept with a small hatchet under my pillow. He continued to try to sell the place, or at least appeared to. My brother-in-law heard about this and, to my complete bewilderment, rang Kurt and offered to buy the place for me. At first it seemed like the answer to all my problems, then I realized that it was a crazy idea. We might not be able to resell and I could be stuck looking after it for years. However, if I could keep Kurt on the hook until Gladdy got herself together enough to see a lawyer that would be a good thing. So there followed a game of cat and mouse with my tormentor. To convince him that I had every intention of buying, I had to spend most of my time up there, pretending to prepare for take-over. There were no holds barred now. I remember Kurt came down to my room at Basso’s one morning at about six, ripped all the clothes off my bed, yanked me out and screamed that if I slept in when I had the ranch, the whole thing would be worthless. The murderous light never left his eyes during those weeks. We were involved in a tacit war, both playing games, both desperate to win. He was forcing me to train the young white bull, Bubby, without benefit of nose-line or saddle, something he would never have done in the old days. This meant that I was thrown at least three times a day, and my nerves were shot to bits. The tension of doing this, coupled with the tension of playing a very dangerous game, was taking its toll. Then one morning I woke to find that he had disappeared overnight, in a puff of dust, like a genie, had sold the place secretly to some station people at half price and disappeared with all the money. He told the buyers that I went along with the ranch and would teach them all they needed to know about camels. They knew precisely nothing. I went to see them. ‘Look,’ I explained, ‘I do not go along with the place, but if you are willing to give me the two camels I want, I will certainly teach you all I know.’ They were pitifully confused. They didn’t know who was ripping off whom, or whom to trust. They acquiesced grudgingly, but kept putting off signing the piece of paper. I knew exactly the two camels I wanted, Biddy and Misch-Misch — two females because bulls were such a nuisance and quite dangerous when in season during winter. Once again I was tied to the ranch and beginning to believe that this process of trying to wheedle camels out of non-cooperative people was never-ending. I foolishly taught them enough camel-managing for them to think they didn’t need me, then, predictably, they backpedalled on the deal, offered me money for the work I had done, and dismissed me. ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘just wait until something goes wrong, you bastards, then let’s see who comes crawling to whom for what.’ And when it came, my stroke of good fortune, it was a little upward spiral of fate that made up for all the downers put together. Dearest Dookie, that most gentle of beasts, took a turn and frightened the socks, shirt, shoes and trousers off the new owner. Luckily I was there. I had been up at the ranch most of the day, arguing about pieces of paper and money and so on, and watching smugly as the man made mistakes. My heart was hardened. ‘Ha, ha,’ I sneered to myself, ‘suffer or sign.’ When the time came to hobble the camels out at night I felt I had to show him how to do it for the camels’ sakes. If he left the hobble leathers too loose, they would slip down over the hock and possibly damage the animal’s legs. First, I took out dear quiet Dookie. ‘There, you see, in that hole there, and make sure this is never so loose that it can slip over this lump here, understand?’ ‘Hmmm, yes I see.’ I let the bull go, and turned to fetch the others. Then I heard a strange rumbling sound behind me and glanced over my shoulder and froze in my tracks. I caught a look at the man’s face too. The blood had drained to his boots. Dookie had transmogrified. Dookie was coming for me with a decidedly Kurtish look in his eyes which were rolling back into his head like spun marbles. Dookie was making burbling noises and white froth was blowing out the side of his mouth. Dookie was trying to rut some rocks. Dookie was completely berserk. I had come between him and his girlfriends and for the first time in his young life he was taken over by those uncontrollable urges of a bull in season. He began thrashing his head and neck around like a whip. He was trying to gallop at me in his hobbles. He was going to try to knock me down and sit on me and crush the life and blood out of my body. ‘Dookie?’ I said, backing off. ‘Hey, Dook, this is me,’ I gasped as I made a bee-line for the gate. I hopped all five feet of it like Pop-Eye after spinach. Dookie was completely oblivious to the man who was still frozen, cowering against the wall of rocks, on the wrong side of the fence. It was me Dookie wanted. ‘Get out of there!’ I screamed as Dookie tried to bite off my head at the neck. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, get me the whip, get me the hobble chain, get me the cattle prodder!’ I yelled maniacally as Dookie pinned me to my side of the gate with his twisted neck and tried to squash me into a cardboard replica. He was leaning into the fence now, trying to smash it so he could get at me. I could not believe this. This was some nightmare from which I would wake screaming at any moment. My Dookie was a Jekyll and Hyde, a killer, a mad mad mad mad bull. The man was galvanized into action. He brought out all those instruments of torture. A cattle prod throws a huge number of volts, and this I pressed into Dookie’s snapping lips while I beat him as hard as I could across the back of the head with the hobble chain. I could barely hear my own whimpering through the fracas. Dookie did not feel a thing. He was like a windmill with teeth. I got away from the gate for a second and my mind crystallized. I raced for some ropes, a wood plank, and an iron bar weighing fifteen pounds. About five feet from the other side of the fence, Dookie’s side, was a gum tree. I walked up my side of the fence till I was in line with it. Dookie followed me bellowing and snorting and thrashing. I bent down to his front legs, threw the rope through the hobbles, cleared the fence, and quickly, oh so quickly, brought the rope around the tree and heaved with all my might. I had him tied to the tree by the legs now and I only hoped that all of it would hold. I then proceeded to bash that creature over the back of the neck with the wood, until it snapped, and then with the iron bar. Down he would go, half conscious, then up again to attack. I had the superhuman strength you only get when you are in a flat, adrenalin-pumping panic, and fighting for your life. Suddenly, Dookie sat down with a thump, shook his head a few times, and remained sitting, quietly grinding his teeth. I waited a moment, bar poised in mid-air. Are you all right, Dookie?’ I whispered. I moved up to his head. No reaction. ‘Dookie, I’m going to put this nose-line on you now and if you go crazy again, I swear I’ll kill you.’ Dookie looked at me through his long graceful lashes. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I quietly put the nose-line on him, asked him to stand up, bent down and undid the rope, took off his hobbles, and led him back into his yard. Like a little lamb he went, limping slightly. I returned to the man. ‘Well, ha ha, that’s bulls for you,’ I said, trying to will a little colour back into my cheeks. I was drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf in a high wind. His mouth was still open. We led each other inside and had a solid hit of brandy. ‘Do ah, do bulls often act like that?’ he said. ‘Oh hell yeeees,’ I answered, beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘Christ, bulls attack like that all the time.’ I had him now, I knew what was coming. I was almost overcome with glee. I tried to slather a look of sisterly concern over my face. ‘Yeah, you want to keep your kids away from those bulls, that’s for sure.’ By nine o’clock I was running down the creek towards home, whooping and shouting and leaping and laughing hysterically. He had sold me the two bulls for seven hundred dollars — money I didn’t have but which I could borrow. They weren’t the two I would have chosen, but I was in no position to look a gift-camel in the mouth. Dookie, king of kings, and Bub that incorrigible little joker were mine. I had my three camels. This miraculous turn of events opened a whole new vista of trouble for me. For a start, no matter how far I hobbled Dookie out bush, he would strain his way back to the ranch and terrorize everybody witless. He was harmless when hobbled and side-lined and legally there was nothing they could do, but I knew they were having a rough time and I felt sorry for them. I tied my boy up during the day, and let him go at night with Bub and Zelly, miles out in the hills, his feet chained together closely and cruelly; at six in the morning I would try to get him before his previous owners did. The man refused to listen to reason. Twice I caught him driving his car full pelt at Dookie’s rump, scaring the animal and making him more aggressive than ever, and possibly damaging those hobbled legs beyond repair. One day the man flew at me in a temper. ‘You’re just fooling around on a bloody holiday while I have to make a living out of these bloody animals,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you now, if that bull gets anywhere near my place, I’ll kill it.’ I saw red then. I had, after all, taught him all he knew and had he been civil I was quite willing to teach him more. He certainly hadn’t done badly on the deal. ‘And if anything happens to my Dookie, friend, you will wake up one morning and find all your camels missing. Gone out bush for a holiday.’ Counter-threatening came quite easily to me now, even though I secretly and guiltily believed him to be right. This range-war mentality had been developed over the months, years now, until it governed my attitude to the world at large. I was a battleaxe — a product of the frontier. And there were perfectly good reasons for that. Fullarton had paid me a little visit to suggest that the town wasn’t big enough for two camel businesses, should I be deciding to set one up. On one occasion some people from town came to look over the place in the hope of buying it before the Aboriginal Lands Council could get its black hands on it. They walked straight through my bedroom as if I didn’t exist, without even a how do you do or a by your leave. I was furious and told them to get out of my house, and next time to have the civility to ask permission before walking through it and taking photographs. They blustered and shouted in return that they would have me thrown out by the health department. There were also the occasional police visits to contend with. ‘Just checking up on how you’re doing,’ they would say as they made themselves at home and searched the roofless rooms, god knows for what. Molotov cocktails? Heroin? I don’t know. A couple of them even threatened to prevent my going on my trip: ‘You haven’t got a chance, you know, even men have died out there, so why should you rely on station people and us to come and rescue you?’ By this stage Julie, a friend, was living with me. We had taken up a window-cleaning business in town, pedalling in on our bikes with mops and squeegees and methylated spirits. Jenny was soon to come out too. Now that Kurt was gone I did not have to worry about my friends’ safety, and I was beginning to understand that being alone got awfully boring sometimes, and that I needed people, wanted them. Life was changing for me. I was being softened and set on a different tack by my friends; in fact things were now so comfortable I had almost forgotten about the trip. I had previously lived the life of a miserly savage at Basso’s. I ate brown rice which I have always hated, and vegetables from my impoverished garden, and then at night after work, when I had brought home the cold meat given to me by the chefs at the restaurant, Diggity, Blue and I would attack it like wolves, all eating together and fighting over the best bits. But with my friends present, there was a reason for being more civilized, easier, pleasanter. Jen was a brilliant gardener, Toly was a superb fix-it man, and Julie was a wizard cook. We lived almost luxuriously. They loved Basso’s as much as I did and each gave it an added dimension which made it more of a home. At first this was slightly difficult for me to accept. When you are used to being the queen, it is hard to consider democracy replacing lone rule. I realized how deep my resistance to change had gone when we were all sitting having tea one afternoon in the back garden. Some travelling hippies arrived. They’d heard about the place down south and were here to stay for a few days’ holiday. My hackles immediately rose and I said they couldn’t stay. When they had gone, I turned to the others and said, ‘How dare they assume they can just walk right in to someone’s private home and stay for a holiday, bloody boring insipid recorder-playing, Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull- reading weeds. Jesus.’ Jenny and Toly looked at me sideways, eyebrows slightly raised, and said nothing. But looks sometimes speak louder than words and I could see that they were thinking something like, ‘Intolerant, hypocritical old boiler, you’ve become what you most dislike.’ So I mulled that one over for a while. I tried to find out the root cause of this meanness in me, apart from the obvious things, like having to fight, at least in Alice Springs, fire with fire. I was surrounded by people who for some reason found my very presence a threat. And had I not been able to stand up to them on their terms, I would be somewhere back on the east coast, my tail between my legs. But it was more than that. For many outback people, the effect of almost total isolation coupled with that all-encompassing battle with the earth is so great that, when the prizes are won, they feel the need to build a psychological fortress around the knowledge and possessions they have broken their backs to obtain. That fiercely independent individualism was something akin to what I was feeling now — the stiffness, the inability to incorporate new people who hadn’t shared the same experience. I understood a facet of Alice Springs, and softened towards it, at that moment. Over the weeks that followed Gladdy’s departure, Blue dog had managed to inveigle his way into not only my heart, but Diggity’s also. He was a charming old codger, a dog’s dog. His primary preoccupations were eating and sleeping; these were followed, in order of preference, by chasing willing female camp dogs, and fighting male camp dogs. At first both Dig and I ordered him outside, but gradually we relented, until Blue was snoring, scratching and snuffling on our nest along with us, on those freezing desert nights. He had life pretty well cased out. He knew what was important and what was not. His fighting urge came to an abrupt end one day when he was almost killed by a pack of irate camp dogs. He licked his wounds for a week, then, with the admirable wisdom of a dog who has lived long and experienced much, retired into a noble, graceful old age. I woke one morning early to find him dying on my back porch. He had been poisoned with strychnine. By the time I had collected my wits, he was dead. I cried as I buried him. Dear old Blue did not deserve such a cruel end. There were two thoughts uppermost in my mind — who would be so sick as to do such a thing, and, thank god it wasn’t Diggity. I found out then that it was quite common for dogs to be poisoned this way in Alice Springs. Some unknown person had been doing it for twenty years and the police still had no clues. Had I not lived so long in the town, I probably would have been very surprised. As it was, I merely sighed, and thought, of course, what else could one expect of such a place. It was once again midsummer, the end of the year, and my room at Basso’s which had been so icy in winter was now a furnace. It was actually a series of cave-like rooms, all stone, with arched windows and doorways, straw on the cement floor and virtually without furniture. It was a haven for the most enormous cockroaches I have ever done battle with. They were fearless and would rise on their hind legs if confronted. They had me bluffed. As I went in at night with my candle, they would scuttle and scratch their way back into their various holes with a noise that made my skin crawl and my stomach heave. They are one creature, apart from leeches, that I simply cannot bear. I laid down large quantities of poisonous powder, something I would not normally do, but they thrived on it. They ate it, chomp chomp, for breakfast, lunch and tea and continued to grow like mutated monsters. And then there were the snakes. Basso’s was home to these exquisite creatures — they courted, bred and died there, refusing to be interfered with by humans. Although deadly, they did not bother me half as much as the cockies; I quite liked them in a respectful, distant sort of way, and I always acted on the belief that if you left them alone, they would leave you alone. But Diggity hated them with a passion. I worried for her, because she would chase them and try to kill them and although she was very good at it, it would only take one bite to kill her. One night I was sweltering in my little cave reading a book by candlelight, when Diggity began her snake vibrato, a behavioural signal that was unmistakable. Out from under my bed came a small Western Brown, on his way to do business with the world outside. It didn’t bother me too much and shortly I blew out my candle and went to sleep. Somewhere in the night I was woken up by Diggity once again, rigid beside me, hair stiff like a warthog, and teeth bared growling. I lit the candle. On the bottom of the bed on the outside of my sheet was yet another snake, dozing. Dig chased it off. I began to feel extremely goose-pimply then and I was too scared of treading on one of the things to get up and block off the door. It took me a few hours to return to sleep. I awoke at about ten in the morning to see Diggity about to pounce on a huge snake slithering under my bed. Three in one night was just too much. I blocked up all possible snake entry holes in my wall, but it was several weeks before I got a decent night’s rest. One continues to learn things in life, then promptly forget them. And I should have known by now that pride always comes before a fall. I was beginning to feel cocky. I was beginning to feel that I was in control of events, self-congratulatory, complacent. Life was good and bountiful. Nothing else could go wrong, statistics were against it. My friends were around me. I was in no danger. After all I had been through, the discomfort of not being able to get away from Basso’s for even a day seemed only the slightest of prices to pay. Toly was spending most of his weekends with us, and we all adored him. He worked as a teacher at Utopia, an Aboriginal-owned cattle station, 150 miles north. And if he whisked Jen away for days at a time, and if I could never go with them because I was chained to the camels, I tried hard not to be envious. They left big empty spaces when they disappeared. Literally hundreds of times we planned ways in which I could get to Utopia, but always some little thing cropped up and I would be unable to go. One of the little things that often cropped up was that I could spend a whole day tracking my camels. Their footprints would become all mixed up and it was difficult to sort today’s from yesterday’s. There were six or seven directions in which they would head out to feed, most of these being rocky places where tracking was not easy. They would secrete themselves away in hidden valleys or dense thickets where I could not see them — they blended in so well with the khaki and reds of the landscape. They had bells on, but I swear they held their necks perfectly still and stiff when they smelt me on the wind. When they saw me, of course, it was all, ‘Hail fellow, well met. Clang clang.’ And, ‘What kept you so long?’ And, ‘How nice to see you, Rob, what titbits have you got in your pockets?’ It got to the point where, instead of catching them, I could simply unhobble them and watch them gallop and buck all the way home, or else crawl up behind some hump and get a lift. Dookie had lost all his bull-headed silliness with the hot weather, and the three were now an inseparable team. Zelly was plumping out in all the right places and her udder was swelling nicely. Camel gestation is twelve months but I had no idea when the calf was due. They had well-defined relationships to one another. Zeleika was the street-smart, crafty, unfazable, self-possessed leader. She was wiser than the other two put together in the ways of the wild. She was the Prime Minister, while Dookie was nominally king, but if anything untoward happened he was the first to hide behind her skirts. And Bub was in love with Dookie. Dookie was his hero, and he was quite brave as long as he had Dookie’s rear end in front of his nose. If Dookie was Hardy, then Bub was definitely his Laurel. It was on one of these mornings, after I had tracked them down to the creek, that something happened which made me believe the world had stopped. Bub was lying on his side. I thought he was sunbathing so I sat next to his head and said, ‘Arra (get going), you lazy little sod, it’s time to go home,’ and put a lolly in his mouth. (They liked jelly-beans and long sticks of licorice best.) Instead of leaping up to see what other goodies I had, he continued to lie there, chewing the sweet halfheartedly, and I knew something was dreadfully wrong. I got him up and saw that he was standing on three legs. I lifted the foot and checked the soft pad underneath — there was a gash, with a wedge of glass stuck in it. Kurt had had to shoot one of his animals because of just such a wound. These pads were meant for soft sand, not sharp objects, and were the most vulnerable part of the animal. Inside the pad is a squishy, elastic sort of bladder; when pressure is put on the foot, any hole will therefore widen. It is impossible to keep them off a leg, because they need that pressure for circulation. The cut had gone straight through the bottom of the foot, and up through the hairy top surface. I thought he was finished. I sat there and wept on that river-bank for a good half hour. I howled and howled. Camels are such hardy animals, I thought, it’s just sheer perverse fate that has caused this to happen. Who is it up there who hates me? I shook my fist and howled some more. Diggity licked my face and Zelly and Dook bent down to offer their condolences. I had Bub’s big ugly head in my lap. He continued to eat jelly-beans, playing Camille admirably. I pulled myself together, took the glass out of the foot as carefully as possible, and led him slowly home. The vets I knew were out of town, I discovered when I pedalled in to the clinic, and a new inexperienced boy was doing the locum for them. He came out to Basso’s to look at Bubby, stood six feet away from the camel, said, ‘Hmm, he’s got a cut in his foot all right.’ And gave me some injections for tetanus. Not much help. I had met two women at the restaurant, Kippy and Cherie, who managed a veterinary practice in Perth. I pedalled in to work that night and told them what had happened. They came out the next day, their last in town, lanced the top hole so that it would drain, and prescribed hot water and Condy’s crystals. The foot was to be immersed in a bucket of the stuff and I was to massage the wound, cleaning it out thoroughly. Wonderful women, they gave me hope again. Toly and Jenny then built me a large holding yard out the back of Basso’s, with old star pickets, scraps of wire and netting, and various other assortments of stuff which we picked up here and there. I kept Bubby in there, treated his foot three times a day and prayed. I had now modified the treatment, with the help of the town surgeon, to inserting an infant’s nasal feeding tube into the top of the cut and dousing out the whole wound with strong antiseptic. This went on for a few weeks, and I could never be sure if the foot was healing or if rotten flesh was growing in there like mushrooms. Some days I had hope, others I was once again in the pits, whimpering for Jenny, Toly, Julie or the town surgeon to come and pull me out. Bub did not enjoy the treatments and neither did I. ‘Keep that bloody foot still, you little mongrel, or I’ll chop it off at the knee.’ He gradually came round. Soon the foot looked healthy enough for me to let him go with the others, who had been hanging around the house like bad smells, putting their long necks into the kitchen, or standing expectantly, eyes greedily bulging every time we sat in the garden for a cup of tea. My friends were falling in love with them as much as I was, though they wrongly accused me of projecting human attributes on to them. We laughed at them for hours. They were better to watch than a Marx Brothers movie. And then one bright sunny day it happened. They disappeared. Into the wild blue yonder, just like that, poof. No camels, no adorable do-no-wrong beasties. They had deserted me, the ungrateful, cunning, fickle, deceitful two-timing traitors — pissed off. It was quite usual for them to wander short distances but this time it was serious. Maybe they were bored, and looking for adventure. But I suspected Zeleika was the culprit. She was going home thank you very much, leading the others back to her herd where there were no such things as saddles and work. She was not as easily conned and bribed with hand-outs and cuddles as the others. Not as spoilt. And she had not for a minute forgotten the sweetness of freedom. I headed out as usual that morning with Dig to find their tracks. It took me about an hour to pick them up — they were heading almost due east, out into the wild hills. I followed for a couple of miles, thinking that they would be just around the next corner and imagining I could hear bells tinkling not too far away. There is a little wedge-bill bird in that country that sounds just like a camel-bell, and it often had me fooled. It was getting very hot, so I took off my shirt, put it under a bush and told Dig to wait there for me until I got back, which I thought would be about half an hour at most. She was already panting and thirsty. She hated being left behind but it was for her own good, and she obeyed. I was now into rough uninhabited country — there was no one and nothing for countless miles. I was vaguely wondering what on earth could have induced the camels to wander this far, this fast. But I wasn’t worried. I was hot on their trail — their droppings were still moist. I could see from the tracks that one of them had broken a leather strap and was dragging a chain. And I walked. And I walked. And I walked. I crossed the Todd River and immersed my boiling body in a cool pool and drank as much as I could. I wet my trousers and wound them around my head. And still I walked. My speed slowed down now as I was in stonier country. And all the while I was thinking, ‘What’s happening here? Has someone chased them? What’s going on, for Christ’s sake?’ I walked thirty miles that day, tantalized by the belief that they were just a minute ahead of me, but I heard nothing but phantom bells dinging inside my own skull, and saw nary a camel. I returned late at night to find poor Diggity almost fretted away, still sitting under the bush, her pink tongue dry as a bone, and a groove of worried dog-prints a hundred yards in the home direction, and a hundred yards in my direction. But she had stayed, faithful creature, despite what must have been an unbearable anxiety and an equally unbearable thirst. She was so relieved to see me, she almost turned herself inside out. The next day I left better prepared. I reached yesterday’s point fairly quickly — it was only about eight miles as the crow flies — to find that the tracks petered out a mile or two later into rocky escarpments. I went home and rang up all the station owners out in that direction. No, they had not seen any camels, they usually shot them anyway. But they would keep a look-out for mine. Then I found some generous people in town with a light aircraft who offered to take me up into the clouds to look for them. Julie came with me. I knew vaguely where they would be, I thought, then realized that if they could go that far in one day, they could go seven times as far, in any direction, in the week that had passed. I felt despondent. We flew in a grid pattern, much lower than regulations ordained, for about an hour. Not a sign. ‘There they are!’ I screamed, strangling the co-pilot from behind. ‘No, donkeys.’ ‘Oh.’ And as I sat, straining my eyes out the window of the plane, something rose to the surface which had been buried since the moment I decided on this trip, more than two years before. I didn’t have to go through with it. Losing the camels was the perfect excuse. I could pack my bags and say, ‘Oh, well, I did my best,’ and go on home. I had never really considered doing it of course. I had conned myself into believing I would but no one would be crazy enough to do such a thing. It was dangerous. Now, even my camels would be happy, and that would be that. And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That’s what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. Yes, exactly, only now, after all this time, I had discovered that the grenade was a dud, and I could hop right back to that same old spot which was safety. The excruciating thing was that those two selves were now warring with each other. I wanted desperately to find those camels, and I wanted desperately not to find them. The pilot snapped me back to the present dilemma. ‘Well, what do you want to do? Shall we call it a day?’ I would have said yes, but Julie talked us into one more run. And on that final turn, there they were. Julie spotted them, we took a position and flew back to the runway. And that was the point at which all my disparate selves agreed to do the trip. Tracks 3 T HE TIME HAD COME for me to choose my two camels. I singled out a stubborn but quiet old dowager called Alcoota Kate and a beautiful young wild thing — Zeleika. Sallay approved the choice and wished me well. My friends at Basso’s Farm had moved to the city, leaving the house for me to live in until it was sold. It was a stroke of luck — nothing could have been more desirable at that stage. It meant I could hobble my camels out in the wild fenceless back country where they would have plenty to eat, and I could live in a home of my own. No people. The last day at the tent was a disaster. While I was away Akhnaton had flown off with his friends never to be seen again; I had somehow to work out how to get two edgy camels six miles down a major highway without killing myself and them; Kate had sat on a broken bottle a few weeks earlier and lacerated her brisket, but no one had paid it much attention, simply treating it occasionally with Stockholm tar; Zeleika had a large infected gash in her head; and Dennis and I gave way to our hostile impulses for the last time. I got them to Basso’s at last, after only minor traumas and a near nervous collapse. There was no one but myself to rely on now, no Kurts, Sallays or Dennises to help or hinder. I cleaned their wounds, hobbled them out and watched happily as they munched their way along the dirt track leading to the hills in the east. My camels. My home. It was one of those brittle-bright days such as only a desert in bountiful season can produce. Crystal water sped down the broad bed of the Charles River, a foot or two deep in some places where it swirled around a giant trunk of a dappled river gum; black-shouldered kites hovered above their hunting grounds in the back garden, catching the light on their shimmering wings and in their blood-red predatory eyes; black cockatoos with flamboyant orange tail-feathers screeched their music through the high trees; sunlight exploded, flooding everything with its harsh pounding energy; crickets grated intermittently from the flowering pomegranates and made, together with the drone of the blow-flies in the kitchen, an anthem for hot Australian afternoons. I had never had a home of my own — having left the barred windows and regimented dormitories of boarding school to enter immediately the communal life of cheap shared houses with large groups of friends. And here I was with a whole castle where I could be queen. This sudden transition from too much bad company to the prospect of none at all was a pleasant shock. Like walking from the din of a busy street into the heavy silence of a shuttered room. I wandered and roamed through my domain, my private space, smelling its essence, accepting its claim on me and incorporating every dust mote, every spider’s web into an orgy of possessive bliss. This sprawling, tattered old stone ruin, which was sinking gracefully back into the ground from which it had come; this delightful, roofless pile of rocks with tough thriving fig trees and tall smothering grasses; its permanent guests, the snakes, lizards, insects and birds; its dramatic patterns of light and shade; its secret rooms and recesses; its unhinged doors, and its nestling correctness in the Arunta rock complex; this was my first home, where I felt such a sense of relief and belonging that I needed nothing and no one. Before that moment, I had always supposed that loneliness was my enemy. I had seemed not to exist without people around me. But now I understood that I had always been a loner, and that this condition was a gift rather than something to be feared. Alone, in my castle, I could see more clearly what loneliness was. For the first time it flashed on me that the way I had conducted my life was always to allow myself that remoteness, always protect that high, clear place that could not be shared without risking its destruction. I had paid for this over and over with moments of neurotic despair, but it had been worth it. I had somehow always countered my desire for a knight in shining armour by forming bonds with men I didn’t like, or with men who were so off the air there was no hope of a permanent relationship. I could not deny this. It lay, crystal clear, beneath the feelings of inadequacy and defeat, the clever, self-directed plan that had been working towards this realization for years. I believe the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditioned, vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up. So now, for the first time in my life, my aloneness was a treasure which I guarded like a jewel. If I saw people driving up to see me, I would most often hide. This precious happy time lasted for a month or two but, like everything, had to follow the laws of change. My closest neighbour was Ada Baxter, a handsome Aboriginal woman with a wildly passionate nature and a warm, generous heart. She loved high times and flagons of wine. Her shack, which sat at the back of Basso’s, was very different from the impoverished humpies of her relations on the other side of the creek. It had been built for her by one of her succession of white men-friends (to Ada, an association with whitefellas meant status), and in it were the treasured knick-knacks and paraphernalia of a material society which she had partly adopted but which, in essence, was not her own. She came over often to share some booze, or camp on the floor if she thought I needed protecting. Although she could not understand my desire to be alone, her company was never an infringement of my privacy, as it was easy and relaxed and carried with it that ability many Aboriginal people have to touch and be affectionate without stiffness, and to be comfortable with silence. She always addressed me as ‘my daughter’, and was as kind and understanding a mother as I could ask for. One of the potters who had lived there before had told me a very funny story about this remarkable woman. They had all been sitting at home one night, listening to the sounds of drunken battle wafting over from Ada’s camp. Suddenly, the shouts became louder and more urgent and my friend went over to see if there was any trouble. He arrived in time to see Ada’s boyfriend staggering around the shack emptying a can of petrol on the way, then bending down with shaking fingers, trying to light the stuff. It had all sunk into the dust by then, so there was no real danger, but Ada was not to know that. She had gone to the woodpile, picked up the axe and felled the man with one blow. He dropped flat on his back, blood streaming from the wound into the ground around him. My friend thought for sure Ada had killed him and screamed at the others to run for an ambulance. Being so certain there was nothing he could do for the bloody body, he did what he could for Ada who was by then in shock. With trembling fingers he wrapped her in a blanket and handed her some of his tequila. There was a groan behind him. The man struggled on to an elbow, fixed my friend with a swaying glare and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, man, can’t you see she’s had enough?’ Just before moving to Basso’s, I had met a group of young white people involved with Aboriginal rights. Like me, they had brought with them the idealism and indignant morality of their various good educations. It was against this small group that the catch-cry, ‘Do-gooder troublemakers from the city’ was levelled by many of the locals. If this were true in the beginning, and it often was, it rarely remained so, because life in Alice Springs quickly replaced political and personal naivety with astuteness. I liked these people, agreed with them and supported them, but I did not want them around me. I had won so much, had gained so much ground all on my own, that I felt, psychologically at least, self-sufficient. I did not want potential friendships complicating things. They did, after all, require energy that I needed to direct at camel trips. But two of them in particular — Jenny Green and Toly Sawenko — sought me out and wooed me with their wit, warmth and intelligence until I began, surreptitiously, to look forward to their visits, and the cheeses and wines they brought, now such a luxury in my austere, monastic life. They gradually and tactfully broke through my reserve until, months later, I had become hopelessly dependent upon them for encouragement and support, until they became so inextricably involved with that era that I cannot think of it without remembering them. The distorted memories of the next few months are all stored together in my brain like a tangled adder’s nest. I only know that from such wonderful beginnings at Basso’s, life degenerated into a farce that almost had me believing in fate. And fate was against me. I was still spending time with Kurt and Gladdy — for one thing I was manipulative enough to want to use Kurt’s yards and facilities and knowledge. This I succeeded in doing by being sweet, apologetic and everything Kurt admired in an underling. But I paid. Oh how he made me pay. There was none of the former tentative camaraderie between us. It had been replaced by total animosity. And there was Gladdy. I wanted to maintain my friendship with her, who was so badly in need of it. She had been talking about leaving Kurt, who was half-heartedly trying to sell the ranch at an astronomical price. Gladdy wanted to stick it out for a little longer, at least until the sale came through, so that she would have some money — as a symbol of having remained unbeaten rather than a desire for the money itself. And there were Frankie and Joanie, two Aboriginal children from Mount Nancy camp, with whom Gladdy and I had spent so much of our time. Joanie was a beautiful girl of about fourteen with the grace and poise of a natural model. She was also extremely bright and perceptive and, already, well acquainted with despair. I understood her depression, it was the kind engendered by a feeling of helplessness in the face of insurmountable odds. Joanie wanted things from life — things that would remain for ever out of her reach, because of her colour, because of her poverty. ‘What have I got to look forward to?’ she would say. ‘Booze? Getting married to someone who beats me up every night?’ Frankie was slightly better off. He at least had the hope of an acceptable identity as a ringer or station hand — itinerant work at best, but which would allow him a certain amount of self-worth. He was a natural clown, Frankie. And we watched lovingly when he made that transformation from child into young man, with his too large boots and his copied swagger. He would come up to visit me at Basso’s all man-talk and man-action, then suddenly, noticing it was getting dark, sheepishly change back into the boy and ask, ‘Hey, you wouldn’t mind walking me across the creek, would you? I’m scared at night.’ At first, some of the men at the camp had not understood a woman living alone. Along with one or two desperadoes from town, they sometimes came up in the middle of the night in the hope of some drunken dalliance. I had bought myself a gun, a .222 high-power rifle and 20-gauge shotgun, over-under — a beautiful instrument, but all I knew about it was that the bullet came out one end, while you held the other. I never, but never, loaded it. This, however, poked out of the door with a few curt words behind it, did not fail to make an impression. My friends were horrified when I told them I had actually pointed a gun at someone. Well, not directly at someone, I hastened to assure them, but rather aimlessly through the door and into the dark. I could see they thought I was losing my grip but I defended this growing hill billy mentality of mine, which seemed perfectly reasonable given the conditions I was living in and given my highly developed sense of aggression and property. I learnt later that the gun episodes caused endless bouts of hilarity tinged with respect down at the camp and I never had any trouble again. In fact over the months their attitude changed totally. I was now protected if anything, watched out for and looked after. And if they thought I was a bit daft, it was with an overlay of good humour. I was, through Joanie, Frankie, Gladys and Ada, getting to know them all better, beginning to overcome my shyness and my white guilt and to learn more and more about the complex problems — physical, political and emotional — all Aboriginal people have to contend with. There were approximately thirty camps in and around Alice Springs, squatting on parcels of crown land or on camping reserves on the outskirts. These had been set up over the years as traditional territorial sites for members of different surrounding tribal groups, who visited the town from their home settlements, up to several hundred miles away in the Northern Territory and South Australia. One of the main attractions of town was the easy access to alcohol, but there were other important regional resources to be found. These included Aboriginal Legal Aid, Health Services, Aboriginal Art and Craft Centre, Department of Aboriginal Affairs offices, second-hand car lots specially designed to rip off Aborigines, and other assorted bright lights. There was fairly regular movement between these Alice Springs domiciliary sites and the home settlements, although some people became permanent dwellers and built themselves huts of bush timber frames, second-hand galvanized iron, and whatever other makeshift components they could find in the municipal dump. There were five water taps to serve all thirty camps, and many people were so destitute they lived out of garbage cans, off discarded food they found at the dump and by cadging hand-outs in the street. Many were alcoholics, so whatever money they got went straight into a flagon of cheap wine. Children and women suffered the most, from malnutrition, violence and disease. Mount Nancy was the most economically successful, well-organized, socially cohesive camp in town. Small houses (financed by DAA) were beginning to replace the humpies, and an ablution block was being built. The worst camps, by comparison, were those in the dry river-bed of the Todd, right in the centre of town. The people here had no access to water, sanitation or shelter, had nothing to sustain them but alcohol. Because of the rivers land tenure, this was a primary camping ground for itinerant Aborigines. They were under threat from the town council which had been trying to extend the leases of the properties bordering the river out into the river-bed itself — a tidy way of getting rid	457,317
Walden (Thoreau, Henry David) (Z-Library).epub	Walden Spring T HE opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of ’52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point; near the shore at 33°; in the middle of Flint’s Pond, the same day, at 32½°; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In mid-winter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of a pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honey-combed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or “comb,” that is, assume the appearance of honey-comb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning glasses to melt the ice beneath. The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint’s Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun’s rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the “thundering of the pond” scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillæ. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel’s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer, it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April. Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel,—who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah,—told me, and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of Nature’s operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between them, that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, unlike any thing he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore,—at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it came to a stand still. At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off. Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated lobed and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopards’ paws or birds’ feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands , the separate streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand , still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks , like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom. The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,—for the sun acts on one side first,—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally , whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe , a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat, ( , labor, lapsus , to flow or slip downward, a lapsing;, globus , lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words,) externally a dry thin leaf , even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b . The radicals of lobe are lb , the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed,) with a liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb , the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria , on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip (labium from labor (?)) laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther. Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is “in full blast” within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter. Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces. When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter,—life-everlasting, golden-rods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds,—decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. At the approach of spring the red-squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No you don’t—chickaree—chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible. The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire,—“et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata,”—as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame,—the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,— olit, olit, olit,—chip, chip, chip, che char,—che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,—a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus , as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said. The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as on a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—the same sweet and powerful song of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A “plump” of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature. As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.— “Eurus ad Auroram, Nabathæaque regna recessit, Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.” “The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan kingdom, And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed; Or the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven.” A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,—why the judge does not dismiss his case,—why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all. “A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them. “After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?” “The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, And mortals knew no shores but their own. There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed.” On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe,—sporting there alone,—and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;-or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud. Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then? Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp,—tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hill-sides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The phœbe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrel-ful. This is the “sulphur showers” we hear of. Even in Calidas’ drama of Sacontala, we read of “rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus.” And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847. Walden Visitors I THINK that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither. I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement. One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear,—we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other’s undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough. My “best” room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the mean while. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man’s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card:— “Arrivéd there, the little house they fill, Ne looke for entertainment where none was; Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: The noblest mind the best contentment has.” When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massassoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their own words,—“He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only plank, laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” At one o’clock the next day Massassoit “brought two fishes that he had shot,” about thrice as big as a bream; “these being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting.” Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to ‘the savages’ barbarous singing, (for they used to sing themselves asleep,)” and that they might get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect. As for men, they will hardly fail one any where. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life; I mean that I had some. I met several there under more favorable circumstances than I could any where else. But fewer came to see me upon trivial business. In this respect, my company was winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side. Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,—a Canadian, a wood-chopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, “if it were not for books,” would “not know what to do rainy days,” though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles’ reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance.—“Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?”— “Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? They say that Menœtius lives yet, son of Actor, And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons, Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.” He says, “That’s good.” He has a great bundle of white-oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. “I suppose there’s no harm in going after such a thing to-day,” says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and his father’s house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house,—for he chopped all summer,—in a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn’t a-going to hurt himself. He didn’t care if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall,—loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, “How thick the pigeons are! If working every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want by hunting,—pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges,—by gosh! I could get all I should want for a week in one day.” He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last. He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well. When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at any thing which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he would exclaim,—“By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I want no better sport.” Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chicadees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his fingers; and he said that he “liked to have the little fellers about him.” In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, “Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life.” But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him out as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to fe	638,596
Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Strayed, Cheryl) (Z-Library).epub	dc91228e-8c26-4fcb-819a-12b899602dfa TRIVIA-ON-BOOKS PRESENTS –––––––– Cheryl Strayed's Wild –––––––– A TRIVIA GUIDES COLLECTION Join the trivia club –––––––– Copyright © 2015 by Trivia-On-Books. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or retransmitted, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks featured or referred to within this publication are the property of their respective trademark holders and is not sponsored, approved, licensed, or endorsed by any of their licensees or affiliates. Disclaimers and Terms of Use: This is an unofficial and unauthorized trivia guide to supplement the original book. The publisher and author do not warrant or represent that the contents within are accurate and disclaim all warranties and is not liable for any damages whatsoever. Although all attempts were made to verify information, they do not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter contained within as perceived slights of peoples, persons, organizations are unintentional and information contained within should not be used as a source of legal, business, accounting, financial, or other professional advice. Foreword –––––––– Many read the book, but many don’t like it. Many like the book, but many are not avid fans. Many call themselves avid fans, but few truly are. Come test your knowledge with a trivia quiz to the bookandsee if you have what it takes to be called an avid fan. This is the missing link to separate yourself from the crowd and find out if you really are an avid fan or not. –––––––– What will you score? –––––––– Editors at Trivia-On-Books –––––––– Attention: Get Your FREE Bonus Gifts Now Claim Our Bestselling Gift Below To say Thank You , we’ve included a FREE gift of our All-Time Top 5 Bestselling Kindle Trivia-On-Books yours FREE. Click Here to Get Instant Access. SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Table of Contents Table of Contents –––––––– The First Challenge The Second Challenge The Third Challenge The Moment of Truth –––––––– TRIVIA-ON-BOOKS PRESENTS –––––––– Cheryl Strayed's Wild The First Challenge The First Challenge Have you read the book? Question #1 "Wild" is the story of Cheryl Strayed's journey on which trail? Pacific Crest Trail Apex National Recreation Trail Big Dry Creek National Recreation Trail Crag Crest National Recreation Trail ANSWERa Pacific Crest Trail “Wild” is a memoir by Cheryl Strayed . In this book, she relived her hike of over thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer of 1995. She described in great detail the very reasons that caused her to take the journey to self-discovery. The book has been successful and sold more than 1.75 million copies in print and has been translated into over thirty languages. Question #2 When was the book “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” published? 2010 2011 2012 2013 ANSWER d 2013 Knopf took the book to publication in March of 2013. It was first written in the English language and was listed in the education and memoir genres. The paperback edition of the book contains 315 pages, but it is also available in hardcover or eBook format and as an audiobook. Goodreads users gave "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" four out of five stars as did readers on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble's website. Question #3 Where was Cheryl Strayed born? Pennsylvania Texas North Carolina Minnesota ANSWER a Pennsylvania Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania in 1968. Born to Barbara “Bobbi” Lambrecht and Ronald Nyland, Cheryl traced her love for writing back to when she was six years old. She is best known for her novel, essay, and memoir writing. Essays written by Cheryl have appeared in numerous magazines in the United States. Her work has also been published in "The Best American Essays” while one of them, entitled "Munro County," was awarded the Pushcart Prize. Question #4 Where did Cheryl Strayed relocate when she was five? Minnesota Texas Michigan Mississippi ANSWER a Minnesota Cheryl Strayed relocated to Chaska, Minnesota when she was five years old and a year later, her parents divorced. Her mother eventually remarried and moved to Aitkin County, Minnesota when she was thirteen. Her mother and stepfather, Eddie, bought forty acres of land and built a house for themselves. The house was surroundedby trees and ponds; add animal friends, from baby chicks to horses, and you make a greatcanvas. Question #5 What occurred in 1991 that resulted in Cheryl Strayed’s devastation? Her father left them Her mother died Her husband found a new love All of the above ANSWER b Her mother died Strayed’s mother, Bobbi Lambrecht died in 1991 while they were both still in college. This devastating news made her succumb to depression. She recalled her mother’s love for animals when she lived in Minnesota. She would often bring the animals into her home to care for them. To pay respects to her mother, every nearby veterinarian sent flowers to her funeral service. Four years after her mother's death, driven by the hope of discovering herself and resolving her grief, Strayed braved the Pacific Crest Trail all alone. Question #6 Where did Cheryl Strayed’s finish her college degree? University of St. Thomas University of Minnesota Rainy River Community College Century College ANSWER b University of Minnesota Strayed attended McGregor High School where she was homecoming queen. She was active in extracurricular activities and sports. Moving forward, she attended college at the University of St. Thomas. She stayed there for one year, and then transferred to the University of Minnesota, graduating with a Bachelor's in English and Women's Studies.In her early writing years, Strayed held numerous job titles including EMT, waitress, and political organizer. Question #7 What was Cheryl Strayed’s first novel and when was it published? Dear Sugar, 2000 Tiny Beautiful Things, 2012 Torch, 2006 None of the above ANSWER c Torch, 2006 "Torch," Strayed's first novel, was published in 2006. The book received much attention, and it was even named one of the greatest books of the year by The Oregonian. In 2012, "Tiny Beautiful Things," a compilation of Strayed's advice from "Dear Sugar," was published. This compilation started as a column in The Rumpus, which offers audacious advice to readers. Question #8 What name did the three men whom Cheryl Strayed met in her trail quest give her? Princess of the Pacific Crest Amozona Queen Queen of the Trail All of the above ANSWER c Queen of the Trail "Wild" begins with Cheryl Strayed telling the story of her life at age twenty-two. At age 26, she started her 1,100-mile journey, having no prior backpacking experience. She began her journey in the Mojave Desert; passing through California and Oregon, and finally ending in Washington. She also narrated her prior life experiences that led her to begin her mountain-climbing journey. Strayed met many interesting people along the Pacific Crest Trail including the three men who named her the "Queen of the Trail.” Question #9 What animal did Cheryl Strayed find the spirit of her mother in while she was on the trail? Bears Rattlesnakes Lions Fox ANSWER d Fox The difficulties Strayed faced included the death of her mother, the detachment of her stepfather, and no communication with her siblings. Because of all of the hardships she was dealing with in her personal life, Strayed began using heroin. Four years after her mother's death, driven by the hope of discovering herself and resolving her grief, Strayed braved the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed often feels that the animals she meets in her life carry the spirit of her mother. She says she found the spirit of her mother in a fox she ran into along the Pacific Crest Trail. Question #10 What did Cheryl Strayed consider as the greatest thing she has ever done? Marrying the love of her life Having twin kids Hiking the Pacific Crest All of the above ANSWER d All of the above Strayed considers hiking the Pacific Crest Trail the greatest thing she has ever done in her life, aside from being married and having children. The Pacific Crest Trail taught her how to continue moving forward in her life no matter what obstacles arise. Another struggle she had to face while she was on her book tour was she had no money to pay for rent. People thought that she would splurge on fancy things now that she was already famous, but Cheryl did otherwise. The Second Challenge The Second Challenge Do you know the author? SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Click Here to Get Instant Access to Top 5 Bestsellers for FREE. Question #1 How did Cheryl Strayed start to communicate again with her siblings? Through Facebook Through Skype Through her email All of the above ANSWER c Thru her email Strayed exhausted all means to find her half-sister and half-brother but to no avail. However, when her half-sister read her memoir, Wild, she found the courage to make herself known and send her an email. They were both ecstatic knowing that after years of longing to see each other, the day had finally arrived that their paths had crossed. Strayed says, “Life is like that. There’s always more, always a reveal.” Question #2 What did Cheryl Strayed prove wrong with her solo trail hike? That women alone are in danger Women who hike are bisexuals Women lack the ability to do manlyquests All of the above ANSWER a That women alone are in danger For Strayed to be alone on the Pacific Crest Trail went against the message often given in society that women alone are in danger. In fact, she felt that people were more excited for her and more willing to help her. Strayed is not the type of person to ask anyone for help. She was raised to do things on her own, and she sticks to that now even with her success. Strayed feels as though she could never have completed her hike without the help of the people she met along the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed says there is a sense of togetherness among hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. Question #3 What nickname did Cheryl Strayed give her backpack? Wild Wild West Monster Rodeo Desert Storm ANSWER b Monster Strayed was a music lover, and she thought she could not be without music on her trail journey. She only had the music inside of her head since Ipods and cellular phones were not yet available. Her journey allowed her to maximize her brain’s potential since there were no distractions like telephones or computers for her. She was alone with only her thoughts. A prized companion that never left her throughout the entire journey was her backpack nicknamed "Monster." Question #4 What are the three beginnings that Cheryl Strayed talked about for her planned solo hike? The decision to do it To actually do it Preparing to do it All of the above ANSWER d All of the above Strayed stated that her quest to the trail had many obstacles. She started her quest by quitting her job and finalizing her divorce, selling everything she owned and visiting her mother’s grave one last time. She drove, caught a flight to Los Angeles, and finally embarked on the hike to Pacific Crest Trail. Question #5 What color was often repeated in the memoir? Red Blue Yellow Green ANSWER d Green Strayed could clearly remember her mother making her clothes for her. She wore green pants, a green shirt, and a green bow in her hair as she accompanied her parents to each floor of the Mayo Clinic while her mother went through a series of tests. She wasn’t crazy about the green pantsuit, but she wore it as a sign of penance. She remembered not asking God for mercy because she did not believe in God in the first place. Question #6 Why did Cheryl Strayed believe her mother would not get cancer? Because her mother was pious Because her mother was a vegetarian Because her mother had never said a bad word Because her mother was very calm and peaceful ANSWER b Because her mother was a vegetarian Strayed’smother was forty-five, and she looked fine. She could remember that her mother was a vegetarian for a good number of years. She recalled how she and her siblings were made to swallow raw cloves of garlic when they had colds to prevent it from getting worse. Her mother would plant different varieties of flowers in the garden to keep bugs away instead of using pesticides. She was never a smoker. She believed that the tests done in Mayo Clinic would prove the previous diagnosis wrong. Question #7 At what age did Cheryl Strayed learn about her mother’s illness? Twenty Twenty-two Twenty-four Twenty-six ANSWER b Twenty-two She was twenty-two, and the news came as a shock. She was at the lowest point of her life and could not believe she would lose her mother to cancer. She wondered who would take care of the family and how God could let this happen. She wanted to die now rather than slowly be killed by the thought of living the rest of her life without her mother. Question #8 What childhood experience did Cheryl Strayed recall when the doctor confirm that her mother had lung cancer? Riding a bike Swimming in the sea Playing in the park Fainting in the tub Answer d Fainting in the tub When the doctor declared that it was lung cancer and that there was nothing more that could do, and that finding it so late was common, Strayed forgot to breathe. She recalled fainting once when she was three years old because she did not want to get out of the bathtub. She would ask her mother throughout her childhood to tell that story repeatedly. She was amazed and delighted by her impetuous will. Question #9 Where did Cheryl and her mother proceed right after they finish with the doctor? Main lobby Restaurant Restroom Chapel ANSWER c Restroom Strayed and her mother went to the women’s restroom, occupying the adjacent stalls, crying. They did not worry about the other people there. She could feel her mother’s weight leaning against the thin wall that separated them, and she could feel the burden because she carried it just the same. After what seemed like forever, they came out to compose themselves, looking at each other in the mirror in front of them. Question #10 What was Cheryl Strayed’s prayer while they were waiting at the pharmacy? A year, a year, a year Lord, please show us some mercy Heal my mother, Jesus None of the above ANSWER a A year, a year, a year They went straight to the pharmacy and took a seat while waiting for the prescription. They took much delight in wondering how the other patients on the lobby were thinking. Most of the time, her thoughts were about what their family would say when they found out. Her prayer was: A year, a year, a year. That was what the doctor told them; those words beat like a heart in her chest. The Third Challenge The Third Challenge Are you an Avid Fan? SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Click Here to Get Instant Access to Top 5 Bestsellers for FREE. Question #1 How did Cheryl Strayed describe her mother’s love for her family? Ten thousand promises Ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe Ten thousand and one Dalmatians None of the above ANSWER b Ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe Strayed remembered her mother as sweet and charming. Her mother would always ask her and her two siblings, “Do I love you this much?” and she would hold her hands a few inches apart. “No” they would answer, grinning. It was beyond reach. They described their mother’s love as more than the ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe. Question #2 What was the reason for Cheryl Strayed’s parents’ break-up? Her father was always drunk Her mother was addicted to casinos Her father beat her mother All of the above ANSWER c Her father beat her mother Strayed’s mother married her father and got pregnant at the young age of nineteen. Not long after they had been married, her father started beating her mother. Her mother left and came back. She lost track of the times she would leave him. Her father had been cruel to her mother several times. After nine years of cruelty, broken nose and all, her mother managed to leave her father for good. Question #3 How did Cheryl Strayed’s family manage in life after they left her father? She worked with her mother at a mine Her siblings were made to beg Her mother worked for a wealthy businessman Her mother worked multiple jobs ANSWER d Her mother worked multiple jobs To be able to put food on the table, Strayed’s mother accepted just about any job that was available to her. She waited tables at places called Norseman and Infinity. She was a factory worker during the day making plastic containers capable of holding highly corrosive chemicals. She would bring the rejects home so that the kids could make a toy out of them. They received a subsidy from the government and had presents from charity at Christmas. Question #4 What traits of Cheryl Strayed’s mother annoyed her most? Her optimism and cheer Her being bossy and arrogance Her patience and kindness Her cursing and impatience ANSWER a Her optimism and cheer Early in March, Strayed’s mother needed to go to Duluth because she was in so much pain that even putting her on socks was hard to do. She sat on the bed with her eyes closed and said to her, “Honey, this is not the way I wanted it to be, but it was the way it was.” It was the very acceptance of suffering that annoyed Strayed about her mother, her optimism and cheer. Question #5 Which part of the body did Cheryl Strayed’s mother donate when she died? Her kidneys Her eyes Her liver All of the above Answer b Her eyes When Strayed and her brother, Leif, reached their mother’s hospital room, a sign was posted on the door. A nurse explained that they had put ice on their mother’s eyes because she has just donated her corneas. Strayed opened the door, and her stepfather fetched them with arms outstretched, but she went straight to her mother’s bed. She cried her heart out, but her mother would never hear them anymore. They were late; their mother was dead. Question #6 What was the letter about which Cheryl Strayed received after her mother’s death? Letter of Condolences Letter of Thanksgiving Letter of acceptance from a University None of the above ANSWER c Letter of acceptance from a University The end of Strayed’s marriage began when she and Paul received a letter from New School in New York, a week after her mother’s death. She recalled that three months before they knew that her mother had cancer, she helped her husband, Paul, apply for a Ph.D. program to which he was accepted. In those times, it felt like it was heaven to live there but now that her mother was gone, it felt like impossible to move on with her life. Question #7 Why did Cheryl Strayed feel that so much had been denied to her? Because she wed at an early age Because she had to keep her family together Because she had to sacrifice leaving her hometown All of the above ANSWER a Because she wed at an early age When Paul had to go to New York for his Ph.D., Strayed told him to go without her. She was tormented because a part of her was terrified by his absence, but the other part hoped he would. She loved her husband, but the early commitment at the age of nineteen felt like she had been denied being attracted to other men. Question #8 Why did Paul defer his admission to New School? So Strayed could be with her family So they could work on having a baby So they could look for a new home All of the above ANSWER a So she could be with her family As Strayed waited for Paul to leave for graduate school, she made out with many men. On the other hand, her husband was thinking about her and deferred his admission for a year and stayed in Minnesota so she could be near her family. He believed this would help her cope.However, it accomplished very little. Without her mother, the family fell apart; Eddie had become a stranger, and Karen, Leif, and Strayed had moved on with their lives. Question #9 Why did Cheryl Strayed feel jealous and hurt after her husband left her? Because their friend made out with Paul Because Paul was dating many women Both a and b None of the above ANSWER c Both a and b When Strayed admitted her adulterous activities to Paul, he left her. Their friends were shocked saying their disposition told another story. When they knew the reason for the breakup, a dear friend made out with Paul, and he started dating a few women. These things hurt her and made her jealous. What was more troubling was that a friend told her that she deserved all of the things that were happening to her: a taste of her own medicine. Question #10 Who portrayed Cheryl Strayed in the movie “Wild”? Gwyneth Paltrow Alicia Silverstone Reese Witherspoon Eva Mendes ANSWER c Reese Witherspoon The film Wild was released in December 2014 with Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon portraying Cheryl Strayed, the movie’s protagonist. By the time the book was published, Pacific Standard had secured the rights to the film. Witherspoon promised the author, Cheryl Strayed, that she would make the best film she possibly could and that she would honor and protect it as she could relate to the grief that Strayed talks about in the book. She also thought the subject matter was unique. The Moment of Truth The Moment of Truth –––––––– Results May Vary –––––––– Based on the difficulty of the questions you are an Avid Fan if you’ve received less than “2” wrong. Review This Book! Attention: Get Your FREE Bonus Gifts Now Claim Our Bestselling Gift Below To say Thank You , we’ve included a FREE gift of our All-TimeTop 5 Bestselling Kindle Trivia-On-Books yours FREE. Click Here to Get Instant Access. SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com	22,208
Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) (Z-Library).epub	Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (HELEN ZIMMERN TRANSLATION) Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION PREFACE CHAPTER I PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS CHAPTER II THE FREE SPIRIT CHAPTER III THE RELIGIOUS MOOD CHAPTER IV APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES CHAPTER V THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS CHAPTER VI WE SCHOLARS CHAPTER VII OUR VIRTUES CHAPTER VIII PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES CHAPTER IX FROM THE HEIGHTS Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some adaptations from the original text were made to format it into an e-text. Italics in the original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign language phrases that were italicized. Original footnotes are put in brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. Some spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future PREFACE SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF, indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super- terrestrial" pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe- inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato, or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT. . . . Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future CHAPTER I PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS 1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk. 2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself-- THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous "Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear. 3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things." 4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. 5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half- distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"-- and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"-- makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask--in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," to translate the term fairly and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:--how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! 6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. 7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS, there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out? 8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus. 9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. 10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted . . . what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and not back! 11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still prouder!--But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself--and what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"--but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for "faculties." And what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to say. But, is that--an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere, Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, Cujus est natura sensus assoupire. But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which "German philosophy"--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas (goosefeet)?--has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into this, in short--"sensus assoupire." . . . 12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best- refuted theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an abbreviation of the means of expression)-- thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle- atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL- ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows? perhaps to DISCOVER the new. 13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength--life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles!--one of which is the instinct of self- preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles. 14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode, consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers, with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge- builders of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform. 15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our organs--? 16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me."--In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego' as cause of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the truth?" 17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula--"To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently" . . . It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates--the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has refined itself). 18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it. 19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing--he seems to have adopted a POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name--and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages. So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition "AWAY FROM WHICH we go," the sensation of the condition "TOWARDS WHICH we go," the sensation of this "FROM" and "TOWARDS" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs," commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought;--and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the "willing," as if the will would then remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey"--this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered--and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who WILLS commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will,--this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term "I": a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing--to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command--consequently obedience, and therefore action--was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. "Freedom of Will"--that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order-- who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls--indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls--to his feelings of delight as commander. L'EFFET C'EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls", on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing- as-such within the sphere of morals--regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself. 20. That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent--is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the one after the other--to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is easily enough explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar--I mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical functions--it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems, just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world- interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of the subject is least developed) look otherwise "into the world," and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.--So much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas. 21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": I mean "non-free will," which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly MATERIALISE "cause" and "effect," as the natural philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,--NOT for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "casual- connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there "law" does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as "being-in-itself," with things, we act once more as we have always acted--MYTHOLOGICALLY. The "non-free will" is mythology; in real life it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.--It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings--the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to THEIR merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is ITS "good taste." 22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but "Nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad "philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! "Everywhere equality before the law--Nature is not different in that respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic--likewise a second and more refined atheism--is once more disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maitre"--that, also, is what you want; and therefore "Cheers for natural law!"-- is it not so? But, as has been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read out of the same "Nature," and with regard to the same phenomena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of power--an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before your eyes, that almost every word, and the word "tyranny" itself, would eventually seem unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor--as being too human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable" course, NOT, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate consequences every moment. Granted that this also is only interpretation--and you will be eager enough to make this objection?--well, so much the better. 23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience--still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. If, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and m	383,813
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Volume I (Søren Kierkegaard, Howard V. Hong (Translator) etc.) (Z-Library).epub	Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments INTRODUCTION 15 [VII 1] You will perhaps recall, my dear reader, that there was a remark at the end of Philosophical Fragments (p. 162 16 ), something that might look like the promise of a sequel. Regarded as a promise [ Løfte ], that remark (“if I ever do write a second section”) was certainly as casual as possible, as far as possible from a solemn pledge [ Tro-Lovelse ]. Therefore I have not felt bound by that promise, even though from the beginning it was my intent to fulfill it and the prerequisites were already on hand concurrently with the promise. Accordingly, the promise could very well have been made with great formality, in optima forma [in the best form], but it would have been inconsistent to publish a pamphlet so constituted that it was not able, and did not want, to cause a sensation and then in it to make a formal promise that, if nothing else, is bound to cause a sensation and certainly would have caused an enormous sensation. You know how these things happen. An author publishes a very sizable book; it has been out scarcely a week when by chance he falls into conversation with a reader who, in a glow of longing, courteously and congenially asks if he will not write a new book soon. The author is enthralled—to have a reader who so quickly works his way through a big book and, despite the labor, retains a keen desire. Alas, the poor deceived author! In the course of the conversation, that sympathetically interested reader of the book, who so ardently looks forward to the new book, admits, yes, he admits that he has not even read it and probably never will find the time to do so, but at a social gathering he had attended he had heard [VII 2] mention of a new book by the same author, and to make certain of this matter is of extraordinary concern to him. An author publishes a book and thinks as follows: Now I have a month’s respite before the esteemed critics get it read. What happens? Three days later, a book notice appears, a hastily concocted outcry that ends with a promise of a review. This outcry creates an enormous sensation. Little by little, the book is forgotten; the review never appears. Two years later, there is mention of that book in some group, and a well-informed person recalls it to the recollection of the forgetful by saying: That, of course, was the book that was reviewed by F. F. Thus a promise satisfies the demands of the times. First, it causes an enormous sensation, and two years later the person making the promise still enjoys the honor of having fulfilled it. The promise is of interest, but if the promiser were to fulfill it, he would merely harm himself, because fulfilling it is of no interest. As far as my promise is concerned, its casual form was not in the least accidental, because the promise, essentially understood, was no promise, inasmuch as it had been fulfilled in the pamphlet itself. If an issue is divided into an easier part and a more difficult one, the author making the promise ought to proceed by beginning with the easier part and promise the more difficult part as a sequel. Such a promise is in earnest and in every respect worthy of acceptance. But it is much more frivolous of him to complete the more difficult part and then to promise a sequel, especially the sort of sequel that any attentive reader of the first part, provided he has the requisite education, can easily write on his own—if he should find it worth the trouble. So it is with Philosophical Fragments: the sequel, as mentioned, was only supposed to clothe the issue in historical costume. The issue was the difficulty, that is, if there is anything difficult at all in the whole matter; the historical costume is easy enough. Without wanting to affront anyone, I am of the opinion that not every young graduate in theology would have been capable of presenting the issue with even the same dialectical rhythm with which it is done in the pamphlet. I am also of the opinion that not every young graduate in theology, after reading the pamphlet, would be able to set it aside and then on his own to present the issue with just the same dialectical clarity with which it is elucidated in the pamphlet. With regard to the sequel, however, I remain convinced, yet without knowing whether this conviction would flatter anyone, that every young graduate in theology will be capable of writing it—provided he is capable of imitating the intrepid dialectical positions and movements.[VII 3] This was the nature of the promise regarding the sequel. It is therefore quite in order that it be fulfilled in a postscript, 17 and the author can scarcely be accused of the feminine practice of saying the most important thing in a postscript, that is, if the whole matter is of any importance at all. In essence, there is no sequel. In another sense, the sequel could become endless in proportion to the learnedness and erudition of the one who clothed the issue in historical dress. Honor be to learning and knowledge; praised be the one who masters the material with the certainty of knowledge, with the reliability of autopsy. 18 But the dialectical is nevertheless the vital power in the issue. If the issue is not dialectically clear, if, on the other hand, rare learning and great acumen are expended on particulars—the issue becomes only more and more difficult for the dialectically interested person. There is no denying that, in terms of thorough erudition, critical acumen, and organizational skill, much superb work has been accomplished in regard to that issue by men for whom the present author has a deep veneration and whose guidance in those student days he had wished himself capable of following with greater talent than he possesses, until, with mixed feelings of admiration for the experts and of despondency in his abandoned, doubting distress, he thought he had discovered that, despite those excellent efforts, the issue was not being advanced but suppressed. Thus, if naked dialectical deliberation shows that there is no approximation , that wanting to quantify oneself into faith along this path is a misunderstanding, a delusion , that wanting to concern oneself with such deliberations is a temptation for the believer , a temptation that he, keeping himself in the passion of faith, must resist with all his strength, lest it end with his succeeding (note well, through yielding to a temptation [ Anfægtelse 19 ], consequently through the greatest calamity) in changing faith into something else, into another kind of certainty, in substituting probabilities and guarantees, which were specifically rejected when he, himself beginning, made the qualitative transition of the leap from unbeliever to believer—if this is so, then everyone who, not entirely unfamiliar with learned scientificity and not bereft of willingness to learn, has understood it this way must also have felt his hard-pressed position when he in admiration learned to think meanly of his own insignificance in the face of those distinguished by learning and acumen and deserved renown, so that, seeking the fault in himself, he time and again returned to them, and when in despondency he had to admit that he himself was in the right. Dialectical intrepidity is not easily acquired, and the feeling of one’s abandonment (although one believes oneself to be in the right), admiration’s taking leave of those reliable teachers, is its discrimen [distinctive mark].[VII 4] What is written in the form of an introduction is related to the dialectical in a way comparable to the relation of an orator to the dialectician. The orator requires permission to speak, to expatiate in a coherent address; the other indeed desires it, since he hopes to learn from him. But the orator has rare gifts, is well acquainted with human passions, has the power of imagination to depict, and has terror at his disposal for the moment of decision. So he speaks, he carries away, and the listener loses himself in the depiction. Admiration for the distinguished speaker makes him surrender with feminine abandon; he feels his heart pounding; his whole soul is moved. Now the orator concentrates all earnestness and terror in his demeanor; he commands every objection to be silent. He carries his case to the throne of the Omniscient One. He asks if anyone in all honesty before God dares to deny what only the most ignorant, the most pitifully perplexed, would dare to deny. Gently moved, he adds the exhortation not to yield to such doubts; the only terrible thing is to fall into the temptation of doing so. He revives the troubled one, wrests him out of the terror as a mother her child, who feels reassured by the most affectionate caresses—and the poor dialectician goes home dejected. He discerns very well that the issue was not even presented, much less solved, but he does not yet have the strength to stand victorious against the force of eloquence. Here he understands with the unhappy love of admiration that there must be a prodigious legitimacy in eloquence also. When the dialectician has eventually freed himself from the orator’s domination, the systematician enters and declares with the emphasis of speculative thought: Not until the end of it all will everything become clear. Here it is a matter of persevering for a long time before there can be any question of raising a dialectical doubt. The dialectician is indeed amazed to hear the same systematician say that the system is not yet completed. Oh yes, in the end everything will become clear, but the end is not here yet. The dialectician, however, has not yet achieved dialectical intrepidity; otherwise this intrepidity would soon teach him to smile ironically at a proposition in which the thimblerigger has to such a degree assured himself of subterfuges, for it is indeed ludicrous to treat everything as completed and then to say at the end [ Slutning ] that the conclusion [ Slutning ] is lacking. In other words, if the conclusion is lacking at the end, it is also lacking at the beginning.[VII 5] This should therefore have been said at the beginning. But if the conclusion is lacking at the beginning, this means that there is no system. A house can indeed be finished even though a bell pull is lacking, but in a scholarly construction the lack of a conclusion has retroactive power to make the beginning doubtful and hypothetical, that is, unsystematic. So it is with dialectical intrepidity. But our dialectician has not yet acquired it. Consequently, with youthful decorum he abstains from every conclusion regarding the lack of a conclusion—and full of hope he begins his work. So he reads, and he is amazed. Admiration holds him captive; he submits himself to a superior power. He reads and reads and understands something, but above all he sets his hope on the clarifying reflection of the conclusion upon the whole. He finishes the book but has not found the issue presented. And yet the young dialectician puts the entire awesome trust of youth in the renowned person; yes, like a maiden who has only one wish, to be loved by that someone, so he wishes only one thing—to become a thinker. Alas, the renowned person has it in his power to decide his fate, because the youth, if he fails to understand him, is rejected and has suffered shipwreck on his one and only wish. Therefore, he does not yet dare to entrust himself to anyone and to initiate anyone into his misfortune, into the disgrace of his not understanding the renowned one. So he makes a fresh start. He translates all the more important passages into his mother tongue in order to be sure that he understands them and has not overlooked anything and thereby possibly something about the issue (for he simply cannot understand that this is nowhere to be found). Much of this he memorizes; he sketches the train of thought; he takes it along wherever he goes, occupying himself with it. He tears the notes to pieces and takes notes again. What will a person not do for the sake of his one and only wish! Then he comes to the end of the book a second time but no closer to the issue. He then buys a new copy of the same book, lest he be bothered by discouraging recollections, and journeys to a far country so as to be able to begin with renewed energy. And then what? Then he persists in this way until he finally learns dialectical intrepidity. And then what? Then he learns to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s 20 —his admiration unto the renowned person—but he also learns to hold fast to his issue despite all celebrities. The scholarly introduction distracts by its very erudition, and it looks as if the issue had been formulated the moment the learned research had reached its peak, that is, as if learned and critical striving toward perfection were identical with striving toward the issue. The rhetorical address distracts by intimidating the dialectician.[VII 6] The systematic process promises everything and keeps nothing at all. In none of these three ways does the issue emerge, especially not in the systematic process. The system presupposes faith as given 21 (a system that has no presuppositions! 22 ). Next, it presupposes that faith should be interested in understanding itself in a way different from remaining in the passion of faith, which is a presupposition (a presupposition for a system that has no presuppositions!) and a presupposition insulting to faith, a presupposition that shows precisely that faith has never been the given. The presupposition of the system—that faith is the given—dissolves into a make-believe in which the system has made itself fancy that it knew what faith is. The issue presented in that pamphlet, yet without the pretense of having solved it, since the pamphlet wanted only to present it, reads as follows: Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge? (see the title page). In the pamphlet itself (p. 162 23 ), the following passage is found: “As is well known, Christianity is the only historical phenomenon that despite the historical—indeed, precisely by means of the historical—has wanted to be the single individual’s point of departure for his eternal consciousness, has wanted to interest him otherwise than merely historically, has wanted to base his happiness on his relation to something historical.” Thus, in historical costume, the issue in question is Christianity. Accordingly, the issue pertains to Christianity. In treatise form, the issue could be formulated less problematically this way: the apologetical presuppositions of faith, approximational transitions and overtures to faith, the quantifying introduction to the decision of faith. What would then be treated would be numerous considerations that are discussed or have been discussed by theologians in introductory disciplines, in the introduction to dogmatics and in apologetics. In order, however, to avoid confusion, it should immediately be borne in mind that the issue is not about the truth of Christianity but about the individual’s relation to Christianity, consequently not about the indifferent individual’s systematic eagerness to arrange the truths of Christianity in paragraphs but rather about the concern of the infinitely interested individual with regard to his own relation to such a doctrine.[VII 7] To state it as simply as possible (using myself in an imaginatively constructing way [ experimenterende 24 ]): “I, Johannes Climacus, born and bred in this city and now thirty years old, an ordinary human being like most folk, assume that a highest good, called an eternal happiness, awaits me just as it awaits a housemaid and a professor. I have heard that Christianity is one’s prerequisite for this good. I now ask how I may enter into relation to this doctrine.” “What matchless audacity,” I hear a thinker say, “what horrendous vanity, to presume to attach such importance to one’s own little self in this world-historically concerned, this theocentric, this speculatively significant nineteenth century.” I shudder; if I had not hardened myself against various terrors, I would probably stick my tail between my legs. But in that respect I find myself free of all guilt, because it is not I who of my own accord have become so audacious; it is Christianity itself that compels me. It attaches an entirely different sort of importance to my own little self and to every ever-so-little self, since it wants to make him eternally happy, if he is fortunate enough to enter into it. That is, without having comprehended Christianity—since I am merely presenting the question—I have at least understood this much, that it wants to make the single individual eternally happy and that precisely within this single individual it presupposes this infinite interest in his own happiness as conditio sine qua non [the indispensable condition], an interest with which he hates father and mother 25 and thus probably also makes light of systems and world-historical surveys. Although an outsider, I have at least understood this much, that the only unforgivable high treason against Christianity is the single individual’s taking his relation to it for granted. However modest it may seem to be included as part of the bargain in this way, Christianity specifically regards it as effrontery. I must therefore most respectfully refuse all theocentric helpers and the assistance of helpers’ helpers to help me into Christianity in that way. So I prefer to remain where I am, with my infinite interest, with the issue, with the possibility. In other words, it is not impossible that the individual who is infinitely interested in his own eternal happiness can some day become eternally happy; on the other hand, it is certainly impossible that the person who has lost a sense for it (and such a sense can scarcely be anything but an infinite concern) can become eternally happy. Indeed, once lost, it is perhaps impossible to regain it.[VII 8] The five foolish maidens 26 had indeed lost the infinite passion of expectancy. 27 So the lamp went out. Then a cry arose that the bridegroom was coming. Then they rushed to the dealer and bought new oil and wanted to start afresh and let everything be forgotten. And, of course, everything was indeed forgotten. The door was shut and they were shut out, and when they knocked at the door, the bridegroom said to them: I do not know you. This was not just a quip by the bridegroom but a truth, for in a spiritual sense they had become unrecognizable through having lost the infinite passion. The objective issue, then, would be about the truth of Christianity. The subjective issue is about the individual’s relation to Christianity. Simply stated: How can I, Johannes Climacus, share in the happiness that Christianity promises? The issue pertains to me alone, partly because, if properly presented, it will pertain to everyone in the same way, and partly because all the others do have faith already as something given, as a trifle they do not consider very valuable, or as a trifle amounting to something only when decked out with a few demonstrations. So the presentation of the issue is not some sort of immodesty on my part, but merely a kind of lunacy. In order to make my issue as clear as possible, I shall first present the objective issue and show how that is treated. The historical will thereby receive its due. Next, I shall present the subjective issue. That is really more than the promised sequel as a clothing in historical costume, since this costume is provided merely by mentioning the word “Christianity.” 28 The first part is the promised sequel; the second part is a renewed attempt in the same vein as the pamphlet, a new approach to the issue of Fragments . Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments C HAPTER II 74 The Speculative Point of View The speculative point of view conceives of Christianity as a historical phenomenon; the question of its truth therefore becomes a matter of permeating it with thought in such a way that finally Christianity itself is the eternal thought. Now, the speculating point of view has the good quality of having no presuppositions. 75 It proceeds from nothing, assumes nothing as given, does not begin “bittweise [beggingly, by begging the presuppositions].” 76 So here we can be sure of avoiding the sort of presuppositions encountered earlier. Yet one thing is assumed: Christianity as given. It is assumed that we are all Christians. Alas, alas, alas, speculative thought is much too courteous. Yes, how strange the course of the world is! At one time it was perilous to profess being a Christian; now it is precarious to doubt that one is, especially if this doubt does not mean that one storms forth to have Christianity abolished, for that would really be something! No, if someone were to say, plainly and simply, that he was concerned about himself, that it was not quite right for him to call himself a Christian, he would not be persecuted or executed, but people would give him an angry look and say, “It is really boring of this fellow to make so much ado about nothing; why can’t he be like the rest of us, who are all Christians.[VII 38] He is just like F. F., who does not want to wear a hat, as the rest of us do, but has to be eccentric.” If he were married, his wife would tell him, “Hubby, darling, where did you ever pick up such a notion? How can you not be a Christian? You are Danish, aren’t you? Doesn’t the geography book say that the predominant religion in Denmark is Lutheran-Christian? You aren’t a Jew, are you, or a Mohammedan? What else would you be, then? It is a thousand years since paganism was superseded; so I know you aren’t a pagan. Don’t you tend to your work in the office as a good civil servant; aren’t you a good subject in a Christian nation, in a Lutheran-Christian state? So of course you are a Christian.” Lo, we have become so objective that even the wife of a civil servant argues from the whole, from the state, from the idea of society, from geographic scientificity to the single individual. It follows so automatically that the single individual is Christian, has faith, etc. that it is flippant to make so much ado about it, or certainly capricious. Since it is always unpleasant to have to admit the lack of something that everybody is assumed to possess as a matter of course, something that rightfully takes on a significance of sorts only when somebody is foolish enough to betray his flaw, 77 no wonder, then, that nobody admits it. When it is a matter of something that presupposes proficiency and the like, it is easier to make an admission. But the less significant the object, that is, less significant because everyone possesses it, the more embarrassing is the admission. And this is really the modern category pertaining to a concern about not being a Christian: it is embarrassing.—Ergo, it is a given that we are all Christians. But perhaps speculative thought says, “These are popular and commonplace observations such as are made by normal-school graduates and popularizing philosophers. Speculative thought has nothing to do with them.” Oh, how horrible to be shut out from the superior wisdom of speculative thought! And yet it seems a bit peculiar to me that there is continual talk about speculation and speculation as if this were a man or as if a man were speculation. Speculation does everything—it doubts everything etc. The speculative thinker, on the other hand, has become too objective to talk about himself. Therefore he does not say that he doubts everything but that speculation does it and that he says this of speculation—he says no more, as in a case of private proceedings.[VII 39] Now, should we not agree to be human beings! 78 As is well known, Socrates states that when we assume flute-playing, we must also assume a flutist, 79 and consequently if we assume speculative thought, we also have to assume a speculative thinker or several speculative thinkers. “Therefore, my precious human being, most honorable Mr. Speculative Thinker, you at least I venture to approach in subjective address: O my friend! How do you view Christianity, that is, are you a Christian or are you not? The question is not whether you are going further 80 but whether you are a Christian, unless going further in a speculative thinker’s relation to Christianity means ceasing to be what one was, a true feat à la Münchhausen, 81 a feat that perhaps is possible for speculative thought, for I do not comprehend this enormous power, but certainly is impossible for the speculative thinker qua human being.” The speculative thinker (that is, if he is not just as objective as the wife of that civil servant) thus wants to look at Christianity. It is a matter of indifference to him whether or not anyone accepts it; that sort of concern is left to normal-school graduates and lay people—and then, of course, also to the actual Christians, to whom it is by no means a matter of indifference whether or not they are Christians. He now looks at Christianity in order to permeate it with his speculative thought, yes, his genuine speculative thought. What if this entire undertaking were a chimera, what if it could not be done; what if Christianity is indeed subjectivity, is inward deepening, that is, what if only two kinds of people can know something about it: those who are impassionedly, infinitely interested in their eternal happiness and in faith build this happiness on their faith-bound relation to it, and those who with the opposite passion (yet with passion) reject it—the happy and the unhappy lovers? Consequently, what if objective indifference cannot come to know anything whatever? Like is understood only by like, and the old sentence, quicquid cognoscitur per modum cognoscentis cognoscitur [whatever is known is known in the mode of the knower], 82 must indeed be amplified in such a way that there is also a mode in which the knower knows nothing whatever or that his knowing amounts to a delusion. With reference to a kind of observation in which it is of importance that the observer be in a definite state, it holds true that when he is not in that state he does not know anything whatever. Now, he can deceive one by saying that he is in that state although he is not, but if it turns out so fortunately that he himself declares that he is not in the requisite state, he deceives no one. If Christianity is essentially something objective, it behooves the observer to be objective. But if Christianity is essentially subjectivity, it is a mistake if the observer is objective.[VII 40] In all knowing in which it holds true that the object of cognition is the inwardness of the subjective individual himself, it holds true that the knower must be in that state. But the expression for the utmost exertion of subjectivity is the infinitely passionate interest in its eternal happiness. Even with regard to earthly erotic love it holds true that the observer must indeed be in the inwardness of erotic love [ Elskov ]. But here the interest is not so great, because all erotic love is rooted in illusion, and that is why it has a kind of objective side, which means that speaking of an experience at second hand is still possible. If, however, erotic love is permeated by a God-relationship, then the imperfect illusion, the remaining semblance of objectivity, fades away, and it now holds true that whoever is not in this state gains nothing by all his observing. With the infinite, passionate interest in his eternal happiness, the subjective individual is at the extreme point of his exertion, at the extreme point, not where there is no object (an imperfect and undialectical distinction) but where God is negatively present in the subjectivity that with this interest is the form of the eternal happiness. The speculative thinker looks at Christianity as a historical phenomenon. But suppose Christianity is not that at all. “What obtuseness,” I hear someone say, “what matchless pursuit of originality to say that sort of thing, especially in these times when speculative thought has grasped the necessity of the historical.” 83 Yes, what is speculative thought not capable of comprehending! If a speculative thinker were to say that he had comprehended the necessity of a historical phenomenon, I would indeed bid him to occupy himself for a moment with the misgivings set forth in all simplicity in the Interlude between chapters IV and V of Fragments . Thus, for the time being, reference is made to that little section. I shall always be willing to make it the basis of further dialectical development when I have the good fortune of dealing with a speculative thinker, with a human being, because I dare not become involved with speculative thought. And now this matchless pursuit of originality! Let us take an analogy. Take a married couple. See, their marriage clearly leaves its mark in the external world; it constitutes a phenomenon in existence (on a smaller scale, just as Christianity world-historically has left its mark on all of life). But their married love is not a historical phenomenon; the phenomenal is the insignificant, has significance to the marriage partners only through their love, but looked at in any other way (that is, objectively), the phenomenal is a deception. So it is with Christianity. Is that so original? Compared with the Hegelian notion that the outer is the inner and the inner the outer, 84 it certainly is extremely original.[VII 41] But it would be even more original if the Hegelian axiom were not only admired by the present age but also had retroactive power to abolish, backward historically, the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church. 85 The invisible Church is not a historical phenomenon; as such it cannot be observed objectively at all, because it is only in subjectivity. Alas, my originality seems only mediocre. Despite all pursuit of it, of which I am nevertheless not aware, I say only what every schoolchild knows, even though he does not know how to enunciate it as clearly, something that the schoolchild indeed has in common with the great speculative thinkers, only that the schoolchild is still too immature, and the speculative thinker too overmature. There is no denying that the speculative point of view is objective. On the contrary, in order to indicate this even further, I shall again repeat my attempt to place in relation to it a subjective individual impassionedly, infinitely concerned for his eternal happiness, whereupon it will indeed become apparent that the speculative point of view is objective, inasmuch as the subjective individual becomes comic. He is not comic because he is infinitely interested (on the contrary, everyone is comic who is not infinitely, impassionedly interested and yet wants to make people think that he is interested in his eternal happiness). No, the comic is rooted in the mis-relation of the objective. If the speculative thinker is also a believer (which is also claimed), he must long since have perceived that speculative thought can never have the same meaning for him as faith. Precisely as a believer he is indeed infinitely interested in his own eternal happiness and in faith is assured of it ( N.B . the way a believing person can be assured, that is, not once for all but, with infinite, personal, passionate interest, by daily acquiring the certain 86 spirit of faith), and he does not build an eternal happiness on his speculative thought. Instead, he handles speculative thought with suspicion, lest it trick him out of the certitude of faith (which at every moment has within itself the infinite dialectic of uncertainty) into indifferent objective knowledge. Simply understood, dialectically, that is how the matter stands. Therefore, if he says that he builds his eternal happiness on speculative thought, he contradicts himself comically, because speculative thought, in its objectivity, is indeed totally indifferent to his and my and your eternal happiness, whereas an eternal happiness is specifically rooted in the subjective individual’s diminishing self-esteem acquired through the utmost exertion.[VII 42] Furthermore, he is lying with regard to posing as a believer. Or the speculative thinker is not a believer. The speculator, of course, is not comic, for he does not at all ask about his eternal happiness. The comic first emerges when the impassioned, infinitely interested subjective individual wants to relate his happiness to speculative thought. But the speculative thinker does not raise the issue we are discussing, because as a speculative thinker he becomes precisely too objective to concern himself with his eternal happiness. But I should add a word here, in case anyone misunderstands a number of my remarks, in order to make clear that he is the one who wants to misunderstand me, whereas I am not at fault. Honor be to speculative thought, praised be everyone who is truly occupied with it. To deny the value of speculative thought (even though one could wish to have the money-changers in the temple courtyard 87 etc. chased away as desecraters) would, in my eyes, be to prostitute oneself and would be especially foolish for one whose life in large part and at its humble best is devoted to its service, and especially foolish for one who admires the Greeks. After all, he must know that Aristotle, when discussing what happiness is, lodges the highest happiness in thinking, mindful of the eternal gods’ blissful pastime of thinking. 88 Furthermore, he must have both a conception of and a respect for the dauntless enthusiasm of the scholar, his perseverance in the service of the idea. But for the speculating thinker the question of his personal eternal happiness cannot come up at all, precisely because his task consists in going away from himself more and more and becoming objective and in that way disappearing from himself and becoming the gazing power of speculative thought. I am well acquainted with all this. But note that the blessed gods, those grand prototypes for the speculative thinker, were not in the least concerned about their eternal happiness. Therefore, the issue never arose in paganism. But to deal with Christianity in the same way leads only to confusion. Since a human being is a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal, 89 the speculative happiness that a speculator can enjoy will be an illusion, because he wants to be exclusively eternal within time. Therein lies the speculator’s untruth.[VII 43] Higher, therefore, than that happiness is the impassioned, infinite interest in one’s personal eternal happiness. It is higher precisely because it is truer, because it definitely expresses the synthesis. Understood in this way (and in a certain sense it would not even need to be explained whether the infinite interest in one’s eternal happiness is something higher, since the main consideration is simply that this is what is being asked about), the comic readily becomes manifest in the contradiction. The subjective individual is impassionedly, infinitely interested in his eternal happiness and is now supposed to be helped by speculative thought, that is, by his own speculating. But in order to speculate, he must take the very opposite path, must abandon and lose himself in objectivity, disappear from himself. This incongruity will completely prevent him from beginning and will pass comic judgment on every affirmation that he has gained something in taking this path. This is, from the opposite side, identical with what was said previously about the observer’s relation to Christianity. Christianity cannot be observed objectively, precisely because it wants to lead the subject to the ultimate point of his subjectivity, and when the subject is thus properly positioned, he cannot tie his eternal happiness to speculative thought. By means of a metaphor, I shall try to illustrate the contradiction between the impassioned, infinitely interested subject and speculative thought, if it is supposed to help him. In sawing wood, one should not press down too hard on the saw; the lighter the touch of the sawer, the better the saw functions. If one presses down on the saw with all one’s might, one will never manage to saw at all. Similarly, the speculative thinker should make himself objectively light, but whoever is impassionedly, infinitely interested in his eternal happiness makes himself as subjectively heavy as possible. Precisely thereby he makes it impossible for himself to speculate. Now, if Christianity requires this infinite interest in the individual subject (which is assumed, since the issue revolves around it), it is easy to see that in speculative thought he cannot possibly find what he is seeking.—This can also be expressed as follows: speculative thought does not permit the issue to arise at all, and thus all of its response is only a mystification. 90 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments * 25 Double-reflection is already implicit in the idea of communication itself: that the subjective individual (who by inwardness wants to express the life of the eternal, in which all sociality and all companionship are inconceivable because the existence-category, movement, is inconceivable here, and hence essential communication is also inconceivable because everyone must be assumed to possess everything essentially), existing in the isolation of inwardness, wants to communicate himself, consequently that he simultaneously wants to keep his thinking in the inwardness of his subjective existence and yet wants to communicate himself. It is not possible (except for thoughtlessness, for which all things are indeed possible) for this contradiction to become manifest in a direct form. —It is not so difficult, however, to understand that a subject existing in this way may want to communicate himself. A person in love, for instance, to whom his erotic love is his very inwardness, may well want to communicate himself, but not directly, just because the inwardness of erotic love is the main thing for him. Essentially occupied with continually acquiring the inwardness of erotic love, he has no result and is never finished, but he may nevertheless want to communicate; yet for that very reason he can never use a direct form, since that presupposes results and completion. So it is also in a God-relationship. Just because he himself is continually in the process of becoming in an inward direction, that is, in inwardness, he can never communicate himself directly, since the movement is here the very opposite. Direct communication requires certainty, but certainty is impossible for a person in the process of becoming, and it is indeed a deception. Thus, to employ an erotic relationship, if a maiden in love yearns for the wedding day because this would give her assured certainty, if she wanted to make herself comfortable in legal security as a spouse, if she preferred marital yawning to maidenly yearning, then the man would rightfully deplore her unfaithfulness, although she indeed did not love anyone else, because she would have lost the idea and actually did not love him. And this, after all, is the essential unfaithfulness in an erotic relationship; the incidental unfaithfulness is to love someone else. * That is how it always goes with the negative; wherever it is unconsciously present, it transmutes the positive into the negative. In this case, it transmutes communication into an illusion, because no thought is given to the negative in the communication, but the communication is thought of purely and simply as positive. In the deception of double-reflection, consideration is given to the negativity of the communication, and therefore this communication, which seems to be nothing compared with that other mode of communication, is indeed communication. ** It is always to be borne in mind that I am speaking of the religious, in which objective thinking, if it is supposed to be supreme, is downright irreligiousness. But wherever objective thinking is within its rights, its direct communication is also in order, precisely because it is not supposed to deal with subjectivity. * I say only “suppose,” and in this form I have permission to present what is most certain and most unreasonable, for even the most certain is not posited as the most certain but is posited as what is assumed for the purpose of shedding light on the matter; and even the most unreasonable is not posited essentially but only provisionally, for the purpose of illustrating the relation of ground and consequent. * If in our age there lived a person who, subjectively developed, was aware of the art of communication, he would experience the most glorious buffoonery and farce. He would be turned out of doors as one who is incapable of being objective, until at long last a good-natured objective chap, a systematic devil of a fellow, would most likely have mercy upon him and help him halfway into the paragraphs. What was once regarded as an impossibility—namely, to paint a picture of Mars in the armor that makes him invisible 30 —would now succeed extremely well; in fact, what is even more curious, it would now succeed halfway. * If someone now living were to speak this way, everyone would undoubtedly perceive that he was lunatic, but the positive ones know, and they know with positive definiteness, that Socrates was a wise man. That is supposed to be quite definite—ergo. * The thoroughly educated and developed individuality is known by how dialectical the thinking is in which he has his daily life. To have his daily life in the decisive dialectic of the infinite and yet to go on living—that is the art. Most people have comfortable categories for daily use and the categories of the infinite only on solemn occasions, that is, they never have them. But to have the dialectic of the infinite for daily use and to exist in it is, of course, the greatest strenuousness, and in turn the greatest strenuousness is needed lest the practice, instead of exercising a person in existing, deceptively trick him out of it.—It is well known that a cannonade makes a person unable to hear, but it is also well known that by persevering one can hear every word just as when all is quiet. And that is the way it is with a spiritual existence intensified by reflection. * The Socratic gazing is also an expression of the highest pathos and therefore also just as comic. Let us try it out. Socrates is standing and gazing into space; then two passers-by come along and the one says to the other: What is that man doing? The other replies: Nothing. Let us suppose that one of them has a little more of an idea of inwardness.[VII 71] He describes Socrates’ action as a religious expression and says: He is absorbed in the divine; he is praying. Let us concentrate on the latter expression, “He is praying.” But is he using words, perhaps ever so many words? No, Socrates understood his God-relationship in such a way that he did not dare to say anything at all for fear of talking a lot of nonsense and for fear of having a wrong desire fulfilled. Instances of the latter are said to have occurred, for example, when the oracle prophesied to a man that all his sons would become distinguished, and the troubled father went on to ask: And then will they all probably die a miserable death? The oracle replied: This, too, you shall see fulfilled. 53 Here the oracle is consistent enough to assume that the person who consults it is a supplicant, and therefore it consistently uses the word “fulfilled,” which is grievous irony for the person involved. Consequently, Socrates does nothing whatever; he does not even in his inner being converse with the god—and yet he does the highest of all. Socrates himself presumably had perceived this and also knew how to emphasize it in a teasing manner. Magister Kierkegaard, on the other hand, has scarcely understood this, as can be inferred from his dissertation. Citing the dialogue Alcibiades secundus , he mentions Socrates’ negative relation to prayer, but, as might be expected of a positive graduate in theology in our day, he cannot refrain from informing Socrates (in a footnote) that this negativity is true only to a certain degree. 54 ** Here I am not referring to what is accidentally comic, as when a man in prayer holds his hat before his eyes without noticing that the crown is missing, and someone accidentally happens to see him face-to-face. * As far as that goes, Fragments could just as well have advanced the opposite and made this the issue: How can something historical be decisive for an eternal unhappiness? In that case, human thoughtfulness would certainly have found it something to ask about, since it could not even be answered. * The demonstrations with which a devout orthodoxy has sought to safeguard that dogma of eternal punishment must be considered a misunderstanding. Yet its approach is by no means of the same character as that of speculative thought, for inasmuch as it is actually rooted in the disjunction, every demonstration is a superfluity. * Perhaps a reader will here recall what was presented in Fragments on the impossibility of becoming contemporary (in an immediate sense) with a paradox, 73 also on the point that the distinction between the contemporary and the later follower is a vanishing factor. 74 * In this presentation of the matter, it is evident that Fragments really opposes Lessing, insofar as he has stipulated the advantage of contemporaneity, in the negation of which lies the real dialectical issue, and thereby the solution of Lessing’s issue gains a different significance. * Perhaps the reader will recall what was emphasized in Fragments regarding this systematic topsy-turvy feat, that nothing comes into existence by way of necessity (because coming into existence and necessity contradict each other), and far less does something become necessary by having come into existence, since only the necessary cannot become, because it is always presupposed to be. 79 * See Fr. H. Jacobi, Werke , IV 1 , p. 74. * It was fortunate for Lessing that he did not live in the nineteenth century, which is just as earnest as it is genuinely speculative-dogmatic. He would perhaps have lived to see that some very earnest gentleman with no sense of jest at all would earnestly petition that Lessing should attend confirmation classes again in order to learn earnestness. * This confusion is not very easily solved dialectically. In Fragments , 99 I have reminded the reader of how it arises and how Socrates’ self-knowledge ran aground on the oddity that he did not know for sure whether he was a human being or a more composite creature than Typhon. 100 ** I am, of course, speaking only of thinking as it is in the subjective existing thinker; I have never been able to understand how a human being could become speculative thought, objective speculative thought and pure being. That is, a human being can become many things in the world. As it says in the rhyme, he can become “Edelmann, Bettelmann, Doctor, Pastor, Schuster, Schneider [nobleman, beggar, doctor, pastor, shoemaker, tailor]......” 103 Thus far I can understand the Germans. He can also become a thinker or a dunderhead, but to become speculative thought is the most incomprehensible of all miracles. * See Fr. H. Jacobi, Werke , IV, p. 110. * The light-mindedness with which systematicians admit that Hegel has perhaps not been successful everywhere in importing movement into logic, much like the grocer who thinks that a few raisins do not matter when the purchase is large—this farcical docility is, of course, contempt for Hegel that not even his most vehement attacker has allowed himself. There have certainly been logical attempts prior to Hegel, but his method is everything. 117 [VII 89] For him and for everyone who has intelligence enough to comprehend what it means to will something great, the absence of it at this or that point cannot be a trivial matter, as when a grocer and a customer bicker about whether there is a little underweight or overweight. Hegel himself has staked his whole reputation on the point of the method. But a method possesses the peculiar quality that, viewed abstractly, it is nothing at all; it is a method precisely in the process of being carried out; in being carried out it is a method, and where it is not carried out, it is not a method, and if there is no other method, there is no method at all. To turn Hegel into a rattlebrain must be reserved for his admirers; an attacker will always know how to honor him for having willed something great and having failed to achieve it. * To show how would become too prolix here. Frequently it is not worth the trouble either, because, after a person has laboriously advanced an objection sharply, from a philosopher’s rejoinder he discovers that his misunderstanding was not that he could not understand the idolized philosophy but rather that he had allowed himself to be persuaded to believe that the whole thing was supposed to be something—and not flabby thinking concealed by the most overbearing expressions. * And if it is not that, it is in any case an esthetic category, as when Plutarch states that some have assumed one world because they feared that otherwise the result would be an unlimited and embarrassing infinity of worlds (ε ύ ϑ ὺ ς ἀ ο ϱ ί στου ϰ α ί χαλεπ ῆ ς ἀ πει ϱ ί ας ὑ πολαμβανο ύ οης. De defectu oraculorum , XXII 124 ). * Perhaps the reader will recall that when the issue becomes objective, there is no question of an eternal happiness, because this lies precisely in subjectivity and in decision. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Part One THE	1,680,234
EitherOr A Fragment of Life (Kierkegaard Søren Hannay Alastair) (Z-Library).epub	SØREN KIERKEGAARD Either/Or: A Fragment of Life EITHER/OR SØREN AABYE KIERKEGAARD was born in Copenhagen in 1813, the youngest of seven children. His mother, his sisters and two of his brothers all died before he reached his twenty-first birthday. Kierkegaard’s childhood was an isolated and unhappy one, clouded by the religious fervour of his father. He was educated at the School of Civic Virtue and went on to enter the university, where he read theology but also studied the liberal arts and science. In all, he spent seven years as a student, gaining a reputation both for his academic brilliance and for his extravagant social life. Towards the end of his university career he started to criticize the Christianity upheld by his father and to look for a new set of values. In 1841 he broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen and devoted himself to his writing. During the next ten years he produced a flood of discourses and no fewer than twelve major philosophical essays, many of them written under noms de plume. Notable are Either/Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Life’s Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) and The Sickness unto Death (1849). By the end of his life Kierkegaard had become an object of public ridicule and scorn, partly because of a sustained feud that he had provoked in 1846 with the satirical Danish weekly the Corsair , partly because of his repeated attacks on the Danish State Church. Few mourned his death in November 1855, but during die early twentieth century his work enjoyed increasing acclaim and he has done much to inspire both modern Protestant theology and existentialism. Today Kierkegaard is attracting increasing attention from philosophers and writers ‘inside’ and outside the postmodern tradition. ALASTAIR HANNAY was born to Scottish parents in Plymouth, Devon, in 1932 and educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of Edinburgh and University College, London. In 1961 he became a resident of Norway, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he has been a frequent visiting professor at the University of California, at San Diego and Berkeley. Alastair Hannay has also translated Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death and Papers and Journals for Penguin Classics. His other publications include Mental Images – A Defence, Kierkegaard (Arguments of the Philosophers), Human Consciousness, Kierkegaard: A Biography, and Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, as well as articles on diverse themes in philosophical collections and journals. SØREN KIERKEGAARD Either/Or A Fragment of Life Edited by VICTOR EREMITA Abridged, Translated and with an Introduction and Notes by ALASTAIR HANNAY PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M 4 V 3 B 2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd. Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC 2 R 0 RL , England www.penguin.com This translation first published 1992 Reprinted 2004 17 Copyright © Alastair Hannay, 1992 All rights reserved The moral rights of the editors have been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser 9780141915753 CONTENTS Translator’s Note Introduction PART ONE : CONTAINING THE PAPERS OF A Preface 1 Diapsalmata 2 The Immediate Erotic Stages or the Musical Erotic 3 Ancient Tragedy’s Reflection in the Modern 4 Shadowgraphs 5 The Unhappiest One 6 Crop Rotation 7 The Seducer’s Diary PART TWO : CONTAINING THE PAPERS OF B : LETTERS TO A 1 The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage 2 Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality 3 Last Word 4 The Edifying in the Thought that Against God We Are Always in the Wrong Notes TRANSLATOR’S NOTE This abridgement contains two kinds of omission: cuts of varying length in the pieces translated and one essay omitted in its entirety. The former are marked […] in the text, while other, similar indications (e.g.… and –) are in the original. By far the greatest number and longest omissions of this kind, some extending to several pages, occur in Part Two . The essay omitted, along with shorter passages which make reference to it, is from Part One . It is ‘Den første Kjærlighed, Lystspil i een Act af Scribe, oversat af J. L. Heiberg’ (‘First Love, Comedy in One Act by Scribe, translated by J. L. Heiberg’). For comments on both kinds of omission, see the introduction . Paragraph divisions have been added to the original text where appropriate; the original contains often very long paragraphs, sometimes stretching over several pages. Personal and place (including street) names have largely been left as in the original. I am deeply grateful to my editor, Christine Collins, for suggesting many stylistic improvements. INTRODUCTION Like the unfortunate madman who says he’ll climb down into Dovrefjell to blow up the whole world with a syllogism, what was needed was someone who could, to everyone’s knowledge, climb really deep down into the whole world of mediation, mediocrity, and spiritlessness to plant there, for all to see, the explosive either/or. * W HEN Kierkegaard wrote these words in 1852, nine years after the publication of Either/Or, he was looking back on his working life as a deed on behalf of Christian awakening. By then his targets had become the Danish clergy: ‘servants of Christianity’ who, in the prevailing tendency to ‘idolize mediocrity’, had ‘shrewdly’ exploited the ‘pagan optimism’ which made Christianity commensurable with all things finite, and managed to reap the benefits of a ‘both/and’ which made being a Christian just another item on the list. Either/Or had no such clear-cut target. It was written still some time before the notion of a ‘leap’ into a distinctively Christian point of view crystallized in Kierkegaard’s writings. The motivation for the work was probably a combination of two things: the fateful choice Kierkegaard had just made in his own life by breaking off an engagement and his confrontation with the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, from whose lectures in Berlin he sought a philosophical answer to Hegelianism. Schelling (in lectures published posthumously as Philosophy of Revelation and Philosophy of Mythology ) was presenting reality (or ‘actuality’) as a free action of a personal God, instead of as the outcome of historical or spiritual necessity. Though at first enthusiastic, * Kierkegaard soon saw that Schelling’s was not the promised radical criticism of Hegelian philosophy he had hoped for. What was needed was a ‘doubled-edged little dagger’ with which he could ‘assassinate’ the whole of reality: the ‘either/or’. † In March 1842, after four months in Berlin, Kierkegaard returned to Copenhagen. Either/Or was published on 20 February the following year. According to Kierkegaard himself it took eleven months to write. Part Two was written first and already completed while he was in Berlin; most of Part One was written after his return. ‡ The ‘editor’s’ preface, written last, was ready in November 1842. The official chronology gives approximately 7 December 1841 as the date of completion of the second of the two main sections of Part Two . So, assuming he wrote the sections consecutively and in Berlin, as he must have if eleven months is an accurate estimate, that is a truly astonishing achievement, all the more so in view of the fact that he was at the same time attending lectures at the University. The completion dates of the essays in Part One indicate that these too were written in a different order from that in which they eventually appeared. Thus the concluding ‘Seducer’s Diary’ was completed before the first main essay on the ‘Immediate Erotic Stages’. This suggests that the writing itself may not have followed any conscious plan or strategy discernible in the work as we now have it. This is part of the fascination of Either/Or. True to its title, Kierkegaard’s classic places many choices in its would-be reader’s path and almost as many temptations – mostly, as hinted here, of interpretation. But there are also practical choices and temptations to consider, the first prompted by the work’s sheer size: Must I really read the whole thing? The standard two-volume format invites a rather handy answer to that question by offering a prior choice: Do I have to buy both volumes? Vain searches for the first volume among shelves full of copies of the second quickly reveal the outcome of that short-lived choice. Although what this particular preference very likely indicates is the continuing reputation of Kierkegaard’s portrayals of the aesthetic way of life, rather than penury, say, or normal human postponement, the author himself would hardly approve. Commenting on the work’s critics, Kierkegaard says, ‘If someone starts by saying “either” – and doesn’t conceal from the listener that the first clause is going to be a very long one, you owe it to him either to ask him not to begin or to listen also to his “or”.’ * An advantage of the single-volume version offered here is that it ensures that would-be readers give themselves the chance also to read Kierkegaard’s ‘or’. Against that, however, we are offering an abridgement, which surely deprives readers of a choice the author would definitely wish them to retain. Indeed Kierkegaard says one should either read the whole or not read it at all. So what justification is there for not merely defying the author’s express wishes here, but also for disallowing a privilege any reader of a classic is surely entitled to, namely to read such a work in its entirety? The original 1843 edition, to whose reception Kierkegaard was reacting, was also in two volumes. Perhaps in view of his comments a second edition, of 1849, appeared in a single volume. But later editions, encumbered with an increasingly demanding annotational apparatus (to say nothing of introductions), have been forced into the two-volume format by plain bulk. The most obvious justification for an abridgement, therefore, is the making available once more of a portable (and readable) single-volume edition able nevertheless to incorporate at least a minimum of annotational material and an introduction. Naturally, if the cuts involve a serious loss of meaning, that is not a satisfactory reason. Since, however, a lengthy discussion of this question would be self-defeating in the present context, we must let the following clarifications and comments suffice. Besides the omission of a few ‘diapsalmata’, one shorter essay, ‘The First Love’, is omitted in its entirety from Part One (as well as short sections in other essays making reference to it). A commentary on a one-act comedy by the French dramatist A. E. Scribe, this was the outcome of an essay Kierkegaard had apparently begun before forming any clear idea of the later project. The comedy was familiar to Copenhagen theatregoers, who would also be among Kierkegaard’s readers, and they would be in an excellent position to appreciate this illustration of an important idea in the work. But the commentary undoubtedly loses something in narrative coherence to readers lacking that familiarity, and since the idea itself is discussed copiously elsewhere in the work, it was decided to omit this essay in preference to others. The omissions from Part Two are of a different kind. Although conveniently contributing to the provision of a slimmer volume, the cuts here are designed primarily to bring the line of Vilhelm’s argument into greater relief and thus to help it make a more immediate impact upon the reader. Whatever the purist’s misgivings, the result is at least better than the far more drastic abridgements usually resorted to, patched out of passages quoted out of context in textbooks. As for Kierkegaard’s own insistence that the work be read in its entirety or not at all, that too should be read in context. Kierkegaard is complaining that although they have been provided with both an ‘either’ and an ‘or’, his critics have shown interest only in the ‘either’, some only in the ‘Seducer’s Diary’. By saying ‘read it all or not at all’, Kierkegaard means first of all ‘read at least both my “either” and my “or”’. With these practical decisions behind us and a firm reader’s commitment to a qualified ‘both/and’, there remain the choices, and temptations, of interpretation. The situation is less straightforward than it can seem. That is, one cannot immediately assume that the point or significance of Either/Or is adequately put by saying that the work provides readers with the opportunity to ask themselves which of the two points of view represented they themselves prefer. Many questions intervene. Just how distinct are the two points of view? Why can’t they be combined? What if we don’t feel like assenting to either? And isn’t it really obvious that we are supposed to assent in the end to the ethical point of view anyway? But then what if I don’t feel like doing that? Must I conclude that I’ve missed something, or is it because something is missing in me? Later generations are sometimes said to be better placed to make sense of a significant work of literature than its contemporaries. That is claimed particularly in the case of a significantly innovative work, a category to which Either/Or clearly belongs. The reason offered is that the contemporary lacks the perspective needed for seeing the work’s real significance, and lacks it necessarily since the perspective and its distance are not yet in place. * That may well be true, but time can complicate the picture as much as clarify it. There are two mutually reinforcing factors why this should be especially true of Either/Or. One factor is a general truth about literary classics. They become parts of traditions which they help to sustain but also to change. Readings of them can therefore reflect two quite different points of view: that of their origin and that of their (always provisional) destination. No doubt it is also true that what makes a work a classic (something one of the essays in Part One of Either/Or is much concerned with) is in part its ability to perform these functions at the propitious time. Since this factor is bound up in Kierkegaard’s case with his reputation as ‘the father of existentialism’, there is a not unnatural tendency to read Either/Or as an expression of such modern existentialist notions as that of radical commitment, of which more in a moment. This perspective obscures the fact that Either/Or is Kierkegaard’s first main work, and therefore also the possibility that one can read it in a more historical light. There is also the fact – though one might well choose to ignore it, believing an author’s works once completed to be self-sufficient – of Kierkegaard’s own changing attitudes to the work. Compounding this confusion is the second factor: the author’s notorious practice of concealing himself behind a barrage of pseudonyms. Either/Or is exemplary in this respect, wrapped as it is in several layers of pseudonymity. The two main parts are assigned to two fictitious authors, the first part containing what is at least made to look like a diary by a third author, and the second containing a sermon by a fourth. On top of that the work is as a whole presented by a pseudonymous editor in a fictitious preface. Why such subterfuge? Well, of course it wasn’t really subterfuge on Kierkegaard’s part. Nobody was taken in, at least not for long, and given the pseudonyms Kierkegaard chose it would be ludicrous to suppose he intended that they should be. At most he may have hoped to spread uncertainty for a while as to whether it was he or someone else lurking behind the strange Latinized pseudonyms. But then again these pseudonyms are not just means of concealment. Literal translations can disclose their special signatures in the form of a variety of points of departure, positions, or perspectives. Thus Johannes de silentio, the ‘author’ of Fear and Trembling, writes about something of which he himself says one cannot intelligibly speak, namely that Abraham’s intention to sacrifice Isaac should be an act of faith. * Of Either/Or, Kierkegaard later wrote that when writing the work he was ‘already in a cloister, which thought is hidden in the pseudonym: Victor Eremita ’. † What does that tell us? Kierkegaard says in the same passage that when writing the book he had long given up the thought of a comfortingly marital solution to life. Although it is not clear whether he means life in general or his own, the remark at least indicates that he himself was not prepared to follow Vilhelm’s advice; yet that hardly justifies the inference that Kierkegaard himself thought the advice should not be followed. Nor does it justify our saying of Victor Eremita, as does one commentator, that he is ‘no more taken in by the aesthete’s paean to enjoyment than he is by the Judge’s vision of marriage’. * Yet that is surely an interesting possibility; it would mean that at least from the fictitious editor’s point of view, the proper conclusion to draw from reading Either/Or is ‘neither/nor’. So although the fact that Eremita is looking at things from the coolness of a cloister doesn’t indeed force us to assume that he occupies some vantage-point superior to the two he presents, the ultimate ‘significance’ of Either/Or – even in Kierkegaard’s mind – might still be that he does occupy that position, and that we should therefore somehow seek in deficiencies of both views the basis of a third. But then, whether we place Eremita above, below, or behind his two protagonists, we are still one layer away from Kierkegaard himself. So we can still think of him as occupying another position. Or none. This latter is a useful idea. One way of looking at the pseudonymity is to note how it enables Kierkegaard to disown authority for what he writes. It ‘scrambles’ the author–reader link in a way that allows the writings to enjoy a genuinely independent existence, letting them become considerations in the mind of the reader, to do there whatever work they have it in themselves to do. † Moreover, if dissolving the semblance or pretence of authority inherent in acknowledged authorship is one advantage of pseudonymity, another – the opposite side of the same coin – is that it also absolves a writer of personal responsibility for the views expressed, thus freeing him of the potential restrictions on movement imposed by an accumulating authorial past. Time can not only make the search for a literary work’s meaning complicated, it can positively distort that meaning. This factor is important in assessing a quite common reaction to Part Two . Judge Vilhelm strikes many as a hopeless bore and hypocrite. And there can be no doubt that our modern climate of opinion makes his defence of marriage look very like a classic case of male chauvinism. In deference to the author, those who see Vilhelm in this light may then suppose that this is what Kierkegaard intended. But then there are also other negative responses that conflict with this one. Some see in Vilhelm a fantast, a romantic, playing the same kind of game as his young friend the aesthete, but with his dreams being played out in social and family forms. Both these responses may be due to a cultural cleft. Thus we might surmise that our modern age has lost (as surely almost by definition it has) certain kinds of background attitudes necessary for taking Vilhelm’s seriousness as seriously as he himself takes it – and as seriously as he would like the aesthete to take it. If that hypothesis were true, we would then have to ask whether the modern positions or perspectives from which we make such judgements are in some universally valid sense superior to those envisioned for his readers by Kierkegaard. But the possibility would also have to be faced that we have lapsed into a position already envisioned by Kierkegaard, indeed into something Vilhelm himself might feel justified in calling ‘despair’. Might not the conclusion we reach after reading Either/Or, then, be that we, or most of us, are ‘mere’ aesthetes? Thus, apart from the possibility of a neither/nor reading, a crucial question which awaits the person who decides against that reading, and assumes therefore that Kierkegaard definitely intends one of the two views presented to be life-affirming, is ‘Which?’. We must be careful to separate that question from another, namely, ‘Which, if either, do I take to be life-affirming?’. Whether due to the cultural cleft or just to a significant shift in climate, it is of course quite plausible that a reader’s response to Either/Or should be quite different from Kierkegaard’s own. But that raises another question that must be answered before the two questions can be taken to be as different as may at first be supposed. That question is: ‘In writing Either/Or did Kierkegaard believe it more important that readers decide for themselves which life-view is life-affirming than that they should see the matter as he did?’ But even there we haven’t reached rock bottom. We can also wonder whether Kierkegaard, had he suspected that Vilhelm’s case might lose its appeal, could have approved of attempts to update his portrait of the ethical in order to restore that appeal, for example by making Vilhelm a feminist. Alternatively, in order to escape this plethora of options, the reader may choose another, totally ignoring what Kierkegaard might have meant and simply reading the work as though first published today, and reading it in an altogether open-minded way just to see where the portrait fits and to find out how far the choices can affect one’s value-horizon. Consistently with a negative evaluation of Vilhelm’s case for the ethical goes a typically modern predilection for his aesthetic counterpart. Indeed it could be said that the less conviction Vilhelm’s portrayal of the supposedly fulfilling life of the ethicist carries, the more plausibly his young friend appears to us in the guise of the modern hero, richly egocentric, tragically melancholic, excitingly nihilistic, daringly imaginative. There is indeed a cultural stereotype of the aesthete that fits well with Kierkegaard’s portrait. It is amply represented in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, no better perhaps than in the one-act plays of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931). * Looking at the work in this light, favouring as it does a monocular focusing on Kierkegaard’s ‘either’, we can simply choose to ignore whatever evidence there is that Kierkegaard is conducting a campaign on behalf of his ethical ‘or’. We prize instead his contribution to a progressive aesthetic culture. Perhaps we can even broaden the perspective in a binocular direction just enough to reveal the ethicist as representative of a powerful but oppressive tradition unfriendly to life and ready for replacement by some aesthetic alternative, even ripe for some sabotage from the aesthetic camp itself. The fact that it would not be wholly perverse to choose to look at Either/Or in this way is an indication of the work’s immense cultural resources. But it also helps us to see more clearly just what kind of war Kierkegaard thought he was waging, against whom, and with what victory in mind. The target or enemy was philosophy. That in itself dictates that the weapons with which he was committed to prosecuting his campaign were literary rather than philosophical. It was the spirit of philosophy itself, incarnate in Hegel, that Kierkegaard was out to destroy, and in order to break with Hegel he could not resort to the discursive and systematic methods of the Hegelians themselves. Kierkegaard had to appeal to his reader’s sensibilities. Hegel was to be destroyed in subsequent works (notably in Concluding Unscientific Postscript ) mainly by appeal to the reader’s sense of the ridiculous. But the most important point to be clear about is that the victory Kierkegaard had in mind was not merely the destruction of Hegel; it was the retrieval from philosophy of legitimate human goals (ethical and religious understanding) which he believed philosophy had usurped and dreadfully distorted. This positive appeal, then, had to be first of all to our senses of fulfilment in life, in pleasure or a sense of beauty, from which alone the ethically crucial sense of a want of fulfilment could then be elicited in the reader. Kierkegaard was thus able to put his native literary talent to the edifying task of regenerating ethics in the ordinary-life situations that make up a human life. The means he created are the books of his pseudonymous authorship. In an important comment on Either/Or, ‘leaked’ by another of his pseudonyms, Kierkegaard gives us to understand that the work’s special purpose was to ‘exhibit the existential relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical in an existing individual’, the motive behind this being the need to remind people ‘what it means to exist, and what inwardness signifies’. This was something that, ‘because of the great increase of knowledge’, his age had forgotten. ‘Knowledge’ here is an ironic reference to Hegelian philosophy, a ‘system’ of thought which accords no ultimate value to subjectivity, sensibility or inwardness. Of the German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), criticized for subordinating the realm of knowledge to that of feeling and faith, this other pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, says: Poor Jacobi! Whether anyone visits your grave I do not know, but I know that the paragraph-plough digs all your eloquence, all your inwardness under, while a few scant words are registered in the System as what you amount to. It says of him that he represented feeling with enthusiasm; a reference like that makes fun of both feeling and enthusiasm, whose secret is precisely that they cannot be reported at second-hand … * Whatever the ethical view of life has to offer, then, it can only direct its appeal to individual sensibility. But that of course means directing it to where the aesthetic view of life also makes its appeal. So aesthetics is where one inevitably has to begin, and that applies equally to the religious view of life, not portrayed in this work but glimpsed in the ‘sermon’ appended as a ‘last word’ ( Ultimatum ) to Judge Vilhelm’s second letter. In the same passage Climacus comments on the absence of a distinctively religious perspective in Either/Or, but says that the fact that his age had forgotten what it is to exist religiously implied also that people had first of all forgotten what it was to exist as human beings. Either/Or is the required reminder, a necessary prolegomenon to the reminders to come, about what it is to lead, first, a religious existence and then, secondly, a specifically Christian existence. We now find ourselves face to face with one final interpretational either/or. As we noted earlier, reading Kierkegaard from within the perspective of modern existentialism, some people interpret the choice between an aesthetic and an ethical view of life in terms of a ‘radical choice’. In place of ‘radical’ the term ‘criterionless’ is sometimes used; a choice made according to some criterion not exclusively part of the view itself would not be criterionless, and the choice would therefore not be radical enough to cover the transition from the aesthetic to the ethical point of view. Each Kierkegaardian ‘stage’ or ‘sphere’ of existence in effect represents an atomically distinctive answer to the question, ‘What is it essentially to be a human being?’. The radical nature of the choice lies in the fact that in choosing one of the stages you are also choosing the kinds of reason available to you for defending the choice. The peculiarly ‘modern’ touch to this is the belief that the notion of a criterionless choice is a way of expressing an insight the gaining of which marks the coming of age of our culture. It involves recognizing an irreducible multiplicity of cultural traditions, irreducible in the sense that there is no general basic principle for deciding between them. If we have to conclude from this, as well we might, that values in general are no more than expressions of habitual and basically arbitrary preferences, we may look on this positively as a release from bad philosophical habits, or else negatively as a cultural nightmare. But some people advocate an ‘Aristotelian’ solution which (to exploit a not at all inappropriately biological metaphor) would let values grow in specific cultures. Here the notion of ‘radicalness’ would apply only in the sense that given cultural contexts were what provided values with their ‘roots’. Those who advocate such a solution see Existentialists with their ‘radical choices’ as engaged in a hopeless task, trying with the mere choosing to confer on the choice that substantial quality it can only acquire within a culture to which the chooser also belongs. * If one considers briefly what this idea of a radical choice implies, the criticism seems justified. It means that the chooser stands outside the options offered, so whichever one is picked is selected as arbitrarily as one picks a chocolate from a box not knowing what kind of centre it has, though here one is not even supposed to care. Since there are no operative preferences upon which the selection is based – they all belong to the alternatives on offer – it would be appropriate to describe this as a case of picking rather than choosing. By the same token there can be no inter-‘stage’ or inter-‘sphere’ dialogue. Naturally, there can be dialogue in the sense of conversations about matters of shared interest, swapping of information and so on, as well as disputes about things on which there is disagreement. But there can be no way of settling basic disputes, no shared basis of considerations to which, say, an ethicist can appeal to try to win over an aesthete. So if Vilhelm offers arguments to his friend, these will have no effect if they are arguments sincerely offered in defence of the ethical way of life. If they are to have any effect, either his friend must already have taken leave of the aesthetic world and be able and willing to see the point of arguments based on ethical criteria, or else Vilhelm will have to deliberately phrase his arguments in terms of aesthetic values to which he himself does not subscribe. He will then have to lure his friend into the ethical with arguments that, if he really stood by them, would place him in the aesthetic world alongside his friend. Yet however radically the views presented in Either/Or differ, it is hard not to see the work as having the character of a dialogue. Part One contains implicit arguments against the ethical life-view, which are then rebutted in Part Two . There are also such arguments in Part Two , in the form of objections to ethical ideals that Vilhelm recalls his young friend having voiced and to which he replies. Further, it would be hard to read the two main sections in Part Two otherwise than as a sustained argument in favour of the ethical life-view, which is also continually underpinned by arguments against the aesthetic life-view. So ‘either’ there is a great deal of indirect persuasion and subterfuge, hardly a good advertisement at least for a supposedly ethical life-view, ‘or’ the radical-choice reading is mistaken. But since dialogues do nevertheless aim at agreement, if only on some position that turns out to be neither of the original alternatives, and since agreement surely requires some kind of choice on the part of at least one of the participants, there should still be room for an either/or and so for a choice. There are, however, a number of quite different ways in which we might think of a choice occurring in conclusion of a dialogue. One would be where one party convinces the other by making him see how what he says ‘stands to reason’. There would, however, be no appeal to ‘inwardness’ here; the dialogue might be said to occur only at a ‘paragraph-ploughing’ level. Another way, that did appeal to inwardness and sensibility, could be one in which the convinced party simply goes over to the new position as a matter of course in the light of certain appeals to which he was already attuned but about whose relevance to the case in hand he had not been clear. The function of the dialogue would be to bring about that clarity and the result might still, though only just, be called a kind of choice. Neither of these captures the sense of choice required by Vilhelm of his young friend’s entering upon the ethical life. That choice, as the reader discovers, is said to be ‘of oneself’; and part of what that means is precisely that one no longer regards oneself as a being who, as in the second case, moves from one position to another simply from the weight or pressure of argument or circumstance. The ethical life involves rejecting any idea of oneself as just a passive accumulator, or in the case of the mature aesthete also imaginative manipulator, of life’s contingent blessings; it requires acceptance of the quite different idea that one is a responsible agent. The ‘choice of oneself’ is therefore one that cuts short the passivity and imaginative manipulation. It requires, first, that one acknowledge a peculiarly human ability, indeed a need, to ask what it is essentially to be a human being. Second, it requires that one take this ability at its face value, as a genuine freedom to stake out one’s own future according to a ‘view of life’; and, third, it requires that the view of life one adopts be one in which one is ‘revealed’ in a context of familial and social responsibilities. ‘Revelation’ here does not mean the disclosure of a self that was previously hidden; a hidden ‘self’ is precisely not a self in Vilhelm’s sense. The choice of oneself is the choice of visible selfhood, placing the chooser firmly within the area of public morality, and amenable for the first time to the ethical categories of good and bad, praise and blame. This choice is clearly still a radical one. And its radicalness still lies in the total redefining of the values of a human life. It is important to realize the compass of the redefinition. It isn’t a matter simply of turning over a new leaf; the choice of oneself means rewriting the whole book. In choosing oneself, as Vilhelm says, one takes responsibility for one’s past and ‘repents’ for not having taken on this responsibility earlier. The ethicist’s task as Vilhelm sees it, then, is to persuade the aesthete of the urgency of the choice. But this task is made the easier by the fact that the mature aesthete’s life has already taken a form which an ethical redefinition of values can be seen to fit, as easily in principle as a glove fits a hand, the actual practice requiring only the will to put it on. His aestheticism is driving him out of the world in which his pleasure is sought; it has driven him into a corner from where he has to rely on his ingenuity and imagination to keep things going, on his ability to enjoy things in reflection, to enjoy the idea of things rather than the things themselves. He should be well disposed in principle at least, then, to seeing what Vilhelm is getting at when he describes the aesthete’s life as one of ‘despair’. But he should be able also to see the point of Vilhelm’s advice to ‘choose despair’ rather than, say, some occupation or marrying, where these would be undertaken as expedients for just the kinds of reasons that an aesthete must give. Finally, then, if that is the case he might also be able to see how both getting a job and marrying might be radically reconceived as vehicles of human fulfilment instead of as expedients. Getting a job and marrying were things Kierkegaard himself conspicuously failed to do. The background to that fact and a short account of the events in Kierkegaard’s life prior and subsequent to the publication of Either/Or may help to put its subject-matter in perspective, as well as providing the reader unfamiliar with the details of Kierkegaard’s life with the benefit of a brief portrait. The sequence of events which turned Søren Aabye Kierkegaard to full-time authorship began in 1837 when he met Regine Olsen, daughter of a Copenhagen dignitary. Regine was then fourteen years old. The following year Kierkegaard’s father died, aged eighty-one (Kierkegaard was then twenty-five). Kierkegaard’s father had exercised a largely oppressive influence on his son from early childhood, and Kierkegaard later said that he had never enjoyed a proper childhood. Two years before the meeting with Regine he had been describing Christianity, associated with his father, as a debilitating influence and, looking about him for some other idea ‘to live or die for’, * he gave up his studies and led outwardly the life of an aesthete and wit. Entries in his Journal tell a different story. Kierkegaard was undergoing a period of deep and even occasionally suicidal depression. But the year before his father died came the first meeting with Regine, and Kierkegaard effected a reconciliation with his father shortly before the latter’s death. Just one month later Kierkegaard published his first book, From the Papers of One Still Living, though the title derives not from his father’s death but the death in the same year of Søren’s teacher and friend, Poul Martin Møller (1794–1838). A little over two years later Kierkegaard became engaged to Regine. He underwent practical training for a career in the State Church and in 1841 published and publicly defended his doctoral thesis, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates. Since he had already preached his first sermon, all seemed set for a life of conventional civic virtue. But well before the end of that year Kierkegaard had returned Regine’s engagement ring. The reasons for this turn of events are much disputed. The crux, however, seems to have been Kierkegaard’s sense of his inability to ‘reveal’ himself as civic life, and in particular the life of a husband and father, required. By November, soon after the defence of his thesis, the break had become final and Kierkegaard was on his way to Berlin, the first of four visits which were his only journeys outside Denmark. It was from this first visit, ostensibly for the purpose of attending Schelling’s lectures, that Kierkegaard brought back the manuscripts containing Judge Vilhelm’s defence of romantic love and marriage. The publication of Either/Or in February 1843 was followed in October by two slimmer volumes, Repetition and Fear and Trembling (both mostly written on a second visit to Berlin not long after the publication of Either/Or ). All these works deal with the problem of entering society (or ‘realizing the universal’, an expression introduced by Vilhelm). The same theme was pursued in the substantial Stages on Life’s Way, published in April 1845, though now with a distinctive religious aspect more in evidence. But almost a year previously, in June 1844, there had appeared two books introducing new topics. Philosophical Fragments sought, in subtle and spare language, to offer a Christian alternative to Hegelian philosophy, though without mentioning the latter. The theme was elaborated more explicitly, at great length, and with much irony and humour, almost two years later in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. Within a few days of Philosophical Fragments, however, there had also appeared The Concept of Dread (alternatively ‘The Concept of Anxiety’), an examination of the psychological background to the experience of sin. Alongside this already impressive production, Kierkegaard also published twenty-one ‘edifying’ and ‘Christian’ discourses under his own name, some of them published on the same days as works under pseudonyms. As its title shows, Concluding Unscientific Postscript was supposed to mark the end of Kierkegaard’s work as a writer. A few days before the manuscript was delivered to the printer, Kierkegaard provoked a feud with a satiric weekly called Corsair (Corsaren). In a volume of essays by a well-known literary figure and aesthete, P. L. Møller, he had chanced upon a biting criticism of his own latest work at the time, Stages on Life’s Way. Not altogether coincidentally, Møller was the reputed model for Johannes, the pseudonymous author of ‘The Seducer’s Diary’. Kierkegaard, who knew that Møller sustained a connection with Corsair which he nevertheless wished to keep secret so as not to spoil his prospects for a Chair at the University, divulged the connection in a newspaper article under a pseudonym from the work criticized, at the same time wondering why the pseudonyms had been singled out for the dubious honour of being spared Corsair’s abuse. Corsair’s response was immediate. The weekly began mercilessly to pillory, not the pseudonyms, but Kierkegaard in person. Three weeks before Postscript was to be published, and while the Corsair business was at its height, Kierkegaard wrote in his Journal that he felt his time as an author was over, and even before the feud it appears he had given thought once more to the priesthood. There remained only one more literary chore: the proof-reading of a review of a book called Two Ages, a review in which he may have felt that he had properly rounded off his work by spelling out its social and political implications. By the beginning of the following year, however, Kierkegaard was dismissing these plans as a lapse of nerve and the author was again in full spate. The same year (1847) he published Edifying Discourses in Different Spirits and the substantial Works of Love, followed in the spring of 1848 by Christian Discourses and in 1849 by The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air and Three Discourses at Communion on Fridays. There then followed two works under a new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus: The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity. These later works display a new stringency. Perhaps the Corsair affair, which left Kierkegaard an object of public ridicule, enforced a polarization between him and his society. His own suffering for truth was set off against the complacency of a bourgeois public which manifested its self-contentment not least in the manner of its religious observances, and whose religious leaders, formerly close associates of Kierkegaard and friends of his family, struck him as exemplars of self-seeking worldliness. Thus, in a way, the social and political criticism that emerged in what might have been Kierkegaard’s final work, the review of Two Ages, was a seed that developed in the atmosphere created by the feud with Corsair to become a general condemnation of the age in which he lived. The Sickness unto Death diagnoses the problem as despair, but as the preface to that work says, this time as the sickness and not, as Vilhelm has it in Either/Or, the remedy. * In the next few years Kierkegaard wrote little until he unleashed a vitriolic attack on the State Church, which he now saw clearly as the real root and bastion of spiritual complacency and compromise. During these years he lived in increasingly straitened circumstances, and the remainder of his inheritance and the modest proceeds of his authorship went to financing the final assault, amongst other things through the publication of his own broadsheet, The Instant. This went through nine issues before Kierkegaard fell ill, collapsed in the street, and died in hospital some six weeks later, probably of a lung infection. He was forty-two years old. On his sickbed he confided to Emil Boesen, his friend from boyhood, indeed by that time his only friend, now a pastor and the only member of the Church he would see (including his own brother), that his life had been a ‘great and to others unknown and incomprehensible suffering’, which looked like ‘pride and vanity’ but ‘wasn’t’. Kierkegaard regretted he hadn’t married and taken on an official position. His funeral was the occasion of what may have been one of the first student demonstrations, led by his nephew, an early supporter, who protested at the Church’s insistence on officiating at the committal proceedings, contrary to the deceased’s wishes. We remarked earlier that since Either/Or was an early work we might ask ourselves what Kierkegaard thought about it later. But it was also suggested that this question could quite properly be ignored. Once a literary or a philosophical work has been launched on the world, readers are no more obliged to concern themselves with than to share in whatever embarrassments it may have caused its author. On the other hand, Kierkegaard’s deathbed regrets about not having married or occupied an official position kindle one’s curiosity. And we still don’t really know what Kierkegaard ever thought of Vilhelm. Our comments here, now that we are focusing on the author and not the work, can be treated initially as nothing but an appendix to the biography. One question relates to selfhood. In a note from the year Either/Or was published, Kierkegaard tells us that the reason Part Two begins with a defence of marriage is that marriage is life’s ‘deepest form of revelation’. * Might then the later Kierkegaard wish to allow that emerging from the cover of his pseudonyms to conduct a public campaign against the established Church also counted as a form of revelation? Or does his regret at not having married amount to a belief that he remained incompletely revealed and therefore that he failed to attain true selfhood? On the other hand, the later pseudonym Anti-Climacus added a direct God-relationship to Vilhelm’s specification of selfhood. So here Kierkegaard may have felt he had the better of Vilhelm in spite of conspicuously failing to live up to the latter’s ideal of the ethical. Much of Kierkegaard’s working life was spent worrying whether what it accomplished justified his being an ‘exception’. One way of putting the problem would be to ask whether there was a ‘selfhood’ reserved for martyrs. The deeper question would then be whether he deserved that status. One way of construing the Corsair affair is to see it as an attempt to hasten the necessary trial by ordeal before it was too late to run the course. There is also the problem of Vilhelm’s portrayal of the relation between the sexes in marriage, and whether the limitations in it so apparent to us today are expressions of Kierkegaard’s own views at the time and if so whether these ever changed. The year before his death he wrote that what Vilhelm says about ‘the woman’ is ‘what you could expect from a husband defending marriage with ethical enthusiasm’. Kierkegaard seems to suggest the ethical enthusiasm is somehow false. He says that although man has a lust for life, left to himself he finds no way to awaken it. When the woman, however, in whom this lust is already alive, appears before him she awakens his ‘unspecified’ lust and specifies it. * So Vilhelm’s marriage is really no more than an expression of his own shortcomings and needs, and Vilhelm himself really as much of an egoist as his friend the aesthete. So far so good, but this is where Kierkegaard stops. Or rather, he says that man is constitutionally ‘spirit’, which as readers of The Sickness unto Death will recognize, means that he is fated to exercise what was referred to here earlier as the human ability to ask what it is essentially to be a human being. Two things follow: first that the exercise of this ability deprives man of his lust for life, and second, that the only way for him to supplement this loss is for woman to lack this peculiarly human ability. An unholy combination if ever there was one: Vilhelm’s stolid chauvinism gives way to a cynical symbiotitism. Does Kierkegaard have any better defence of marriage to offer than that of an enthusiastic ethicist? Our motto, the reader will recall, has Kierkegaard using his either/or to drive out mediocrity and ‘spiritlessness’, along with the pagan optimism which made Christianity just one more item on the agenda of finitude. Here the either/or makes a clear separation between the finite life we lead, and would like to have a lust for, and the world of spirit for which life as we generally lead it is trivial and not lustworthy. ‘Drop all this egoistic trifling which people usually fill their lives with, doing business, marrying, begetting children, being something in the world; drop it, cut it all out – let your life be dedicated to loving God and devotion to humanity …’ † The 1854 either/or spans an unbridgeable divide between petty bourgeois self-seeking and a life of unspecified self-effacement on behalf of the Good. Just where the things Vilhelm prizes find a place in a world defined by these stark alternatives is unclear, as indeed what it could be about them that gave us any sense of their value. The appeal of	1,419,555
Fear and Trembling A New Translation (Kierkegaard, Søren) (Z-Library).epub	Fear and Trembling NOTES Translator’s Introduction 1 . Once again, more than a few investigators have noted that the tale of Agnete and the Merman contains significant parallels to the story of Kierkegaard’s broken engagement to Regine Olsen, and thus have seen in this tale, and in other episodes included in Fear and Trembling , coded—or not very coded—references to the real life of the book’s real author. None of this concerns us here. Translator’s Note 1 . Concerning the term Anfægtelse and its translation, see the discussions in Howard V. and Edna H. Hong’s translation, Fear and Trembling and Repetition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 343–44, where Anfægtelse is translated as “spiritual trial,” and Alastair Hannay’s translation of Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) in which Anfægtelse is translated both as “spiritual trial” and as “temptation.” Epigraph 1 . Cited from Hamann’s Schriften [Hamann’s Writings], ed. F. Roth, 8 vols. (Berlin, 1821–1843), vol. 3 (1828), p. 190. Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) was a German philosopher and author. Tarquin the Proud (Latin, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus), d. 495 BC, last of the kings of Rome (reign 535–510 BC). When Tarquin’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, who had arrived in the city of Gabii in order to subdue it for his father, asked his father for orders about how to carry out his mission, the father sent no written reply, but instructed his messenger to accompany Sextus into a garden and then to strike off the heads of the tallest poppies. The messenger did not understand the message, but Sextus understood that his father had ordered him to kill the city’s leading men. Preface 1 . A reference to René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher, mathematician, and natural scientist, who asserted that everything ought to be subjected to doubt (Latin, “de omnibus dubitandum est”), with the exception of the fact that the person who is doubting does indeed exist as a thinking being: “I think, therefore I am” (Latin, “cogito ergo sum”). 2 . In referring to “going further,” Kierkegaard is making satirical reference to his contemporary Danish Hegelians such as Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860) and Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–1884), who wanted to go further than Hegel himself had gone in his own efforts to go further than his philosophical predecessors. 3 . René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences,” The Philosophical Writings of Descartes , 1:112, 113. 4 . Perhaps a reference to Socrates. 5 . i.e., Hegelian philosophy. 6 . An innuendo directed at the Danish philosopher Rasmus Nielsen (1809–1884), who began as an adherent of Hegel, publishing his work Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk [Outlines of Speculative Logic], in four booklets (Copenhagen, 1841–1844); however, these four installments were all that ever appeared, with the fourth installment ending in midsentence. 7 . Adresseavisen is an abbreviated reference to Kjøbenhavns kongelig alene privilegerede Adressecomptoirs Efterretninger [Information from Copenhagen’s Only Royally Licensed Advertising Office], but in this case the reference is to an actual advertisement for a gardener’s apprentice that appeared not in Adresseavisen but in Berlingske politiske og Avertissements-Tidende [Berling’s Political and Advertisement Times], no. 34, February 6, 1843, and no. 39, February 11, 1843, where, under the heading “Positions Available,” a small illustration depicts a man bowing forward with a watering can in his hand, accompanied by this text: “There is a position open beginning May 1st at Hørbygaard in Holbæk for a gardener, preferably unmarried, who is competent in his profession and can also produce proof of sobriety and good conduct.” 8 . In scene 7 of Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s vaudeville, Recensenten og Dyret [The Reviewer and the Beast] (1826), the perpetual student Trop wants to divide his tragedy Menneskeslægtens Ødelæggelse [The Destruction of the Human Race] into two volumes out of respect for prevailing taste. See J. L. Heibergs Skrifter. Skuespil [J. L. Heiberg’s Writings: Plays], 7 vols. (Copenhagen 1833–1841), vol. 3 (1834), p. 221. 9 . Kierkegaard is making a derogatory reference to Hegel’s philosophy as an “omnibus” (for all), alluding to the fact that Hegel’s philosophy was now being adapted for every purpose and for every sort of explanation, so it was a universal means to explain just about anything, just as the brand-new means of transportation was also an “omnibus,” i.e., that it would transport anyone and everyone. Thus, Kierkegaard’s meaning here is that both Hegelian philosophy and these new coaches were public conveyances that are willing to transport everyone and anything. Tuning Up 1 . Kierkegaard also cites this passage in his journals: see entry JJ:1: “1842. May. I find a perfect example of the Romantic in the Old Testament, in the book of Judith, chap. 10, v. 11: ‘Judith went out, she and her handmaid with her; and the men of the city looked after her, until she was gone down the mountain, until she had passed through the valley, and they could see her no more. And they went straight onward through the valley’” KJN 2:135. 2 . Kneeling and clasping the knees of one’s superior was a sign of humility and respect in the ancient Greek world; see Homer, Odyssey , bk. 6, vv. 142–49. 3 . i.e., the fact that she had not borne a child. 4 . Before Abraham received Isaac, he viewed Eliezer as his heir; see Gen. 15:2. In Praise of Abraham 1 . See Homer, Iliad , bk. 6, vv. 146–49. 2 . See ibid., bk. 3, vv. 380–81; possibly also an allusion to Acts 1:9. 3 . Perhaps an allusion to the prophet Jeremiah; it has also been suggested that the reference is to Ovid, who had been banished to the Black Sea and hoped to be permitted to return to Rome. 4 . See n. 3, supra . 5 . Presumably, this alludes to the tale of Jupiter and Io, of Jupiter’s jealous wife, Juno, and of Argus, who was to watch over Io; see Ovid, Metamorphoses , bk. 1. Kierkegaard could also be alluding to a retelling by the Danish Golden Age poet Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) of the Old Norse myth that recounted the impossible tasks that Thor attempted during his visit to the giants of Jotunheim; see, e.g., “Thors Reise til Jothunheim” [Thor’s Journey to Jotunheim], included in Nordiske Digte [Nordic Poems] (Copenhagen, 1807). Thor loses a wrestling match with a wrinkled old woman who turns out to be the personification of time. 6 . Presumably an allusion to Plato’s Phaedrus 244a–45c, 256a–c, and 265b. See Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters , ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 491–92, 501–2, and 511. Problemata 1 . Kierkegaard’s Danish, “Foreløbig Expectoration,” translates literally as “Preliminary Expectoration.” In Kierkegaard’s day, “Expectoration” still retained, at least for the learned, the meaning of unburdening one’s soul or of “getting something off (Latin, ex ) one’s chest (Latin, pectus ).” 2 . An allusion to the story of Aladdin’s ring from the collection of tales, One Thousand and One Nights . The story served as the inspiration for Adam Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin, eller den forunderlige Lampe [Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp], which was included his Poetiske Skrifter [Poetic Writings], 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1805), which Kierkegaard owned. Aladdin and Noureddin are characters in the play and represent, respectively, light and darkness. 3 . An allusion to the Greek myth that tells of Orpheus’s rescue of Eurydice in the underworld; here, and in what follows, Kierkegaard is referring to the version in Plato, Symposium , 179d; see Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Including the Letters , ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 533–34. 4 . See Plato’s version of the Orpheus myth in his Symposium , 179d, where Orpheus is denigrated for having been a mere “minstrel.” 5 . An allusion to the story of the Greek king Midas, related by Ovid in bk. xi of his Metamorphoses ; see Ovid, Metamorphoses , trans. Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1916), 2:126–31. 6 . Miltiades the Younger (died 489 BC) was an Athenian military leader whose triumphs included victory over the Persians at the battle of Marathon (490 BC). In his Vitae parallelae [Parallel Lives], the Greek historian Plutarch (c. AD 46–c. 120) relates that in the period following the victory at Marathon, the Greek political and military leader, Themistocles (c. 524–459 BC), was made sleepless when he contemplated Miltiades’ feat, and he subsequently played a key role in defeating the second Persian attempt to invade: “For it is said that Themistocles was so transported with the thoughts of glory, and so inflamed with the passion for great actions, that, though he was still young when the battle of Marathon was fought against the Persians, upon the skilful conduct of the general, Miltiades, being everywhere talked about, he was observed to be thoughtful, and reserved, alone by himself; he passed the nights without sleep, and avoided all his usual places of recreation, and to those who wondered at the change, and inquired the reason of it, he gave the answer, that ‘the trophy of Miltiades would not let him sleep.’” Plutarch’s Lives , trans. John Dryden, 3 vols. (London, 1910), 2:293. 7 . See n. 2 to Preface. 8 . See Horace, Epistles , bk. I, 18:84: “nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximis ardet” (’Tis your own safety that’s at stake, when your neighbour’s wall is in flames), Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica , trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 374–75. Kierkegaard has “jam” for Horace’s “nam.” 9 . An allusion to Troens rare klenodie [Faith’s Rare Treasure] (1739), a well-known Danish hymnal by the poet and bishop Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764). 10 . Frederiksberg is immediately adjacent to Copenhagen; its park has long been a favorite destination for walks. 11 . Public transit consisting of horse-drawn coaches was introduced in Copenhagen around 1840. 12 . The Sound, or Øresund, is the body of water separating Copenhagen and the Danish island of Zealand from Sweden. 13 . The Strand Road, or Strandvejen, runs north from Copenhagen, parallel to the shore. 14 . In Kierkegaard’s day, Copenhagen was still surrounded by defensive ramparts, and on one’s way back into town on the Strand Road, one would have to pass through Østerport (literally, Eastgate). 15 . A very small amount of money, roughly the price of a loaf of rye bread, the staple of the day. 16 . See entry FF:193 (from 1838) in KJN 2:104: “Just as human walking is a continual falling, all consistency is a continual inconsistency.” See also Paper 283:1 (from 1843) in KJN 11, pt. 1, pp. 274–76, esp. 275: “The doctrine of motion. (the transition). (not on the spot and not beyond the spot) Here is the leap—therefore the human gait is a falling”; see the accompanying explanatory note, in which the notion of the human gait as a continual falling is traced to the Danish natural scientist Hans Christian Ørsted, the German philosopher J. G. Herder, and to standard German reference works of Kierkegaard’s time. Kierkegaard makes this same point in Philosophical Fragments . 17 . An allusion to the death of Socrates, who was ordered to drink a cup of poisonous hemlock; see Plato, Phaedo , 117b–c, in Plato, Collected Dialogues , p. 97. 18 . An allusion to Hegel’s notion of “Vermittlung” [mediation], the suspension of conceptual opposites, which become reconciled in a higher conceptual unity. 19 . See Apology , 21a–d, in Plato, Collected Dialogues , pp. 7–8. 20 . The verse has not been identified, but supposedly the final words of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) were “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.” 21 . A reference to Plato’s Phaedo 81c–82a; see Plato, Collected Dialogues , pp. 64–65. 22 . From a medieval Danish folk song, “Ridder Stig og Findal” [Knight Stig and Findal], no. 5 in the cycle “Runernes Magt” [The Power of Runes], which ends with the verse: “Now Maiden Rigitslille has recovered from her distress, / She sleeps every night beside Knight Stig Hvide”; from Udvalgte Danske Viser fra Middelalderen; efter A. S. Vedels og P. Syvs trykte Udgaver og efter haandskrevne Samlinger [Selected Danish Songs from the Middle Ages, from the Printed Editions by A. S. Vedel and P. Syv and from Manuscript Collections], ed. W. Abrahamson, R. Nyerup, and K. L. Rahbek, 5 vols. (Copenhagen, 1812–1814), vol. 1, p. 301. 23 . A concept developed by the German philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716), who argued in his most important work, Essaie de théodicée [Essay on Theodicy], published in 1710, that the existence of an infinitely good and powerful God precludes the existence of absolute evil. 24 . See “Erzsi die Spinnerin” [Erszi the Spinster], in Magyarische Sagen, Märchen und Erzählungen [Magyar Legends, Fairy Tales, and Stories], 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1837), vol. 2, p. 18. See EE:89 in KJN 2:29. 25 . Cited from Horace’s Odes , bk. 3, no. 24, 6, ultimately referring to the Fates’ merciless (Latin, dirae ) rulings; see Horace, Odes and Epodes , ed. and trans. Niall Rudd, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 196–97, where “dira necessitas” is translated “dreaded Doom.” 26 . In Ovid’s Metamorphoses , bk. 11, vv. 44–53, Orpheus’s music could move stones, trees, rivers, and animals, all of which wept at his death; see Ovid, Metamorphoses , 2:122–25. 27 . In ancient Rome, two censors were charged with carrying out the census and collecting taxes, as well as overseeing public morality. 28 . An allusion to a tale told of Damocles, servant of Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse (fourth century BC). When Damocles praised the tyrant’s enviable situation, he was compelled to exchange places and sit upon the throne for one day—with an enormous sword suspended over his head by a single hair from a horse’s tail, so that Damocles could learn of the constant danger associated with being a ruler. 29 . The German philosopher Karl Rosenkranz (1805–1879) relates a conversation with the German theologian Karl Daub (1765–1836) in which Daub is said to have made a similar statement; see Rosenkranz, Erinnerungen om Karl Daub [Memories of Karl Daub] (Berlin, 1837), pp. 24–25. 30 . In Kierkegaard’s day, having one’s carriage drawn by more than one or two horses was reserved for the nobility and people of great means. 31 . Probably an allusion to Kierkegaard’s magister dissertation, On the Concept of Irony , which he had defended in 1841. 32 . Kierkegaard uses the verb ophæve (the Danish equivalent of Hegel’s German term aufhebe ), literally, to “lift up,” and in Hegel’s philosophical usage it means to annul something in such a manner that it can also be preserved in a subsequent “higher unity”; it has been translated into English with such terms as “annul,” “abrogate,” “suspend,” “sublate,” and “abolish.” See also n. 18, supra , and n. 33, infra . 33 . In his Philosophy of Right , Hegel develops the three spheres of “objective Spirit,” after which he divides the work into three parts: “abstract right,” “morality,” and “the ethical life” (German, Sittlichkeit ; Danish, Sædelighed ), i.e., social morality. The second part (“morality,” i.e., individual as opposed to social morality) is further divided into three subdivisions, of which the third (§129–41) treats “The Good and Conscience.” In §140 Hegel develops the moral forms of evil, beginning with “hypocrisy” and followed by “probabilism,” i.e., the standpoint that is satisfied with what is likely because it views certainty as unattainable or impossible; next comes “Jesuitism,” understood as the principle that the ends justify the means; thereafter comes “conviction,” in which one appeals to individual conscience; lastly comes “irony,” as the highest form of subjectivity and of evil. Neither the objective law (“abstract right”) nor subjective morality can in itself claim to be actuality, and they therefore must be unified (reconciled) in a higher unity, and this unity is “the ethical life” (also translated as “social morality”). In the ethical life, objective Right has gained actuality and substance, while subjective arbitrariness has been deprived of its latitude. In the third part of the work, Hegel develops the ethical life according to its three levels: the family, civil society, and the state, which is the absolute substance of “the ethical life.” 34 . Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711), French poet and critic, friend of Racine and Molière. 35 . The verse forms the conclusion of the first canto of Boileau’s L’Art Poétique [The Art of Poetry] (1674). 36 . See n. 18, supra . 37 . Presumably Jesus Christ. 38 . A reference to Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis . The play is set at the outset of the Trojan War, and the Greek fleet is gathered in Aulis, but cannot set sail for Troy because the goddess Artemis is displeased with the Greek leader, King Agamemnon, and has caused the wind to blow in the wrong direction. The diviner Calchas reveals that in order to grant a favorable wind, the goddess requires the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia. 39 . See Iphigenia at Aulis in Euripides, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Rhesus , ed. and trans. David Kovacs, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 210–11 (vv. 448–51): “Low birth—what a good thing that is! Such people may weep without hesitation and say anything they like! But to a man of high birth all is misery. The prestige of our position controls our lives, and we are slaves to the masses. I shrink from weeping, shrink likewise, wretched man that I am, from not weeping since I have come into the worst of disasters.” 40 . See ibid.: “The only Achaeans who know how these matters stand are Calchas, Odysseus, and Menelaus” (pp. 176–77, vv. 106–7). 41 . The verse number indicated is from Kierkegaard’s Danish edition, Iphigeneia i Aulis [Iphigenia at Aulis], in Euripedes , trans. Chr. Wilster (Copenhagen, 1840); in the Loeb Classical Library translation it reads “O breast and cheeks, O golden hair,” vv. 681–82. 42 . As related in Livy’s history of Rome, Lucius Junius Brutus (d. 509 BC), the legendary Roman hero and first consul of Rome, was obligated to execute his own sons, Titus and Tiberius, because they had participated in a conspiracy to restore Rome’s exiled king to the throne. See Livy, History of Rome , trans. B. O. Foster, 13 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1919), vol. 1, pp. 230–35 (bk. 2, 5:8–9). 43 . Lictors were officers of justice in ancient Rome, and in formal processions they preceded the higher public officials, bearing the ceremonial fasces (a bundle of rods, bound together, with an axe-head projecting) as a symbol of state authority. Lictors also functioned as executioners. 44 . i.e., as an expression of “the ethical life” (Danish, det Sædelige ); see n. 33, supra . 45 . The Danish term Kierkegaard uses here is det Sædelige , a parallel to Hegel’s German notion of Sittlichkeit (Danish, Sædelighed ); see n. 33, supra . 46 . The flat landscape surrounding the port of Aulis, in central Greece, where Euripides’ play Iphigenia at Aulis is set. 47 . Kierkegaard probably has the reference to Pythagoras from the discussion in W. G. Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie [History of Philosophy], 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1798–1819), vol. 1, pp. 105–10; see esp. p. 106. 48 . The term occurs a number of times in the New Testament; see, e.g., 1 Cor. 1:23. 49 . That is, in the normal biological manner; see Gen. 18:11 and 31:35. 50 . In his work Émile ou de l’Éducation [Emile, or On Education], the Swiss-French philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) warns against the cosmopolitan mind-set that seeks to fulfill, at a great remove, those moral obligations that lie close at hand. 51 . See n. 47, supra . 52 . Presumably an allusion to the philosophy of Hegel, where in accordance with Hegel’s speculative and dialectical method, the development of concepts begins in the realm of the immediate and then points out the contradiction to which it is subject. This contradiction must necessarily be overcome, which takes place when it is brought to consciousness in a higher standpoint, and so on until absolute knowledge has abolished and incorporated within itself every contradiction (see n. 33, supra ). Thus, the “first immediacy” must be abolished in a higher form of knowledge, but if that knowledge is not to be placed higher than faith, then according to Kierkegaard, faith must constitute a “subsequent immediacy” that lies outside philosophy’s development of concepts. 53 . i.e., nausea accompanied by an ill humor; a fashionable illness (especially among women), comparable to hysteria and hypochondria, but also to spleen. 54 . On Socratic ignorance, see Plato, Apology , 21a–d, in Plato, Collected Dialogues , pp. 7–8. 55 . This appears to be Kierkegaard’s own translation from the Greek; notably, it differs from the English translation in, e.g., the NRSV , which translates the Greek word ψυχὴν as “life,” where Kierkegaard translates it as “soul” (Danish, Sjæl ). 56 . Kierkegaard is referring to C. G. Bretschneider, Lexicon manual graeco-latinum in libros Novi Testamenti [Greek and Latin Hand Dictionary to the Books of the New Testament], 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1829), vol. 2, p. 87. 57 . A reference to ancient Hebrew, which originally consisted exclusively of consonants and had no vowels at all. This led to confusion, and subsequently three vowels were added. Later, in the sixth–ninth centuries AD, an additional series of vowels was added, and the three older vowels became superfluous, but were retained in written Hebrew, where they were said to be “reposing” in an adjacent consonant. 58 . Fabius Maximus, a Roman general who defeated Hannibal’s army in southeast Italy in 217 BC by repeatedly using delaying tactics, received the surname Cunctator (Latin, “delayer”). 59 . A figure similar to the Italian Pulcinella or the English Punch, representing a peasant or a fool, who was a principal character in the commedia-dell’arte-style puppet shows regularly performed in Dyrehavsbakken, the amusement park at the Deer Park, an open area immediately north of Copenhagen. 60 . A reference to Chr. Olufsen, Gulddaasen. Et Lystspil i fem Optog [The Golden Snuffbox: A Comedy in Five Acts] (1793); the play features a court case in which unreliable witnesses prevail against an innocent man. 61 . The word Kierkegaard uses here is “Melleminstantser,” which designates an intermediate body in an organ of government or an appellate level in a court system. 62 . See n. 52, supra. 63 . The German poet and literary critic Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) developed the notion of “the interesting” in his essay “Ueber das Studium der griechischen Poesie” [On the Study of Greek Poetry] (1795–1796), in which he asserted that modern poetry, unlike Greek poetry, “makes no claim of objective universality; … its ideal and its goal is the interesting, i.e., the subjective attraction and the poetic effect.” In a review of Adam Oehlenschläger’s play Dina in his journal Intelligensblade [Intelligencer], nos. 16–17, November 15, 1842, the Danish dramatist, critic, and Hegelian philosopher Johan Ludvig Heiberg had written on the concept of “the interesting,” noting that ancient tragedy, “in a word, had no knowledge of the interesting , which is a modern concept for which the ancient languages do not even have a proper term. This circumstance characterizes at once both what is great and colossal about ancient tragedy and its limitations, for the consequence of this is that although that art form requires depiction of character, it is fundamentally intolerant of character development : indeed, here there is, so to speak, nothing to develop, any more than in a marble statue. From the beginning, everything has been formally determined, indeed predetermined, in every contour.” Later in the review, Heiberg writes: “From what has been stated, it can be seen that the category that is prominently employed in Dina is that of the interesting , a very popular designation, understood by everyone, even those who have no further understanding of aesthetic concepts. In what I have written above, I have on occasion already noted that the interesting is a category that belongs to the more recent forms of art. … Many cultivated people … almost become angry when asked if they have enjoyed one or another remarkable piece in the theater: ‘No, it was a performance which interested me to an extraordinary degree.’ They do not understand that what is enjoyable—just as, on the other hand, what is sublime, elevating—refers to an immediate mood and thus much more designates the result of the art form, than does the interesting, in which so much reflection is still present.” Thus, “the interesting” included means that were piquant, titillating, and sometimes sensational, disharmonic, etc.; these pleased the public, but displeased some critics who viewed them as lacking in beauty and thus inadmissible as art. “The interesting” is thus linked both to the artist’s appeal to the public by using increasingly spectacular means and to an element of self-reflection that was regarded as specifically modern. 64 . i.e., the system of Hegelian philosophy. 65 . From Aristotle, Poetics , 1452b:8–9. The most recent Loeb Classical Library edition, Aristotle: Poetics; Longinus: On the Sublime; Demetrius: On Style (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 66–67, has “These, then, are the two components of the plot—reversal and recognition” (Stephen Halliwell, trans.). 66 . See Aristotle, Poetics , 1452a:29–1452b:9. 67 . See Aristotle, Poetics , 1452b:3–7. 68 . i.e., Oedipus, in Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex . 69 . i.e., Iphigenia, in Euripedes’ tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris . 70 . See Aristotle, Historia Animalium , trans. A. L. Peck, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1916), vol. 2, pp. 126–31, (bk. 5, 541a:27–31). 71 . See Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis , pp. 258–67, vv. 855–99, where rather than Agamemnon, it is an aged servant who on his own initiative tells Iphigenia’s mother, Clytemnestra, what is to happen. 72 . See Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis , pp. 296–99 (vv. 1211–40), esp. p. 297, v. 1224: “all the skill I have is in my tears.” An olive branch expressed a plea for mercy. 73 . See Apuleius, The Golden Ass , trans. W. Adlington, rev. S. Gaselee, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1915), bk. 5:11, pp. 216–17. 74 . See Gotthold Ephraim Lessings sämmtliche Schriften , 30:223ff. For an English translation, see G. E. Lessing, The Hamburg Dramaturgy , trans. Wendy Arons and Sara Figal, ed. Natalya Baldyga (New York: Routledge, 2019), essays 1–2; available online. 75 . i.e., the theology of those who are still on their way, as opposed to “theologia beatorum,” the theology of the blessed. 76 . Aristotle, Politics , 5, 4, 1303b 37–1304a 4; see Aristotle, Politics , trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1932), pp. 390–91. 77 . A reference to the play Axel og Valborg (Axel and Valborg), published in 1810 by the Danish Romantic poet Adam Oehlenschläger. This tragic drama, set in Norway, involves the love of Axel and Valborg, who have been forbidden to marry because they are close relatives. They succeed, however, in gaining a papal dispensation to do so, but this is blocked by a monk who is an advisor to the king and an expert in canon law. 78 . In essays 22 and 23 included in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (in Gotthold Ephraim Lessings sämmtliche Schriften ), G. E. Lessing writes on the relation between fact and fiction in historical drama, citing the tragedy The Count of Essex (French, Le Comte d’Essex ), 1678, by French dramatist Thomas Corneille (1625–1709), a younger brother of Pierre Corneille. For political reasons, Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) had the Earl of Essex executed in 1601. Subsequently, she learned that a ring, which she had given Essex with instructions that he send it to her in the event he needed a pardon, had actually been sent, but that owing to court intrigue, it had never reached her. 79 . The story, “Agnete og Havmanden” [Agnete and the Merman], appears in Udvalgte Danske Viser fra Middelalderen; efter A. S. Vedels og P. Syvs trykte Udgaver og efter haandskrevne Samlinger [Selected Danish Songs from the Middle Ages, from the Printed Editions by A. S. Vedel and P. Syv and from Manuscript Collections], ed. W. Abrahamson, R. Nyerup, and K. L. Rahbek, 5 vols. (Copenhagen, 1812–1814), vol. 1, p. 313, and had also been treated by the Danish writers Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) and Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). 80 . See n. 63, supra . 81 . See n. 32 and n. 52, supra . 82 . An allusion to the debate that had begun in Germany with the publication in 1830 of Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit [Thoughts on Death and Immortality] by the Left Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, who denied individual immortality. Kierkegaard’s teacher and friend Poul Martin Møller joined the debate, publishing the essay “Tanker over Mueligheden af Beviser for Menneskets Udødelighed, med Hensyn til den nyeste derhen hørende Literatur” [Thoughts Concerning the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality, with Reference to the Most Recent Literature on the Topic] in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur [Literary Monthly] (Copenhagen, 1837), vol. 17, pp. 1–72, 422–53. On p. 6 of the above-mentioned piece, Møller writes: “Here, namely, we presuppose as a definite fact that nowadays express denial of immortality is more widespread than at any previous time during the centuries of Christianity.” 83 . Kierkegaard probably has the reference to Pythagoras from Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie , 1:94, where there is a description of how Pythagoras trained his students in self-concentration. 84 . See Plato, Phaedrus 229c–230a, in Plato, Collected Dialogues , p. 478. 85 . The expression appears in a line from the poem “Resignation” by the German poet Friedrich Schiller: “Da steh’ ich schon auf deiner finstern Brücke, / Furchtbare Ewigkeit! / Empfange meinen Vollmachtbrief zum Glücke! / … / Ich weiß nichts von Glückseligkeit” (“Then I indeed stood on your dark bridge, / Frightful Eternity! / Receive, then, my license to be joyous! / … / I know nothing of happiness”). 86 . Daphnis and Chloe , prologue, §4 in Pastoralia by the second-century AD Greek writer Longus. Translation from Longus, Daphnis and Chloe , ed. and trans. Jeffrey Henderson, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 14–15. 87 . The Bible Kierkegaard used had slightly different verse divisions. In the NRSV , see Tobit 8:12. 88 . The legend of Bluebeard, a man who murdered his brides on their wedding night, is best known from the version told by the French author and folklorist Charles Perrault (1628–1703) in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé [Stories and Tales of Times Past]. The tale had been adapted as a play by the German author Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), and had recently appeared in translation in Digtninger af Ludwig Tieck [Poems by Ludwig Tieck], trans. Adam Oehlenschläger, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1839), in vol. 2, pp. 1–64, as “Ridder Blaaskiæg. Et Eventyr” [Knight Bluebeard, a Fairy Tale]. 89 . William Shakespeare, King Richard III , act 1, sc. 1. Kierkegaard cites the passage from the German translation by A. W. von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, Shakspeare’s dramatische Werke , 12 vols. (Berlin, 1839–1841), vol. 3 (1840), pp. 235–36: “Ich, roh geprägt, und aller Reize baar, / Vor leicht sich dreh’nden Nymphen mich zu brüsten; / Ich, so verkürzt um schönes Ebenmaß, / Geschändet von der tückischen Natur, / Entstellt, verwahrlost, vor der Zeit gesandt / In diese Welt des Athmens, halb kaum fertig / Gemacht, und zwar so lahm und ungeziemend / Daß Hunde bellen, hink’ ich wo vorbei.” 90 . Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), an English dramatist, wrote the comedy The Jew , which premiered in 1794 and featured a Jewish moneylender, Sheva, who is reviled for being miserly when in truth he is really very charitable. The play was performed at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen in period 1795–1835. 91 . Kildevalle is Kierkegaard’s error for “Killevalle,” a character in a satirical poem by the Danish poet Jens Baggesen. 92 . The saying is a paraphrase of a work by the Roman philosopher and writer Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65), De tranquillitate animi [On Tranquility of Soul]. A standard English translation, in Seneca, Moral Essays , trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 284–85, has “[N]o great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness” (xvii, 10). Seneca claims to be quoting Aristotle; see Aristotle, Problemata , 30.1. 93 . Refers to Johann Faust, also known as Dr. Faustus (c. 1466–c. 1541), who, according to legend, entered into a pact with the Devil, Mephistopheles, in order to attain knowledge. Kierkegaard knew the Faust ﬁgure from folk tales and especially from J. W. Goethe’s Faust (part 1 [1808] and part 2 [1831]). 94 . i.e., a liar, a fantast. A reference to Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720–1797), a German fabulist whose famously exaggerated and entertaining stories of himself and his exploits were collected and published at the end of his life. 95 . Tamerlane was a fourteenth-century warlord from Mongolia who conquered an enormous expanse stretching from the Great Wall of China to the Volga River and down into the Indian subcontinent. Kierkegaard erroneously associates him with the Huns, a central Asian people who threatened eastern Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. 96 . i.e., infamy. Herostratus (fourth century BC) sought fame by burning down the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. 97 . Gregory of Rimini (c. 1300–1358), an Augustinian monk who taught in Paris, maintained that unbaptized children went to hell and was thus known as “tortor infantium” (“tormentor of infants”). 98 . An allusion to the comedy Erasmus Montanus eller Rasmus Berg [Erasmus Montanus, or Rasmus Berg] (1731), act 1, sc. 3, by the Danish-Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), in which Peer Degn, the parish clerk, explains that in connection with a burial he must ask people whether they would like to have “fine sand” (which costs more) or “just plain dirt” to cast upon the grave. 99 . Hegel treats Romantic irony critically in a number of his works. In Outlines of the Philosophy of Right , §140, he writes of Romantic irony as the epitome of evil. The introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics includes a critical description of Romantic irony, and later in the same work, Hegel examines the principle of that irony. In vol. 2 of Lectures on the History of Philosophy , Hegel presents Socrates’ irony and contrasts it with modern irony. Hegel also makes brief mention of irony in his Phenomenology of Spirit , his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline , and his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion . 100 . An apparent reference to the ecclesiastical views espoused by the Danish theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) and his followers. 101 . In Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis , Iphigenia comes to Aulis in the belief that she is to wed Achilles. 102 . William Shakespeare, King Richard III , act 2, sc. 1. Kierkegaard cites the passage, with minor deviations, from the German translation by Schlegel and Tieck, Shakspeare’s dramatische Werke , 3:278: “Wer bat für ihn? Wer kniet’ in meinem Grimm / Zu Füßen mir und bat mich überlegen? / Wer sprach von Bruderpflicht? Wer sprach von Liebe.” 103 . i.e., Agamemnon, in Euripedes’ tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris . 104 . i.e., a light comedy of the sort adapted from Parisian theater pieces and popularized in Copenhagen in the 1820s by the playwright, critic, and Hegelian philosopher Johan Ludvig Heiberg. 105 . In Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris , Calchas is the diviner who is to sacrifice Iphigenia on behalf of Agamemnon. 106 . See Plato, Apology , 36a, in Plato, Collected Dialogues , p. 21. Here Kierkegaard follows his edition of Plato’s works; according to later editions, the majority in favor of conviction was not three, but thirty. 107 . See Plato’s dialogue Phaedo , 118a, in ibid., p. 98. 108 . See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers , trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972 [1925]), vol. 2, pp. 354–55: “Pythagoras was caught as he tried to escape; he got as far as a certain bean field, where he stopped, saying he would rather be captured than cross it, and be killed rather than prate about his doctrines.” Epilogue 1 . A reference to the fairy tale “Der Schneider im Himmel” [The Tailor in Heaven] collected by the Grimm brothers in Kinder- und Haus-Märchen [Fairy Tales for Children and the Home], ed. J. L. K. and W. K. Grimm, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Berlin, 1819–1822), vol. 1, pp. 177–79. A tailor improperly seats himself on God’s throne and throws a heavenly stool at a woman who stole some laundry. God is displeased and tells the tailor that only he may punish human beings, and furthermore, that if something from heaven were thrown every time there was a theft on earth, not a chair or a stool would remain in heaven. The tailor is then thrown out of heaven. 2 . Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosopher whose theory that everything was in flux met with misunderstanding. He was said to have deposited his aphoristic work in the temple of Artemis. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers , trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972 [1925]), vol. 2, pp. 408–25, where it is stated (bk. 9, §6, pp. 412–13) that Heraclitus deposited his treatise On Nature in the Temple of Artemis (Roman, Diana), and that he held that “the sum of things flows like a stream” (ibid., §8, pp. 414–15). 3 . Plato translation from Cratylus, 402a, in Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters , ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 439. Kierkegaard refers to his Greek edition of Plato, Platonis opera quae extant [Extant Works of Plato], ed. Fr. Ast, 11 vols. (Leipzig, 1819–1832), vol. 3 (1821), p. 158. 4 . W. G. Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie [History of Philosophy], 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1798–1819); on p. 220, Tennemann writes: “Heraclitus expressed this flux with a visual metaphor: One cannot go through the same river twice . A later disciple found this to be too weak and corrected it to say: ‘One cannot even do it once.’” 5 . The Eleatics were a Pre-Socratic school of philosophy in the Greek colony of Elea (today, Velia) on the southwest coast of Italy, founded c. 540 BC by the philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon in Ionia, who was often called the first Skeptic because he doubted the validity of human knowledge. Subsequent members of the school included Zeno and Parmenides. The Eleatics stressed being and the absence of change in opposition to Heraclitus’s insistence upon becoming and flux. Fear and Trembling Copyright © 2022 by Bruce H. Kirmmse This translation is based on Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work, Frygt og Bæven , text established by Henrik Blicher, Søren Bruun, and Johnny Kondrup, and published by the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter , vol. 4 (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad’s Publishers, 1997), pp. 97–210. Some of the explanatory notes are adapted from those by Henrik Blicher and Joakim Garff, and published by the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter , vol. K4 (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad’s Publishers, 1998), pp. 101–67. Copyright © University of Copenhagen, 2013. All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830 Jacket design: Richard Ljoenes Design LLC Jacket art: The Sacrifice of Abraham, 1635 (oil on canvas), Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Bridgeman Images Book design by Brooke Koven Production manager: Julia Druskin Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN 978-1-63149-831-2 ISBN 978-1-631-49-832-9 (ebk.) Liveright Publishing Corporation, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS Fear and Trembling #[105]# TUNING UP O nce upon a time there was a man who as a child had heard the beautiful story i of how God tempted Abraham and how he withstood the temptation, kept the faith, and contrary to expectation, received a son a second time. When he grew older, he read the same story with even greater admiration, for life had separated what had been united in the pious simplicity of the child. The older he became, the more often his thoughts turned to that story; his enthusiasm for it became greater and greater, and yet he was less and less able to understand the story. Finally, the story caused him to forget everything else; his soul had only one wish: to see Abraham; one longing: to have been witness to that event. He desired not to see the beautiful regions of the East, nor the earthly splendor of the Promised Land, ii nor that God-fearing couple whose old age God had blessed, iii nor the venerable form of the aged patriarch, nor the vigorous youth God had granted Isaac—he would not have objected if it had taken place on the barren heath. His desire was to follow along on that three-day journey, when Abraham rode with sorrow ahead of him and Isaac beside him. His wish was to be present at the moment when Abraham lifted his eyes and beheld Mount Moriah in the distance, the moment when he left the donkeys behind and went up the mountain alone with Isaac; for what concerned him was not the artistic tapestry of the imagination, but the shudder of thought. That man was not a thinker, he felt no need to go beyond faith; it seemed to him that the most splendid thing was to be remembered as its father, an enviable destiny to possess, even if no one knew of it. #[106]# That man was not a learned exegete, he knew no Hebrew; had he known Hebrew he might perhaps have easily understood the story and Abraham. #[107]# I And God tempted Abraham and said to him, take Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you. iv I T WAS EARLY MORNING , Abraham arose early, and he had the donkeys saddled, left his tent, and took Isaac with him, v but Sarah watched them through the window as they went down through the valley, until she saw them no more. vi 1 They rode in silence for three days. On the morning of the fourth day Abraham said not a word, but lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance. He left the servant boys behind and went up the mountain only with Isaac, taking him by the hand. But Abraham said to himself: “I will indeed not conceal from Isaac where this path is leading him.” He stood still, he placed his hand upon Isaac’s head in blessing, and Isaac bowed down in order to receive it. And Abraham’s countenance was fatherly, his look was gentle, his voice admonitory. But Isaac could not understand him, his soul could not be lifted up; he clasped Abraham’s knees, 2 he pleaded at his feet, he begged for his young life, for his sanguine hopes; he called to mind the joy in Abraham’s house, he called to mind the sorrow and the loneliness. Then Abraham raised the boy up and walked with him, taking his hand, and his words were full of consolation and exhortation. But Isaac could not understand him. He climbed Mount Moriah, but Isaac did not understand him. Then he turned away from him for a moment, but when Isaac looked upon Abraham’s countenance for the second time, it was transformed: the look in his eyes was wild, his form one of terror. He seized Isaac by the breast, threw him to the ground, and said: “Foolish boy, do you think I am your father? I am an idolater. Do you think this is God’s command? No, it is my desire.” Then Isaac trembled, and in his anguish he cried out: “God in heaven, have mercy on me, God of Abraham, have mercy on me—if I have no father on earth, #[108]# then you be my father!” But Abraham said softly to himself: “Lord in heaven, I thank you; it is after all better that he believe me to be a monster than that he should lose faith in you.” When the child is to be weaned, the mother blackens her breast. It would of course be a shame for the breast to look so inviting when the child must not have it. So the child believes that the breast has changed, but the mother is the same, the look in her eyes is as loving and tender as ever. Fortunate the person who has not had need of more frightful means to wean the child! #[109]# II I T WAS EARLY IN the morning, Abraham arose early, he embraced Sarah, the bride of his old age, and Sarah kissed Isaac, who had taken away her disgrace, 3 who was her pride, her hope for all generations. vii Then they rode along the way, unspeaking, and Abraham’s gaze was fixed upon the ground until, on the fourth day, he lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance, but his gaze turned back again to the ground. Unspeaking, he arranged the wood for the fire, bound Isaac; unspeaking, he drew the knife; then he saw the ram that God had chosen. He sacrificed it and returned home. — — — From that day forth, Abraham was old, he could not forget that God had required this of him. Isaac throve as he had before; but Abraham’s eye was darkened, he saw joy no more. When the child has grown and is to be weaned, the mother virginally conceals her bosom, so the child no longer has a mother. Fortunate the child who did not lose its mother in another fashion! #[110]# III I T WAS EARLY IN the morning, Abraham arose early; he kissed Sarah, the new mother, and Sarah kissed Isaac, her delight, her joy forever. And Abraham rode down the path, full of thoughts; he thought of Hagar and her son, whom he had driven out into the desert. viii He climbed Mount Moriah, he drew the knife. It was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah. He cast himself down upon his face, he begged God to forgive him his sin, that he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, that the father had forgotten his duty toward his son. He often rode his lonely way, but he had ix no peace. He could not comprehend that it was a sin to have been willing to sacrifice to God the best he possessed, that for which he would gladly have laid down his life many times; and if it was a sin, if he hadn’t loved Isaac like this, then he could not understand that it could be forgiven: for what sin could be more frightful than this? When the child is to be weaned, then the mother, too, is not without sorrow that she and the child are to be separated more and more; that the child, which first lay under her heart, and later rested upon her breast, will no longer be so close. So they sorrow the brief sorrow together. Fortunate the one who kept the child so close and had no need of further sorrow! #[111]# IV I T WAS EARLY IN the morning. In Abraham’s house everything had been made ready for the journey. He took leave of Sarah, and Eliezer, 4 the faithful servant, accompanied him along the way until he turned back again. They rode together as one, Abraham and Isaac, until they came to Mount Moriah. But Abraham prepared everything for the sacrifice, calmly and gently, but when he turned aside and drew the knife, Isaac then saw that Abraham’s left hand was clenched in despair, that a shudder went through his body—but Abraham drew the knife. Then they returned home, and Sarah hastened to meet them, but Isaac had lost the faith. Never in the world was there said a word about it, and Isaac never spoke to anyone about what he had seen, and Abraham did not suspect that anyone had seen it. When the child is to be weaned, the mother has stronger food ready so that the child will not perish. Fortunate the person who has stronger food at hand! In these and in many similar ways, did the man of whom we speak think about this event. Every time, after having gone to Mount Moriah and returned home, he collapsed with weariness, folded his hands, and said: “Indeed, no one was as great as Abraham—who is capable of understanding him?” i See Gen. 22:1–19. ii Presumably a reference to Gen. 12:1–2 and 17:8. iii See Gen. 18:17–18. iv See Gen. 22:1–2. Here and elsewhere, Kierkegaard gives a close paraphrase of the 1740 Danish translation of the Old Testament, which was the authorized version in his time. v See Gen. 22:1–2. vi See Judith 10:10. vii See Gen. 12:1–3, 17:2–21. viii See Gen. 16 and 21:9–21. ix Variant: instead of “he had” (Danish, han havde ), which appears in the first printing of the first edition, both the fair copy as submitted to the printer and Kierkegaard’s draft have “he found” (Danish, han fandt ). Fear and Trembling Contents Cover Title Contents Translator’s Introduction: Fear and Trembling, a Guide to an Unknown Country Translator’s Note Fear and Trembling Preface	358,798
On the Genealogy of Morals (Frederich Nietzsche) (Z-Library).epub	On the Genealogy of Morals On the Genealogy of Morals Friedrich Nietzsche On the Genealogy of Morals FIRST ESSAY. ‘GOOD AND EVIL,’ ‘GOOD AND BAD.’ 1 Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of morality – these men, I say, offer us in their own personalities no paltry problem – they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their books – they themselves are interesting! These English psychologists – what do they really mean? We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the partie honteuse of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the vis inertiæ of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid) – what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a dash of each of these motives – a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy? But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a swamp . I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that these analysts with their psychological microscopes should be, at bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle both their hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and immoral truths – for there are truths of that description. 2 All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the historical sense itself, that they themselves are quite deserted by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and judgement of ‘good.’ ‘Man had originally,’ so speaks their decree, ‘praised and called ‘good’ altruistic acts from the standpoint of those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were useful ; subsequently the origin of this praise was forgotten , and altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were praised as good, came also to be felt as good – as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic goodness.’ The thing is obvious: this initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic traits of the English psychologists – we have ‘utility,’ ‘forgetting,’ ‘habit,’ and finally ‘error,’ the whole assemblage forming the basis of a system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. This pride must be brought low, this system of values must lose its values: is that attained? Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real homestead of the concept ‘good’ is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgement ‘good’ did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of practical expediency is always based – and not for one occasional, not for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic esprit de corps and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into association with a meaner race, an ‘under race,’ this is the origin of the antithesis of good and bad. (The masters’ right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the masters: they say ‘this is that, and that,’ they seal finally every object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word ‘good’ is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic acts, in accordance with the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values, that the antitheses between ‘egoistic’ and ‘altruistic’ presses more and more heavily on the human conscience – it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in contemporary Europe); for today that prejudice is predominant, which, acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain disease, holds that ‘moral,’ ‘altruistic,’ and ‘ désintéressé ’ are concepts of equal value. 3 In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value ‘good’ cannot be historically upheld, it suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of altruistic conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, and this origin has become forgotten : But in what conceivable way is this forgetting possible ! Has perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places the concept ‘good’ as essentially similar to the concept ‘useful,’ ‘purposive,’ so that in the judgements ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mankind is simply summarizing and investing with a sanction its unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concerning the ‘useful-purposive’ and the ‘mischievous-non-purposive.’ According to this theory, ‘good’ is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be considered ‘valuable in the highest degree,’ ‘valuable in itself.’ This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and psychologically tenable. 4 The guide-post which first put me on the right track was this question – what is the true etymological significance of the various symbols for the idea ‘good’ which have been coined in the various languages? I then found that they all led back to the same evolution of the same idea – that everywhere ‘aristocrat,’ ‘noble’ (in the social sense), is the root idea, out of which have necessarily developed ‘good’ in the sense of ‘with aristocratic soul,’ ‘noble,’ in the sense of ‘with a soul of high calibre,’ ‘with a privileged soul’ – a development which invariably runs parallel with that other evolution by which ‘vulgar,’ ‘plebeian,’ ‘low,’ are made to change finally into ‘bad.’ The most eloquent proof of this last contention is the German word ‘ schlecht ’ itself: this word is identical with ‘ schlicht ’ – (compare ‘ schlechtweg ’ and ‘ schlechterdings ’) – which, originally and as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply denoted the plebeian man in contrast to the aristocratic man. It is at the sufficiently late period of the Thirty Years’ War that this sense becomes changed to the sense now current. From the standpoint of the Genealogy of Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the lateness of it is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised in the modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown, even to the province of natural science and physiology, which, prima facie is the most objective. The extent of the mischief which is caused by this prejudice (once it is free of all trammels except those of its own malice), particularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the notorious case of Buckle: it was in Buckle that that plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, broke out once again from its malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that salted, rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present time all volcanoes have spoken. 5 With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and roots which denote ‘good’ we catch glimpses of that arch-trait, on the strength of which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings of a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they call themselves in perhaps the most frequent instances simply after their superiority in power ( e.g. ’the powerful,’ ‘the lords,’ ‘the commanders’), or after the most obvious sign of their superiority, as for example ‘the rich,’ ‘the possessors’ (that is the meaning of arya ; and the Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But they also call themselves after some characteristic idiosyncrasy ; and this is the case which now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, ‘the truthful’: this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouthpiece is found in Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word ἐσθλος, which is coined for the purpose, signifies etymologically ‘one who is ,’ who has reality, who is real, who is true; and then with a subjective twist, the ‘true,’ as the ‘truthful’: at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it becomes the motto and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes the transition to the meaning ‘noble,’ so as to place outside the pale the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him – till finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to delineate psychological noblesse , and becomes as it were ripe and mellow. In the word as in δειλός (the plebeian in contrast to the ἀγαθός) the cowardice is emphasized. This affords perhaps an inkling on what lines the etymological origin of the very ambiguous ἀγαθός is to be investigated. In the Latin malus (which I place side by side with μέλας) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and above all as the black-haired (‘ hic niger est ’), as the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering race: at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact analogue – Fin (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal ), the distinctive word of the nobility, finally – good, noble, clean, but originally the blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a blonde race; and it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those traces of an essentially dark-haired population which are to be seen on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany with any Celtic ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context it is rather the pre-Aryan population of Germany which surges up to these districts. (The same is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in point of fact, the subject race has finally again obtained the upper hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the ‘Commune,’ the most primitive form of society, which is now common to all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real essence signify a monstrous reversion – and that the conquering and master race – the Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe that I can explain the Latin bonus as the ‘warrior’: my hypothesis is that I am right in deriving bonus from an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum = duen-lum , in which the word duonus appears to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of variance, ‘ entzweiung ’ ( duo ), as the warrior: one sees what in ancient Rome ‘the good’ meant for a man. Must not our actual German word gut mean ‘ the godlike , the man of godlike race’? and be identical with the national name (originally the nobles’ name) of the Goths ? The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this work. 6 Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority, in those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the priestly caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers on itself the privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its priestly function. It is in these cases, for instance, that ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ confront each other for the first time as badges of class distinction; here again there develops a ‘good’ and a ‘bad,’ in a sense which has ceased to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken not to take these ideas of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ too seriously, too broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have, on the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in a sense which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude, coarse, physical, and narrow, and above all essentially unsymbolical . The ‘clean man’ is originally only a man who washes himself, who abstains from certain foods which are conducive to skin diseases, who does not sleep with the unclean women of the lower classes, who has a horror of blood – not more, not much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestly aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such an early juncture there should ensue a really dangerous sharpening and intensification of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed values that gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable Achilles of free thought would shudder to cross. There is from the outset a certain diseased taint in such sacerdotal aristocracies, and in the habits which prevail in such societies – habits which, averse as they are to action, constitute a compound of introspection and explosive emotionalism, as a result of which there appears that introspective morbidity and neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to all priests at all times: with regard, however, to the remedy which they themselves have invented for this disease – the philosopher has no option but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred times more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have been the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects of the naïvetés of this priestly cure. Take, for instance, certain kinds of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight into the wilderness (a kind of Weir-Mitchell isolation, though of course without that system of excessive feeding and fattening which is the most efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic ideal); consider too the whole metaphysic of the priests, with its war on the senses, its enervation, its hair-splitting; consider its self-hypnotism on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as a glass disc and obsession), and that climax which we can understand only too well of an unusual satiety with its panacea of nothingness (or God – the demand for a unio mystica with God is the demand of the Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana – and nothing else!). In sacerdotal societies every element is on a more dangerous scale, not merely cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love, ambition, virtue, morbidity: further, it can fairly be stated that it is on the soil of this essentially dangerous form of human society, the sacerdotal form, that man really becomes for the first time an interesting animal , that it is in this form that the soul of man has in a higher sense attained depths and become evil – and those are the two fundamental forms of the superiority which up to the present man has exhibited over every other animal. 7 The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special impetus is given to this opposition, by every occasion when the castes of the priests and warriors confront each other with mutual jealousy and cannot agree over the prize. The knightly-aristocratic ‘values’ are based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney – on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode of valuation is – we have seen – based on other hypotheses: it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies – why? Because they are the weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the history of the world have always been priests, who are also the cleverest haters – in comparison with the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negligible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything were it not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak – take at once the most important instance. All the world’s efforts against the ‘aristocrats,’ the ‘mighty,’ the ‘masters,’ the ‘holders of power,’ are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews – the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realized that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge . Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, ‘the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation – but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!’ We know who it was who reaped the heritage of this Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative which the Jews have exhibited in connection with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I remember the passage which came to my pen on another occasion ( Beyond Good and Evil , Aph. 195) – that it was, in fact, with the Jews that the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of morals ; that revolt which has behind it a history of two millennia, and which at the present day has only moved out of our sight, because it has achieved victory. 8 But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which has taken two thousand years to achieve victory? There is nothing wonderful in this: all lengthy processes are hard to see and to realize. But this is what took place: from the trunk of that tree of revenge and hate, Jewish hate – that most profound and sublime hate, which creates ideals and changes old values to new creations, the like of which has never been on earth – there grew a phenomenon which was equally incomparable, a new love , the most profound and sublime of all kinds of love; and from what other trunk could it have grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on its upward growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the contrary is the truth! This love grew out of that hate, as its crown, as its triumphant crown, circling wider and wider amid the clarity and fullness of the sun, and pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height its goal of hatred, its victory, its spoil, its strategy, with the same intensity with which the roots of that tree of hate sank into everything which was deep and evil with increasing stability and increasing desire. This Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this ‘Redeemer’ bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful – was he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, temptation to take the tortuous path to those very Jewish values and those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel really obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this ‘Redeemer,’ for all that he might pose as Israel’s adversary and Israel’s destroyer? Is it not due to the black magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so that all the world – that is, all the enemies of Israel – could nibble without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human mind with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly dangerous ? Anything that was even equivalent in the power of its seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and corrupting influence to that symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox of a ‘god on the cross,’ to that mystery of the unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror of the self-crucifixion of a god for the salvation of man ? It is at least certain that sub hoc signo Israel, with its revenge and transvaluation of all values, has up to the present always triumphed again over all other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals. 9 ‘But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; that the people have triumphed – or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them – if this has happened through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater mission in the world’s history. The ‘masters’ have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races) – I do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication has succeeded. The ‘redemption’ of the human race (that is, from the masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming Judaized, or Christianized, or vulgarized (what is there in the words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning through the whole body politic of mankind – but its tempo and pace may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more discreet – there is time enough. In view of this context has the Church nowadays any necessary purpose? Has it, in fact, a right to live? Or could man get on without it? Quæritur . It seems that it fetters and retards this tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that might be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish institution, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays, more than it allures. Which of us would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no Church? It is the Church which repels us, not its poison – apart from the Church we like the poison.’ This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), and a democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard to this topic there is much on which to be silent. 10 The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values – a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says ‘no’ from the very outset to what is ‘outside itself,’ ‘different from itself,’ and ‘not itself’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint – this inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subjective – is typical of ‘resentment’: the slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable of action at all – its action is fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to the aristocrat’s system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant ‘yes’ to its own self; its negative conception, ‘low,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘bad,’ is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and passion), of ‘we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones.’ When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits sacrilege on reality, this is limited to that particular sphere with which it is not sufficiently acquainted – a sphere, in fact, from the real knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself. It misjudges, in some cases, the sphere which it despises, the sphere of the common vulgar man and the low people: on the other hand, due weight should be given to the consideration that in any case the mood of contempt, of disdain, of superciliousness, even on the supposition that it falsely portrays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed from that degree of falsity which will always characterize the attacks – in effigy, of course – of the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In point of fact, there is in contempt too strong an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, of boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation, for it to be capable of distorting its victim into a real caricature or a real monstrosity. Attention again should be paid to the almost benevolent nuances which, for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all the words by which it distinguishes the common people from itself; note how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration imparts its honeyed flavour , until at last almost all the words which are applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expressions for ‘unhappy,’ ‘worthy of pity’ (compare δειλο, δείλαιος, πονηρός, μοχθηρός; the latter two names really denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave and beast of burden) – and how, conversely, ‘bad,’ ‘low,’ ‘unhappy’ have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which ‘unhappy’ is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in contempt (let philologists remember the sense in which ὀιζυρός, ἄνολβος, τλήμων, δυστυχεῑν, ξυμφορά used to be employed). The ‘well-born’ simply felt themselves the ‘happy’; they did not have to manufacture their happiness artificially through looking at their enemies, or in cases to talk and lie themselves into happiness (as is the custom with all resentful men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant with strength, and consequently necessarily energetic, they were too wise to dissociate happiness from action – activity becomes in their minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is the etymology of εὖ πρἆττειν) – all in sharp contrast to the ‘happiness’ of the weak and the oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity, among whom happiness appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, a peace, a ‘Sabbath,’ an enervation of the mind and relaxation of the limbs – in short, a purely passive phenomenon. While the aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself (γενναῐος, ‘noble-born,’ emphasizes the nuance ‘sincere,’ and perhaps also ‘naïf’), the resentful man, on the other hand, is neither sincere nor naïf, nor honest and candid with himself. His soul squints ; his mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and back-doors, everything secret appeals to him as his world, his safety, his balm; he is past master in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race of such resentful men will of necessity eventually prove more prudent than any aristocratic race, it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aristocratic men is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and refinement; so among them it plays nothing like so integral a part as that complete certainty of function of the governing unconscious instincts, or as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as a vehement and valiant charge, whether against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times noble souls have recognized each other. When the resentment of the aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no venom : on the other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless instances, when in the case of the feeble and weak it would be inevitable. An inability to take seriously for any length of time their enemies, their disasters, their misdeeds – that is the sign of the full strong natures who possess a superfluity of moulding plastic force, that heals completely and produces forgetfulness: a good example of this in the modern world is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and meannesses which were practised on him, and who was only incapable of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed shakes off with a shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real ‘ love of one’s enemies.’ What respect for his enemies is found, forsooth, in an aristocratic man – and such a reverence is already a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, imagine the ‘enemy’ as the resentful man conceives him – and it is here exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ the ‘evil one,’ and indeed that is the root idea from which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a ‘good one,’ himself – his very self! 11 The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the root idea ‘good’ spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then creates for himself a concept of ‘bad’! This ‘bad’ of aristocratic origin and that ‘evil’ out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred – the former an imitation, an ‘extra,’ an additional nuance; the latter, on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception of a slave-morality – these two words ‘bad’ and ‘evil,’ how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they have an identical contrary in the idea ‘good.’ But the idea ‘good’ is not the same: much rather let the question be asked, ‘Who is really evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?’ In all sternness let it be answered thus: just the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to know those ‘good’ ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not to know them only as ‘ evil enemies ’ and the same men who inter pares were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares , these men who in their relations with each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign element, a foreign country, begins), not much better than beasts of prey, which have been let loose. They enjoy there freedom from all social control, they feel that in the wilderness they can give vent with impunity to that tension which is produced by enclosure and imprisonment in the peace of society, they revert to the innocence of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student’s prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognize at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the magnificent blonde brute , avidly rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must get loose again, must return into the wilderness – the Roman, Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who have left the idea ‘Barbarian’ on all the tracks in which they have marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilization (for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians in that celebrated funeral oration, ‘Our audacity has forced a way over every land and sea, rearing everywhere imperishable memorials of itself for good and for evil ’). This audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, and spasmodic as may be its expression; the incalculable and fantastic nature of their enterprises, Pericles sets in special relief and glory the ραθυμία of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty – all these features become crystallized, for those who suffered thereby in the picture of the ‘barbarian,’ of the ‘evil enemy,’ perhaps of the ‘Goth’ and of the ‘Vandal.’ The profound, icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power – even at the present time – is always still an aftermath of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and ourselves there exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, relationship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and endeavoured to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He could only dispose of the contradiction, with which he was confronted, by the Homeric world, an age magnificent indeed, but at the same time so awful and so violent, by making two ages out of one, which he henceforth placed one behind each other – first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as that world had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families, who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze age, as that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of the oppressed, spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as an age of bronze, as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without feelings and without conscience, crushing everything, and bespattering everything with blood. Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that the very essence of all civilization is to train out of man, the beast of prey, a tame and civilized animal, a domesticated animal, it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real tools of civilization all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also represented the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is not only probable – nay, it is palpable to-day; these bearers of vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up, these descendants of all European and non-European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan population – these people, I say, represent the decline of humanity! These ‘tools of civilization’ are a disgrace to humanity, and constitute in reality more of an argument against civilization, more of a reason why civilization should be suspected. One may be perfectly justified in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the core of all aristocratic races, and in being on one’s guard: but who would not a hundred times prefer to be afraid, when one at the same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of being perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the dwarfed, the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate? What produces today our repulsion towards ‘man’? – for we suffer from ‘man,’ there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm ‘man’ is in the foreground and pullulates; it is that the ‘tame man,’ the wretched mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a ‘higher man’; yes, it is that he has a certain right so to consider himself, in so far as he feels that in contrast to that excess of deformity, disease, exhaustion, and effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved a relative success, he at any rate still says ‘yes’ to life. 12 I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! That something misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale the odour of the entrails of a misbegotten soul! That excepted, what can one not endure in the way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude? In point of fact, one manages to get over everything, born as one is to a burrowing and battling existence; one always returns once again to the light, one always lives again one’s golden hour of victory – and then one stands as one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready for something more difficult, for something more distant, like a bow stretched but the tauter by every strain. But from time to time do ye grant me – assuming that ‘beyond good and evil’ there are goddesses who can grant – one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realized, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of a man that justifies the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that realizes and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to the belief in man ! For the position is this: in the dwarfing and levelling of the European man lurks our greatest peril, for it is this outlook which fatigues – we see today nothing which wishes to be greater, we surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian – man, there is no doubt about it, grows always ‘better’ – the destiny of Europe lies even in this – that in losing the fear of man, we have also lost the hope in man, yea, the will to be man. The sight of man now fatigues. What is present-day Nihilism if it is not that ? We are tired of man . 13 But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the good – of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out – demands its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, ‘These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb, is he not good?’ then there is nothing to cavil at in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, ‘ We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.’ To require of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action – rather it is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all working as conditioned by a worker, by a ‘subject.’ And just exactly as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed some indifferent neutral substratum , which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no such substratum , there is no ‘being’ behind doing, working, becoming; ‘the doer’ is a mere appanage to the action. The action is everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they make the lightning lighten, that is a ‘doing-doing’: they make the same phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, ‘Force moves, force causes,’ and so on. Our whole science is still, in spite of all its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious changeling ‘the subject’ (the atom, to give another instance, is such a changeling, just as the Kantian ‘Thing-in-itself’). What wonder, if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief, and indeed hold no belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this – ‘that the strong has the option of being weak, and the bird of prey of being a lamb.’ Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the birds of prey the responsibility for being birds of prey: when the oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the vindictive guile of weakness, ‘Let us be otherwise than the evil, namely, good! And good is every one who does not oppress, who hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not pay back, who hands over revenge to God, who holds himself, as we do, in hiding; who goes out of the way of evil, and demands, in short, little from life; like ourselves the patient, the meek, the just,’ yet all this, in its cold and unprejudiced interpretation, means nothing more than ‘once for all, the weak are weak; it is good to do nothing for which we are not strong enough ’; but this dismal state of affairs, this prudence of the lowest order, which even insects possess (which in a great danger are fain to sham death so as to avoid doing ‘too much’), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade in the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue, just as though the very weakness of the weak – that is, forsooth, its being , its working, its whole unique inevitable inseparable reality – were a voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed, an act of merit . This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing ‘subject’ necessary from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to use popular language, the soul ) has perhaps proved itself the best dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as freedom, of being this, or being that, as merit . 14 Will any one look a little into – right into – the mystery of how ideals are manufactured in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a moment, dear Mr Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow accustomed to this false changing light – Yes! Enough! Now speak! What is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity – for now I am the listener. ‘I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a cautious, spiteful, gentle whispering and muttering together in all the corners and crannies. It seems to me that they are lying; a sugary softness adheres to every sound. Weakness is turned to merit , there is no doubt about it – it is just as you say.’ Further! ‘And the impotence which requites not, is turned to ‘goodness,’ craven baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience (namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this submission – they call him God). The inoffensive character of the weak, the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as ‘patience,’ which is also called ‘virtue’; not being able to avenge one’s self, is called not wishing to avenge one’s self, perhaps even forgiveness (for they know not what they do – we alone know what they do). They also talk of the ‘love of their enemies’ and sweat thereby.’ Further! ‘They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is a favour and distinction given to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in gold, nay in happiness. This they call ‘Blessedness.’’ Further! ‘They are now giving me to understand, that not only are they better men than the mighty, the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have got to lick ( not out of fear, not at all out of fear! But because God ordains that one should honour all authority) – not only are they better men, but that they also have a ‘better time,’ at any rate, will one day have a ‘better time.’ But enough! Enough! I can endure it no longer. Bad air! Bad air! These workshops where ideals are manufactured – verily they reek with the crassest lies.’	318,817
Parerga and Paralipomena Vol.1 (Arthur Schopenhauer) (Z-Library).epub	Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer Parerga and Paralipomena The purpose of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer is to offer translations of the best modern German editions of Schopenhauer’s work in a uniform format for Schopenhauer scholars, together with philosophical introductions and full editorial apparatus. With the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851, there finally came some measure of the fame that Schopenhauer thought was his due. Described by Schopenhauer himself as ‘incomparably more popular than everything up till now’, Parerga is a miscellany of essays addressing themes that complement his work The World as Will and Representation , along with more divergent, speculative pieces. It includes his Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, reflections on fate and clairvoyance, trenchant views on the philosophers and universities of his day, and an enlightening survey of the history of philosophy. The present volume offers a new translation, a substantial introduction explaining the context of the essays, and extensive editorial notes on the different published versions of the work. This readable and scholarly edition will be an essential reference for those studying Schopenhauer, history of philosophy, and nineteenth-century German philosophy. SABINE ROEHR is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Hubert Fichte: Poetische Erkenntnis. Montage, Synkretismus, Mimesis (1985) and A Primer on German Enlightenment (1995). CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. His most recent books include Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (2002), and Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy (2007). His most recently edited collections include The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (Cambridge, 2000), and Better Consciousness: Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Value (2009, co-edited with Alex Neill). He is General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer, in which he has translated The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (2009), and co-translated three other volumes. Arthur Schopenhauer The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer General Editor Christopher Janaway For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book . Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer Parerga and Paralipomena Short Philosophical Essays Volume 1 Translated and Edited by Sabine Roehr Christopher Janaway with an Introduction by Christopher Janaway Arthur Schopenhauer University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521871389 © Sabine Roehr and Christopher Janaway , 2014 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2014 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788–1860. [Parerga und Paralipomena. English] Parerga and paralipomena : short philosophical essays / Arthur Schopenhauer ; translated and edited by Sabine Roehr, Christopher Janaway ; with an introduction by Christopher Janaway. pages cm. – (The Cambridge edition of the works of Schopenhauer; Volume 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-87138-9 1. Philosophy. I. Roehr, Sabine, 1957-, translator. II. Title. B3118.E5R64 2013 193–dc23 2013026736 ISBN 978-0-521-87138-9 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Arthur Schopenhauer Contents General editor’s preface Editorial notes and references Introduction Notes on text and translation Chronology Bibliography Parerga And Paralipomena, Volume 1 Contents Preface Sketch of a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real Fragments for the history of philosophy On university philosophy Transcendent speculation on the apparent deliberateness in the fate of the individual Essay on spirit-seeing and related issues Aphorisms on the wisdom of life Versions of Schopenhauer’s text Glossary of names Index Arthur Schopenhauer General editor’s preface Schopenhauer is one of the great original writers of the nineteenth century, and a unique voice in the history of thought. His central concept of the will leads him to regard human beings as striving irrationally and suffering in a world that has no purpose, a condition redeemed by the elevation of aesthetic consciousness and finally overcome by the will’s self-denial and a mystical vision of the self as one with the world as a whole. He is in some ways the most progressive post-Kantian, an atheist with profound ideas about the human essence and the meaning of existence which point forward to Nietzsche, Freud and existentialism. He was also the first major Western thinker to seek a synthesis with Eastern thought. Yet at the same time he undertakes an ambitious global metaphysics of a conservative, more or less pre-Kantian kind, and is driven by a Platonic vision of escape from empirical reality into a realm of higher knowledge. Schopenhauer was born in 1788, and by 1809 had gone against his family’s expectations of a career as a merchant and embarked on a university career. He completed his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813, then spent several years in intensive preparation of what became the major work of his life, The World as Will and Representation , which was published at the end of 1818, with 1819 on the title page. Shortly afterwards his academic career suffered a setback when his only attempt at a lecture course ended in failure. Thereafter Schopenhauer adopted a stance of intellectual self-sufficiency and antagonism towards university philosophy, for which he was repaid by a singular lack of reaction to his writings. In 1835 he published On Will in Nature , an attempt to corroborate his metaphysics with findings from the sciences, and in 1841 two self-standing essays on free will and moral philosophy, entitled The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . A large supplementary second volume to The World as Will and Representation appeared in 1844, accompanied by a revised version of the original which now appeared as Volume One; then in 1851 another two-volume work, Parerga and Paralipomena , a collection of essays and observations. Only in the 1850s did serious interest in Schopenhauer’s philosophy begin, with a favourable review appearing in an English journal and a few European universities offering courses on his work. In this final decade before his death in 1860 he published a third edition of The World as Will and Representation and a second edition of The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . After Schopenhauer’s death his follower Julius Frauenstädt produced the first six-volume edition of his works in 1873, providing the basis for many subsequent German editions up to the Sämtliche Werke edited by Arthur Hübscher, which we use as the basis for our translations in the present edition. Though Schopenhauer’s life and the genesis of his philosophy belong to the early part of the nineteenth century, it is the latter half of the century that provides the context for his widespread reception and influence. In 1877 he was described by Wilhelm Wundt as ‘the born leader of non-academic philosophy in Germany’, and in that period many artists and intellectuals, prominent among them Richard Wagner, worked under the influence of his works. The single most important philosophical influence was on Nietzsche, who was in critical dialogue throughout his career with his ‘great teacher Schopenhauer’. But many aspects of the period resonate with Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory, his pessimism, his championing of the Upanishads and Buddhism, and his theory of the self and the world as embodied striving. Over the last three decades interest in Schopenhauer in the English-speaking world has been growing again, with a good number of monographs, translations and collections of articles appearing, where before there were very few. More general trends in the study of the history of philosophy have played a part here. There has recently been a dramatic rise in philosophical interest in the period that immediately follows Kant (including the German Idealists and Romanticism), and the greater centrality now accorded to Nietzsche’s philosophy has provided further motivation for attending to Schopenhauer. Yet until now there has been no complete English edition of his works. The present six-volume series of Schopenhauer’s published works aims to provide an up-to-date, reliable English translation that reflects the literary style of the original while maintaining linguistic accuracy and consistency over his philosophical vocabulary. Almost all the English translations of Schopenhauer in use until now, published though they are by several different publishers, stem from a single translator, the remarkable E. F. J. Payne. These translations, which were done in the 1950s and 1960s, have stood the test of time quite well and performed a fine service in transmitting Schopenhauer to an English-speaking audience. Payne’s single-handed achievement is all the greater given that he was not a philosopher or an academic, but a former military man who became a dedicated enthusiast. His translations are readable and lively and convey a distinct authorial voice. However, the case for new translations rests partly on the fact that Payne has a tendency towards circumlocution rather than directness and is often not as scrupulous as we might wish in translating philosophical vocabulary, partly on the fact that recent scholarship has probed many parts of Schopenhauer’s thought with far greater precision than was known in Payne’s day, and partly on the simple thought that after half a century of reading Schopenhauer almost solely through one translator, and with a wider and more demanding audience established, a change of voice is in order. In the present edition the translators have striven to keep a tighter rein on philosophical terminology, especially that which is familiar from the study of Kant – though we should be on our guard here, for Schopenhauer’s use of a Kantian word does not permit us to infer that he uses it in a sense Kant would have approved of. We have included explanatory introductions to each volume, and other aids to the reader: footnotes explaining some of Schopenhauer’s original German vocabulary, a glossary of names to assist with his voluminous literary and philosophical references, a chronology of his life and a bibliography of German texts, existing English translations and selected further reading. We also give a breakdown of all passages that were added or altered by Schopenhauer in different editions of his works, especially noteworthy being the changes made to his earliest publications, On the Fourfold Root and the single-volume first edition of The World as Will and Representation . A further novel feature of this edition is our treatment of the many extracts Schopenhauer quotes in languages other than German. Our guiding policy here is, as far as possible, to translate material in any language into English. The reader will therefore not be detained by scanning through passages in other languages and having to resort to footnote translations. Nevertheless, the virtuoso manner in which Schopenhauer blends Latin, Greek, French, Italian and Spanish extracts with his own prose style is not entirely lost, since we have used footnotes to give all the original passages in full. Christopher Janaway Arthur Schopenhauer Editorial notes and references Three kinds of notes occur in the translation: (1) Footnotes marked with asterisks (, * and so on) are notes original to Schopenhauer’s text. In the case of Parerga and Paralipomena , some of these notes are from the published text of 1851; others are incorporations by later editors of the German text, using handwritten material by Schopenhauer. (2) Footnotes marked with small letters (a, b, c) are editorial notes. These either give information about the original wording in Schopenhauer’s text (in German or other languages), or provide additional editorial information. All (and only) such additional information is enclosed in brackets [ ]. All footnote material not in brackets consists of words from the original text. (3) Endnotes marked with numerals 1, 2, 3. The endnotes are collected at the end of the volume and indicate some variations between the published text of 1851 and the Hübscher text that has been used for this translation. Schopenhauer’s works are referred to by the following abbreviations. We give page references to those Cambridge editions published as of the date of the present volume. BM and FW are found in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . FR , VC and WN appear collected in one volume. The Hübscher page numbers, which appear as marginal numbers in the Cambridge translations, are supplied in all cases, and can be used to locate passages in future volumes of the Cambridge edition. Hübscher SW 1–7 Sämtliche Werke , ed. Arthur Hübscher (Mannheim: F. A. Brockhaus, 1988), vols. 1–7. BM On the Basis of Morals [ Über die Grundlage der Moral ]. FR On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason [ Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde ]. FW On the Freedom of the Will [ Über die Freiheit des Willens ]. PP 1, 2 Parerga and Paralipomena [ Parerga und Paralipomena ], vols. 1 and 2. VC On Vision and Colours [ Über das Sehn und die Farben ]. WN On Will in Nature [ Über den Willen in der Natur ]. WWR 1, 2 The World as Will and Representation [ Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ], vols. 1 and 2. Unpublished writings by Schopenhauer are referred to thus: GB Gesammelte Briefe , ed. Arthur Hübscher (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978). HN 1–5 Der handschriftlicher Nachlaß , ed. Arthur Hübscher (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1970), vols. 1–5. MR 1–4 Manuscript Remains , ed. Arthur Hübscher, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Berg, 1988), vols. 1–4 [a translation of HN vols. 1–4]. Passages in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason are referred by the standard method, using A and B marginal numbers corresponding to the first and second editions of the work. Other writings by Kant are referred to by volume and page number of the monumental ‘ Akademie ’ edition (Berlin: Georg Reimer/Walter de Gruyter, 1900–), in the form Ak. 4: 397. References to works of Plato and Aristotle use the standard marginal annotations. Arthur Schopenhauer Introduction In June 1850 Schopenhauer had completed his two-volume work Parerga and Paralipomena , and was looking for a publisher. He sent a letter to F. A. Brockhaus, who had previously published his The World as Will and Representation , and explained how he viewed the new offering: Now, after six years’ work, I have completed my miscellaneous philosophical writings: the preliminary drafts of them stretch back 30 years. For in them I have set down all the thoughts that could find no place in my systematic works. Hence this one is, for the most part, also incomparably more popular than everything up till now, as you can see from the list of contents that I include. After this I do not propose to write anything more; because I want to prevent myself from bringing into the world weak children of old age who accuse their father and vilify his reputation. 1 Schopenhauer was 62 years old and would live for another decade. But in that final ten years he produced only revised versions of the works that were already behind him in 1850: The World as Will and Representation , On Will in Nature and The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . The contents of the new, popular work were already settled, and Schopenhauer requested only a small honorarium, but Brockhaus turned the proposal down, and Schopenhauer asked his friend Julius Frauenstädt for assistance in finding another publisher. As a result of Frauenstädt’s efforts Parerga and Paralipomena was finally published in 1851 by A. W. Hayn of Berlin. Schopenhauer specified that there was to be a print-run of only 750, and no honorarium at all. 2 In describing these writings as ‘miscellaneous’ Schopenhauer used the word vermischt , which might also be rendered as ‘mixed’. Indeed his Latin phrase for them in his letters is opera mixta . 3 But his characteristic love of a learned phrase from an ancient language had led him to choose two Greek words for his title: parerga meaning ‘subordinate works’ or works ‘apart from the main business’, paralipomena things ‘left aside’ or ‘passed over’. So this suggests a variety of pieces that for one reason or another did not fit into the programme of The World as Will and Representation , the work that defined his philosophy, or pursued different tacks that interested him but were not essential to that programme. In the draft of a Preface that was never published (see 438 below) Schopenhauer gave a more precise explanation: It can be said on the whole that the first volume contains the Parerga, the second the Paralipomena, the greatest portion of which are to be regarded as supplements to my chief work. – . . . Thus these chapters presuppose knowledge of my philosophy, while the rest of the second volume, and the whole of the first, are comprehensible without such knowledge, although those who have become attached to my philosophy will recognize many connections to it everywhere, and indeed elucidations of it. The essays that cover similar ground to The World as Will and Representation are those concerning the nature of philosophy, idealism, the history of philosophy (some of these being in Volume 1 despite what Schopenhauer says), ethics, aesthetics, religion, and the ‘affirmation and negation of the will to life’, the central theme of the massive Fourth Book of The World as Will . Other pieces are more divergent, speculative pieces on topics such as the apparent fatedness of our lives and the phenomena of clairvoyance and hypnotism, or what was then known as animal magnetism. Some of the writings are decidedly popular in tone, for example the aphorisms on the wisdom of life, and the essays on noise, reading, physiognomy and the notoriously offensive ‘On Women’. In the latter case Schopenhauer is for the most part ranting, as he is at greater length in the well-known ‘On University Philosophy’, an impressive tirade against the careerism of professors making their living in the wake of Hegelianism and toeing the line of religious orthodoxy – favourite targets of Schopenhauer’s wrath and well-worked themes in his writings during the 1830s and 1840s. Parerga and Paralipomena was the first work of Schopenhauer’s to gain a relatively wide audience, and with its publication in 1851 there finally came some measure of the fame that Schopenhauer thought his due. There were positive reviews in German journals, followed in April 1852 by one in English in The Westminster Review , and historical summaries of German philosophy started to make reference to him. The author of the English review was John Oxenford, who in 1853 wrote a much longer article on Schopenhauer, entitled ‘Iconoclasm in German Philosophy’ ( The Westminster Review , April 1853). 4 This review generally pleased Schopenhauer, with its recognition of his attempt to ‘subvert the whole system of German philosophy which has been raised by university professors since the decease of Immanuel Kant’, and its fulsome description of one of the most ingenious and readable authors in the world, skilful in the art of theory building, universal in attainments, inexhaustible in the power of illustration, terribly logical and unflinching in the pursuit of consequences, and – a most amusing qualification to everyone but the persons ‘hit’ – a formidable hitter of adversaries. The translation of Oxenford’s article into German played an important role in spreading the news of what it called ‘this misanthropic sage of Frankfort’, and helped to set in train the increased intensity of his reception during the final years of his life. A number of books and articles on Schopenhauer appeared, as did the revised editions of The World as Will and Representation , On Will in Nature and The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . Oxenford found Schopenhauer ‘misanthropic’ and referred to his philosophy as ‘ultra-pessimism’ and the labels seem to have stuck ever since, although Schopenhauer was unhappy with the former epithet, and did not describe his own philosophy even as ‘pessimism’. But by the 1870s pessimism was what he was chiefly known for. In a survey of German philosophy in 1877 Wilhelm Wundt called Schopenhauer ‘the born leader of Non-Academic Philosophy in Germany’, saying that ‘the chief attraction of Schopenhauer’s philosophy [has been] simply his Pessimism’, in which ‘[he has] completely . . . fallen in with the current of his time’. 5 The view is echoed by Rüdiger Safranski: ‘Schopenhauer would at last make his breakthrough – but not by himself and not by his own strength: the changed spirit of the time met him half-way.’ 6 Whether it was because of the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848, the decline in influence of the Hegelian philosophy he had railed against, or the growth of scientific materialism and the cultural recognition of what Nietzsche would later call the ‘death of God’, Schopenhauer’s work became well known and well received for the first time. The initial fame of his popular writings in Parerga and Paralipomena paved the way for a posthumous six-volume edition of Schopenhauer’s works, edited by Frauenstädt in 1873, and opened a period in which the systematic philosophy first developed over half a century earlier became more widely read and commented upon. Outline of The World as Will and Representation The writings collected in the two volumes of Parerga are avowedly popular, and much that they contain can be approached without a thorough knowledge of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, ethics or aesthetics. However, he is writing against the background of his own systematic thought, and in some parts makes more substantial reference to it. So some awareness of that thought, as presented in The World as Will and Representation , will be of assistance to the reader of the present volume. First published in 1818, then re-issued in 1844 with many textual changes and a large amount of supplementary material placed in a new second volume, The World as Will and Representation was always Schopenhauer’s major work, and his other publications, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason , On Will in Nature and The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics , though they contain much that is of independent interest, are intended as elaborations and confirmations of it. Schopenhauer said that it contains a ‘single thought’. But the nature of that thought has been the subject of some slightly perplexed debate. 7 If there is a single thought, it must be highly elusive or highly complex, or both. But we can perhaps make an initial approach towards what Schopenhauer means if we examine the framework of four Books into which The World as Will and Representation is divided. Their titles and discursive subtitles are as follows: (1) The world as representation, first consideration. Representation subject to the principle of sufficient reason: the object of experience and science. (2) The world as will, first consideration. The objectivation of the will. (3) The world as representation, second consideration. Representation independent of the principle of sufficient reason: the Platonic Idea: the object of art. (4) The world as will, second consideration. With the achievement of self-knowledge, affirmation and negation of the will to life. What we first notice here is an oscillation between the two key terms from the book’s title. At the core of the single thought, then, is this: one and the same world has two aspects, and we can learn about it by considering it as representation, then as will, then as representation in altered fashion, then as will in altered fashion. The two alterations in question introduce two more vital oppositions. With the world as representation, we can either consider it subject to the principle of sufficient reason, or independently of that principle. With the world as will, we can consider it either descriptively for what it is, or on an evaluative dimension – with respect to its affirmation or negation. This, however, leaves us with an immense amount to explain. Let us next try to flesh out these bare bones a little, keeping in mind the four-part dynamic structure that any would-be ‘single thought’ really needs to have if it is to map on to the work as a whole. Schopenhauer uses ‘representation’ (German Vorstellung ) in the same way as his predecessor Kant uses it. It stands for anything that the mind is conscious of in its experience, knowledge or cognition of any form – something that is present to the mind. So we first consider the world as it presents itself to us in our minds. In ordinary human experience, and in the extension of this in the realm of scientific inquiry, we encounter objects, and these are ordered for us, necessarily, by space and time, and by relations of cause and effect. All the ways in which the world is thus ordered for us are species of the single principle ‘Nothing is without a ground for its being rather than not being’, otherwise known as the principle of sufficient reason. Every object is experienced as related to something else which grounds it. Everything in space and time has a determinate position in relation to other things in space and time, everything that happens has a determinate cause, every action relates back to a motive and to its agent’s character, every truth is grounded in some other truth or in the evidence of the senses. So starting, as we must, from the world as we find it in everyday experience and empirical investigation, we see a multiplicity of objects related in necessary ways. Schopenhauer allies himself with transcendental idealism . According to this doctrine, originally developed by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the objects that we experience as outside of us constitute a world of appearance , and we do not experience them in themselves . Empirical objects, the objects of which any subject has conscious experience, are a species of the subject’s representations and what this realm of objects can contain is necessarily limited, shaped by the form of the mind itself. So the familiar world of empirical things is a world of objects for a subject , which is to say a world consisting of the subject’s representations, and not a world that can be regarded as existing in itself, independently of the way it appears and must appear to an experiencing mind. For Schopenhauer, the human mind, and indeed any conscious mind, receives data through the bodily senses and structures them using what he calls the understanding ( Verstand ) or intellect ( Intellekt ). Without this structuring we would register only a conglomeration of subjective sensations, but with it we attain a picture of material objects persisting in time, occupying space and serving as the casual origins of observed changes and of our sensations themselves. However, Schopenhauer’s account of cognition differs quite markedly from Kant ’s in two principal ways. One is that the understanding or intellect cognizes the world in a manner that is not essentially conceptual. Adopting another technical term of Kant’s, Schopenhauer maintains that what the understanding gives us is intuition ( Anschauung ), which essentially means perceptual awareness of particular objects in space and time. For Kant, the senses give us an array of intuitions, and the understanding provides concepts under which it actively orders the intuitions to produce an experience of a world of objects. Only creatures capable of forming concepts and making judgements could have such experience in the full sense. But for Schopenhauer animals such as a dog or a horse, who are incapable of forming concepts, are as much aware of a world of objects as any human subject: they perceive objects in space and time as we do, being simply incapable of making judgements, forming thoughts or carrying out reasoning, and hence being unable to comprehend anything more than what is immediately present in their perception. The other, related feature that differentiates Schopenhauer from Kant is that the capacity to form and manipulate concepts discursively to frame thoughts and arguments, the capacity which for Schopenhauer is reason ( Vernunft ), though indeed unique to human beings, confers on them no special ‘dignity’, nor has any special connection with freedom or morality. Reason’s concepts are secondary representations abstracted from the primary material given in intuition, and reason itself is merely instrumental in value: it enables us, unlike other animals, to be guided in our actions by a vast range of motives that involve thoughts about what is not present immediately in intuition. But a rationally motivated action is no more free than one motivated by fear, thirst or lust – it is just determined by a more complicated cause. The demotion of reason from any foundational role in characterizing human behaviour or explaining what has moral worth, and the consequent levelling that occurs between human beings and all other animals, are vital distinguishing features of Schopenhauer’s ethics and of his philosophy as a whole. In the Second Book of The World as Will and Representation , we find Schopenhauer maintaining that the idealist account of the world as representation, though true, is seriously inadequate. For by definition it does not tell us what we are in ourselves, nor what anything in the world apart from us is in itself. All this remains a ‘riddle’. Schopenhauer proposes to solve that riddle by claiming that the essence, the very being in itself of all things is will ( Wille ). The world that appears to us as representation is, in itself, will. Representation gives us the world as it is empirically: diverse, plural, spatio-temporal, law-like and open to investigation. Will is what that same world and we ourselves are metaphysically – one and the same essence underlying all the many empirical appearances. We must make sense of the world and ourselves from within, not merely experience its manifestations in an ordered fashion from a standpoint detached from reality. This is the central message of the Second Book of The World as Will and Representation . A guiding thought here is that there is one single essence that underlies all objects and all phenomena, ourselves included, one single way in which the ‘riddle’ of all existence can be deciphered. Arguing from our immediate cognition of our own actions, Schopenhauer suggests that whenever we are conscious of ourselves, we are conscious of ourselves as willing something. This unique inner consciousness is to give us the vital clue to our own essence: it is that we strive towards ends. The intrinsic core of our being is will. Schopenhauer uses this term ‘will’ very widely, including in it not only desires, but actions, emotions and affects, and non-conscious or ‘blind’ processes that can be described as end-directed. Human rationality and consciousness are extremely useful, and give us an instrumental superiority over other beings, but are really only a froth on the surface, and do not distinguish humanity from the rest of nature at the most fundamental level. Indeed, our advanced capacities for cognition can be explained, for Schopenhauer, as serving the ends of willing: our ability to perceive and investigate the world functions primarily to enable us to manipulate objects that confront us, in order to continue existing and to reproduce ourselves. If we are really to understand the world and our place within it, we must not remain at the surface of the world as representation, but must delve into this deeper and darker aspect of reality, the world as will – darker because everything that wills or strives is necessarily at the mercy of suffering, and because this suffering has neither point nor end. As long as we will, we suffer; but that we will, and ultimately what we will, is a function of our inescapable essence, not something rationally chosen, and not something we have the means to put an end to by willing. Schopenhauer then extends this idea to the whole of nature, claiming that we can make sense of the world as such by seeing its essence as a kind of blind striving manifesting itself in multiple instances within our experience. Thus the one world is both representation and will. As The World as Will and Representation progresses the tone becomes more sombre. The individual’s existence is dominated by will: desires and needs are incessant, shaping all our perception and understanding of the world, ends can never finally be fulfilled, suffering is ever-present, but the will drives us on to strive and want more things that can never properly satisfy us even if we attain them. Willing goes on perpetually and without final purpose: it is built into us and into the whole fabric of the world. Throughout nature one being dominates and destroys another, the world-will tearing itself apart, says Schopenhauer, because it is a hungry will and there is nothing for it to feed on but itself. At the mid-point of The World as Will and Representation we return to a new, and brighter, consideration of the world as representation. It can happen, according to Schopenhauer, that we confront objects in a kind of experience that is out of the ordinary. We find all the usual kinds of relation – space, time and cause and effect – suspended, and lose ourselves in contemplation, forgetful of ourselves and of the distinction between ourselves and what we perceive. This is aesthetic experience, an extreme form of disinterestedness, a passive ‘mirroring’ of the world in which we cease to grapple with the world of objects, cease striving, and find temporary release from pain. While becoming as free as we can from subjectivity, we apprehend nature in a manner that takes our cognition as close as possible to the true essence of things: we perceive timeless features than run throughout nature, which Schopenhauer calls Ideas, intending us to take this notion in a sense close to Plato’s (or to what are often called Platonic Forms nowadays). Art provides the best opportunity for this kind of experience because it gives us a view of nature mediated through the exceptionally objective mind of a genius. Art enables in us as spectators a state of calm passivity and enhanced objectivity, and the various art forms allow us to recognize diverse aspects of the will’s manifestation in the world, from, as it were, a vantage point where our individual own will is not engaged. The transition to the Fourth Book of The World as Will and Representation takes us back to the world as will, considered now with respect to its ‘affirmation and negation’, or at any rate the affirmation and negation of the ‘will to life’ that Schopenhauer finds to be the essence of each individual. This final part – by far the longest and, in Schopenhauer’s words, the ‘most serious’ – is concerned with ethics, in both a narrower and broader sense. Building on the descriptive account of the will from the Second Book, Schopenhauer gives his own answers to conventional ethical questions: What are morally good and bad actions and characters? What is the nature of right and wrong? What constitutes compassion, and the virtues of justice and loving kindness? In what sense, if at all, are our actions free? But the main thrust of the Fourth Book is a broader ethical treatment of the value of human existence as such – a profound and troubling discussion that borders on religious territory while remaining resolutely atheist in its conviction. Although we exist as empirical individuals separate from one another and so naturally regard the good as consisting in what we can attain through the activity of our own individual wills, this is a mistaken view. When fully understood, the life of a human individual does not and cannot contain anything of true value. Worse, the existence of everything – as a manifestation of the pointlessly self-perpetuating and self-devouring will – is something ultimately to be lamented. To exist as a manifestation of will is to strive without fulfilment, and hence to suffer. Attaining an end through willing brings us nothing of positive value – it just temporarily erases a painful lack or absence. New desires flood in almost immediately to plague us with their non-satisfaction. And if no new desires arrive we are tormented by boredom. Because will is our essence, ‘All life is suffering’ – and consequently we need ‘salvation’ or ‘redemption’ from it. Such redemption can be achieved only by the will within us ‘turning’ and ‘denying itself’. 8 Schopenhauer has argued that the notion of a ‘highest good’ makes no sense. 9 But, he says, if we wish to bring that expression back from retirement and apply it to anything, then it must be to the denial of the will: cessation of desires and wants that relate to the individual we find ourselves as, detachment of identification from this individual, elimination of one’s personality, one’s natural self with its in-built attachment to the ends of living and willing, and contemplation of the whole world, with all its strivings and pains, as if from nowhere within in it. Calling on mystical ideas from diverse cultural traditions, Schopenhauer argues that only such a radical transformation, occasioned by a deep and rare knowledge of the ubiquity of suffering and the illusoriness of the individual, can restore any value to our existence. The world in itself, outside of the forms of space and time that govern the world as representation for us, cannot be separated into individuals. The truly wise human being would comprehend this and would cease to be attached to the strivings of the particular individual manifestation of will he or she is. The will that is the human being’s essence would recoil from pursuing any of its goals, and the sense of individuality weaken to the point where reality could be contemplated with a serenity that is void of the usual pains of existence because the subject has become void of all striving and void of the usual sense of self. History of philosophy in Parerga , Volume 1 The present volume opens with two essays on the history of philosophy, the short ‘Sketch of a history of the doctrine of the ideal and the real’ and the more substantial ‘Fragments for the history of philosophy’. Throughout both discussions Schopenhauer assumes the philosophical position in The World as Will and Representation as true, and traces a course in which earlier thought leads up to it. The ‘Sketch’ concerns modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes and ending with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, who are pointedly set apart in an Appendix. The ‘Fragments’ take a much broader view that goes back to the Presocratics and culminates in some remarks on Schopenhauer’s own philosophy. The ‘Sketch’ is organized around the view that the central problem in philosophy is ‘the problem of the ideal and the real, i.e. the question what in our cognition is objective and what subjective, thus what is to be ascribed to any things distinct from ourselves and what to ourselves’ (7). Schopenhauer claims with some plausibility that it is only in modern philosophy, from Descartes onwards, that this problem comes to the fore. Schopenhauer’s outline of the post-Cartesian debate encompasses Malebranche, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant – though the latter is not discussed with the thoroughness found elsewhere is Schopenhauer’s writings. 10 Descartes posed philosophy’s central question because he came to realize what Schopenhauer sees as a straightforward truth, namely the truth – expressed in Kant’s terminology, not Descartes’ – that the world is given to us only ‘as representation’. This reveals a ‘chasm’ between subjective and objective, between what is ideal and what is real. Schopenhauer interprets the thought of Malebranche , Leibniz and Spinoza , with their various notions of occasional causes, pre-established harmony, and the identity between the order of ideas and the order of things, as centring upon this issue, but as mishandling it by retaining wrong-headed concepts such as ‘God’, ‘substance’ and ‘perfection’. It is only with the philosophy of John Locke that the problem of the real and the ideal comes properly into focus, and the route to transcendental idealism is discernible. Schopenhauer puts Berkeley in the same tradition as Malebranche, Leibniz and Spinoza, and gives him credit for being the first true proponent of idealism, meaning the recognition that what is extended in space and fills it, thus the intuitive world in general, by all means can exist as such only in our representation , and that it is absurd, even contradictory, to attribute to it as such an existence outside of all representation and independent of the cognitive subject. (16) This single idea, for Schopenhauer, was Berkeley’s achievement, in response to the realism of Locke. What then is it that Locke gets right? First, he abandons spurious ‘hyperphysical hypotheses’ about God and immaterial, thinking substances. He relies on ‘experience and common understanding’ and for him substance is simply matter. Secondly, he marks out certain qualities, which are called secondary qualities, as ‘ideal’ in Schopenhauer’s sense, that is, belonging merely to what is present in subjective consciousness: ‘This is the origin of the distinction between thing in itself and appearance, which later became so extremely important in the Kantian philosophy’ (19). From his idealist perspective Schopenhauer finds this fundamental distinction of huge significance, but parts company with Locke over his realism concerning the primary qualities, extension, motion and so on. Spatial and temporal qualities are none of them on the ‘real’ side of the divide that Locke seems to imply: Schopenhauer takes it as established that such determinations of space and time are, as Kant taught, all a priori forms of cognition, not dwelling in things in themselves but rather on the side of the subject’s representation. Schopenhauer ends this brief narrative with the suggestion that he himself has ‘solved the problem around which all philosophizing has revolved since Descartes ’ (21) with his dual theory of the world as representation and as will. The ideal, the subjective, is the world as representation, and ‘the will alone is left as the real’. Schopenhauer believes that there have only been half a dozen real minds at work on the issue in Europe, and seems confident that he has sorted things out for them. Schopenhauer opens the Appendix to the ‘Sketch’ by saying that his readers may be surprised to find Fichte , Schelling and Hegel excluded from the preceding discussion, an attitude that could be shared by today’s reader, who may be used to the classification of these figures precisely as the German Idealists. Schopenhauer is blunt: these people are not like Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Kant, they are not even philosophers, but sophists, whose thought never goes beyond advancing their personal interest – lovers of self, not lovers of wisdom. While Schopenhauer proceeds chiefly by impugning the motives of these contemporaries, and mocking their convoluted styles of writing, there are some criticisms of their actual doctrines here. Fichte is accused of solving the problem of the real and the ideal by simply abolishing the former, Schelling of absurdly identifying abstract conceptual thought with reality, Hegel of taking this idea and running with it to the allegedly absurd lengths of positing ‘self-movement of the concept’ as ‘a revelation of all things within and outside of nature’ (29). In a handwritten addition to his text Schopenhauer descends to crudity, calling Hegel’s writings ‘psychically effective vomitive’, which should be kept in a pharmacy ‘since the disgust they excite is really quite specific’ (30). Schelling, by contrast, receives some praise as ‘the most talented of the three’, but even then only as a useful eclectic and stop-gap until some real philosopher should come along. Schopenhauer’s narrative in the longer essay ‘Fragments for the history of philosophy’ begins at the beginning, with the Presocratic philosophers, and proceeds through sections on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Neoplatonists, Gnostics, Scotus Erigena, Scholasticism, Bacon, then (reprising the previous essay to some extent) the post-Cartesian ‘Philosophy of the Moderns’, and finally Kant and himself. In his writings on the ancient philosophers Schopenhauer shows his considerable powers as a scholar, priding himself on his direct encounter with the original texts, and giving detailed and penetrating analysis of a wide range of sources. He is especially aware of vagaries of transmission of earlier thinkers through later accounts. Nonetheless he tends to assume that philosophers in different periods of history are in pursuit of timeless truths. He thinks that the fundamental propositions of Anaxagoras , Empedocles or Democritus are to be found ‘in the works of the modern philosophers, for example those of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and even Kant, . . . repeated countless times’ (33). He emphasizes those doctrines which he regards as clear anticipations of what he thinks right – e.g. the Eleatics are given a Kantian-sounding distinction between phainomena and nooumena , Empedocles’ ordering principles of love and hate are glossed as ‘a blind drive, i.e. a will without cognition’ (34), and so on. He maintains that ‘There is also much in the remaining doctrines of these Presocratic philosophers that can be proven true’; and that Socrates exhibits ‘quite a few similarities’ with Kant (41). The short section on Plato does not reflect Schopenhauer’s debt to this great ancient thinker, which he elsewhere puts on a par with his debt to Kant. In fact, the section focuses less on Plato as such, and more on the notion of a pure rational soul. Schopenhauer uses the term ‘dianoiology’ for this theoretical view, which for him is as pernicious as it is persistent in the history of philosophy. For Schopenhauer there is no soul separate from the body, and besides, it is intuition, the grasp of an objective world through the senses, that is fundamental to human cognition, not rational, discursive thought. More than half the section entitled ‘Plato’ returns to the modern arena, arguing that Kant’s view of cognition puts paid to the Cartesian version of dianoiology. Schopenhauer’s attitude to Aristotle is strikingly different to his attitude to Plato. Throughout his writings he quotes short extracts from Aristotle’s works to substantiate a point in his argument, and he recognizes Aristotle as ‘a great, even stupendous mind’ (48), but he shows only limited respect, finding him superficial rather than profound – ‘his view of the world is shallow even if ingeniously elaborated’ (45) – and laments how he ‘cannot stick to anything but jumps from what he plans to tackle to something else that occurs to him just now, in the way that a child drops a toy in order to seize another one that it has just noticed’ (46). Aristotle’s empirical approach is valuable, though he does not always practise it consistently, according to Schopenhauer, and it is only from Bacon onwards that true empiricism emerges. Schopenhauer’s disquisitions on writers of later antiquity show wide scholarly reading but often strike a critical, even churlish note. Stobaeus ’ exposition of the Stoics is ‘incredibly dreary’ (51), Iamblichus is ‘full of crass superstition and crude demonology . . . he is a bad and unpleasant writer: narrow, eccentric, grossly superstitious, muddled, and vague’ (53–4), Proclus is an ‘insipid chatterer’. Style of writing is of enormous importance to Schopenhauer, as a transparent reflection of the clarity of thought and the character of the writer. We have seen how critical he is of Hegel for his obscure and pompous writing. In this respect he is scarcely less harsh on his great hero, Kant. 11 So it is not surprising that virtually no one in the history of philosophy escapes this kind of complaint, though he finds Plotinus , despite his ‘boring verbosity and confusion’ (55) an important and insightful thinker. Schopenhauer attempts no comprehensive account of these earlier figures, but rather picks out certain themes of particular interest to him: the realism–nominalism debate, free will, metempsychosis, the world-soul, the ideality of time, in all of which he finds pre-echoes of themes from his own philosophy. He is also keen to postulate Indian origins for certain ideas: he thinks Plotinus must have been influenced by Indian thought via Egyptian relig	1,435,752
Parerga and Paralipomena Vol.2 (Arthur Schopenhauer) (Z-Library).epub	On reading and books Chapter 24 588 On reading and books §290 Ignorance only degrades mankind when it is encountered in the company of wealth. The poor man is limited by his poverty and plight; his achievements take the place of knowledge and occupy his thoughts. On the other hand, wealthy men who are ignorant live merely for their pleasures and resemble animals, as can be seen every day. Added to this is the accusation that wealth and leisure were not used for what grants them the greatest possible value. §291 When we read someone else thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. This is like the pupil who in learning to write traces with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly in reading we are for the most part absolved of the work of thinking. This is why we sense relief when we transition from preoccupation with our own thoughts to reading. But during reading our mind is really only the playground of the thoughts of others. What remains when these finally move on? 1 It stems from this that whoever reads very much and almost the whole day, but in between recovers by thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think on his own – as someone who always rides forgets in the end how to walk. But such is the case of many scholars : they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading immediately taken up again in every free moment is even 589 more mentally paralysing than constant manual labour, since in the latter we can still muse about our own thoughts. But just as a coiled spring finally loses its elasticity through the sustained pressure of a foreign body, so too the mind through the constant force of other people’s thoughts. And just as one ruins the stomach by too much food and so harms the entire body , so too we can overfill and choke the mind with too much mental food. For the more one reads, the fewer traces are left behind in the mind by what was read; it becomes like a tablet on which many things have been written over one another. Therefore we do not reach the point of rumination; * but only through this do we assimilate what we have read, just as food does not nourish us through eating but through digestion. 2 On the other hand, if we read continuously without later thinking about it further, then it does not take root and most of it is lost. Generally speaking things are no different with mental food than with physical food; scarcely one-fifth of what we take in becomes assimilated, the rest is lost through evaporation, respiration, or otherwise. Add to all this that thoughts committed to paper are generally nothing more than a man’s footprints in the sand; although we see the way he has taken, we have to use our own eyes to know what he has seen along the way. §292 There is no literary quality, as for instance power of persuasion, wealth of imagery, gift of comparison, boldness, or bitterness, or brevity, or grace, or ease of expression, nor wit, surprising contrasts, laconism, naïveté and so on, that we can acquire by reading writers who have them. But by reading we could indeed summon such qualities in us if we already have them as an inclination, hence potentially, a and we could become aware of them, could 590 see all the things we could do with them, could be strengthened in our tendency, even in our courage to apply them, and we could evaluate the effect of their use by example and thus learn to use them properly, only after which, of course, we would possess these qualities actually. b Therefore this is the only way reading shapes us for writing, in that it teaches us the use we can make of our own natural gifts, but always assuming we possess them. Without them, on the other hand, we learn nothing by reading except cold, dead mannerisms, and we become shallow imitators. §292a 3 In the interest of our eyesight the health authorities should be on guard to keep the smallness of print at a predetermined minimum which may not be exceeded. (When I was in Venice in 1818, at the time when the genuine Venetian chains were still being made, a goldsmith told me that those who made the fine chain a would go blind after thirty years.) – §293 Just as the strata of the earth successively preserve the living creatures of past epochs, so too the shelves of libraries successively preserve the errors of the past and their stories, which like the former were quite alive in their time and made a lot of noise, but now stand there rigid and petrified, while only the literary palaeontologist observes them. §294 According to Herodotus , Xerxes wept at the sight of his immense army when it occurred to him that of all these men no one would be alive in a hundred years. Who wouldn’t weep at the sight of the book-fair catalogue when it occurs to him that of all these books, not one of them will still be alive after ten years? §295 591 In literature it is no different than in life; wherever one turns one immediately encounters the incorrigible rabble of humanity which exists everywhere in legions, fills everything and pollutes everything like flies in summer. Hence the enormous number of books , these rampant weeds of literature, which deprive wheat of its nourishment and choke it. They grab for themselves the time, money and attention of the public that by rights belong to good books and their noble aims, while they were written merely with the aim of bringing in money or obtaining offices. Thus they are not only useless, but positively harmful. Nine-tenths of our entire current literature has no other purpose than to coax a few dollars from the pockets of the public; to this end authors, publishers and reviewers have solemnly conspired. 4 It is a sly and lowly but considerable trick which the literary men, writers for pay, and overly prolific writers have succeeded in playing on the good taste and true culture of our time, in managing to pull the strings of the entire elegant world by training people to read a tempo , namely on time, everyone constantly reading the same thing, the latest, in order to have material for conversation in their circles; this purpose is served by bad novels and similar productions from the pens of once renowned writers like Spindler , Bulwer , Eugene Sue and others. But what can be more miserable than the fate of such a belletristic public which has committed itself to always reading the latest scribbling of highly ordinary minds who write merely for money and therefore also exist in large numbers, at the expense of the works of the rare and superior minds of all times and countries, who are known to the public only by name! – Especially the belletristic daily press is a slyly conceived means to rob the aesthetic public of the time it should spend on the genuine productions of this kind, for the sake of its cultural health, so that its time can be devoted instead to the daily bungling of ordinary minds. Because people always read only the latest , instead of the best of all times, 592 writers stay within a narrow circle of circulating ideas, and the age silts up ever more deeply in its own muck. Therefore with respect to our reading the art of not reading is extremely important. It consists in our not picking up whatever happens to be occupying the greater public at any given time, such as for instance political or literary pamphlets, novels, poems and so on, which currently make a lot of noise and even reach several editions in the first and last years of their run. On the contrary, we should consider that whoever writes for fools always finds a large public, and we should devote the always precious and carefully measured time set aside for reading exclusively to the works of the great minds of all times and peoples, who tower over the rest of humanity, and who are distinguished as such by the voice of fame. Only they really shape and instruct us. Of the inferior we can never read too little and the good never too often. Bad books are intellectual poison: they ruin the mind. In order to read the good it is a condition that we do not read the bad; for life is short, and our time and our powers are limited. 5 – §295a 6 Books are written about this or that great mind of antiquity, and the public reads them, but not the thinkers themselves, because it wants to read only what is freshly printed, because ‘like is attracted to like’, a and the shallow, tasteless gossip of a contemporary pinhead is more agreeable and convenient to them than the thoughts of great minds. But I thank fate that it guided me already in my youth to a beautiful epigram of A. W. Schlegel , which has been my guiding star ever since: Assiduously read the ancients, the true and genuine ancients: What moderns say about them does not mean much. a Oh how one ordinary mind is so similar to the next! How all of them have been poured from one mould! How each of them has the same insight given 593 the same occasion, and nothing else! Now add their lowly personal intentions. And the worthless gossip of such creatures is read by a stupid public if only it is printed today, while they let the great minds languish on bookshelves. The foolishness and perverseness of the public are unbelievable, for they leave unread the noblest, rarest minds in every genre, from all times and lands, in order to read the daily scribblings of ordinary minds as they are hatched each year in countless numbers, like swarms of flies – merely because they were printed today and are still hot off the press. Instead, these productions should stand there abandoned and despised already from their day of birth, just as they will be after a few years and then forever after, a mere target for laughter at times gone by and their drivel. – §296 At all times there are two literatures that walk side by side but somewhat unknown to one another; one is real and one merely appears to be. The former grows into permanent literature . Practised by people who live for science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and silently, but extremely slowly, producing in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century, yet those that remain. The other is practised by those who live from science or poetry; it gallops amidst the noise and shouting of its stakeholders, and each year it brings many thousands of works to market. But after a few years people ask: where are they? Where is their fame, b so premature and loud? We could also describe the latter as flowing, the former as enduring literature. 7 §296a 8 It would be nice to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them, but we usually confuse the purchase of books with the assimilation of their content. – To demand of someone that he retain everything he has ever read is like demanding that he still carry in himself what he has ever eaten. He has 594 lived physically off the former and mentally of the latter, and through them has become what he is. But just as the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, everyone retains what interests him, i.e., whatever fits into his system of thoughts or suits his purpose. Of course everyone has the latter, but few indeed have something resembling a system of thoughts, which is why they take an objective interest in nothing, and for this reason nothing from their reading sticks with them: they retain nothing of it. – ‘Repetition is the mother of study.’ a Every book worth reading at all should immediately be read twice, partly because we understand things better in their context the second time and only really understand the beginning when we know the end, and partly because we bring a different spirit and mood to every passage the second time around, which makes for a different impression and is as if we view an object in another light. – Works are the quintessence of a mind; they will therefore be incomparably richer in content than his company, and will also essentially replace this – indeed, far exceed and leave it behind. Even the writings of an ordinary mind can be instructive, worth reading and entertaining, precisely because they are his quintessence , the result and fruit of all his thinking and studying – whereas his company cannot suffice for us. Therefore we can read books by people whose company would afford us no pleasure, and this is why elevated spiritual culture eventually brings us to the point where we find entertainment almost only in books, and no longer in other people. – There is no greater quickening for the mind than reading the ancient classics; as soon as we have picked up any one of them, and even if only for a half hour, we at once feel refreshed, relieved, purified, elevated and fortified, no different than if we had quenched our thirst at a mountain spring. Is this due to the ancient languages and their perfection? Or is it on account of the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by millennia? Perhaps it is due to both. But I know that if the learning of ancient languages should cease one day, as is now threatened, 595 then a new literature will arise consisting of such barbaric, trite and worthless writing as has never before existed, especially since the German language, which does indeed possess some of the perfections of the ancient ones, is being zealously and methodically dilapidated and mutilated by the worthless scribblers of today’s ‘time of now’, b so that it is gradually transitioning into a miserable jargon, impoverished and crippled. – There are two histories : the political and that of literature and art. The former is of the will , the latter of the intellect . Therefore the former is dreadful without exception, even terrifying: fear, distress, deceit and horrific murder en masse . The latter on the other hand is everywhere delightful and cheerful, like the isolated intellect, even where it describes erroneous paths. Its main branch is the history of philosophy, which is really its bass part whose notes are sounded even in the other history; from its foundation there it too guides opinion, but opinion rules the world. Really therefore philosophy, properly understood, is also the most powerful material force, though it works very slowly. §297 In world history a half century is always considerable because its material always continues to flow, since something is happening all the time. On the other hand, in the history of literature the same period of time often counts for nothing, simply because nothing has happened; it is not concerned with bungling experiments, and so we are back where we were fifty years ago. In order to illustrate this, let us think of the progress of knowledge in the human race using the metaphor of a planetary orbit. Then the erroneous paths on which our species usually finds itself after every significant advance can be depicted by Ptolemaic epicycles; after running through each of them we are again back where we were before the onset of the epicycle. The great minds, however, who really lead the human race along this planetary orbit, do not participate in the respective epicycle. This explains why the fame of posterity often comes at the price of the loss of 596 approbation among contemporaries, and vice versa. – Such an epicycle, for example, is the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, crowned in the end by Hegel’s caricature of it. This epicycle deviated from the circular path last continued to that point by Kant, where I later picked it up again in order to continue it; but in the meantime the above-mentioned pseudo-philosophers and a few more others ran the course of their epicycle, which has just been completed, so that now the public that ran the course with them has realized that they find themselves at that very point from which the epicycle had originated. It is in connection with this unfolding of events that every thirty years we see the scientific, literary and artistic spirit of the age declaring bankruptcy. In such times the errors in question have increased to such a point that they collapse under the weight of their own absurdity, and at the same time opposition to them has strengthened. Now things turn around, but often an error in the opposite direction sets in. It would be the proper, pragmatic material of literary history to demonstrate this course of events in its periodic recurrence, but literary history is scarcely concerned with this. Moreover due to the relatively short duration of such periods, their data from remote times are often difficult to gather, which is why we can most conveniently observe the matter in our own age. If we wanted an example of this from the natural sciences we could use Werner ’s Neptunian geology . But I will stick with the example cited above, which concerns us most closely. Kant ’s heyday in German philosophy was directly followed by another period in which one strove to impress instead of to persuade; to be flashy and hyperbolic, moreover unintelligible instead of thorough and lucid, indeed even to intrigue instead of to seek the truth. In this manner philosophy could make no progress. Finally it came to the bankruptcy of this entire school and method. For in Hegel and his associates the impudence of nonsensical scribbling on the one hand, and that of unconscionable eulogizing on the other, along with the obvious intentionality a of the whole nasty business had reached such colossal proportions that in the end everyone’s eyes were bound to open to the entire charlatanry, and when as a 597 result of certain disclosures protection from above was withdrawn from the whole affair, so too was the verbal support. Fichte’s and Schelling’s antecedents of this most wretched ever of pseudo-philosophies were pulled down by it into the abyss of discredit. This is why the complete philosophical incompetence of the first half of the century following Kant in Germany is now coming to light, whereas vis-à-vis foreign countries we boast of the philosophical gifts of Germans – especially since an English writer had the malicious irony to call them a people of thinkers. 9 Now whoever wants proofs from the history of art of the general scheme of epicycles discussed here, need only consider Bernini ’s school of sculpture, which flourished in the previous century especially in its French development; instead of antique beauty it portrayed common nature, and instead of antique simplicity and grace, the decorum of the French minuet. It went bankrupt after Winckelmann rebuked it, and a return to the school of the ancients ensued. – A proof from painting in turn is provided by the first quarter of this century, which regarded art as a mere means and tool of a medieval religiosity and therefore selected ecclesiastical subjects as its sole theme, but which was now treated by painters who lacked the true earnestness of that faith and yet, as a result of the aforementioned madness took Francesco Francia , Pietro Perugino , Angelo da Fiesole and similar painters as models, indeed, valued them more highly than the really great masters who followed them. With respect to this confusion and because in poetry an analogous striving had asserted itself at the same time, Goethe wrote the parable Pfaffenspiel . a This school also was recognized to be based on whims, went bankrupt, and was followed by the return to nature, which manifested in genre paintings and all kinds of scenes of life, even though it occasionally wandered into the vulgar. Corresponding to the course of human progress depicted above, literary history for the most part is the catalogue of a cabinet of abortions. The spirit in which these are preserved longest is pigskin. On the other hand we do not need to look there for the few births that turned out well; they remain 598 alive and we encounter them everywhere in the world, where they stroll along as immortals in eternally fresh youth. They alone constitute the real literature described in the previous section, whose thinly populated history we learn in our youths from the lips of all educated people, and not first from compendia. – As a remedy for the now prevailing monomania of reading literary history in order to be able to babble about everything, without really knowing anything at all, I recommend a passage from Lichtenberg that is extremely worth reading, vol. 2, p. 302 of the old edition. 10 I do wish, however, that at some point someone would attempt a tragic literary history in which he described how the different nations, each of which after all takes the greatest possible pride in the great writers and artists it has to show for itself, actually treated them during the course of their lives. Thus he would enable us to picture that endless struggle which the good and genuine of all times and lands must endure against the ever-prevailing perverse and inferior; he would describe the martyrdom of almost all true enlighteners of mankind, almost all great masters in every branch and art; he would demonstrate how, with few exceptions, they led tormented lives of poverty and misery without recognition, without sympathy, without disciples while fame , honour and wealth were granted to the unworthy contemporaries of their disciplines. Thus he would show how their fate was like that of Esau who, while hunting and killing game for his father, was cheated out of his father’s blessing at home by Jacob disguised in his coat; 11 how nevertheless despite all this, love for their cause kept them standing tall until finally the hard struggle of such an educator of the human race was over, the immortal laurel beckoned to him and the hour struck when these words also applied to him: The heavy armour turns to wings for flying, Now pain is brief, only joy is undying. a a potentia b actu a catena fina a similis simile gaudet a [‘Studium des Altertums’ (‘Study of Antiquity’), in Musenalmanach ( Almanach of the Muses ), literary journal edited by Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck (1802), p. 62] b Ruhm a Repetitio est mater studiorum b Jetztzeit [See p. 233, n. a ] a Absichtlichkeit a [‘Preacher’s game’: a poem ridiculing Romanticism] a [Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans ( The Maid of Orleans ), conclusion] * Indeed, the continuous strong influx of newly-read material merely serves to hasten the forgetting of what was read earlier. xlChronology Chronology 1788 Arthur Schopenhauer born on 22 February in the city of Danzig (now Gdansk), the son of the Hanseatic merchant Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna Schopenhauer, née Trosiener 1793 Danzig is annexed by the Prussians. The Schopenhauer family moves to Hamburg 1797 His sister Adele is born. Schopenhauer begins a two-year stay in Le Havre with the family of one of his father’s business partners 1799 Returns to Hamburg, and attends a private school for the next four years 1803–4 Agrees to enter career as a merchant, and as a reward is taken by his parents on a tour of Europe (Holland, England, France, Switzerland, Austria). From June to September 1803 is a boarder in Thomas Lancaster’s school in Wimbledon 1804 Is apprenticed to two Hanseatic merchants in Hamburg 1805 His father dies, probably by suicide 1806 Johanna Schopenhauer moves with Adele to Weimar, where she establishes herself as a popular novelist and literary hostess 1807 Schopenhauer abandons his commercial career for an academic one. Enters Gotha Gymnasium and then receives private tuition in Weimar 1809 Studies science and then philosophy (especially Plato and Kant) at the University of Göttingen 1811 Studies science and philosophy at the University of Berlin. Attends the lectures of Fichte and Schleiermacher 1813–14 Lives in Rudolstadt, writing his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason , which is accepted by the University of Jena and published in 1814. Conversations with Goethe on colour and vision 1814 Begins reading a translation of the Upanishads . Stays with his mother in Weimar, but breaks with her permanently after a final quarrel. Lives in Dresden until 1818 1814–18 Works on The World as Will and Representation 1816 Publishes On Vision and Colours 1818 March: completion of The World as Will and Representation , published by Brockhaus at the end of the year, with ‘1819’ on title page 1818–19 Travels in Italy (Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice) and returns to Dresden 1819 Is appointed as unsalaried lecturer ( Privatdozent ) at the University of Berlin 1820 Gives his only course of lectures, which is poorly attended 1822–3 Travels again to Italy (Milan, Florence, Venice). Returns from Italy to live in Munich. Is ill and depressed 1824 Lives in Bad Gastein, Mannheim and Dresden. Proposes to translate Hume’s works on religion into German, but does not find a publisher 1826 Returns to Berlin 1829–30 Plans to translate Kant into English, without success; publishes Commentatio Exponens Theoriam Colorum Physiologicam, Eandemque primariam, Auctore Arthurio Schopenhauero 1831 Leaves Berlin because of the cholera epidemic. Moves to Frankfurt-am-Main 1831–2 Lives temporarily in Mannheim 1833 Settles in Frankfurt, where he remains for the rest of his life 1836 Publishes On Will in Nature 1838 His mother dies 1839 Enters competition set by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and wins prize with his essay On the Freedom of the Will 1840 Submits On the Basis of Morals in a competition set by the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, and is not awarded a prize 1841 On the Freedom of the Will and On the Basis of Morals published under the title The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics 1844 Publishes second, revised edition of The World as Will and Representation , adding a second volume consisting of fifty essays elaborating on ideas discussed in the first volume 1847 Publishes second, revised edition of On the Fourfold Root 1851 Publishes Parerga and Paralipomena in two volumes 1853 An article on his philosophy by J. Oxenford in Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review marks the beginning of his belated recognition 1854 Publishes second editions of On Will in Nature and On Vision and Colours . Julius Frauenstädt publishes Letters on Schopenhauer’s Philosophy 1857 Schopenhauer’s philosophy taught at Bonn University 1858 Declines invitation to be a member of Berlin Royal Academy 1859 Publishes third edition of The World as Will and Representation 1860 Publishes second edition of The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics . Dies on 21 September in Frankfurt-am-Main BITS2EPUB Parerga and Paralipomena Short Philosophical Essays Volume 2 Arthur Schopenhauer Vitam impendere vero [‘To devote one’s life to truth.’ Juvenal , Satires IV. 91] Additional remarks on the doctrine of the affirmation and negation of the will to life Chapter 14 331 Additional remarks on the doctrine of the affirmation and negation of the will to life §161 To a certain extent it can be seen a priori , and colloquially a it is self-evident, that that which now produces the phenomenon of the world must also be capable of not doing this, consequently of remaining at rest; or, in other words, that there must also be a systole b to the present diastole . c Now if the former is the appearance of life’s willing, then the other will be the appearance of its non-willing. Also this will essentially be identical with the great Sakhepat d of the Veda doctrine (in the Oupnek’hat , e vol. 1, p. 163), the Nirvana of the Buddhists, 1 also with the epekeina f of the Neoplatonists. Counter to certain silly objections I maintain that the negation of the will to life g in no way signifies the annihilation of a substance, but the mere act h of not-willing; the same thing that willed hitherto wills no more. Since we know this being, the will , as thing in itself merely in and through the act of willing , we are incapable of saying or grasping what else it is or does after it has given up this act; this is why negation for us , who are the appearance of the will, is a transition to nothingness. i The affirmation and negation of the will to life is a mere velle and nolle . j The subject of these two acts k is one and the same, and consequently as such it is not annihilated by one or the other act. Its velle manifests itself in 332 this intuitive world, which is precisely why it is the appearance of its thing in itself. Of the nolle , on the other hand, we know no other appearance than merely its occurrence, and moreover in the individual, who already belongs originally to the appearance of the velle . Thus we see the nolle struggling always with the velle as long as the individual exists; if the individual has come to an end and the nolle achieved the upper hand in him, then this has been a pure declaration of the nolle (this is the meaning of the Papal canonization). Of the latter we can only say that its appearance cannot be that of the velle , but we do not know whether it appears at all, i.e., whether it obtains a secondary existence for an intellect which it would first have to produce. And since we know the intellect only as an organ of the will in its affirmation, we do not see why it should produce the intellect after it suspends affirmation; nor can we say anything about its subject, since we have positively recognized it only in the opposing act, the velle , as the thing in itself of its world of appearance. 2 §162 There is a glaring contrast between the ethics of the Greeks and the Hindus. The former (though with the exception of Plato) has as a goal the ability to lead a happy life, vitam beatam , a the latter on the other hand the liberation and redemption from life as such, as is directly expressed in the very first sentence of the Samkhya Karika . b One will obtain a related contrast, strengthened by graphic portrayal, if one observes the beautiful antique sarcophagus in the gallery at Florence, whose reliefs depict the entire series of wedding ceremonies from the first proposal to where Hymen’s torch lights the way to the torus; and now beside it one pictures the Christian coffin, draped in black as a sign of mourning, with the crucifix on top. The contrast is a highly significant one. Both are supposed to console for death, each in an opposing manner, and both are right. One depicts the affirmation of the will to life , wherein life remains certain throughout all time, as quickly as the forms may change. 333 The other through symbols of suffering and death depicts the negation of the will to life and redemption from a world where death and the devil rule: until willing becomes not-willing. c , 3 Between the spirit of Graeco-Roman paganism and that of Christianity the real contrast is that of affirmation and negation of the will to life, according to which, in the final analysis, Christianity is basically right. §163 My ethics is related to all the ethics of European philosophy as the New Testament is related to the Old, according to the ecclesiastical concept of this relationship. That is, the Old Testament places mankind under the rule of the law, which nevertheless does not lead to redemption. The New Testament, on the other hand, declares the law to be inadequate, indeed absolves us from it (e.g. Romans 7, Galatians 2 and 3). It preaches instead the kingdom of grace achieved by faith, love of one’s neighbour and the complete renunciation of oneself; a this is the way to redemption from evil and from the world. For, contrary to all Protestant-rationalistic distortions, the ascetic spirit is indeed quite properly the soul of the New Testament; but this spirit is the very same negation of life, and that transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, from the rule of law to the rule of faith, from the justification through works to redemption by the mediator, from the rule of sin and death to eternal life in Christ means, in the true sense, b the transition from the merely ethical virtues to negation of the will to life. – Now it is in the spirit of the Old Testament that all philosophical ethics before me have stopped, with their absolute (i.e., dispensing with both reasons and goal) moral law and all their moral commandments and prohibitions, to which the commanding Jehovah is secretly added in their imagination, however differently the forms and representations of the matter may turn out among them. My ethics, on the other hand, has grounds, purpose and goal; it first theoretically demonstrates the metaphysical ground of justice and loving kindness, and then also shows the goal to 334 which they must lead in the end if perfectly executed. At the same time it frankly acknowledges the reprehensibility of the world and points to the negation of the will as the way to redemption from it. Therefore it really is in the spirit of the New Testament, whereas the others are all in that of the Old and accordingly amount even theoretically to mere Judaism (naked, despotic theism). In this sense one could call my doctrine the genuine Christian philosophy – as paradoxical as this may seem to those who do not go to the core of the matter, but instead remain stuck at the outer skin. §164 Whoever is capable of thinking a little more deeply will soon see that human cravings cannot first begin to be sinful at that point where they accidentally intersect in their individual tendencies, causing ill c on one side and evil d on the other; instead, if this is so, they must already be sinful and reprehensible originally and according to their nature, and so the entire will to life itself is reprehensible. After all, the entire horror and misery of which the world is full is merely the necessary result of all the characters in whom the will to life objectifies itself, under the conditions arising from the uninterrupted chain of necessity which provides them with motives; it is therefore merely the commentary to the affirmation of the will to life. (Cf. Theologica Germanica , a p. 93.) 4 That our very existence implies a guilt is proved by death. §165 A noble character will not readily complain about his own fate; instead, what applies to him is what Hamlet eulogizes in Horatio: for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing. b And this is to be understood from the fact that such a man, recognizing his 335 own essence even in others and therefore sharing their fate, almost always sees around him still harsher lots than his own, which is why he cannot bring himself to complain of his. On the other hand an ignoble egoist who limits all reality to himself and regards others as mere masks and phantasms does not share in their fate, but will focus his entire sympathy on his own, therefore resulting in great sensitivity and frequent complaining. Precisely this recognizing of oneself in the appearance of another, from which justice and loving kindness proceed in the first place, as I have often shown, ultimately leads to giving up the will, because the appearances in which it manifests itself find themselves to be so decisively in the state of suffering that whoever extends his self c to all of them can continue to will it no longer; just as one who takes all the tickets in a lottery necessarily must suffer great loss. The affirmation of the will presupposes the limitation of self-consciousness to one’s own individuality and is based on the possibility of a favourable course of life from the hand of chance. §166 If in conceiving of the world one starts from the thing in itself , the will to life, then as its kernel, as its greatest concentration, one finds the act of generation; this manifests itself then as the first thing, as the point of departure; it is the leaping point of the world egg d and the main thing. But what a contrast on the other hand if one starts from the empirical world given as appearance, from the world as representation! For here that act manifests itself as something quite singular and special, of subordinate importance, indeed, as a concealed and hidden secondary matter that merely sneaks in, a paradoxical anomaly that provides abundant material for laughter . However, it might also seem to us that the devil only wanted to hide his game, for intercourse is his earnest money and the world his kingdom. For have we not noticed how immediately after coitus one hears 336 the pealing laughter of the devil? a which, seriously speaking, is based on the fact that sexual lust is the quintessence of the whole fraud of this noble world, especially when it is concentrated into falling in love through fixation on a particular woman. For it promises so unspeakably, infinitely and extravagantly much and then delivers so pitifully little. – The woman’s share in generation is in a certain sense less guilty than that of the man, insofar as he provides the one to be conceived with a will , which is the first sin and therefore the source of all evil and ill. Woman, on the other hand, provides cognition , which opens the way to redemption. The act of generation is the world knot, b for it states: 5 ‘The will to life has affirmed itself anew.’ In this sense a standing Brahmanic cliché laments: ‘Alas, alas, the lingam is in the yoni.’ On the other hand conception and pregnancy state: ‘The will is once again provided with the light of cognition’, with which it can find its way out again, and thus the possibility of redemption arises once more. From this we can explain the remarkable phenomenon that whereas every woman would die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, on the other hand she displays her pregnancy without a trace of shame, indeed, with a kind of pride. Since after all everywhere else an unmistakable sign is taken as synonymous with the signified object itself, this is also why any other sign of completed coitus shames a woman in the highest degree; only pregnancy does not. This can be explained by the fact that according to the above, pregnancy in a certain sense brings with it, or at least holds out the prospect of, a cancelling of the debt contracted by the coitus. Therefore coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the matter, whereas the pregnancy that is so closely related to it remains pure and innocent, indeed, becomes venerable to an extent. Coitus is mainly the concern of the man; pregnancy is entirely that of the woman. A child gets its will and character from the father, and from the mother its intellect. The latter is the redeeming principle, the will is the binding one. Coitus is the symbol of the constant existence of the will to 337 life in time, despite all enhancement of illumination through the intellect. The symbol of this light of cognition, and indeed in the highest degree of clarity, joined anew to this will and keeping open the possibility of redemption, is the renewed turning-human a of the will to life. Its sign is pregnancy, which therefore goes about frankly and freely, indeed proudly, whereas coitus hides like a criminal. §167 Some Church Fathers have taught that even marital cohabitation is only permitted when it occurs for the sake of conceiving children, ‘for the mere conception of children’, b as Clement of Alexandria says in Stromata , III, ch. 11. (The relevant passages are found compiled in P. E. Lind, On the Celibacy of Christians , c ch. I.) Clement of Alexandria in Stromata III, ch. 3 also attributes this view to the Pythagoreans . 6 However, strictly speaking this view is incorrect, for if coitus is no longer willed for its own sake, then the negation of the will to life has already occurred, and then the propagation of the human race is superfluous and void of meaning insofar as the purpose has already been reached. Moreover, to put a human being into the world just so that he is in it, without any subjective passion, without lust and physical urge, merely from pure calculation and cold blooded intention, would be a very dubious act, morally speaking, which certainly only a few would take upon themselves, indeed, an act someone might even say relates to conception from mere sexual drive as cold blooded premeditated murder relates to a death blow from rage. 7 The damnability of all unnatural sexual gratification is actually based on the opposite ground, because through it the drive is gratified, hence the will to life affirmed, but propagation is missing, which alone keeps open the possibility of negation of the will. This explains why it is only with the onset of Christianity, whose tendency is ascetic , that pederasty was recognized as a grave sin . §168 338 A monastery is a coming together of human beings who have vowed themselves to poverty, chastity, obedience (i.e., renunciation of wilfulness) d and, by living together, seek in part to make existence itself easier, but even more so that state of severe renunciation. Insofar as the sight of those with similar inclinations who renounce in the same manner strengthens their resolve and comforts them, so too the conviviality of living together with certain restrictions is suited to human nature and acts as an innocent relaxation amid numerous and severe privations. This is the normal conception of monasteries . And who could call such a society an association of fools and buffoons, as one must according to every other philosophy but mine? 8 – The inner spirit and meaning of genuine monastic life, like asceticism generally, is such that one has acknowledged oneself worthy and capable of a better existence than is ours, and wants to strengthen and maintain this conviction by despising what this world offers, scorning all its pleasures as worthless and now calmly and confidently awaiting the end of this life, bereft of its futile lures, in order to welcome the hour of death as the hour of redemption. The Sannyasis a have entirely the same tendency and meaning, and likewise the monasticism of the Buddhists . Of course in no case does practice so rarely correspond with theory as with monasticism, precisely because its basic idea is so sublime, and the abuse of the best is the worst abuse. b A genuine monk is an extremely venerable being, but in most cases by far the cowl is a mere mask behind which there is no more a real monk than at a masquerade. 9 §169 For the negation of one’s own will, the idea c that one is submitting and surrendering oneself totally and without reserve to a foreign, individual will is a psychic palliative, and therefore an appropriate allegorical vehicle of the truth . §170 339 The number of regular Trappists is small, to be sure, but on the other hand probably half of mankind consists of involuntary Trappists ; poverty, obedience, lack of all pleasures, indeed, of the most necessary means of comfort, and often chastity that is forced on them or brought about by deficiency, are their lot. The difference is merely that the Trappists practise all this by free choice, methodically and without hoping for improvement, whereas the other means is to be counted among what I characterized with the expression deuteros plous a in my ascetic chapters. Nature by virtue of the foundation of its order has already ensured adequate provision of this, especially when one adds to the ills stemming directly from it those others produced by the duplicity and malice of human beings, in war and peace. But this very necessity of involuntary suffering for the sake of eternal salvation is expressed in that utterance of the Saviour (Matthew 19:24): ‘It is easier for an anchor rope to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ b For this reason, those who were very serious about their eternal salvation have voluntarily chosen poverty, if fate had denied it to them and they were born in wealth; hence Buddha Sakya Muni, who voluntarily took up the beggar’s staff though born a prince, and Francis of Assisi , founder of the mendicant orders, who was asked as a young dandy at the ball where the daughters of the notables were sitting together: “Well now, Master Francis, will you not soon decide on one of these beauties?”, to which he responded: “I have selected a much more beautiful one!” – “Oh, which one?” – “Poverty.” c Whereupon he shortly afterwards left everything behind and wandered begging through the land. 10 Whoever realizes through such considerations how necessary distress and suffering usually are for our salvation will recognize that we should envy others not so much for their fortune but for their misfortune. For the same reason stoicism of disposition, which defies fates, is of 340 course also a good armour against the suffering of life and useful in order to better endure the present, but it stands in the way of true salvation because it hardens the heart. How is it supposed to be improved by sufferings if, encased in a stony rind, it does not sense them? – Moreover a certain degree of this stoicism is not very rare. Often it may be affected and traceable to ‘grin and bear it’; d yet where it is undisguised it usually arises from mere absence of feeling, from a lack of energy, vitality, sensitivity and imagination , which are even required for great sorrow. The phlegmatic and plodding nature of the Germans is particularly favourable to this kind of stoicism . §171 With respect to their perpetrator, unjust and malicious deeds are indications of the strength of his affirmation of the will to life and accordingly they underscore his distance from true salvation and consequently from redemption from the world, which require the negation of the same. They also signify the long school of knowledge and suffering that he has yet to negotiate before he gets there. – But with respect to the one who has to suffer from those deeds, they are to be sure a physical ill, but on the other hand a metaphysical good and at bottom a kindness, since they contribute to guiding him towards his true salvation. §172 World Spirit : Here then is the quota of your labours and your sufferings; this is why you shall exist , as all other things exist. Mortal : What do I get from existence? If it is busy, I have distress; if it is not busy, I have boredom. How can you offer me such meagre wages for so much labour and so much suffering? World Spirit : And yet it is the equivalent of all your efforts and all your suffering, and it is this by virtue of its paltriness. Mortal : Really? This truly exceeds my power to comprehend. 341 World Spirit : I know. – ( aside ) Should I tell him that the value of life consists precisely in the fact that it teaches him not to want it? a For this supreme initiation life itself must first prepare him. §172a 11 As I have said, each human life , surveyed as a whole, displays the qualities of a tragedy and we see that life as a rule is nothing more than a series of dashed hopes, thwarted plans and errors recognized too late, such that the sad verse affirms its truth in relation to it: Then old age and experience, hand in hand, Lead him to death and make him understand, After a search so painful and so long, That all his life he has been in the wrong. b This accords entirely with my world view, which regards existence itself as something that should not be, as a kind of going astray from which our knowledge of the same is supposed to bring us back. Mankind, ho anthrôpos , a is in the wrong b already generally speaking, inasmuch as he exists and is human, consequently it is wholly in keeping with this that also each individual human being, tis anthrôpos , c surveying his life, finds himself thoroughly in the wrong. That he realizes this generally is his redemption, and for this he must begin to recognize it in the individual case , i.e., in his individual course of life. For everything that applies to the genus applies also to the species . d Life is to be regarded completely as a strict lesson which we are taught even though we cannot understand, with our forms of thinking designed for quite different purposes, how we could come to the point where we needed it. But accordingly we should look back on our departed friends with satisfaction, considering that they have survived their lesson, and with the cordial wish that it has taken hold; and from the same point of view we should look forward to our own death as a welcome and pleasing event, 342 instead of with quailing and horror, as happens most often. A happy life e is impossible; the best a human being can attain is a heroic course of life . Such a life is led by one who, in some way and for some cause, fights against overwhelming odds for something that benefits everyone, and in the end he wins, though he will be poorly rewarded or not at all. Then he remains standing in the end like the prince in Gozzi’s King Stag , f turned to stone but in a noble pose and with a magnanimous gesture. His memory remains and is celebrated as that of a hero ; his will , mortified his whole life long by toil and labour, failure and the ingratitude of the world, extinguishes in Nirvana . (Carlyle in this spirit wrote On Heroes and Hero-Worship , London, 1842.) §173 Now if, through reflections like those above and hence from a very lofty standpoint, we can foresee a justification for the suffering of humanity, then it still does not extend to animals whose significant sufferings are brought about in large part by humans, to be sure, but occur often even without their involvement. (See World and Will and Representation , 3rd ed., vol. 2, pp. 404ff.). g , 12 The question then forced upon us is: To what end this tormented, fearful will in thousands of forms without the freedom to redemption which is conditioned by soundness of mind? The suffering of the animal world can only be justified by the fact that the will to life must devour its own flesh because in the world of appearance nothing at all exists besides it, and it is a hungry will; hence the hierarchy of its appearances, each of which lives at the expense of the other. 13 Further I refer to §153 and §154 , which illustrate that the c	1,763,698
The Sickness Unto Death (Søren Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay) (Z-Library).epub	Cover The Sickness unto Death THE BEGINNING Let the conversation begin… Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinukbooks Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks Find out more about the author and discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk The Sickness unto Death A. That Despair is the Sickness unto Death A Despair is a sickness of the spirit, of the self, and so can have three forms: being unconscious in despair of having a self (inauthentic despair), not wanting in despair to be oneself, and wanting in despair to be oneself The human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self. In a relation between two things the relation is the third term in the form of a negative unity, 5 and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to that relation; this is what it is from the point of view of soul for soul and body to be in relation. 6 If, on the other hand, the relation relates to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. Such a relation, which relates to itself, a self, must either have established itself or been established by something else. If the relation which relates to itself has been established by something else, then of course the relation is the third term, but then this relation, the third term, is a relation which relates in turn to that which has established the whole relation. Such a derived, established relation is the human self, a relation which relates to itself, and in relating to itself relates to something else. That is why there can be two forms of authentic despair. If the human self were self-established, there would only be a question of one form: not wanting to be itself, wanting to be rid of itself. There could be no question of wanting in despair to be oneself. For this latter formula is the expression of the relation’s (the self’s) total dependence, the expression of the fact that the self cannot by itself arrive at or remain in equilibrium and rest, but only, in relating to itself, by relating to that which has established the whole relation. Indeed, so far from its being simply the case that this second form of despair (wanting in despair to be oneself) amounts to a special form on its own, all despair can in the end be resolved into or reduced to it. If a person in despair is, as he thinks, aware of his despair and doesn’t refer to it mindlessly as something that happens to him (rather in the way someone suffering from vertigo talks through an internally caused delusion about a weight on his head, or its being as though something were pressing down on him, etc., neither the weight nor the pressure being anything external but an inverted image of the internal), and wants now on his own, all on his own, and with all his might to remove the despair, then he is still in despair and through all his seeming effort only works himself all the more deeply into a deeper despair. The imbalance 7 in despair is not a simple imbalance but an imbalance in a relation that relates to itself and which is established by something else. So the lack of balance in that ‘ for-itself relationship also reflects itself infinitely in the relation to the power which established it. This then is the formula which describes the state of the self when despair is completely eradicated: in relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it. B The possibility and actuality of despair Is despair a merit or a defect? Purely dialectically it is both. If one were to think of despair only in the abstract, without reference to some particular despairer, one would have to say it is an enormous merit. The possibility of this sickness is man’s advantage over the beast, and it is an advantage which characterizes him quite otherwise than the upright posture, for it bespeaks the infinite erectness or loftiness of his being spirit. The possibility of this sickness is man’s advantage over the beast; to be aware of this sickness is the Christian’s advantage over natural man; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian’s blessedness. Consequently it is an infinite merit to be able to despair. And yet not only is it the greatest misfortune and misery actually to be in despair; no, it is ruin. Generally the relation between possibility and actuality 8 is not like this; if the ability to be such and such is meritorious, then it is an even greater merit actually to be it. That is to say, in relation to being able, being is an ascent. In the case of despair, however, in relation to being able to be, actually being is one of descent. As infinite as is possibility’s merit, just so great is the descent. So what amounts to an ascent in the case of despair is not being in it. Yet this way of putting it is again ambiguous. Not being in despair is not the same as not being lame, blind, and so on. If not being in despair means neither more nor less than not being in despair, then it is precisely to be in despair. Not being in despair must mean the annihilated possibility of the ability to be in it. For it to be true that someone is not in despair, he must be annihilating that possibility every instant. Usually the relation between possibility and actuality is not like this. For although the thinkers 9 say that actuality is annihilated possibility, that is not entirely true; it is the fulfilled, the active possibility. Here, on the contrary, the actuality (not being in despair), which is thus also a negation, is the possibility annihilated, rendered impotent. Usually the relation of the actual to the possible is one of confirmation; here it is a denial. Despair is the imbalance in a relation of synthesis, in a relation which relates to itself. But the synthesis is not the imbalance, the synthesis is just the possibility; or, the possibility of the imbalance lies in the synthesis. If the synthesis were itself the imbalance, there would be no despair; it would be something that lay in human nature itself, that is, it would not be despair; it would be something that happened to a person, something he suffered, like a sickness he succumbs to, or like death, which is the fate of everyone. No, despair lies in the person himself. But if he were not a synthesis there would be no question of his despairing; nor could he despair unless the synthesis were originally in the right relationship from the hand of God. Where then does despair come from? From the relation in which the synthesis relates to itself, from the fact that God, who made man this relation, as it were lets go of it; that is, from the relation’s relating to itself. And in the fact that the relation is spirit, is the self, lies the accountability under which all despair is, every moment, what it is, however much and however ingeniously the despairer, deceiving both himself and others, speaks of his despair as a misfortune – through a confusion as in the afore-mentioned case of vertigo, with which despair, though different in kind, has much in common, vertigo being under the aspect of soul what despair is under the aspect of spirit, and pregnant with analogies to despair. So when the imbalance, despair, occurs, does it continue as a matter of course? No, not as a matter of course. If it continues, that is due not to the imbalance but to the relation which relates to itself. That is to say, every time the imbalance manifests itself, and every moment it exists, one must go back to the relation. Note how one talks of someone bringing a sickness upon himself, through carelessness say. So the sickness sets in and from that moment it takes effect and is now something actual, and its origin becomes more and more past. It would be both cruel and inhuman to keep on saying, ‘You, the patient, are this very moment bringing sickness upon yourself, that is, perpetually to resolve the actuality of the sickness into its possibility. It is true that he brought the disease upon himself, but he did that only once; the perseverance of the sickness is a simple consequence of the fact that that is what he once did; its progress is not to be referred every moment to him as its cause. He brought it upon himself, but one cannot say, ‘He is bringing it upon himself.’ Not so with despair. Every actual moment of despair is to be referred back to its possibility; every moment he despairs he brings it upon himself ; the time is constantly the present; nothing actual, past and done with, comes about; at every moment of actual despair the despairer bears with him all that has gone before as something present in the form of possibility. This is because despair is an aspect of spirit, it has to do with the eternal in a person. But the eternal is something he cannot be rid of, not in all eternity. He cannot rid himself of it once and for all; nothing is more impossible. Every moment he doesn’t have it, he must have cast or be casting it off – but it returns, that is, every moment he despairs he brings the despair upon himself. For despair is not a result of the imbalance, but of the relation which relates to itself. And the relation to himself is something a human being cannot be rid of, just as little as he can be rid of himself, which for that matter is one and the same thing, since the self is indeed the relation to oneself. C Despair is ‘the sickness unto death’ We must none the less understand this concept, the sickness unto death, in a special sense. Ordinarily, it would mean a sickness the end and outcome of which is death. Thus one would speak of sickness unto death synonymously with a fatal illness. In this sense despair cannot be called the sickness unto death. But in the Christian understanding death is itself a passing into life. For that matter, in Christian terms, no earthly, physical sickness is unto death. For death is no doubt the end of the sickness, but death is not the end. If, in the strictest sense, there is to be any question of a sickness unto death, it must be one where the end is death and where death is the end. And thinking that is precisely to despair. Yet despair is the sickness unto death in another and still more definite sense. For there is not the remotest possibility of dying of this sickness in the straightforward sense, or of this sickness ending in physical death. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely the inability to die. In this it has much in common with the condition of the mortally ill person who is in the throes of death but cannot die. Thus to be sick unto death is to be unable to die, yet not as though there were hope of life. No, the hopelessness is that even the last hope, death, is gone. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life. But when one learns to know the even more horrifying danger, one hopes for death. When the danger is so great that death has become the hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die. It is in this latter sense, then, that despair is the sickness unto death, this tormenting contradiction, this sickness in the self; eternally to die, to die and yet not to die, to die death itself. For to die means that it is all over, while to die death itself means to live to experience dying. And if one can live to experience this for a single moment, then one lives to experience it for ever. If someone is to die of despair as one dies of an illness, then the eternal in him, the self, must be able to die in the same sense that the body dies of the illness. But this is impossible: dying in despair transforms itself constantly into a living. The despairer cannot die; no more than ‘the dagger can kill thoughts’ 10 can despair consume the eternal, the self that is the source of despair, whose worm dieth not and whose fire is not quenched. 11 Yet despair is exactly a consumption of the self, but an impotent self-consumption not capable of doing what it wants. But what it wants is to consume itself, which it cannot do, and this impotence is a new form of self-consumption, but in which despair is once again incapable of doing what it wants, to consume itself. This is a heightening of despair, or the law for the heightening of despair. This is the hot incitement or the cold fire in despair, 12 this incessantly inward gnawing, deeper and deeper in impotent self-consumption. Far from its being any comfort to the despairer that the despair doesn’t consume him, on the contrary this comfort is just what torments him; this is the very thing that keeps the sore alive and life in the sore. For what he – not despaired but – despairs over is precisely this: that he cannot consume himself, cannot be rid of himself, cannot become nothing. This is the heightened formula for despair, the rising fever in this sickness of the self. Someone in despair despairs over something. So, for a moment, it seems, but only for a moment. That same instant the true despair shows itself, or despair in its true guise. In despairing over something he was really despairing over himself, and he wants now to be rid of himself. Thus when the power-crazed person whose motto is ‘Caesar or nothing’ 13 doesn’t become Caesar, he despairs over that. But this indicates something else: that he cannot stand being himself precisely because he failed to become Caesar. So really he is in despair not over not becoming Caesar, but over himself for not having become Caesar. This self which, had it become Caesar, would have been everything he desired – though in another sense just as much in despair – this self is now what he can bear least of all. In a deeper sense what he cannot bear is not that he did not become Caesar; what is unbearable is this self which did not become Caesar; or better still, what he cannot bear is that he cannot be rid of himself. By becoming Caesar he would have despairingly been rid of himself, but now he did not become Caesar, and, despairingly, cannot be rid of himself. He is really in despair either way, for he does not have his self, he is not his self. By becoming Caesar he would still not have become himself, he would have been rid of himself. And by not becoming Caesar he despairs at not being able to be rid of himself. So it is superficial (and I dare say typical of those who never observed a person in despair, not even themselves) to remark of someone in despair, as though it were the penalty of despair, ‘He is eating himself up.’ For that is just what he despairs of doing, that is just what to his torment he cannot do, since with despair a fire takes hold in something that cannot burn, or cannot be burned up – the self. Consequently, to despair over something is still not really despair. It is the beginning, or it is as when the physician says of a sickness that it hasn’t yet declared itself. Next comes the declared despair, despairing over oneself. A young girl despairs of love, she despairs over losing the loved one, because he died or became unfaithful. This despair is not declared. No, she despairs over herself. This self of hers, which if it had become ‘his’ beloved, she would have been rid of, or lost, in the most blissful manner – this self, since it is destined to be a self without ‘him’, is now an embarrassment; this self, which should have been her richesse – though in another sense just as much in despair – has become, now that ‘he’ is dead, a loathsome void, or a despicable reminder of her betrayal. Just try now, just try saying to such a girl, ‘You are eating yourself up’, and you will hear her reply, ‘Oh no! The pain is just that I can’t.’ To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair. So that the second form of despair – wanting in despair to be oneself – can be traced back to the first – in despair not wanting to be oneself – rather as in the aforegoing we resolved the form, ‘in despair not wanting to be oneself’ into ‘wanting in despair to be oneself’ (cf. A ). A person in despair wants despairingly to be himself. But surely if he wants despairingly to be himself, he cannot want to be rid of himself. Yes, or so it seems. But closer observation reveals the contradiction to be still the same. The self which, in his despair, he wants to be is a self he is not (indeed, to want to be the self he truly is, is the very opposite of despair); that is, he wants to tear his self away from the power which established it. But despite all his despair, this he is incapable of doing. Despite all his despairing efforts, that power is the stronger, and it compels him to be the self he does not want to be. But then this is still wanting to be rid of himself, rid of the self that he is, in order to be the self he himself has chanced upon. To be ‘self in the way he wants to be it, that would be – even if in another sense just as despairing – everything he desired; but to be forced to be ‘self in a way that he doesn’t want to be, that is his torment – not being able to be rid of himself. Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the sickness of the soul (sin) does not consume it as the body’s sickness consumes the body. 14 One can similarly prove the eternal in a man from the fact that despair cannot consume his self, that this is precisely the torment of contradiction in despair. If there were nothing eternal in a man, he would simply be unable to despair. But if despair were able to consume his self, then it couldn’t really have been despair in the first place. This then is the manner in which despair, this sickness in the self, is the sickness unto death. The despairer is mortally ill. It is, although in a sense quite different from any physical illness, the most vital parts that the sickness has attacked; and yet he cannot die. Death is not the end of the sickness, but death is incessantly the end. To be saved from this sickness by death is an impossibility, for the sickness and its torment – and death – are precisely to be unable to die. That is the condition of despair. However much it eludes the despairer, however much (as must be especially the case with the kind of despair which is ignorance of being in despair) the despairer has succeeded in altogether losing his self, and in such a way that the loss is not in the least way noticeable, eternity will nevertheless make it evident that his condition is that of despair, and will nail him to his self so that the torment will still be that he cannot be rid of his self, and it will be evident that his success was an illusion. And this eternity must do, because having a self, being a self, is the greatest, the infinite, concession that has been made to man, but also eternity’s claim on him. The Sickness unto Death Contents Introduction The Sickness unto Death Preface Introduction PART ONE: The Sickness unto Death is Despair PART TWO: Despair is Sin Notes Chronology Further Reading Translator’s Note Follow Penguin Middlemarch Introduction ‘This sickness is not unto death’ (John 11.4). But still Lazarus died. Upon the disciples misunderstanding him when he later added: ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep’ (11.11), Christ told them bluntly: ‘Lazarus is dead’ (11.14). So Lazarus is dead, and yet this sickness was not unto death; he was dead, and still this sickness is not unto death. We know, of course, that Christ was thinking of the miracle which, ‘if [they] wouldest believe’, was to let contemporaries see ‘the glory of God’ (11.40), that miracle through which he awoke Lazarus from the dead; so ‘this sickness’ was not merely ‘not unto death’, but, as Christ had foretold, ‘for the glory of God, that the son of God might be glorified thereby’ (11.4). Ah!, but even had Christ not awoken Lazarus, is it not still true that this sickness, death itself, is not unto death? When Christ steps forward to the grave and in a loud voice cries out, ‘Lazarus, come forth’ (11.43), it is plain enough that this sickness is not unto death. Yet, even if Christ had not said that, doesn’t simply the fact that He who is ‘the resurrection and the life’ (11.25) steps forward to the grave mean that this sickness is not unto death? That Christ exists – doesn’t that mean that this sickness is not unto death? And what good would it have done Lazarus to be awoken from the dead if in the end he must die anyway? What good would it have done Lazarus if He did not exist. He who is the resurrection and the life for every person who believes in Him? No, it is not because Lazarus was awoken from the dead; that is not why we can say this sickness is not unto death. It is because He exists; that is why this sickness is not unto death. For in human terms death is the last thing of all, and in human terms hope exists only so long as there is life; but to Christian eyes death is by no means the last thing of all, just another minor event in that which is all, an eternal life. And to Christian eyes there is in death infinitely more hope than in, simply in human terms, not merely life itself but life at its height of health and vigour. So to Christian eyes not even death is the ‘sickness unto death’, so much less so everything that goes under the name of earthly and temporal suffering: want, illness, misery, hardship, adversity, torment, mental agony, sorrow, grief. And even where these are so hard and painful that we humans, or at any rate the sufferer, would say that ‘this is worse than death’, to Christian eyes none of this, which even where it isn’t in fact sickness is comparable to it, is the sickness unto death. This then is the measure of the high-mindedness with which Christianity has taught the Christian to think of all that is worldly, death included. It’s almost as if the Christian were supposed to vaunt this proud elevation above all that humanity normally calls misfortune, over what humanity normally calls the greatest evil. But then Christianity has discovered in its turn a misery which humanity as such does not know exists. This misery is the sickness unto death. What the natural man counts terrible, when it is all added up and he can think of no remainder, all this the Christian treats as a joke. Such is the relation between the natural man and the Christian; it is like that between a child and an adult: what the child shrinks from in horror the adult thinks nothing of. The child doesn’t know what is horrifying; the adult knows, and he shrinks from it in horror. The child’s imperfection is, first, not to know what is horrifying, and then by the same token to shrink from something else in horror. So too with the natural man. He has no knowledge of what is truly horrifying, yet is not exempted thereby from shrinking in horror. No, he shrinks in horror from what is not horrifying. It is something like the pagan’s relationship to God: he doesn’t know the true God, but as if that weren’t enough he worships an idol as God. Only the Christian knows what is meant by the sickness unto death. As a Christian he has acquired a courage unknown to the natural man, a courage he acquired by learning to fear something even more horrifying. That is always how a person acquires courage: when he fears a greater danger he always has the courage to face a lesser. When one fears a danger infinitely, it is as if the others weren’t there at all. But the truly horrifying thing which the Christian has learned to know is the ‘sickness unto death’. The Sickness unto Death Chronology 1756 Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, Søren’s father, born in formal bondage of peasant stock in Sreding, West Jutland. Baptized 12 December. 1768 Michael Kierkegaard apprenticed to his uncle, a hosier, in Copenhagen. Ane Sørensdatter Lund, Søren’s mother, born 18 June in south-east Jutland. 1777 The Sreding village priest formally releases Michael Kierkegaard from serfdom. 1788 Michael Kierkegaard receives royal patent ‘to deal in East Indian and Chinese goods, as well as goods coming from our West Indian islands … and to sell same at wholesale or retail to all and sundry’. This was the year that Arthur Schopenhauer was born. 1794 Michael Kierkegaard marries Kirstine Røyen, sister of a business partner. 1796 23 March, Kirstine Royen Kierkegaard dies childless; Michael Kierkegaard inherits from his uncle and benefactor. 1797 Michael Kierkegaard retires from business in February. On 26 April, he marries Kirstine’s maid, and his own distant cousin, Ane Sørensdatter Lund, at the family home on Købmagergade in Copenhagen. A daughter, Maren Kirstine, is born 7 September. 1799 25 October, a second daughter, Nicoline Christine, is born. 1801 7 September, a third, Petrea Severine, is born. 1805 A first son, Peter Christian, is born. 1807 23 March, a second son, Søren Michael, is born. 1809 The year in which Hans Lassen Martensen, Kierkegaard’s tutor to be, rival and bitter opponent, was born. 1810 30 April, a third son, Niels Andrea, is born. 1813 5 May, a last child, Søren Aabye, is born at home (2 Nytorv), and baptized in the Church of the Holy Spirit 3 June. This was the year the State Bank was declared bankrupt, as a result of economic problems stemming from the bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in 1807 and Denmark’s continuing alliance with Napoleon. Other notable figures born that year were the composers Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. 1819 14 September, Kierkegaard’s brother Søren Michael dies, aged twelve. 1821 Kierkegaard begins school at Copenhagen’s Borgerdydskole. 1822 15 March, Maren Kirstine, Michael Kierkegaard’s favourite daughter, dies, aged twenty-four. 1823 15 February, Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard’s future fiancée, is born. 1828 20 April, Kierkegaard is confirmed in the Church of Our Lady by Pastor (later Bishop) J. P. Mynster. 1830 The year of the July Revolution, a three-day revolt in Paris that ends the Bourbon restoration, with its tightened control of the press and universities, and results in some degree of liberal reform. In Denmark, as elsewhere, one effect of the revolt was to consolidate the lobby for freedom of the press. Kierkegaard, who later takes part in the dispute over press freedom, graduates from the Borgerdydskole (with distinction in Greek, history, French and Danish composition) and on 30 October enters the University of Copenhagen. On 1 November he enlists in the King’s Lifeguard, but four days later is discharged as unfit for service. His brother Peter Christian (known in academic circles as ‘the disputing devil of the North’), who was in Paris at the time of the July Revolution, receives a doctorate from the University of Gottingen for a dissertation on telling lies. 1831 25 April, Kierkegaard takes the first part of the first-year university exam (with distinction in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and history, and exceptional distinction in lower mathematics), and on 27 October the second part (with exceptional distinction in all subjects: theoretical and practical philosophy, physics and higher mathematics). This was the year that Hegel, whose influence on Danish philosophy provoked Kierkegaard’s later onslaught on Hegelianism, died. 1832 Kierkegaard’s 33-year-old sister Nicoline Christine (married to a clothier, Johan Christian Lund) dies after child birth. 1832 His brother Niels Andreas emigrates to the USA to pursue a business career. 1833 21 September, Niels Andreas dies, twenty-four years old, in Paterson, New Jersey. 1834 31 July, his mother dies. 4 December, he makes his journalistic debut, under the imprint ‘A’, with a piece in Flyveposten (The Flying Post) entitled ‘Also a Defence of Woman’s Superior Capacity’, in response to an article on the same theme. 29 December, his sister Petrea Severine (married to a banker, Heinrich Ferdinand Lund) dies after childbirth. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the Christian theologian and philosopher, also died this year, having visited and been fêted in Copenhagen only the year before. 1835 He spends a summer holiday at Gilleleje in northern Sjælland. Records his resolve ‘to find a truth that is true for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.’ 28 November, he reads a paper to the Student Union on ‘Our Journal Literature’ with reference to freedom of the press. 1836 He publishes (in Flyveposten and under the imprint ‘B’, but finally under his own name) three articles in an exchange on the topic of the paper delivered to the Student Union. Later in the year, his surviving brother Peter Christian marries and the couple make their home at 2 Nytorv. 1837 In May, he meets Regine Olsen (then fifteen years old) for the first time while visiting the Rørdam family in Frederiksberg. In September, he begins teaching Latin at the Borgerdysdskole and moves from Nytorv to his own apartment at 7 Løvstraede. In July, Peter Christian’s young wife dies. 1838 13 March, Kierkegaard’s mentor and mainstay, Poul Martin Møller, dies at forty-four. 9 August, his father dies and he inherits a sum amounting to near half a million dollars. In September he publishes his first book, From the Papers of One Still Living, attacking Hans Christian Andersen. 1839–40 He studies assiduously. In the winter he moves into an apartment at 11 Kultorvet, which he shares with another student. Ten months later he moves again, to 230A (now 38) Nørregade. 1840 He finally passes his examination for the theological degree (with distinction, though not at the top of the class), visits his ancestral home in Jutland, and, 10 September (having ‘approached her for a month’), proposes to Regine Olsen, who is now eighteen years old to his twenty-seven. She accepts. In November, Kierkegaard enters the pastoral seminary for practical training in the ministry. 1841 12 January, he preaches a sermon in Holmen’s Church. In July, his dissertation for the M.A. (later Ph.D.) degree. ‘On the Concept of Irony’, is accepted for public defence. 11 August, he breaks his engagement to Regine. 29 September, he successfully defends his dissertation. 11 October, the break with Regine is complete; 25 October, he leaves by ship for Berlin. He attends Schelling’s lectures in Berlin, among others. 1842 Having written large parts of Either/Or in Berlin, he returns in March to Copenhagen to complete the work. Begins, but does not complete, or publish, ‘De Omnibus Dubitandum Est’. Copenhagen this year saw the birth of Georg Brandes, a Danish intellectual who was to become an internationally famous literary critic and tried too late to interest Nietzsche in Kierkegaard’s work. 1843 15 February, Either/Or published. May, he briefly visits Berlin. 8 May, two days before his departure, Two Edifying Discourses was published, followed 7 October by Fear and Trembling and Repetition, 13 October by Three Edifying Discourses, and 6 December by Four Edifying Discourses. 1844 24 February, Kierkegaard held, in the Church of the Trinity, and with ‘distinction’, the trial sermon required for entry into the Danish Church. Two Edifying Discourses and Three Edifying Discourses were published 5 March and 8 June respectively. Then in June Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and Prefaces. In August followed Four Edifying Discourses. In October, He Moves from 230A Nørregade back to the family house at 2 Nytorv. In the wider world, on which these works would later have some impact, this year saw the birth of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose father was born the same year as Kierkegaard. 1845 Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and Stages on Life’s Way are published in April on successive days. In May, he is away for two weeks on a brief visit to Berlin. 1846 In January, The Corsair, responding to a provocation signed by one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, attacks him in person. He briefly considers becoming a country pastor. Concluding Unscientific Postscript is published 27 February, followed on 30 March by A Literary Review. In May, he is absent once more from Copenhagen for a two-week trip to Berlin. In October, Meyer Goldschmidt, the editor of The Corsair and formerly a protégé of Kierkegaard, resigns and leaves Denmark. 1847 13 March, Edifying Discourses in a Different Tenor is published; 29 September, Works of Love. His publisher informs him that Either/Or is sold out. On 16 May, his rival and former tutor, Hans Lassen Martensen, is appointed Royal Chaplain. On 3 November, Regine marries her former teacher Friedrich Schlegel. In December, Kierkegaard sells the family home a 2 Nytorv. During the year he has twice visited his brother, now remarried and pastor at an out-of-town-parish at Pedersborg, near Sorø. Abroad, Marx and Engels are drafting the Communist Manifesto, which came out the following year. 1848 The year of the February Revolution in France with repercussions throughout Europe. These include the Dano-Prussian war over Schleswig-Holstein. His servant is drafted. Just previously, 20 January, King Christian VIII, with whom Kierkegaard had at least two audiences, had died. On 28 January, he had signed a lease on an apartment at the corner of Rosenborggade and Tornebuskgade and in April moved in. On 26 April, Christian Discourses is published and 24 and 27 July the two-part article, ‘The Crisis and a Crisis in an Actress’s life’. By November he has finished The Point of View of My Work as an Author but decides not to have it published in his lifetime. The year was also the gestation period for The Sickness unto Death, some conception for which is first mentioned in a journal entry from 28 December 1847. 1849 The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air and Two Minor Ethico-Religious Treatises are published 14 and 19 May respectively. The Sickness unto Death is published 30 July under a new pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, and Three Discourses at Communion on Fridays 13 November. 1850 18 April, he moves to yet another apartment, at 43 Narregade. Practice in Christianity is published under the AntiClimacus pseudonym 27 September and An Edifying Discourse 20 December. 1850 In April, he moves outside the old city’s walls to 108A Østerbro. On 18 May he gave a sermon at the Citadel Church, in August published Two Discourses at Communion on Fridays and On My Work as an Author, and 10 September For Self-Examination. 1852–3 In April, he moves back inside the city to a small two-room flat let out of a larger apartment at Klaedeboderne 5–6 (now 28 Skindergade and 5 Dyrkøb), just opposite the Church of Our Lady. Judge for Yourself is completed but not published until twenty-one years after his death. In his journals he reflects over his ‘life’s operation’. 1854 30 January, Bishop Mynster dies. In February, Kierke gaard writes an article attacking the established church, but does not publish it until December. Hans Martensen is named Bishop 15 April. Rather than provoking reaction, publication of the article causes some confusion. 1855 From January to the end of May, he attacks the church in various articles published in Faedrelandet. In this final year he publishes: 24 May, This Must Be Said, So Let It Now Be Said; 16 June, Christ’s Judgment on Official Christianity; and 3 September, The Unchangeableness of God. In May he begins his own broadsheet, The Instant. It goes through nine issues before he falls ill. On 2 October, he collapses outside his home and is taken later, at his own request, to Frederiks Hospital. He dies there six weeks later, at 9 p.m., 11 November, probably of a staphylococcus infection of the lungs, though there was no autopsy. His funeral, at the prompting of his brother Peter Christian, but much to Martensen’s distaste, was conducted at the Church of Our Lady, attracting people of all classes, while the burial itself was the occasion of a disturbance in which Kierkegaard’s devoted but overwrought nephew deplored the fact that the Church (at his older uncle’s instigation) had commandeered the proceedings. 1856 The Point of View of my Authorship is published by Peter Christian Kierkegaard. 1860 The death of Arthur Schopenhauer (b. 1788), whose works Kierkegaard first read with admiration and mixed appreciation in 1854. 1884 Hans Lassen Martensen dies. 1888 24 February, Peter Christian Kierkegaard dies, aged eighty-two, his mind unbalanced. Thirteen years earlier, he resigned his episcopate in Aalborg (1856–75) and resigned his civic rights, placing himself in legal custody. 1904 Regine Schlegel dies. Her husband, Fritz Schlegel, governor of the Danish West Indies from 1855 until 1860 (on his deathbed Kierkegaard jibed that Regine had always wanted to be a ‘governess’) and later an important city official in Copenhagen, had died in 1896. The Sickness unto Death Further Reading A reasonably erudite reader looking for some scholarly enlightenment on The Sickness unto Death can be referred to two useful essay collections, an earlier one: International Kierkegaard Commentary 19: The Sickness unto Death, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), and the more recent Kierkegaard Studies: Yearbook 1996, ed. N. J. Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996). The discussions here should present few problems to those who have some overall grasp of the text itself. For a generally accessible and comprehensive view of the cultural and political background to Kierkegaard’s writings, see Bruce H. Kirmmse’s Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990). A highly readable short introduction to Kierkegaard’s life and works is Michael Watts’ Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003). For general surveys of Kierkegaard’s works and essays relating them to more recent thought, see Gordon Marino and Alastiar Hannay (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Martin J. Matustik and Merold Westphal (eds.), Kierkegaard in Post/ Modernity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995); and Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain (eds.), Kierkegaard: A Critical trader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). The way Kierkegaard’s thought relates to philosophy is the general topic of Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). The pioneering biography is Walter Lowrie’s Kierkegaard (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1938). The later Josiah Thomson’s Kierkegaard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973) presents a less saintly portrait, while Alastair Hannay’s Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) places Kierkegaard’s thought and writings in the context of his life and contemporaries. Those interested in the biographical backgrouncd should also read Bruce H. Kirmmse’s excellent annotated collection, Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). The Sickness unto Death B. The Continuation of Sin * Note the distinction between despairing over one’s sin and despairing of the forgiveness of sins. * One notes therefore that despair over sin is understood dialectically in the direction of faith. That there is this dialectical aspect (even if this work only treats despair as a sickness) must never be forgotten; it is implicit in despair’s being also the first element in faith. But when the direction is away from faith, from the God-relationship, then despair over sin is the new sin. In the life of spirit everything is dialectical. For indeed, as annulled possibility offence is an element in faith. But offence in the direction away from faith is sin. One can hold it against a person that he can never be offended by Christianity. In talking in this way, one speaks of being offended as though it were something good. And still one must say that to be offended is sin. * The doctrine of the sin of the race has often been abused through failure to realize that sin, however common to all, does not gather men together into a common concept, into an association or partnership (‘no more than out in the graveyard [ Kirkegaarden ] the multitude of the dead form a society’ [a reference to one of Kierkegaard’s own works]), but splits people up into individuals and fastens hold of every individual as a sinner, a splitting up which in another sense both corresponds with and is ideologically directed towards the perfection of existence. People have been unaware of this and have therefore let the fallen race be made good again once and for all through Christ. And so, once again, God has been saddled with an abstraction which wants, as an abstraction, to claim closer kinship with him. But this is a camouflage that only makes people lose their shame. For when ‘the single individual’ feels himself akin to God (and this is what Christianity teaches), then he also feels all the pressure of this in fear and trembling; he must discover – as if this were not an ancient discovery – the possibility of offence. But if the individual is to attain this glory through an abstraction, then the whole thing becomes very easy and is really taken in vain. The single individual does not then acquire that enormous pressure of God, which in humbleness weighs one down as much as it uplifts; the single individual imagines he has everything as a matter of course, merely by participating in this abstraction. But being a man is not like being an animal, where the specimen is always less than the species. Man is distinguished from other animal species not just by the advantages usually mentioned, but qualitatively by the individual’s, the particular individual’s being more than the species. And this specification is in turn dialectical; it means that the individual is a sinner, but then again, that it is perfection to be the individual. * Note that this is why God is ‘the judge’; for him there is no crowd, only particular individuals. * As is now the case almost everywhere in Christendom, which apparently either altogether ignores the fact that it is Christ himself who so repeatedly and fervently warned against offence, even, up to the very end of his life, to his faithful apostles who had followed him from the beginning and for his sake had given up everything; or perhaps tacitly takes this to be an exaggerated fear on the part of Christ, seeing that experience proves thousand upon thousand times that one can believe in Christ without remarking the least possibility of offence. But this might well be a mistake which will no doubt come to light when the possibility of offence judges Christendom. † Here is a small task for observers. If one assumes that all the many priests, here and abroad, who hold and write sermons, are believing Christians, how can it be explained that one never hears or reads the prayer which especially in our times would be so apt: ‘God in heaven, I thank you for not requiring a person to comprehend Christianity, for if it were required, then I would be of all men the most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend it, the more I discover merely the possibility of offence. Therefore, I thank you for requiring only faith and I pray you will continue to increase it.’ From the point of view of orthodoxy, this prayer would be altogether correct and, assuming sincerity on the part of the one who gave it, it would also be a well-directed irony on the whole of speculation. But I wonder, shall one find faith on the earth? [This contains references to I Corinthians and Luke. Translator. ] The Sickness unto Death Introduction * see pp. 62 – 3 below * The Concept of Dread, tr. W. Lowrie (with intro. and notes), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1944; and The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and tr. R. Thomte (with intro. and notes), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980. * Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (20 vols.), Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1909 – 48, XI 1 , A 407, p. 313. * Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, VIII 1 , A 9, p. 8. * Translators commonly use the form ‘not to will to be oneself’ and ‘to will ‘to be oneself’. But there is no need to use this archaic form and the Danish translates naturally and colloquially into ‘not to want’ and ‘to want’. * Concluding Unscientific Postscript , tr. D. F. Swenson and W. Lowrie, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1941, p. 508. * Cf. Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, tr. (with intro.) D. V. Steere, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1958. * Søren Kierkegaard’s Papirer. X 1 , A 517, p. 332. * Kierkegaard’s remark about the demonic aspect of Anti-Climacus might be interpreted not just as saying that the ideal is super-human, but that in representing it as such, Anti-Climacus is in fact doing the devil’s errand by making it appear untrue to human life and therefore to be rejected. This would accord with Anti-Climacus’s own use of the term ‘demonic’ in the work, but sounds very like the form of despair Anti-Climacus himself calls the despair of infinitude. † J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. H. E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956, p. 615. * L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, tr. P. Winch, Blackwell, Oxford, 1980, p. 46e. The word translated ‘torment’ (Not) includes the sense of ‘need’. The passage also contains the remark: ‘The whole planet can suffer no greater torment than a single [eine] soul.’ Wittgenstein was an admirer of Kierkegaard. * See Bernard Williams, ‘Deciding to Believe’, in Problems of the Self, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 136 – 51. * Because the Danish for ‘to relate’ (in the sense of ‘to be in relation’) (at forholde sig) has a reflexive form, translators have rendered this ‘relates itself to itself’, which has then been construed as meaning ‘relates its actual to its true self (or vice versa). This is both unnecessary and misleading. The Danish says simply that to be a self is for the synthesis to have a relation to itself, that is, to be self-related. The distinction between an actual and a true self is already contained in that of the synthesis. That remark must none the less be qualified. The synthesis is also described in one place as simply ‘psychophysical’, that is, as just a relation between mind and body. This refers, however, to the human synthesis prior to its relating to itself from the point of view of ‘spirit’. To keep the picture consistent, one should perhaps construe the self-relation in a strong sense, such that the synthesis only relates to itself when it has enough of a self to bear a self -relation. And then the synthesis can be construed in terms of actual (imbalanced) and ideal (balanced) selves. A person without spirit must have enough reflexivity to carry on a spiritless existence. If one grants a weaker sense of ‘relating to itself’, one could say that it does not relate to itself as a self. Kierkegaard does not often pause to define his terms. * Søren Kierkegaard’s Papirer, X 2 . A 617, p. 442. † See The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and tr. R. Thomte (with intro. and notes), Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980, pp. 150, 152 and 154. * ‘To a Mouse on Turning her up in her Nest with a Plough’ (1785). * The idea of the self as a relation that ‘relates to itself’ is not original to Kierkegaard but is found in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979, p. 12. * As spelled out in a companion work Indeveke i Christendom (‘Practice in Christianity’), translated by W. Lowrie as Training in Christianity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1944, p. 109. * The details of Kierkegaard’s life are largely gathered from Josiah Thompson’s excellently vivid biography, Kierkegaard, A. A. Knopf, New York, 1973. The account here is drawn from my own Kierkegaard, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1982, ch. 1. * Also published in Penguin Classics. * From a hymn written by H. A. Broison (1694 – 1764). See 5. Kierkegaard’s Letters and Documents, tr. H. Rosenmeier, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1978, pp. 26 – 7. * This introduction owes much to discussion with colleagues and the writings of Kierkegaard scholars, too many to be listed here. But I wish to record my debt particularly to Paul Dietrichson and to Gordon Marino. I would also like to thank Sarah Gustavus-Jones, my most perceptive copy editor at Penguin. The Sickness unto Death Introduction The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed. Anti-Climacus * A sickness ‘unto death’ would normally be an illness that someone took with them to the grave, or more pointedly the one that took them there. In the New Testament story, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, thereby showing that Lazarus’s own sickness unto death was miraculously now no longer so – though of course in the end Lazarus presumably died like everyone else. But such fatal, or ‘terminal’, illness is not what Kierkegaard’s title refers to. As the author points out in his Introduction, there is a sense in which, even if Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead, the story implies that neither his nor anyone else’s sickness is ‘unto death’. For in that story Jesus is Christ, and Christ is ‘the resurrection and the life’; so for the Christian, that is to say, for the person who believes that the historical Jesus was Christ, th	381,472
The World As Will And Representation (volume 1) (Arthur Schopenhauer) (Z-Library).epub	The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 47. B ecause beauty with grace is the principal subject of sculpture, it likes the nude, and tolerates clothing only in so far as this does not conceal the form. It makes use of drapery, not as a covering, but as an indirect presentation of the form. This method of presentation greatly engrosses the understanding, since the understanding reaches the perception of the cause, namely the form of the body, only through the one directly given effect, that is to say, the arrangement of the drapery. Therefore in sculpture drapery is to some extent what foreshortening is in painting. Both are suggestions, yet not symbolical, but such that, if they succeed, they force the understanding immediately to perceive what is suggested, just as if it were actually given. Here I may be permitted in passing to insert a comparison relating to the rhetorical arts. Just as the beautiful bodily form can be seen to the best advantage with the lightest clothing, or even no clothing at all, and thus a very handsome man, if at the same time he had taste and could follow it, would prefer to walk about almost naked, clothed only after the manner of the ancients; so will every fine mind rich in ideas express itself always in the most natural, candid, and simple way, concerned if it be possible to communicate its thoughts to others, and thus to relieve the loneliness that one is bound to feel in a world such as this. Conversely, poverty of mind, confusion and perversity of thought will clothe themselves in the most far-fetched expressions and obscure forms of speech, in order to cloak in difficult and pompous phrases small, trifling, insipid, or commonplace ideas. It is like the man who lacks the majesty of beauty, and wishes to make up for this deficiency by clothing; he attempts to cover up the insignificance or ugliness of his person under barbaric finery, tinsel, feathers, ruffles, cuffs, and mantles. Thus many an author, if compelled to translate his pompous and obscure book into its little clear content, would be as embarrassed as that man would be if he were to go about naked. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 69. S uicide, the arbitrary doing away with the individual phenomenon, differs most widely from the denial of the will-to-live, which is the only act of its freedom to appear in the phenomenon, and hence, as Asmus calls it, the transcendental change. The denial of the will has now been adequately discussed within the limits of our method of consideration. Far from being denial of the will, suicide is a phenomenon of the will’s strong affirmation. For denial has its essential nature in the fact that the pleasures of life, not its sorrows, are shunned. The suicide wills life, and is dissatisfied merely with the conditions on which it has come to him. Therefore he gives up by no means the will-to-live, but merely life, since he destroys the individual phenomenon. He wills life, wills the unchecked existence and affirmation of the body; but the combination of circumstances does not allow of these, and the result for him is great suffering. The will-to-live finds itself so hampered in this particular phenomenon, that it cannot develop and display its efforts. It therefore decides in accordance with its own inner nature, which lies outside the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and to which every individual phenomenon is therefore indifferent, in that it remains itself untouched by all arising and passing away, and is the inner core of the life of all things. For that same firm, inner assurance, which enables all of us to live without the constant dread of death, the assurance that the will can never lack its phenomenon, supports the deed even in the case of suicide. Thus the will-to-live appears just as much in this suicide (Shiva) as in the ease and comfort of self-preservation (Vishnu), and the sensual pleasure of procreation (Brahma). This is the inner meaning of the unity of the Trimurti which every human being entirely is, although in time it raises now one, now another of its three heads. As the individual thing is related to the Idea, so is suicide to the denial of the will. The suicide denies merely the individual, not the species. We have already found that, since life is always certain to the will-to-live, and suffering is essential to life, suicide, or the arbitrary destruction of an individual phenomenon, is a quite futile and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself remains unaffected by it, just as the rainbow remains unmoved, however rapidly the drops may change which sustain it for the moment. But in addition to this, it is also the masterpiece of Maya as the most blatant expression of the contradiction of the will-to-live with itself. Just as we have recognized this contradiction in the lowest phenomena of the will in the constant struggle of all the manifestations of natural forces and of all organic individuals for matter, time, and space, and as we saw that conflict stand out more and more with terrible distinctness on the ascending grades of the will’s objectification; so at last at the highest stage, the Idea of man, it reaches that degree where not only the individuals exhibiting the same Idea exterminate one another, but even the one individual declares war on itself. The vehemence with which it wills life and revolts against what hinders it, namely suffering, brings it to the point of destroying itself, so that the individual will by an act of will eliminates the body that is merely the will’s own becoming visible, rather than that suffering should break the will. Just because the suicide cannot cease willing, he ceases to live; and the will affirms itself here even through the cessation of its own phenomenon, because it can no longer affirm itself otherwise. But as it was just the suffering it thus shunned which, as mortification of the will, could have led it to the denial of itself and to salvation, so in this respect the suicide is like a sick man who, after the beginning of a painful operation that could completely cure him, will not allow it to be completed, but prefers to retain his illness. Suffering approaches and, as such, offers the possibility of a denial of the will; but he rejects it by destroying the will’s phenomenon, the body, so that the will may remain unbroken. This is the reason why almost all ethical systems, philosophical as well as religious, condemn suicide, though they themselves cannot state anything but strange and sophistical arguments for so doing. But if ever a man was kept from suicide by purely moral incentive, the innermost meaning of this self-conquest (whatever the concepts in which his faculty of reason may have clothed it) was as follows: “I do not want to avoid suffering, because it can help to put an end to the will-to-live, whose phenomenon is so full of misery, by so strengthening the knowledge of the real nature of the world now already dawning on me, that such knowledge may become the final quieter of the will, and release me for ever.” It is well known that, from time to time, cases repeatedly occur where suicide extends to the children; the father kills the children of whom he is very fond, and then himself. If we bear in mind that conscience, religion, and all traditional ideas teach him to recognize murder as the gravest crime, but yet in the hour of his own death he commits this, and indeed without his having any possible egoistical motive for it, then the deed can be explained only in the following way. The will of the individual again recognizes itself immediately in the children, although it is involved in the delusion of regarding the phenomenon as the being-in-itself. At the same time, he is deeply moved by the knowledge of the misery of all life; he imagines that with the phenomenon he abolishes the inner nature itself, and therefore wants to deliver from existence and its misery both himself and his children in whom he directly sees himself living again. It would be an error wholly analogous to this to suppose that one can reach the same end as is attained by voluntary chastity by frustrating the aims of nature in fecundation, or even by men, in consideration of the inevitable suffering of life, countenancing the death of the new-born child, instead of rather doing everything to ensure life to every being that is pressing into it. For if the will-to-live exists, it cannot, as that which alone is metaphysical or the thing-in-itself, be broken by any force, but that force can destroy only its phenomenon in such a place and at such a time. The will itself cannot be abolished by anything except knowledge. Therefore the only path to salvation is that the will should appear freely and without hindrance, in order that it can recognize or know its own inner nature in this phenomenon. Only in consequence of this knowledge can the will abolish itself, and thus end the suffering that is inseparable from its phenomenon. This, however, is not possible through physical force, such as the destruction of the seed or germ, the killing of the new-born child, or suicide. Nature leads the will to the light, just because only in the light can it find its salvation. Therefore the purposes of nature are to be promoted in every way, as soon as the will-to-live, that is her inner being, has determined itself. There appears to be a special kind of suicide, quite different from the ordinary, which has perhaps not yet been adequately verified. This is voluntarily chosen death by starvation at the highest degree of asceticism. Its manifestation, however, has always been accompanied, and thus rendered vague and obscure, by much religious fanaticism and even superstition. Yet it seems that the complete denial of the will can reach that degree where even the necessary will to maintain the vegetative life of the body, by the assimilation of nourishment, ceases to exist. This kind of suicide is so far from being the result of the will-to-live, that such a completely resigned ascetic ceases to live merely because he has completely ceased to will. No other death than that by starvation is here conceivable (unless it resulted from a special superstition), since the intention to cut short the agony would actually be a degree of affirmation of the will. The dogmas that satisfy the faculty of reason of such a penitent delude him with the idea that a being of a higher nature has ordered for him the fasting to which his inner tendency urges him. Old instances of this can be found in the Breslauer Sammlung von Natur- und Medicin-Geschichten, September 1719, p. 363 seq.; in Bayle’s Nouvelles de la république des lettres, February 1685, p. 189 seq.; in Zimmermann, Ueber die Einsamkeit, Vol. I, p. 182; in the Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences of 1764, an account by Houttuyn; the same account is repeated in the Sammlung für praktische Aerzte, Vol. I, p. 69. Later reports are to be found in Hufeland’s Journal für praktische Heilkunde, Vol. X, p. 181, and Vol. XLVIII, p. 95; also in Nasse’s Zeitschrift für psychische Aerzte, 1819, Part III, p. 460; in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 1809, Vol. V, p. 319. In the year 1833, all the papers reported that the English historian, Dr. Lingard, had died of voluntary starvation at Dover in January; according to later accounts it was not Lingard himself but a kinsman of his who died. But in these accounts the individuals are for the most part described as mad, and it is no longer possible to ascertain how far this may have been the case. But I will here give a more recent account of this kind, if only to ensure the preservation of one of the rare instances of the striking and extraordinary phenomenon of human nature just mentioned, which, at any rate, apparently belongs to where I should like to assign it, and could hardly be explained in any other way. This recent account is to be found in the Nürnberger Korrespondent of 29 July 1813, in the following words: “It is reported from Bern that in a dense forest near Thurnen a small hut was discovered in which was lying the decomposed corpse of a man who had been dead for about a month. His clothes gave little information about his social position. Two very fine shirts lay beside him. The most important thing was a Bible, interleaved with blank pages, which had been partly written on by the deceased. In it he announced the day of his departure from home (but it did not mention where his home was). He then said that he was driven into the wilderness by the spirit of God to pray and fast. On his journey to that spot, he had already fasted for seven days, and had then eaten again. After settling down here, he began to fast again, and indeed fasted for as many days. Every day was now indicated by a stroke, of which there were five, after which the pilgrim had presumably died. There was also found a letter to a clergyman about a sermon that the deceased had heard him preach; but the address was missing.” Between this voluntary death springing from the extreme of asceticism and that resulting from despair there may be many different intermediate stages and combinations, which are indeed hard to explain; but human nature has depths, obscurities, and intricacies, whose elucidation and unfolding are of the very greatest difficulty. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 64. F rom our description of eternal justice, which is not mythical but philosophical, we will now proceed to the kindred consideration of the ethical significance of conduct, and of conscience, which is merely the felt knowledge of that significance. Here, however, I wish first of all to draw attention to two characteristics of human nature which may help to make clear how the essential nature of that eternal justice and the unity and identity of the will in all its phenomena, on which that justice rests, are known to everyone, at least as an obscure feeling. After a wicked deed has been done, it affords satisfaction not only to the injured party, who is often filled with a desire for revenge, but also to the completely indifferent spectator, to see that the person who caused pain to another suffers in turn exactly the same measure of pain; and this quite independently of the object (which we have demonstrated) of the State in punishing, which is the basis of criminal law. It seems to me that nothing is expressed here but consciousness of that eternal justice, which, however, is at once misunderstood and falsified by the unpurified mind. Such a mind, involved in the principium individuationis, commits an amphiboly of the concepts, and demands of the phenomenon what belongs only to the thing-in-itself. It does not see to what extent the offender and the offended are in themselves one, and that it is the same inner nature which, not recognizing itself in its own phenomenon, bears both the pain and the guilt. On the contrary, it longs to see again the pain in the same individual to whom the guilt belongs. A man might have a very high degree of wickedness, which yet might be found in many others, though not matched with other qualities such as are found in him, namely one who was far superior to others through unusual mental powers, and who, accordingly, inflicted unspeakable sufferings on millions of others—a world conqueror, for instance. Most people would like to demand that such a man should at some time and in some place atone for all those sufferings by an equal amount of pain; for they do not recognize how the tormentor and tormented are in themselves one, and that it is the same will by which these latter exist and live, which appears in the former, and precisely through him attains to the most distinct revelation of its inner nature. This will likewise suffers both in the oppressed and in the oppressor, and in the latter indeed all the more, in proportion as the consciousness has greater clearness and distinctness, and the will a greater vehemence. But Christian ethics testifies to the fact that the deeper knowledge, no longer involved in the principium individuationis, a knowledge from which all virtue and nobleness of mind proceed, no longer cherishes feelings demanding retaliation. Such ethics positively forbids all retaliation of evil for evil, and lets eternal justice rule in the province of the thing-in-itself which is different from that of the phenomenon (“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Rom. xii, 19). A much more striking, but likewise much rarer, characteristic of human nature, which expresses that desire to draw eternal justice into the province of experience, i.e., of individuation, and at the same time indicates a felt consciousness that, as I put it above, the will-to-live acts out the great tragedy and comedy at its own expense, and that the same one will lives in all phenomena—such a characteristic, I say, is the following. Sometimes we see a man so profoundly indignant at a great outrage, which he has experienced or perhaps only witnessed, that he deliberately and irretrievably stakes his own life in order to take vengeance on the perpetrator of that outrage. We see him search for years for some mighty oppressor, finally murder him, and then himself die on the scaffold, as he had foreseen. Indeed, often he did not attempt in any way to avoid this, since his life was of value to him only as a means for revenge. Such instances are found especially among the Spaniards. 179 Now if we carefully consider the spirit of that mania for retaliation, we find it to be very different from common revenge, which desires to mitigate suffering endured by the sight of suffering caused; indeed, we find that what it aims at deserves to be called not so much revenge as punishment. For in it there is really to be found the intention of an effect on the future through the example, and without any selfish aim either for the avenging individual, who perishes in the attempt, or for a society that secures its own safety through laws. This punishment is carried out by the individual, not by the State; nor is it in fulfilment of a law; on the contrary, it always concerns a deed which the State would not or could not punish, and whose punishment it condemns. It seems to me that the wrath which drives such a man so far beyond the limits of all self-love, springs from the deepest consciousness that he himself is the whole will-to-live that appears in all creatures through all periods of time, and that therefore the most distant future, like the present, belongs to him in the same way, and cannot be a matter of indifference to him. Affirming this will, he nevertheless desires that in the drama that presents its inner nature no such monstrous outrage shall ever appear again; and he wishes to frighten every future evildoer by the example of a revenge against which there is no wall of defence, as the fear of death does not deter the avenger. The will-to-live, though it still affirms itself here, no longer depends on the individual phenomenon, on the individual person, but embraces the Idea of man. It desires to keep the phenomenon of this Idea pure from such a monstrous and revolting outrage. It is a rare, significant, and even sublime trait of character by which the individual sacrifices himself, in that he strives to make himself the arm of eternal justice, whose true inner nature he still fails to recognize. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 37. N ow according to our explanation, genius consists in the ability to know, independently of the principle of sufficient reason, not individual things which have their existence only in the relation, but the Ideas of such things, and in the ability to be, in face of these, the correlative of the Idea, and hence no longer individual, but pure subject of knowing. Yet this ability must be inherent in all men in a lesser and different degree, as otherwise they would be just as incapable of enjoying works of art as of producing them. Generally they would have no susceptibility at all to the beautiful and to the sublime; indeed, these words could have no meaning for them. We must therefore assume as existing in all men that power of recognizing in things their Ideas, of divesting themselves for a moment of their personality, unless indeed there are some who are not capable of any aesthetic pleasure at all. The man of genius excels them only in the far higher degree and more continuous duration of this kind of knowledge. These enable him to retain that thoughtful contemplation necessary for him to repeat what is thus known in a voluntary and intentional work, such repetition being the work of art. Through this he communicates to others the Idea he has grasped. Therefore this Idea remains unchanged and the same, and hence aesthetic pleasure is essentially one and the same, whether it be called forth by a work of art, or directly by the contemplation of nature and of life. The work of art is merely a means of facilitating that knowledge in which this pleasure consists. That the Idea comes to us more easily from the work of art than directly from nature and from reality, arises solely from the fact that the artist, who knew only the Idea and not reality, clearly repeated in his work only the Idea, separated it out from reality, and omitted all disturbing contingencies. The artist lets us peer into the world through his eyes. That he has these eyes, that he knows the essential in things which lies outside all relations, is the gift of genius and is inborn; but that he is able to lend us this gift, to let us see with his eyes, is acquired, and is the technical side of art. Therefore, after the account I have given in the foregoing remarks of the inner essence of the aesthetic way of knowing in its most general outline, the following more detailed philosophical consideration of the beautiful and the sublime will explain both simultaneously, in nature and in art, without separating them further. We shall first consider what takes place in a man when he is affected by the beautiful and the sublime. Whether he draws this emotion directly from nature, from life, or partakes of it only through the medium of art, makes no essential difference, but only an outward one. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 FOURTH BOOK THE WORLD AS WILL SECOND ASPECT With the Attainment of Self-Knowledge, Affirmation and Denial of the Will-to-Live Tempore quo cognitio simul advenit, amor e medio supersurrexit. Oupnek’hat, studio Anquetil Duperron, Vol. ii. p. 216. (“The moment knowledge appeared on the scene, thence arose desire.” [Tr.]) The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 22. N ow, if this thing-in-itself (we will retain the Kantian expression as a standing formula)—which as such is never object, since all object is its mere appearance or phenomenon, and not it itself—is to be thought of objectively, then we must borrow its name and concept from an object, from something in some way objectively given, and therefore from one of its phenomena. But in order to serve as a point of explanation, this can be none other than the most complete of all its phenomena, i.e., the most distinct, the most developed, the most directly enlightened by knowledge; but this is precisely man’s will. We have to observe, however, that here of course we use only a denominatio a potiori, by which the concept of will therefore receives a greater extension than it has hitherto had. Knowledge of the identical in different phenomena and of the different in similar phenomena is, as Plato so often remarks, the condition for philosophy. But hitherto the identity of the inner essence of any striving and operating force in nature with the will has not been recognized, and therefore the many kinds of phenomena that are only different species of the same genus were not regarded as such; they were considered as being heterogeneous. Consequently, no word could exist to describe the concept of this genus. I therefore name the genus after its most important species, the direct knowledge of which lies nearest to us, and leads to the indirect knowledge of all the others. But anyone who is incapable of carrying out the required extension of the concept will remain involved in a permanent misunderstanding. For by the word will, he will always understand only that species of it hitherto exclusively described by the term, that is to say, the will guided by knowledge, strictly according to motives, indeed only to abstract motives, thus manifesting itself under the guidance of the faculty of reason. This, as we have said, is only the most distinct phenomenon or appearance of the will. We must now clearly separate out in our thoughts the innermost essence of this phenomenon, known to us directly, and then transfer it to all the weaker, less distinct phenomena of the same essence, and by so doing achieve the desired extension of the concept of will. From the opposite point of view, I should be misunderstood by anyone who thought that ultimately it was all the same whether we expressed this essence-in-itself of all phenomena by the word will or by any other word. This would be the case if this thing-in-itself were something whose existence we merely inferred, and thus knew only indirectly and merely in the abstract. Then certainly we could call it what we liked; the name would stand merely as the symbol of an unknown quantity. But the word will, which, like a magic word, is to reveal to us the innermost essence of everything in nature, by no means expresses an unknown quantity, something reached by inferences and syllogisms, but something known absolutely and immediately, and that so well that we know and understand what will is better than anything else, be it what it may. Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will. We must not imagine that this is a dispute about words or a matter of no consequence; on the contrary, it is of the very highest significance and importance. For at the root of the concept of force, as of all other concepts, lies knowledge of the objective world through perception, in other words, the phenomenon, the representation, from which the concept is drawn. It is abstracted from the province where cause and effect reign, that is, from the representation of perception, and it signifies just the causal nature of the cause at the point where this causal nature is etiologically no longer explicable at all, but is the necessary presupposition of all etiological explanation. On the other hand, the concept of will is of all possible concepts the only one that has its origin not in the phenomenon, not in the mere representation of perception, but which comes from within, and proceeds from the most immediate consciousness of everyone. In this consciousness each one knows and at the same time is himself his own individuality according to its nature immediately, without any form, even the form of subject and object, for here knower and known coincide. Therefore, if we refer the concept of force to that of will, we have in fact referred something more unknown to something infinitely better known, indeed to the one thing really known to us immediately and completely; and we have very greatly extended our knowledge. If, on the other hand, we subsume the concept of will under that of force, as has been done hitherto, we renounce the only immediate knowledge of the inner nature of the world that we have, since we let it disappear in a concept abstracted from the phenomenon, with which therefore we can never pass beyond the phenomenon. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 43. M atter as such cannot be the expression of an Idea. For, as we found in the first book, it is causality through and through; its being is simply its acting. But causality is a form of the principle of sufficient reason; knowledge of the Idea, on the other hand, essentially excludes the content of this principle. In the second book we also found matter to be the common substratum of all individual phenomena of the Ideas, and consequently the connecting link between the Idea and the phenomenon or the individual thing. Therefore, for both these reasons, matter cannot by itself express an Idea. This is confirmed a posteriori by the fact that of matter as such absolutely no representation from perception is possible, but only an abstract concept. In the representation of perception are exhibited only the forms and qualities, the supporter of which is matter, and in all of which Ideas reveal themselves. This is also in keeping with the fact that causality (the whole essence of matter) cannot by itself be exhibited in perception, but only a definite causal connexion. On the other hand, every phenomenon of an Idea, because, as such, it has entered into the form of the principle of sufficient reason, or the principium individuationis, must exhibit itself in matter as a quality thereof. Therefore, as we have said, matter is to this extent the connecting link between the Idea and the principium individuationis, which is the individual’s form of knowledge, or the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore Plato was quite right, for after the Idea and its phenomenon, namely the individual thing, both of which include generally all the things of the world, he put forward matter only as a third thing different from these two ( Timaeus [48-9], p. 345). The individual, as phenomenon of the Idea, is always matter. Every quality of matter is also always phenomenon of an Idea, and as such is also susceptible of aesthetic contemplation, i.e., of knowledge of the Idea that expresses itself in it. Now this holds good even of the most universal qualities of matter, without which it never exists, and the Ideas of which are the weakest objectivity of the will. Such are gravity, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, reaction to light, and so on. Now if we consider architecture merely as a fine art and apart from its provision for useful purposes, in which it serves the will and not pure knowledge, and thus is no longer art in our sense, we can assign it no purpose other than that of bringing to clearer perceptiveness some of those Ideas that are the lowest grades of the will’s objectivity. Such Ideas are gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, those universal qualities of stone, those first, simplest, and dullest visibilities of the will, the fundamental bass-notes of nature; and along with these, light, which is in many respects their opposite. Even at this low stage of the will’s objectivity, we see its inner nature revealing itself in discord; for, properly speaking, the conflict between gravity and rigidity is the sole aesthetic material of architecture; its problem is to make this conflict appear with perfect distinctness in many different ways. It solves this problem by depriving these indestructible forces of the shortest path to their satisfaction, and keeping them in suspense through a circuitous path; the conflict is thus prolonged, and the inexhaustible efforts of the two forces become visible in many different ways. The whole mass of the building, if left to its original tendency, would exhibit a mere heap or lump, bound to the earth as firmly as possible, to which gravity, the form in which the will here appears, presses incessantly, whereas rigidity, also objectivity of the will, resists. But this very tendency, this effort, is thwarted in its immediate satisfaction by architecture, and only an indirect satisfaction by roundabout ways is granted to it. The joists and beams, for example, can press the earth only by means of the column; the arch must support itself, and only through the medium of the pillars can it satisfy its tendency towards the earth, and so on. By just these enforced digressions, by these very hindrances, those forces inherent in the crude mass of stone unfold themselves in the most distinct and varied manner; and the purely aesthetic purpose of architecture can go no farther. Therefore the beauty of a building is certainly to be found in the evident and obvious suitability of every part, not to the outward arbitrary purpose of man (to this extent the work belongs to practical architecture), but directly to the stability of the whole. The position, size, and form of every part must have so necessary a relation to this stability that if it were possible to remove some part, the whole would inevitably collapse. For only by each part bearing as much as it conveniently can, and each being supported exactly where it ought to be and to exactly the necessary extent, does this play of opposition, this conflict between rigidity and gravity, that constitutes the life of the stone and the manifestations of its will, unfold itself in the most complete visibility. These lowest grades of the will’s objectivity distinctly reveal themselves. In just the same way, the form of each part must be determined not arbitrarily, but by its purpose and its relation to the whole. The column is the simplest form of support, determined merely by the purpose or intention. The twisted column is tasteless; the four-cornered pillar is in fact less simple than the round column, though it happens to be more easily made. Also the forms of frieze, joist, arch, vault, dome are determined entirely by their immediate purpose, and are self-explanatory therefrom. Ornamental work on capitals, etc., belongs to sculpture and not to architecture, and is merely tolerated as an additional embellishment, which might be dispensed with. From what has been said, it is absolutely necessary for an understanding and aesthetic enjoyment of a work of architecture to have direct knowledge through perception of its matter as regards its weight, rigidity, and cohesion. Our pleasure in such a work would suddenly be greatly diminished by the disclosure that the building material was pumice-stone, for then it would strike us as a kind of sham building. We should be affected in almost the same way if we were told that it was only of wood, when we had assumed it to be stone, just because this alters and shifts the relation between rigidity and gravity, and thus the significance and necessity of all the parts; for those natural forces reveal themselves much more feebly in a wooden building. Therefore, no architectural work as fine art can really be made of timber, however many forms this may assume; this can be explained simply and solely by our theory. If we were told clearly that the building, the sight of which pleased us, consisted of entirely different materials of very unequal weight and consistency, but not distinguishable by the eye, the whole building would become as incapable of affording us pleasure as would a poem in an unknown language. All this proves that architecture affects us not only mathematically, but dynamically, and that what speaks to us through it is not mere form and symmetry, but rather those fundamental forces of nature, those primary Ideas, those lowest grades of the will’s objectivity. The regularity of the building and its parts is produced to some extent by the direct adaptation of each member to the stability of the whole; to some extent it serves to facilitate a survey and comprehension of the whole. Finally regular figures contribute to the beauty by revealing the conformity to law of space as such. All this, however, is only of subordinate value and necessity, and is by no means the principal thing, for symmetry is not invariably demanded, as even ruins are still beautiful. Now architectural works have a quite special relation to light; in full sunshine with the blue sky as a background they gain a twofold beauty; and by moonlight again they reveal quite a different effect. Therefore when a fine work of architecture is erected, special consideration is always given to the effects of light and to the climate. The reason for all this is to be found principally in the fact that only a bright strong illumination makes all the parts and their relations clearly visible. Moreover, I am of the opinion that architecture is destined to reveal not only gravity and rigidity, but at the same time the nature of light, which is their very opposite. The light is intercepted, impeded, and reflected by the large, opaque, sharply contoured and variously formed masses of stone, and thus unfolds its nature and qualities in the purest and clearest way, to the great delight of the beholder; for light is the most agreeable of things as the condition and objective correlative of the most perfect kind of knowledge through perception. Now since the Ideas, brought to clear perception by architecture, are the lowest grades of the will’s objectivity, and since, in consequence, the objective significance of what architecture reveals to us is relatively small, the aesthetic pleasure of looking at a fine and favourably illuminated building will lie not so much in the apprehension of the Idea as in the subjective correlative thereof which accompanies this apprehension. Hence this pleasure will consist preeminently in the fact that, at the sight of this building, the beholder is emancipated from the kind of knowledge possessed by the individual, which serves the will and follows the principle of sufficient reason, and is raised to that of the pure, will-free subject of knowing. Thus it will consist in pure contemplation itself, freed from all the suffering of will and of individuality. In this respect, the opposite of architecture, and the other extreme in the series of fine arts, is the drama, which brings to knowledge the most significant of all the Ideas; hence in the aesthetic enjoyment of it the objective side is predominant throughout. Architecture is distinguished from the plastic arts and poetry by the fact that it gives us not a copy, but the thing itself. Unlike those arts, it does not repeat the known Idea, whereby the artist lends his eyes to the beholder. But in it the artist simply presents the object to the beholder, and makes the apprehension of the Idea easy for him by bringing the actual individual object to a clear and complete expression of its nature. Unlike the works of the other fine arts, those of architecture are very rarely executed for purely aesthetic purposes. On the contrary, they are subordinated to other, practical ends that are foreign to art itself. Thus the great merit of the architect consists in his achieving and attaining purely aesthetic ends, in spite of their subordination to other ends foreign to them. This he does by skilfully adapting them in many different ways to the arbitrary ends in each case, and by correctly judging what aesthetically architectural beauty is consistent and compatible with a temple, a palace, a prison, and so on. The more a harsh climate increases those demands of necessity and utility, definitely determines them, and inevitably prescribes them, the less scope is there for the beautiful in architecture. In the mild climate of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the demands of necessity were fewer and less definite, architecture was able to pursue its aesthetic ends with the greatest freedom. Under a northern sky these are greatly curtailed for architecture; here, where the requirements were coffers, pointed roofs, and towers, it could unfold its beauty only within very narrow limits, and had to make amends all the more by making use of embellishments borrowed from sculpture, as can be seen in Gothic architecture. In this way architecture is bound to suffer great restrictions through the demands of necessity and utility. On the other hand, it has in these a very powerful support, for with the range and expense of its works and with the narrow sphere of its aesthetic effect, it certainly could not maintain itself merely as a fine art unless it had at the same time, as a useful and necessary profession, a firm and honourable place among men’s occupations. It is the lack of this that prevents another art from standing beside architecture as a sister art, although, in an aesthetic respect, this can be quite properly coordinated with architecture as its companion; I am referring to the artistic arrangement of water. For what architecture achieves for the Idea of gravity where this appears associated with rigidity, is the same as what this other art achieves for the same Idea where this Idea is associated with fluidity, in other words, with formlessness, maximum mobility, and transparency. Waterfalls tumbling, dashing, and foaming over rocks, cataracts softly dispersed into spray, springs gushing up as high columns of water, and clear reflecting lakes reveal the Ideas of fluid heavy matter in exactly the same way as the works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid matter. Hydraulics as a fine art finds no support in practical hydraulics, for as a rule the ends of the one cannot be combined with those of the other. Only by way of an exception does this come about, for example, in the Cascata di Trevi in Rome. 107 The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1 § 41. T he course of our remarks has made it necessary to insert here a discussion of the sublime, when the treatment of the beautiful has been only half completed, merely from one side, the subjective. For it is only a special modification of this subjective side which distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful. The difference between the beautiful and the sublime depends on whether the state of pure, will-less knowing, presupposed and demanded by any aesthetic contemplation, appears of itself, without opposition, by the mere disappearance of the will from consciousness, since the object invites and attracts us to it; or whether this state is reached only by free, conscious exaltation above the will, to which the contemplated object itself has an unfavourable, hostile relation, a relation that would do away with contemplation if we gave ourselves up to it. This is the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. In the object the two are not essentially different, for in every case the object of aesthetic contemplation is not the individual thing, but the Idea in it striving for revelation, in other words, the adequate objectivity of the will at a definite grade. Its necessary correlative, withdrawn like itself from the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of knowing, just as the correlative of the particular thing is the knowing individual, both of which lie within the province of the principle of sufficient reason. By calling an object beautiful, we thereby assert that it is an object of our aesthetic contemplation, and this implies two different things. On the one hand, the sight of the thing makes us objective, that is to say, in contemplating it we are no longer conscious of ourselves as individuals, but as pure, will-less subjects of knowing. On the other hand, we recognize in the object not the individual thing, but an Idea; and this can happen only in so far as our contemplation of the object is not given up to the principle of sufficient reason, does not follow the relation of the object to something outside it (which is ultimately always connected with relations to our own willing), but rests on the object itself. For the Idea and the pure subject of knowing always appear simultaneously in consciousness as necessary correlatives, and with this appearance all distinction of time at once vanishes, as both are wholly foreign to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms. Both lie outside the relations laid down by this principle; they can be compared to the rainbow and the sun that take no part in the constant movement and succession of the falling drops. Therefore if, for example, I contemplate a tree aesthetically, i.e., with artistic eyes, and thus recognize not it but its Idea, it is immediately of no importance whether it is this tree or its ancestor that flourished a thousand years ago, and whether the contemplator is this individual, or any other living anywhere and at any time. The particular thing and the knowing individual are abolished with the principle of sufficient reason, and nothing remains but the Idea and the pure subject of knowing, which together constitute the adequate objectivity of the will at this grade. And the Idea is released not only from time but also from space; for the Idea is not really this spatial form which floats before me, but its expression, its pure significance, its innermost being, disclosing itself and appealing to me; and it can be wholly the same, in spite of great difference in the spatial relations of the form. Now since, on the one hand, every existing thing can be observed purely objectively and outside all relation, and, on the other, the will appears in everything at some grade of its objectivity, and this thing is accordingly the expression of an Idea, everything is also beautiful . That even the most insignificant thing admits of purely objective and will-less contemplation and thus proves itself to be beautiful, is testified by the still life paintings of the Dutch, already mentioned in this connexion in para. 38. But one thing is more beautiful than another because it facilitates this purely objective contemplation, goes out to meet it, and, so to speak, even compels it, and then we call the thing very beautiful. This is the case partly because, as individual thing, it expresses purely the Idea of its species through the very distinct, clearly defined, and thoroughly significant relation of its parts. It also completely reveals that Idea through the completeness, united in it, of all the manifestations possible to its species, so that it greatly facilitates for the beholder the transition from the individual thing to the Idea, and thus also the state of pure contemplation. Sometimes that eminent quality of special beauty in an object is to be found in the fact that the Idea itself, appealing to us from the object, is a high grade of the will’s objectivity, and is therefore most significant and suggestive. For this reason, man is more beautiful than all other objects, and the revelation of his inner nature is the highest aim of art. Human form and human expression are the most important object of plastic art, just as human conduct is the most important object of poetry. Yet each thing has its own characteristic beauty, not only everything organic that manifests itself in the unity of an individuality, but also everything inorganic and formless, and even every manufactured article. For all these reveal the Ideas through which the will objectifies itself at the lowest grades; they sound, as it were, the deepest, lingering bass-notes of nature. Gravity, rigidity, fluidity, light, and so on, are the Ideas that express themselves in rocks, buildings, and masses of water. Landscape-gardening and architecture can do no more than help them to unfold their qualities distinctly, perfectly, and comprehensively. They give them the opportunity to express themselves clearly, and in this way invite and facilitate aesthetic contemplation. On the other hand, this is achieved in a slight degree, or not at all, by inferior buildings and localities neglected by nature or spoiled by art. Yet these universal basic Ideas of nature do not entirely disappear even from them. Here too they address themselves to the observer who looks for them, and even bad buildings and the like are still capable of being aesthetically contemplated; the Ideas of the most universal properties of their material are still recognizable in them. The artificial form given to them, however, is a means not of facilitating, but rather of hindering, aesthetic contemplation. Manufactured articles also help the expression of Ideas, though here it is not the Idea of the manufactured articles that speaks from them, but the Idea of the material to which this artificial form has been given. In the language of the scholastics this can be very conveniently expressed in two words; thus in the manufactured article is expressed the Idea of its forma substantialis , not that of its forma accidentalis; the latter leads to no Idea, but only to a human conception from which it has come. It goes without saying that by manufactured article we expressly do not mean any work of plastic art. Moreover, by forma substantialis the scholastics in fact understood what I call the grade of the will’s objectification in a thing. We shall return once more to the Idea of the material when we consider architecture. Consequently, from our point of view, we cannot agree with Plato when he asserts ( Republic, X [596 ff.], pp. 284-285, and Parmenides [130 ff.], p. 79, ed. Bip.) that table and chair express the Ideas of table and chair, but we say that they express the Ideas already expressed in their mere material as such. However, according to Aristotle ( Metaphysics , xii, chap. 3), Plato himself would have allowed Ideas only of natural beings and entities: ó Πλάτων ἔϕη, ὄτι εἴδη ἐστὶν ὁπóσα ϕύσει ( Plato dixit, quod ideae eorum sunt, quae natura sunt ), 105 and in chapter 5 it is said that, according to the Platonists, there are no Ideas of house and ring. In any case, Plato’s earliest disciples, as Alcinous informs us ( Introductio in Platonicam philosophiam, chap. 9), denied that there were Ideas of manufactured articles. Thus he says: Όρίζονται δὲ τὴν ἰδέαν, παράδειγμα τῶν ϰατὰ ϕύσιν αἰώνιον. Oὔτε γὰρ τoῖς πλείστοις τῶν ἀπὸ Πλάτωνoς ἀρέσϰει, τῶν τεχνιϰῶν εἰναι ἰδέας, oἶoν ἂσπιδoς ἢ λύρας, oὔτε μὴν τῶν παρὰ ϕύσιν, oἶoν πυρετoῦ ϰαì χoλέρας, oὔτε τῶν ϰατὰ μέρoς, oἶoν Σωϰράτoυς ϰαì Πλάτωνoς, ὰλλ’ oὔτε τῶν εὐτελῶν τινός, oἶoν ῥύπoυ ϰαì ϰάρϕoυς, oὔτε τῶν πρός τι, oἶoν μείζoνoς ϰαì ύπερέχoντoς εἶναι γὰρ τὰς ἰδέας νoήσεις αἰωνίoυς τεϰαὶ αὐτoτελεῖς.—( Definiunt autem IDEAM exemplar aeternum	1,516,201
The World As Will And Representation (volume 2) (Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne) (Z-Library).epub	The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2 CHAPTER XVI 71 On the Practical Use of Our Reason and on Stoicism I showed in the seventh chapter that, in the theoretical, to start from concepts is sufficient only for mediocre achievements, whereas eminent and superior achievements demand that we draw from perception itself as the primary source of all knowledge. In the practical, however, the converse is true; there, to be determined by what is perceived is the method of the animal, but is unworthy of man, who has concepts to guide his conduct. In this way he is emancipated from the power of the present moment existing in perception, to which the animal is unconditionally abandoned. In proportion as man asserts this prerogative, his conduct can be called rational, and only in this sense can we speak of practical reason, not in the Kantian sense, whose inadmissibility I have discussed in detail in the essay On the Basis of Morality. But it is not easy to let ourselves be determined by concepts alone; for the directly present external world with its perceptible reality obtrudes itself forcibly even on the strongest mind. But it is just in overcoming this impression, in annihilating its deception, that man’s mind shows its intrinsic worth and greatness. Thus, if inducements to pleasure and enjoyment leave it unaffected, or the threats and fury of enraged enemies do not shake it; if the entreaties of deluded friends do not cause its resolve to waver, and the deceptive forms with which preconcerted intrigues surround it leave it unmoved; if the scorn of fools and the populace does not disconcert it or perplex it as to its own worth, then it seems to be under the influence of a spirit-world visible to it alone (and this is the world of concepts), before which that perceptibly present moment, open to all, dissolves like a phantom. On the other hand, what gives the external world and visible reality their great power over the mind is their nearness and immediacy. Just as the magnetic needle, which is kept in position by the combined effect of widely distributed natural forces embracing the whole earth, can nevertheless be perturbed and set in violent oscillation by a small piece of iron, if one is brought quite close to it, so even a powerful intellect can sometimes be disconcerted and perturbed by trifling events and persons, if only they affect it very closely. The most deliberate resolution can be turned into a momentary irresolution by an insignificant but immediately present counter-motive. For the relative influence of the motives is under a law directly opposed to that by which the weights act on a balance; and in consequence of that law a very small motive that lies very close to us can outweigh a motive much stronger in itself, yet acting from a distance. But it is that quality of mind by virtue of which it may be determined in accordance with this law, and is not withdrawn therefrom by dint of the really practical reason ( Vernunft ) which the ancients expressed by animi impotentia, 72 which really signifies ratio regendae voluntatis impotens . 73 Every emotion ( animi perturbatio ) arises simply from the fact that a representation acting on our will comes so extremely near to us that it conceals from us everything else, and we are no longer able to see anything but it. Thus we become incapable for the moment of taking anything of a different kind into consideration. It would be a good remedy for this if we were to bring ourselves to regard the present in our imagination as if it were the past, and consequently to accustom our apperception to the epistolary style of the Romans. On the other hand, we are well able to regard what is long past as so vividly present, that old emotions long asleep are reawakened thereby to their full intensity. In the same way, no one would become indignant and disconcerted over a misfortune, a vexation, if his faculty of reason always kept before him what man really is, the most needy and helpless of creatures, daily and hourly abandoned to great and small misfortunes without number, who has therefore to live in constant care and fear. ( Homo totus est calamitas ) 74 as Herodotus [i. 32] has it. The first result of applying the faculty of reason to practical affairs is that it puts together again what is one-sided and piecemeal in knowledge of mere perception, and uses the contrasts presented thereby as corrections for one another; in this way the objectively correct result is obtained. For example, if we look at a man’s bad action we shall condemn him; on the other hand, if we consider merely the need that induced him to perform it, we shall sympathize with him. The faculty of reason by means of its concepts weighs the two, and leads to the result that the man must be restrained, restricted, and guided by appropriate punishment. Here I recall once more Seneca’s utterance: “ Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, te subjice rationi.” 75 Now since, as is shown in the fourth book, suffering is of a positive nature and pleasure of a negative, the man who takes abstract or rational knowledge as his rule of conduct, and accordingly always reflects on its consequences and on the future, will very frequently have to practise sustine et abstine, since to obtain the greatest possible painlessness in life he generally sacrifices the keenest joys and pleasures, mindful of Aristotle’s ( Quod dolore vacat, non quod suave est, persequitur vir prudens ). 76 With him, therefore, the future is always borrowing from the present instead of the present from the future as in the case of the frivolous fool, who thus becomes impoverished and ultimately bankrupt. In the case of the former the faculty of reason, of course, must often play the part of an ill-humoured mentor, and incessantly demand renunciations, without being able to promise anything in return for them except a fairly painless existence. This depends on the fact that the faculty of reason, by means of its concepts, surveys the whole of life, the result of which, in the happiest conceivable case, can be no other than what we have said. When this striving after a painless existence, in so far as such an existence might be possible by applying and observing rational deliberation and acquired knowledge of the true nature of life, was carried out with strict consistency and to the utmost extreme, it produced Cynicism, from which Stoicism afterwards followed. I will discuss this briefly here, in order to establish more firmly the concluding argument of our first book. All the moral systems of antiquity, with the single exception of Plato’s, were guides to a blissful life; accordingly, virtue in them has its end in this world, and certainly not beyond death. For with them it is simply the right path to the truly happy life; for this reason it is chosen by the prudent man. Hence we get the lengthy debates preserved for us especially by Cicero, those keen and constantly renewed investigations as to whether virtue, entirely alone and of itself, is really sufficient for a happy life, or whether something external is also required for this; whether the virtuous and the prudent are happy even on the rack and wheel or in the bull of Phalaris; or whether it does not go as far as this. For this of course would be the touchstone of an ethical system of this kind, that the practice of it would inevitably and necessarily produce happiness immediately and unconditionally. Unless it can do this, it does not achieve what it ought, and is to be rejected. Consequently, it is as correct as it is in accordance with the Christian point of view for Augustine to preface his exposition of the moral systems of the ancients ( De Civitate Dei, Bk. xix, c. 1) with the explanation: Exponenda sunt nobis argumenta mortalium, quibus sibi ipsi beatitudinem facere IN HUJUS VITAE INFELICITATE moliti sunt; ut ab eorum rebus vanis spes nostra quid dijfferat clarescat. De finibus bonorum et malorum multa inter se philosophi disputarunt; quam quaestionem maxima inten-tione versantes, invenire conati sunt, quid efficiat hominem beatum: illud enim est finis bonorum. 77 I wish to place beyond doubt by a few express statements of the ancients the declared eudaemonistic purpose of the ethics of antiquity. Aristotle says in the Magna Moralia, i, 4: ( Felicitas in bene vivendo posita est; verum bene vivere est in eo positum, ut secundum virtutem vivamus ), 78 and with this can be compared Nicomachean Ethics, i, 5; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v, 1: Nam, quum ea causa impulerit eos, qui primi se ad philosophiae studia contulerunt, ut omnibus rebus posthabitis, totos se in optimo vitae statu exquirendo collocarent; profecto spe beate vivendi tantam in eo studio curam operamque posuerunt. 79 According to Plutarch ( De Repugn. Stoic., c. 18) Chrysippus said: ( Vitiose vivere idem est, quod vivere infeliciter ). 80 Ibid., c. 26: ( Prudentia nihil dif-fert a felicitate, estque ipsa adeo felicitas ) . 81 Stobaeus, Eclogues, Bk. ii, c. 7: ( Finem esse dicunt felicitatem, cujus causa fiunt omnia ). 82 ( Finem bonorum et felicitatem synonyma esse dicunt ) . 83 Epictetus, in Arrian, Discourses, i, 4: ( Virtus profitetur, se felicitatem praestare ). 84 Seneca, Epistola 90: Ceterum ( sapientia ) ad beatum statum tendit, illo ducit, illo vias aperit. Idem, Epistola 108: Illud admoneo, auditionem philosophorum lectionemque ad proposi-tum beatae vitae trahendum . 85 Therefore the ethics of the Cynics also adopted this aim of the happiest life, as is expressly testified by the Emperor Julian ( Oratio 6): ( Cynicae philosophiae, ut etiam omnis philosophiae, scopus et finis est feliciter vivere: felicitas vitae autem in eo posita est, ut secundum naturam vivatur, nec vero secundum opiniones multitudinis ). 86 Only the Cynics followed a very special path to this goal, one that is quite the opposite of the ordinary path, that, namely, of carrying privation to the farthest possible limits. Thus they started from the insight that the motions into which the will is put by the objects that stimulate and stir it, and the laborious and often frustrated efforts to attain them, or the fear of losing them when they are attained, and finally also the loss itself, produce far greater pains and sorrows than the want of all these objects ever can. Therefore, to attain to the most painless life, they chose the path of the greatest possible privation, and fled from all pleasures as snares by which one would subsequently be delivered over to pain. Then they could boldly bid defiance to happiness and its strange tricks. This is the spirit of cynicism; Seneca sets it forth distinctly in the eighth chapter De Tranquillitate Animi: Cogitandum est quanto levior dolor sit, non habere, quam perdere: et intelligemus, paupertati eo minorem tormentorum quo minorem damnorum esse materiam. And: Tolerabilius est faciliusque non acquirere, quam amittere. . . . Diogenes effect, ne quid sibi eripi posset, . . . qui se fortuitis omnibus exuit. . . . Videtur mihi dixisse: age tuum negotium, fortuna: nihil apud Diogenem jam tuum est. 87 The parallel passage to this last sentence is the quotation in Stobaeus ( Eclogues, ii, 7): ( Diogenes credere se dixit videre Fortunam ipsum intuentem ac dicentem: Ast hunc non potui tetigisse canem rabiosum ) . 88 The same spirit of cynicism is also testified by the epitaph of Diogenes in Suidas, under the word and in Diogenes Laërtius, vi, 2: (Aera quidem absumit tempus, sed tempore numquam Interitura tua est gloria, Diogenes: Quandoquidem ad vitam miseris mortalibus aequam Monstrata est facilis, te duce, et ampla via. ) 89 Accordingly, the fundamental idea of cynicism is that life in its simplest and most naked form, with the hardships that naturally belong to it, is the most tolerable, and is therefore to be chosen. For every aid, comfort, enjoyment, and pleasure by which people would like to make life more agreeable, would produce only new worries and cares greater than those that originally belong to it. Therefore the following sentence may be regarded as the expression of the very core of the doctrine of cynicism: ( Diogenes Clamabat saepius, hominum vitam facilem a diis dari, verum occultari illam quaerentibus mellita cibaria, unguenta, et his similia. Diogenes Laërtius, vi, 2). 90 And further: ( Quum igitur, repudiatis inutilibus laboribus, naturales insequi, ac vivere beate debeamus, per summam dementiam infelices sumus. . . . eandem vitae formam, quam Hercules, se vivere affirmans, nihil libertati praeferens. Ibid.) 91 Accordingly, the old genuine Cynics, Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, and their disciples, renounced every possession, all conveniences and pleasures, once for all, in order to escape for ever from the troubles and cares, the dependence and pains, that are inevitably bound up with them, and for which they are no compensation. By the bare satisfaction of the most pressing needs and the renunciation of everything superfluous, they thought they would come off best. They therefore put up with what in Athens and Corinth was to be had almost for nothing, such as lupins, water, a second-hand cloak, a knapsack, and a staff. They begged occasionally, so far as was necessary to obtain these things, but they did not work. But they accepted absolutely nothing in excess of the necessaries above-mentioned. Independence in the widest sense was their object. They spent their time in resting, walking about, talking with everyone, and in scoffing, laughing, and joking. Their characteristics were heedlessness and great cheerfulness. Now since with this way of living they had no aims of their own, no purposes and intentions to pursue, and so were lifted above human activities, and at the same time always enjoyed complete leisure, they were admirably suited, as men of proved strength of mind, to become the advisers and counsellors of others. Therefore, Apuleius says ( Florida, iv): Crates ut lar familiaris apud homines suae aetatis cultus est. Nulla domus ei unquam clausa erat: nec erat patrisfamilias tam absconditum secretum, quin eo tempestive Crates interveniret, litium omnium et jurgiorum inter propinquos disceptator et arbiter. 92 Hence in this, as in so many other things, they showed great similarity with the mendicant friars of modern times, at any rate with the better and more genuine of these, whose ideal may be seen in the Capuchin Cristoforo in Manzoni’s famous novel. This similarity, however, is to be found only in the effects, not in the cause. They concur and coincide in the result, but the fundamental idea of the two is quite different. With the friars, as with the Sannyâsis who are akin to them, it is a goal transcending life; with the Cynics, however, it is only the conviction that it is easier to reduce one’s desires and needs to the minimum than to attain to their maximum satisfaction; and this is even impossible, as with satisfaction desires and needs grow ad infinitum. Therefore to reach the goal of all ancient ethics, namely the greatest possible happiness in this life, they took the path of renunciation as the shortest and easiest: ( unde et Cynismum dixere compendiosam ad virtutem viam. Diogenes Laërtius, vi, 9). 93 The fundamental difference between the spirit of cynicism and that of asceticism comes out very clearly in the humility essential to asceticism, but so foreign to cynicism that the latter, on the contrary, has in view pride and disdain for all other men: Sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives, Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum. 94 (Horace, Epist. [I.i. 106]). On the other hand, the Cynics’ view of life agrees in spirit with that of J.-J. Rousseau as he expounds it in the Discours sur I’origine de l’inégalité; for he too would lead us back to the crude state of nature, and regards the reduction of our needs to the minimum as the surest path to perfect happiness. For the rest, the Cynics were exclusively practical philosophers; at any rate, no account of their theoretical philosophy is known to me. The Stoics proceeded from them by changing the practical into the theoretical. They were of opinion that actual dispensing with everything that can be discarded is not required, but that it is sufficient for us constantly to regard possession and enjoyment as dispensable, and as held in the hand of chance; for then the actual privation, should it eventually occur, would not be unexpected, nor would it be a burden. We can in all circumstances possess and enjoy everything, only we must always keep in mind the conviction of the worthlessness and dispensableness of such good things on the one hand, and their uncertainty and perishableness on the other; consequently, we must entirely underrate them all, and be ready at all times to give them up. In fact, the man who actually has to do without these things in order not to be moved by them, shows in this way that in his heart he considers them as really good things, which we must put entirely out of sight if we are not to hanker after them. The wise man, on the other hand, knows that they are not good things at all, but rather quite insignificant, or at most 95 Therefore when they are offered to him, he will accept them; yet he is always ready to give them up again with the greatest indifference, if chance, to which they belong, demands them back, since they are 96 In this sense Epictetus (chap. vii) says that the wise man, like one who has disembarked from a ship, and so forth, will allow himself to be welcomed by his wife or little boy, but will always be ready to let them go again, as soon as the ship’s master summons him. Thus the Stoics perfected the theory of equanimity and independence at the cost of practice, by reducing everything to a mental process; and by arguments like those presented in the first chapter of Epictetus, they sophisticated themselves into all the amenities of life. But in doing so they left out of account the fact that everything to which we are accustomed becomes a necessity, and therefore can be dispensed with only with pain; that the will cannot be trifled with, and cannot enjoy pleasures without becoming fond of them; that a dog does not remain indifferent when we draw through his mouth a piece of roast meat, or a sage when he is hungry; and that between desiring and renouncing there is no mean. But they believed they came to terms with their principles if, when sitting at a luxurious Roman table, they left no dish untasted; yet they assured everyone that these things were all and sundry mere not 97 or in plain English, they ate, drank, and made merry, yet gave no thanks to God for it all, but rather made fastidious faces, and always bravely assured everyone that they got the devil a bit out of the whole feast! This was the expedient of the Stoics; accordingly, they were mere braggarts, and are related to the Cynics in much the same way as the well-fed Benedictines and Augustinians are to the Franciscans and Capuchins. Now the more they neglected practice, the more sharply did they bring theory to a fine point. Here I wish to add a few more isolated proofs and supplements to the explanation given at the end of our first book. If, in the writings of the Stoics which are left to us, all of which are unsystematically composed, we look for the ultimate ground of that unshakable equanimity that is constantly expected of us, we find none other than the knowledge that the course of the world is entirely independent of our will, and consequently that the evil that befalls us is inevitable. If we have regulated our claims in accordance with a correct insight into this, then mourning, rejoicing, fearing, and hoping are follies of which we are no longer capable. Here, especially in the commentaries of Arrian, it is surreptitiously assumed that all that is (in other words, does not depend on us) would also at once be (in other words, would not concern us). Yet it remains true that all the good things of life are in the power of chance, and consequently as soon as chance exercises this power and takes them away from us, we are unhappy if we have placed our happiness in them. We are supposed to be delivered from this unworthy fate by the correct use of our faculty of reason, by virtue of which we do not ever regard all these good things as our own, but only as lent to us for an indefinite time; only thus can we never really lose them. Therefore, Seneca says (Epistola 98): Si quid humanarum rerum varietas possit cogitaverit, ante quam senserit, 98 and Diogenes Laërtius (vii, 1.87): ( Secundum virtutem vivere idem est, quod secundum experientiam eorum, quae secundum naturam accidunt, vivere ) . 99 Here the passage in Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus, Bk. iii, chap. 24, 84-89, is particularly relevant, and especially, as a proof of what I have said in this respect in § 16 of the first volume, the passage: ibid . IV, 1.42. ( Haec enim causa est hominibus omnium malorum, quod anticipationes generales rebus singularibus accommodare non possunt. 100 Similarly the passage in Marcus Aurelius (IV, 29): in other words: “If he is a stranger in the world who does not know what there is in it, no less of a stranger is he who does not know how things go on in it.” The eleventh chapter of Seneca’s De Tranquillitate Animi is also a complete illustration of this view. The opinion of the Stoics on the whole amounts to this, that if a man has watched the juggling illusion of happiness for a while and then uses his faculty of reason, he must recognize the rapid change of the dice as well as the intrinsic worthlessness of the counters, and must therefore henceforth remain unmoved. In general, the Stoic view can also be expressed as follows. Our suffering always springs from an incongruity between our desires and the course of the world. One of these two must therefore be changed and adapted to the other. Now as the course of things is not in our power we must regulate our wishing and desiring according to the course of things, for the will alone is This adaptation of willing to the course of the external world, and hence to the nature of things, is very often understood by the ambiguous 101 See Arrian, Diss. ii, 17, 21, 22. Seneca further expresses this view when he says ( Epistola 119): Nihil interest, utrum non desideres, an habeas. Summa rei in utroque est eadem: non torqueberis . 102 Also Cicero ( Tusc. iv, 26) by the words: Solum habere velle, summa dementia est. 103 Similarly Arrian ( Discourses of Epictetus, iv, 1, 175): (Non enim explendis desideriis libertas comparatur, sed tollenda cupiditate .) 104 The quotations collected in the Historia Philosophiae GraecoRomanae of Ritter and Preller, § 398, may be regarded as proofs of what I have said in the place referred to above about the 105 of the Stoics; similarly the saying of Seneca (Ep. 31 and again Ep. 74): Perfecta virtus est aequalitas et tenor vitae per omnia consonans sibi. 106 The spirit of the Stoa in general is clearly expressed by this passage of Seneca ( Ep. 92): Quid est beata vita? Securitas et perpetua tranquillitas. Hanc dabit animi magnitudo, dabit constantia bene judicati tenax. 107 A systematic study of the Stoics will convince anyone that the aim of their ethics, like that of Cynicism from which it sprang, is absolutely none other than a life as painless as possible, and thus as happy as possible. From this it follows that the Stoic morality is only a particular species of eudaemonism. It has not, like Indian, Christian, and even Platonic ethics, a metaphysical tendency, a transcendent end, but an end that is wholly immanent and attainable in this life; the imperturbability and unclouded, serene happiness of the sage whom nothing can assail or disturb. However, it is undeniable that the later Stoics, Arrian especially, sometimes lose sight of this aim, and betray a really ascetic tendency, to be ascribed to the Christian and, in the main, oriental spirit that was already spreading at the time. If we consider closely and seriously the goal of Stoicism, this we find in it a mere hardening and insensibility to the blows of fate. This is attained by our always keeping in mind the shortness of life, the emptiness of pleasures, the instability of happiness, and also by our having seen that the difference between happiness and unhappiness is very much smaller than our anticipation of both is wont to make us believe. This, however, is still not a happy state or condition, but only the calm endurance of sufferings which we foresee as inevitable. Nevertheless, magnanimity and intrinsic merit are to be found in our silently and patiently bearing what is inevitable, in melancholy calm, remaining the same while others pass from jubilation to despair and from despair to jubilation. Thus we can also conceive of Stoicism as a spiritual dietetics, and in accordance with this, just as we harden the body to the influences of wind and weather, to privation and exertion, we also have to harden our mind to misfortune, danger, loss, injustice, malice, spite, treachery, arrogance, and men’s folly. I remark further that the of the Stoics, which Cicero translates officia, signify roughly Obliegenheiten, or that which it befits the occasion to do, English incumbencies, Italian quel che tocca a me di fare o di lasciare, and so in general what it behoves a reasonable person to do. See Diogenes Laërtius, vii, 1, 109. Finally, the pantheism of the Stoics, though absolutely inconsistent with so many of Arrian’s exhortations, is most distinctly expressed by Seneca: Quid est Deus? Mens universi. Quid est Deus? Quod vides totum, et quod non vides totum. Sic demum magnitudo sua illi redditur, qua nihil majus excogitari potest: si solus est omnia, opus suum et extra et intra tenet. ( Quaestiones Naturales, I, praefatio, 12 [correctly, 13—Tr.]) 108 The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2 CHAPTER XLVII 380 On Ethics Here is the great gap which results in these supplements from the fact that I have already dealt with morality in the narrower sense in the two essays published under the title Die Grundprobleme der Ethik. As I have said, I assume an acquaintance with these, in order to avoid needless repetitions. Hence there remains for me only a small gleaning of isolated reflections that could not be discussed in those essays where the contents were, in the main, prescribed by the Academies, and least of all those that require a higher point of view than the one common to all, at which I was compelled to stop in those essays. Accordingly, it will not surprise the reader to find these reflections here in a very fragmentary collection. This has been continued again in chapters 8 and 9 of the second volume of the Parerga. Moral investigations are incomparably more important than physical, and in general than all others; this follows from the fact that they almost immediately concern the thing-in-itself, namely that phenomenon of it in which, directly discovered by the light of knowledge, it reveals its true nature as will. Physical truths, on the other hand, remain entirely within the sphere of the representation, i.e., of the phenomenon, and show merely how the lowest phenomena of the will manifest themselves in the representation in conformity to law. Moreover, consideration of the world from the physical angle, however far and successfully it may be pursued, remains in its results without consolation for us; only on the moral side is consolation to be found, since here the depths of our own inner nature are disclosed for consideration. My philosophy, however, is the only one that grants to morality its complete and entire rights; for only if the true nature of man is his own will, consequently only if he is, in the strictest sense, his own work, are his deeds actually entirely his and attributable to him. On the other hand, as soon as he has another origin, or is the work of a being different from himself, all his guilt falls back on to this origin or originator. For operari seguitur esse. 381 Since Socrates, the problem of philosophy has been to connect the force which produces the phenomenon of the world and in consequence determines its nature, with the morality of the disposition or character, and thus to demonstrate a moral world-order as the basis of the physical. Theism achieved this in a childlike manner which was unable to satisfy mature mankind. Therefore pantheism opposed itself to theism, as soon as it ventured to do so, and demonstrated that nature carries within herself the power by virtue of which she appears. With this, however, ethics was bound to be lost. It is true that here and there Spinoza attempts to save it by sophisms, but he often gives it up altogether, and with an audacity that excites astonishment and indignation he declares the difference between right and wrong, and in general between good and evil, to be merely conventional, and therefore in itself hollow and empty (e.g., Ethics, IV, prop. 37, schol. 2). After Spinoza had met with unmerited neglect for more than a hundred years, he has been again overrated in this century through the reaction caused by the swing of the pendulum of opinion. All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany, then everything done by man, and even by the animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics. Therefore, in consequence of the renewed Spinozism of our day, and thus of pantheism, the treatment of ethics has sunk so low and has become so shallow, that there has been made from it a mere set of instructions for a proper public and family life, in which the ultimate aim of human existence was supposed to consist, that is, in methodical, perfect, smug, and comfortable Philistinism. Pantheism, of course, has led to such shallow absurdities only by the fact that (by a shameful misuse of the e quovis ligno fit Mercurius ) 382 Hegel, a man with a common mind, has been falsely stamped by the well-known means as a great philosopher, and a herd of his disciples, at first suborned but afterwards merely stupid, got the big words. Such outrages on the human mind do not remain unpunished; the seed has sprung up. In the same spirit, it was then asserted that ethics ought to have for its material not the conduct of individuals, but that of masses of people, and that this alone was a theme worthy of it. Nothing can be more preposterous than this view, which rests on the shallowest realism. For in every individual the whole undivided will-to-live, the being-in-itself, appears, and the microcosm is like the macrocosm. The masses have no more substance than has any individual. In ethics the question is not one of action and result, but of willing, and willing itself occurs only in the individual. What is decided morally is not the fate of nations, which exists only in the phenomenon, but that of the individual. Nations are in reality mere abstractions; only individuals actually exist. Hence in this way is pantheism related to ethics. The evils and misery of the world, however, are not in accord even with theism; and so it tried to help itself by all kinds of shifts, evasions, and theodicies which nevertheless succumbed irretrievably to the arguments of Hume and Voltaire. But pantheism is wholly untenable in face of that evil side of the world. Thus, only when we consider the world entirely from without and solely from the physical side, and keep in view nothing but the order of things which always renews itself, and thereby the comparative imperishableness of the whole, is it perhaps feasible to declare the world to be a God, yet always only symbolically. But if we enter within, and therefore take in addition the subjective and the moral side, with its preponderance of want, suffering, and misery, of dissension, wickedness, infamy, and absurdity, we soon become aware with horror that we have before us anything but a theophany. But I have shown, and have proved especially in my work On the Will in Nature, that the force working and operating in nature is identical with the will in ourselves. In this way, the moral world-order actually enters into direct connexion with the force that produces the phenomenon of the world. For the phenomenal appearance of the will must correspond exactly to its mode of existence. On this rests the explanation of eternal justice, which is given in §§ 63, 64 of volume 1; and, although it continues to exist by its own power, the world receives throughout a moral tendency. Consequently, the problem raised since the time of Socrates is now actually solved for the first time, and the demand of our thinking reason, that is directed to what is moral, is satisfied. But I have never professed to propound a philosophy that would leave no questions unanswered. In this sense, philosophy is actually impossible; it would be the science of omniscience. But est quadam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra; 383 there is a limit up to which reflection can penetrate, and so far illuminate the night of our existence, although the horizon always remains dark. This limit is reached by my doctrine in the will-to-live that affirms or denies itself in its own phenomenon. To want to go beyond this is, in my view, like wanting to fly beyond the atmosphere. We must stop here, although new problems arise from those that are solved. Moreover, we must refer to the fact that the validity of the principle of sufficient reason or ground is limited to the phenomenon; this was the theme of my first essay on that principle, published as early as 1813. I now go on to supplement particular observations, and will begin by supporting with a couple of passages from classical poetry my explanation of weeping, given in § 67 of volume 1, namely that it springs from sympathy, the object of which is one’s own self. At the end of the eighth book of the Odyssey, Ulysses, who is never represented as weeping in spite of his many sufferings, bursts into tears, when, still unknown, he hears his previous heroic life and deeds chanted by the bard Demodocus at the court of the Phaeacian king, since the remembrance of the brilliant period of his life contrasts with his present wretchedness. Hence not this wretchedness itself directly, but the objective consideration of it, the picture of his present plight brought into prominence by the past, provokes his tears; he feels sympathy for himself. Euripides makes Hippolytus, innocently condemned and bemoaning his own fate, express the same feeling: ( Heu, si liceret mihi, me ipsum extrinsecus spectare, quantopere deflerem mala, quae patior ). 384 Finally, as proof of my explanation, there may be cited here an anecdote that I take from the English paper The Herald of 16 July, 1836. A client, after listening to the presentation of his case in court by his counsel, burst into tears, and exclaimed: “I never thought I had suffered half so much till I listened to it here today!” I have of course shown in § 55 of the first volume how, in spite of the unalterability of character, in other words of the real, fundamental willing of man, an actual moral repentance is yet possible. However, I will add the following explanation, which I must preface with one or two definitions. Inclination is any strong susceptibility of the will to motives of a certain kind. Passion is an inclination so strong, that the motives that excite it exercise a power over the will which is stronger than that of any possible motive acting against them. Its mastery over the will thus becomes absolute; consequently, the attitude of the will towards it is passive, an attitude of sufferings. Here, however, it is to be observed that passions seldom reach the degree in which they correspond to the definition completely; on the contrary, they bear their name as mere approximations to this degree ; and so there are then counter-motives that are able at least to restrict their effect, if only they distinctly enter consciousness. The emotion is a stirring of the will, just as irresistible yet only temporary, by a motive that does not obtain its power through a deep-rooted inclination. On the contrary, such a motive gets its power merely by suddenly appearing and excluding for the moment the counter-effect of all other motives, since it consists in a representation which wholly obscures the others by its excessive vividness, or entirely conceals them, as it were, by its too close proximity, so that they cannot enter consciousness and act on the will. Hence in this way, the capacity for reflection, and with it intellectual freedom, 385 are to a certain extent abolished. Accordingly, the emotion is related to the passion as the fancy of an overwrought brain is to madness. A moral repentance is now conditioned by the fact that, before the deed, the inclination thereto did not leave the intellect free scope, since it did not allow it to contemplate clearly and completely the motives opposing the deed, but rather directed it again and again to motives urging the deed. But now, when the deed is done, these motives are neutralized by this deed itself, and have consequently become ineffective. Now reality brings the opposing motives before the intellect as consequences of the deed which have already taken place, and the intellect then knows that they would have been the stronger, if only it had properly contemplated and carefully weighed them. The man, therefore, becomes aware of having done what was not really in accordance with his will; this knowledge is repentance. For he has not acted with full intellectual freedom, since not all the motives attained to effectiveness. What excluded the motives opposed to the deed was, in the case of the hasty deed, the emotion, and in the case of the deliberate deed, the passion. Often it is also due to the fact that the man’s faculty of reason presented the counter-motives to him in the abstract, it is true, but was not supported by an imagination strong enough to present to him their whole content and true significance in pictures or images. Examples of what has been said are the cases in which thirst for revenge, jealousy, and avarice lead to murder. After the murder is committed, these are extinguished, and then justice, sympathy, the remembrance of former friendship raise their voice, and say all that they would have said earlier had they been allowed to have their say. Then bitter repentance appears and says: “If it had not happened already, it would never happen.” A unique presentation of this is afforded by the famous old Scottish ballad Edward, Edward!, which has been translated by Herder. In an analogous way, the neglect of one’s own well-being can bring about an egotistical repentance. For example, when an otherwise inadvisable marriage is contracted in consequence of a passionate love that by such marriage is then extinguished, whereupon the counter-motives of personal interest, lost independence, and so on only then enter consciousness, and speak as they would have spoken previously had they been allowed to have their say. Accordingly, all such actions spring ultimately from a relative weakness of the intellect, in so far as this intellect allows itself to be mastered by the will, when it should have inexorably fulfilled its function of presenting motives, without allowing itself to be disturbed by the will. Here the vehemence of the will is only indirectly the cause, in so far as it interferes with the intellect, and thereby prepares repentance for itself. The reasonableness of the character, which is opposed to passionateness, really consists in the will’s never overpowering the intellect to such an extent as to prevent it from correctly exercising its function of presenting motives distinctly, completely, and clearly, in the abstract for our faculty of reason, and in the concrete for our imagination. This can rest just as well on the moderation and mildness of the will as on the strength of the intellect. All that is required is that the intellect be relatively strong enough for the existing will, hence that the two stand in a suitable relation to each other. The following explanations have still to be added to the characteristics of jurisprudence, discussed in § 62 of volume 1, as well as in § 17 of the essay On the Basis of Morality. Those who deny with Spinoza that there is a right apart from the State, confuse the means of enforcing the right with the right itself. The right, of course, is assured protection only in the State, but it itself exists independently of the State. For by force it can be merely suppressed, never abolished. Accordingly, the State is nothing more than an institution of protection, rendered necessary by the manifold attacks to which man is exposed, and which he is not able to ward off as an individual, but only in alliance with others. Accordingly, the aims of the State are: ( 1 ) First of all protection directed outwards, which may become necessary against inanimate forces of nature or wild beasts as well as against man, and consequently against other nations; although this case is the most frequent and important, for man’s worst enemy is man: homo homini lupus . 386 Since, in consequence of this aim, nations lay down the principle in words, though not in deeds, of always wishing to maintain only a defensive, never an aggressive, attitude to one another, they recognize international law. At bottom, this is nothing but natural right in the only sphere of practical efficacy left to it, namely between nation and nation, where it alone must reign, because its stronger son, positive law, cannot assert itself, since that requires a judge and executive. Accordingly, international law consists in a certain degree of morality in the dealings of nations with one another, the maintenance of which is a matter of honour for mankind. Public opinion is the tribunal of cases based on this law. (2) Protection directed inwards, that is, protection of the members of a State against one another, and consequently the safeguarding of private right, by means of the maintenance of an honest and fair state of things. This consists in the protection of each individual by the concentrated forces of all, from which there results a phenomenon as though all were honest, that is to say, just, as if no one wanted to injure anyone else. But, as is usual in things human, the removal of one evil generally opens the way to a fresh one; thus the granting of this twofold protection brings about the need for a third, namely: (3) Protection against the protector, in other words, against him, or those, to whom society has handed over the management of the protection; and thus guarantee of public right. This seems most completely attainable by dividing and separating from one another the threefold unity of the protective power, the legislature, the judicature, and the executive, so that each is managed by others, and independently of the rest. The great value, in fact the fundamental idea, of monarchy seems to me to lie in the fact that, because men remain men, one must be placed so high, and be given so much power, wealth, security, and absolute inviolability, that for himself there is nothing left to desire, to hope, or to fear. In this way, the egoism that dwells in him, as in everyone, is annihilated, as it were, by neutralization; and, just as if he were not a human being, he is now enabled to practise justice, and to have in view no longer his own welfare, but only that of the public. This is the origin of the seemingly superhuman character which everywhere accompanies the dignity of royalty, and distinguishes it so entirely from mere presidency. Therefore it must also be hereditary, not subject to election, so that no one may be able to see in the king his own equal, and also so that the king can provide for his descendants only by caring for the welfare of the State, as such welfare is absolutely identical with that of his own family. If other aims besides that of protection, here discussed, are ascribed to the State, this can easily endanger its true aim. According to my explanation, the right of property arises only through the manufacture or working up of things. This truth has often been stated already; and it finds a noteworthy confirmation in that it is maintained even in a practical regard, in a statement of the American ex-president, Quincy Adams, which is to be found in the Quarterly Review for 1840, No. 130, and also in French in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève, July 1840, No. 55. I repeat it here: “There are moralists who have questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever; but have they maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields, their constructed habitations, a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed of themselves by personal labour, was undoubtedly by the laws of nature theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?” and so on. In just the same way, those who in our own day saw themselves impelled to combat communism with arguments (for example, the Archbishop of Paris in a pastoral letter of June 1851 ), have always advanced the argument that property is the fruit of one’s own labour, is only, so to speak, embodied work. This shows once more that the right of property is to be established only by work applied to things, since only in this respect does it meet with free recognition, and assert itself morally. A proof of an entirely different kind in support of the same truth is afforded by the moral fact that, while the law punishes poaching just as severely as, and in many countries even more severely than, it punishes theft, civil honour, which through theft is irretrievably lost, is yet not really forfeited by poaching, but in so far as the poacher has not made himself guilty of anything else, he is of course burdened with a stigma, yet not regarded as dishonest and shunned by all, as is the thief. For the principles of a citizen’s honour rest on moral and not on merely positive right; game, however, is not an object of treatment or elaboration, and so is not an object of morally valid possession. The right to it is therefore entirely positive, and is not morally recognized. According to my view, the basis of criminal law should be the principle that it is not the person, but only the deed that is punished, so that it may not recur. The criminal is merely the subject in which the deed is punished, so that the power to deter may be retained by the law in consequence of which the punishment takes place. This is the meaning of the expression “he is forfeit to the law.” According to Kant’s explanation, amounting to a jus talionis, it is not the deed but the person who is punished. The penitentiary system also tries to punish not so much the deed as the person, so that he may change for the better. In this way it sets aside the real aim of punishment, determent from the deed, in order to achieve the very problematical aim of improvement. But it is always a doubtful thing to try to secure two different ends by one means; how much more so when the two ends are in any sense opposite. Education is a benefit, punishment is supposed to be an evil; the penitentiary prison is supposed to achieve both. Moreover, however large may be the share that brutality and ignorance, in conjunction with external distress, have in many crimes, we must not regard them as the principal cause of these, since innumerable persons living under the same hard conditions and in entirely similar circumstances do not commit any crimes. The principal matter, therefore, reverts to the personal, moral character, but, as I have explained in the essay On the Freedom of the Will , this character is absolutely unalterable. Therefore, real moral reform is not at all possible, but only determent from the deed. Moreover, correction of knowledge and the awakening of a desire to work may of course be attained; it will be seen how far this can be effective. Besides this, it is clear from the aim of punishment, which I advance in the text, that, where possible, the apparent suffering of the punishment should exceed the actual; but solitary confinement achieves the reverse. Its great severity has no witnesses, and is by no means anticipated by anyone who has not yet experienced it; hence it does not deter. It threatens the person, tempted to crime by want and misery, with the opposite pole of human wretchedness, boredom; but as Goethe rightly observes: If real affliction is our lot, Then do we wish for boredom. Therefore the prospect of it will deter him as little as will the sight of the palatial prisons that are built by honest persons for rogues. If it is desired, however, to regard these penitentiary prisons as educational institutions, it is to be regretted that admission to them is obtained only by crimes, instead of which the prisons should have preceded these. That punishment should bear a correct proportion to the crime, as Beccaria taught, does not rest on its being an expiation thereof, but on the fact that the pledge must be appropriate to the value of that for which it answers. Therefore everyone is justified in demanding as a pledge the life of another, as a guarantee for the security of his own, but not for the security of his property, for which the freedom and so forth of another is sufficient pledge. For safeguarding the lives of the citizens, capital punishmen	1,780,618
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, Ludwig]) (Z-Library).epub	Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND DAVID H. PINSENT Motto: . . . und alles, was man weiss, nicht bloss rauschen und brausen gehört hat, lässt sich in drei Worten sagen. K ÜRNBERGER . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Contents Introduction Chapter Index Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein Translated by C. K. Ogden With an Introduction by Bertrand Russell DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC. Mineola, New York Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus INTRODUCTION BY BERTRAND RUSSELL M R W ITTGENSTEIN’S Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , whether or not it prove to give the ultimate truth on the matters with which it deals, certainly deserves, by its breadth and scope and profundity, to be considered an important event in the philosophical world. Starting from the principles of Symbolism and the relations which are necessary between words and things in any language, it applies the result of this inquiry to various departments of traditional philosophy, showing in each case how traditional philosophy and traditional solutions arise out of ignorance of the principles of Symbolism and out of misuse of language. The logical structure of propositions and the nature of logical inference are first dealt with. Thence we pass successively to Theory of Knowledge, Principles of Physics, Ethics, and finally the Mystical ( das Mystische ). In order to understand Mr Wittgenstein’s book, it is necessary to realize what is the problem with which he is concerned. In the part of his theory which deals with Symbolism he is concerned with the conditions which would have to be fulfilled by a logically perfect language. There are various problems as regards language. First, there is the problem what actually occurs in our minds when we use language with the intention of meaning something by it; this problem belongs to psychology. Secondly, there is the problem as to what is the relation subsisting between thoughts, words, or sentences, and that which they refer to or mean; this problem belongs to epistemology. Thirdly, there is the problem of using sentences so as to convey truth rather than falsehood; this belongs to the special sciences dealing with the subject-matter of the sentences in question. Fourthly, there is the question: what relation must one fact (such as a sentence) have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other? This last is a logical question, and is the one with which Mr Wittgenstein is concerned. He is concerned with the conditions for accurate Symbolism, i.e . for Symbolism in which a sentence “means” something quite definite. In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise. Thus, logic has two problems to deal with in regard to Symbolism: (1) the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols; (2) the conditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols. A logically perfect language has rules of syntax which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols which always have a definite and unique meaning. Mr Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language—not that any language is logically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here and now, of constructing a logically perfect language, but that the whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate. The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given the syntax of a language, the meaning of a sentence is determinate as soon as the meaning of the component words is known. In order that a certain sentence should assert a certain fact there must, however the language may be constructed, be something in common between the structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact. This is perhaps the most fundamental thesis of Mr Wittgenstein’s theory. That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, so he contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shown , not said, for whatever we may say will still need to have the same structure. The first requisite of an ideal language would be that there should be one name for every simple, and never the same name for two different simples. A name is a simple symbol in the sense that it has no parts which are themselves symbols. In a logically perfect language nothing that is not simple will have a simple symbol. The symbol for the whole will be a “complex,” containing the symbols for the parts. In speaking of a “complex” we are, as will appear later, sinning against the rules of philosophical grammar, but this is unavoidable at the outset. “Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosopher result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful” ( 4.003 ). What is complex in the world is a fact. Facts which are not compounded of other facts are what Mr Wittgenstein calls Sachverhalte , whereas a fact which may consist of two or more facts is called a Tatsache: thus, for example, “Socrates is wise” is a Sachverhalt , as well as a Tatsache , whereas “Socrates is wise and Plato is his pupil” is a Tatsache but not a Sachverhalt . He compares linguistic expression to projection in geometry. A geometrical figure may be projected in many ways: each of these ways corresponds to a different language, but the projective properties of the original figure remain unchanged whichever of these ways may be adopted. These projective properties correspond to that which in his theory the proposition and the fact must have in common, if the proposition is to assert the fact. In certain elementary ways this is, of course, obvious. It is impossible, for example, to make a statement about two men (assuming for the moment that the men may be treated as simples), without employing two names, and if you are going to assert a relation between the two men it will be necessary that the sentence in which you make the assertion shall establish a relation between the two names. If we say “Plato loves Socrates,” the word “loves” which occurs between the word “Plato” and the word “Socrates” establishes a certain relation between these two words, and it is owing to this fact that our sentence is able to assert a relation between the person’s name by the words “Plato” and “Socrates.” “We must not say, the complex sign ‘ a R b ’ says ‘ a stands in a certain relation R to b ’; but we must say, that ‘ a ’ stands in a certain relation to ‘ b ’ says that a R b ” ( 3.1432 ). Mr Wittgenstein begins his theory of Symbolism with the statement ( 2.1 ): “We make to ourselves pictures of facts.” A picture, he says, is a model of the reality, and to the objects in the reality correspond the elements of the picture: the picture itself is a fact. The fact that things have a certain relation to each other is represented by the fact that in the picture its elements have a certain relation to one another. “In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the one can be a picture of the other at all. What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner—rightly or falsely—is its form of representation” ( 2.161 , 2.17 ). We speak of a logical picture of a reality when we wish to imply only so much resemblance as is essential to its being a picture in any sense, that is to say, when we wish to imply no more than identity of logical form. The logical picture of a fact, he says, is a Gedanke . A picture can correspond or not correspond with the fact and be accordingly true or false, but in both cases it shares the logical form with the fact. The sense in which he speaks of pictures is illustrated by his statement: “The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one)” ( 4.014 ). The possibility of a proposition representing a fact rests upon the fact that in it objects are represented by signs. The so-called logical “constants” are not represented by signs, but are themselves present in the proposition as in the fact. The proposition and the fact must exhibit the same logical “manifold,” and this cannot be itself represented since it has to be in common between the fact and the picture. Mr Wittgenstein maintains that everything properly philosophical belongs to what can only be shown, to what is in common between a fact and its logical picture. It results from this view that nothing correct can be said in philosophy. Every philosophical proposition is bad grammar, and the best that we can hope to achieve by philosophical discussion is to lead people to see that philosophical discussion is a mistake. “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.) The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred” ( 4.111 and 4.112 ). In accordance with this principle the things that have to be said in leading the reader to understand Mr Wittgenstein’s theory are all of them things which that theory itself condemns as meaningless. With this proviso we will endeavour to convey the picture of the world which seems to underlie his system. The world consists of facts: facts cannot strictly speaking be defined, but we can explain what we mean by saying that facts are what make propositions true, or false. Facts may contain parts which are facts or may contain no such parts; for example: “Socrates was a wise Athenian,” consists of the two facts, “Socrates was wise,” and “Socrates was an Athenian.” A fact which has no parts that are facts is called by Mr Wittgenstein a Sachverhalt . This is the same thing that he calls an atomic fact. An atomic fact, although it contains no parts that are facts, nevertheless does contain parts. If we may regard “Socrates is wise” as an atomic fact we perceive that it contains the constituents “Socrates” and “wise.” If an atomic fact is analysed as fully as possibly (theoretical, not practical possibility is meant) the constituents finally reached may be called “simples” or “objects.” It is not contended by Wittgenstein that we can actually isolate the simple or have empirical knowledge of it. It is a logical necessity demanded by theory, like an electron. His ground for maintaining that there must be simples is that every complex presupposes a fact. It is not necessarily assumed that the complexity of facts is finite; even if every fact consisted of an infinite number of atomic facts and if every atomic fact consisted of an infinite number of objects there would still be objects and atomic facts ( 4.2211 ). The assertion that there is a certain complex reduces to the assertion that its constituents are related in a certain way, which is the assertion of a fact : thus if we give a name to the complex the name only has meaning in virtue of the truth of a certain proposition, namely the proposition asserting the relatedness of the constituents of the complex. Thus the naming of complexes presupposes propositions, while propositions presupposes the naming of simples. In this way the naming of simples is shown to be what is logically first in logic. The world is fully described if all atomic facts are known, together with the fact that these are all of them. The world is not described by merely naming all the objects in it; it is necessary also to know the atomic facts of which these objects are constituents. Given this total of atomic facts every true proposition, however complex, can theoretically be inferred. A proposition (true or false) asserting an atomic fact is called an atomic proposition. All atomic propositions are logically independent of each other. No atomic proposition implies any other or is inconsistent with any other. Thus the whole business of logical inference is concerned with propositions which are not atomic. Such propositions may be called molecular. Wittgenstein’s theory of molecular propositions turns upon his theory of the construction of truth-functions. A truth-function of a proposition p is a proposition containing p and such that its truth or falsehood depends only upon the truth or falsehood of p , and similarly a truth-function of several propositions p , q , r . . . is one containing p , q , r . . . and such that its truth or falsehood depends only upon the truth or falsehood of p , q , r . . . It might seem at first sight as though there were other functions of propositions besides truth-functions; such, for example, would be “A believes p ,” for in general A will believe some true propositions and some false ones: unless he is an exceptionally gifted individual, we cannot infer that p is true from the fact that he believes it or that p is false from the fact that he does not believe it. Other apparent exceptions would be such as “ p is a very complex proposition” or “ p is a proposition about Socrates.” Mr Wittgenstein maintains, however, for reasons which will appear presently, that such exceptions are only apparent, and that every function of a proposition is really a truth-function. It follows that if we can define truth-functions generally, we can obtain a general definition of all propositions in terms of the original set of atomic propositions. This Wittgenstein proceeds to do. It has been shown by Dr Sheffer ( Trans. Am. Math. Soc , Vol. XIV. pp. 481-488) that all truth-functions of a given set of propositions can be constructed out of either of the two functions “not- p or not- q or “not- p and not- q .” Wittgenstein makes use of the latter, assuming a knowledge of Dr Sheffer’s work. The manner in which other truth-functions are constructed out of “not- p and not- q ” is easy to see. “Not- p and not- q ” is equivalent to “not- p ,” hence we obtain a definition of negation in terms of our primitive function: hence we can define “ p or q ,” since this is the negation of “not- p and not- q ,” i.e . of our primitive function. The development of other truth-functions out of “not- p ” and “ p or q ” is given in detail at the beginning of Principia Mathematica . This gives all that is wanted when the propositions which are arguments to our truth-function are given by enumeration. Wittgenstein, however, by a very interesting analysis succeeds in extending the process to general propositions, i.e . to cases where the propositions which are arguments to our truth-function are not given by enumeration but are given as all those satisfying some condition. For example, let fx be a propositional function ( i.e . a function whose values are propositions), such as “ x is human”—then the various values of fx form a set of propositions. We may extend the idea “not- p and not- q ” so as to apply to simultaneous denial of all the propositions which are values of fx . In this way we arrive at the proposition which is ordinarily represented in mathematical logic by the words “ fx is false for all values of x .” The negation of this would be the proposition “there is at least one x for which fx is true” which is represented by “( x ). fx .” If we had started with not- fx instead of fx we should have arrived at the proposition “ fx is true for all values of x ” which is represented by “( x ). fx .” Wittgenstein’s method of dealing with general propositions [ i.e . “( x ). fx ” and “( x ). fx ”] differs from previous methods by the fact that the generality comes only in specifying the set of propositions concerned, and when this has been done the building up of truth-functions proceeds exactly as it would in the case of a finite number of enumerated arguments p , q , r . . . . Mr Wittgenstein’s explanation of his symbolism at this point is not quite fully given in the text. The symbol he uses is ( , , ( )). The following is the explanation of this symbol: stands for all atomic propositions. stands for any set of propositions. ( ) stands for the negation of all the propositions making up . The whole symbol ( , , ( )) means whatever can be obtained by taking any selection of atomic propositions, negating them all, then taking any selection of the set of propositions now obtained, together with any of the originals—and so on indefinitely. This is, he says, the general truth-function and also the general form of proposition. What is meant is somewhat less complicated than it sounds. The symbol is intended to describe a process by the help of which, given the atomic propositions, all others can be manufactured. The process depends upon: ( a ) Sheffer’s proof that all truth-functions can be obtained out of simultaneous negation, i.e . out of “not- p and not- q “; ( b ) Mr Wittgenstein’s theory of the derivation of general propositions from conjunctions and disjunctions; ( c ) The assertion that a proposition can only occur in another proposition as argument to a truth-function. Given these three foundations, it follows that all propositions which are not atomic can be derived from such as are, by a uniform process, and it is this process which is indicated by Mr Wittgenstein’s symbol. From this uniform method of construction we arrive at an amazing simplification of the theory of inference, as well as a definition of the sort of propositions that belong to logic. The method of generation which has just been described, enables Wittgenstein to say that all propositions can be constructed in the above manner from atomic propositions, and in this way the totality of propositions is defined. (The apparent exceptions which we mentioned above are dealt with in a manner which we shall consider later.) Wittgenstein is enabled to assert that propositions are all that follows from the totality of atomic propositions (together with the fact that it is the totality of them); that a proposition is always a truth-function of atomic propositions; and that if p follows from q the meaning of p is contained in the meaning of q , from which of course it results that nothing can be deduced from an atomic proposition. All the propositions of logic, he maintains, are tautologies, such, for example, as “ p or not p .” The fact that nothing can be deduced from an atomic proposition has interesting applications, for example, to causality. There cannot, in Wittgenstein’s logic, be any such thing as a causal nexus. “The events of the future,” he says, “ cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.” That the sun will rise to-morrow is a hypothesis. We do not in fact know whether it will rise, since there is no compulsion according to which one thing must happen because another happens. Let us now take up another subject—that of names. In Wittgenstein’s theoretical logical language, names are only given to simples. We do not give two names to one thing, or one name to two things. There is no way whatever, according to him, by which we can describe the totality of things that can be named, in other words, the totality of what there is in the world. In order to be able to do this we should have to know of some property which must belong to every thing by a logical necessity. It has been sought to find such a property in self-identity, but the conception of identity is subjected by Wittgenstein to a destructive criticism from which there seems no escape. The definition of identity by means of the identity of indiscernibles is rejected, because the identity of indiscernibles appears to be not a logically necessary principle. According to this principle x is identical with y if every property of x is a property of y , but it would, after all, be logically possible for two things to have exactly the same properties. If this does not in fact happen that is an accidental characteristic of the world, not a logically necessary characteristic, and accidental characteristics of the world must, of course, not be admitted into the structure of logic. Mr Wittgenstein accordingly banishes identity and adopts the convention that different letters are to mean different things. In practice, identity is needed as between a name and a description or between two descriptions. It is needed for such propositions as “Socrates is the philosopher who drank the hemlock,” or “The even prime is the next number after 1.” For such uses of identity it is easy to provide on Wittgenstein’s system. The rejection of identity removes one method of speaking of the totality of things, and it will be found that any other method that may be suggested is equally fallacious: so, at least, Wittgenstein contends and, I think, rightly. This amounts to saying that “object” is a pseudo-concept. To say “ x is an object” is to say nothing. It follows from this that we cannot make such statements as “there are more than three objects in the world,” or “there are an infinite number of objects in the world.” Objects can only be mentioned in connexion with some definite property. We can say “there are more than three objects which are human,” or “there are more than three objects which are red,” for in these statements the word object can be replaced by a variable in the language of logic, the variable being one which satisfies in the first case the function “ x is human”; in the second the function “ x is red.” But when we attempt to say “there are more than three objects,” this substitution of the variable for the word “object” becomes impossible, and the proposition is therefore seen to be meaningless. We here touch one instance of Wittgenstein’s fundamental thesis, that it is impossible to say anything about the world as a whole, and that whatever can be said has to be about bounded portions of the world. This view may have been originally suggested by notation, and if so, that is much in its favour, for a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher. Notational irregularities are often the first sign of philosophical errors, and a perfect notation would be a substitute for thought. But although notation may have first suggested to Mr Wittgenstein the limitation of logic to things within the world as opposed to the world as a whole, yet the view, once suggested, is seen to have much else to recommend it. Whether it is ultimately true I do not, for my part, profess to know. In this Introduction I am concerned to expound it, not to pronounce upon it. According to this view we could only say things about the world as a whole if we could get outside the world, if, that is to say, it ceased to be for us the whole world. Our world may be bounded for some superior being who can survey it from above, but for us, however finite it may be, it cannot have a boundary, since it has nothing outside it. Wittgenstein uses, as an analogy, the field of vision. Our field of vision does not, for us, have a visual boundary, just because there is nothing outside it, and in like manner our logical world has no logical boundary because our logic knows of nothing outside it. These considerations lead him to a somewhat curious discussion of Solipsism. Logic, he says, fills the world. The boundaries of the world are also its boundaries. In logic, therefore, we cannot say, there is this and this in the world, but not that, for to say so would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the boundaries of the world as if it could contemplate these boundaries from the other side also. What we cannot think we cannot think, therefore we also cannot say what we cannot think. This, he says, gives the key to Solipsism. What Solipsism intends is quite correct, but this cannot be said, it can only be shown. That the world is my world appears in the fact that the boundaries of language (the only language I understand) indicate the boundaries of my world. The metaphysical subject does not belong to the world but is a boundary of the world. We must take up next the question of molecular propositions which are at first sight not truth-functions, of the propositions that they contain, such, for example as “A believes p .” Wittgenstein introduces this subject in the statement of his position, namely, that all molecular functions are truth-functions. He says ( 5.54 ): “In the general propositional form, propositions occur in a proposition only as bases of truth-operations.” At first sight, he goes on to explain, it seems as if a proposition could also occur in other ways, e.g . “A believes p .” Here it seems superficially as if the proposition p stood in a sort of relation to the object A. “But it is clear that ‘A believes that p ,’ ‘A thinks p ,’ ‘A says p ’ are of the form ‘ p says p ’; and here we have no co-ordination of a fact and an object, but a co-ordination of facts by means of a co-ordination of their objects” ( 5.542 ). What Mr Wittgenstein says here is said so shortly that its point is not likely to be clear to those who have not in mind the controversies with which he is concerned. The theory with which he is disagreeing will be found in my articles on the nature of truth and falsehood in Philosophical Essays and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 1906-7. The problem at issue is the problem of the logical form of belief, i.e . what is the schema representing what occurs when a man believes. Of course, the problem applies not only to belief, but also to a host of other mental phenomena which may be called propositional attitudes: doubting, considering, desiring, etc. In all these cases it seems natural to express the phenomenon in the form “A doubts p ,” “A desires p ,” etc., which makes it appear as though we were dealing with a relation between a person and a proposition. This cannot, of course, be the ultimate analysis, since persons are fictions and so are propositions, except in the sense in which they are facts on their own account. A proposition, considered as a fact on its own account, may be a set of words which a man says over to himself, or a complex image, or train of images passing through his mind, or a set of incipient bodily movements. It may be any one of innumerable different things. The proposition as a fact on its own account, for example the actual set of words the man pronounces to himself, is not relevant to logic. What is relevant to logic is that common element among all these facts, which enables him, as we say, to mean the fact which the proposition asserts. To psychology, of course, more is relevant; for a symbol does not mean what it symbolizes in virtue of a logical relation alone, but in virtue also of a psychological relation of intention, or association, or what-not. The psychological part of meaning, however, does not concern the logician. What does concern him in this problem of belief is the logical schema. It is clear that, when a person believes a proposition, the person, considered as a metaphysical subject, does not have to be assumed in order to explain what is happening. What has to be explained is the relation between the set of words which is the proposition considered as a fact on its own account, and the “objective” fact which makes the proposition true or false. This reduces ultimately to the question of the meaning of propositions, that is to say, the meaning of propositions is the only non-psychological portion of the problem involved in the analysis of belief. This problem is simply one of a relation of two facts, namely, the relation between the series of words used by the believer and the fact which makes these words true or false. The series of words is a fact just as much as what makes it true or false is a fact. The relation between these two facts is not unanalysable, since the meaning of a proposition results from the meaning of its constituent words. The meaning of the series of words which is a proposition is a function of the meanings of the separate words. Accordingly, the proposition as a whole does not really enter into what has to be explained in explaining the meaning of a proposition. It would perhaps help to suggest the point of view which I am trying to indicate, to say that in the cases we have been considering the proposition occurs as a fact, not as a proposition. Such a statement, however, must not be taken too literally. The real point is that in believing, desiring, etc., what is logically fundamental is the relation of a proposition considered as a fact , to the fact which makes it true or false, and that this relation of two facts is reducible to a relation of their constituents. Thus the proposition does not occur at all in the same sense in which it occurs in a truth-function. There are some respects, in which, as it seems to me, Mr Wittgenstein’s theory stands in need of greater technical development. This applies in particular to his theory of number ( 6.02ff .) which, as it stands, is only capable of dealing with finite numbers. No logic can be considered adequate until it has been shown to be capable of dealing with transfinite numbers. I do not think there is anything in Mr Wittgenstein’s system to make it impossible for him to fill this lacuna. More interesting than such questions of comparative detail is Mr Wittgenstein’s attitude towards the mystical. His attitude upon this grows naturally out of his doctrine in pure logic, according to which the logical proposition is a picture (true or false) of the fact, and has in common with the fact a certain structure. It is this common structure which makes it capable of being a picture of the fact, but the structure cannot itself be put into words, since it is a structure of words, as well as of the facts to which they refer. Everything, therefore, which is involved in the very idea of the expressiveness of language must remain incapable of being expressed in language, and is, therefore, inexpressible in a perfectly precise sense. This inexpressible contains, according to Mr Wittgenstein, the whole of logic and philosophy. The right method of teaching philosophy, he says, would be to confine oneself to propositions of the sciences, stated with all possible clearness and exactness, leaving philosophical assertions to the learner, and proving to him, whenever he made them, that they are meaningless. It is true that the fate of Socrates might befall a man who attempted this method of teaching, but we are not to be deterred by that fear, if it is the only right method. It is not this that causes some hesitation in accepting Mr Wittgenstein’s position, in spite of the very powerful arguments which he brings to its support. What causes hesitation is the fact that, after all, Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit. The whole subject of ethics, for example, is placed by Mr Wittgenstein in the mystical, inexpressible region. Nevertheless he is capable of conveying his ethical opinions. His defence would be that what he calls the mystical can be shown, although it cannot be said. It may be that this defence is adequate, but, for my part, I confess that it leaves me with a certain sense of intellectual discomfort. There is one purely logical problem in regard to which these difficulties are peculiarly acute. I mean the problem of generality. In the theory of generality it is necessary to consider all propositions of the form fx where fx is a given propositional function. This belongs to the part of logic which can be expressed, according to Mr Wittgenstein’s system. But the totality of possible values of x which might seem to be involved in the totality of propositions of the form fx is not admitted by Mr Wittgenstein among the things that can be spoken of, for this is no other than the totality of things in the world, and thus involves the attempt to conceive the world as a whole; “the feeling of the world as a bounded whole is the mystical”; hence the totality of the values of x is mystical ( 6.45 ). This is expressly argued when Mr Wittgenstein denies that we can make propositions as to how many things there are in the world, as for example, that there are more than three. These difficulties suggest to my mind some such possibility as this: that every language has, as Mr Wittgenstein says, a structure concerning which, in the language , nothing can be said, but that there may be another language dealing with the structure of the first language, and having itself a new structure, and that to this hierarchy of languages there may be no limit. Mr Wittgenstein would of course reply that his whole theory is applicable unchanged to the totality of such languages. The only retort would be to deny that there is any such totality. The totalities concerning which Mr Wittgenstein holds that it is impossible to speak logically are nevertheless thought by him to exist, and are the subject-matter of his mysticism. The totality resulting from our hierarchy would be not merely logically inexpressible, but a fiction, a mere delusion, and in this way the supposed sphere of the mystical would be abolished. Such an hypothesis is very difficult, and I can see objections to it which at the moment I do not know how to answer. Yet I do not see how any easier hypothesis can escape from Mr Wittgenstein’s conclusions. Even if this very difficult hypothesis should prove tenable, it would leave untouched a very large part of Mr Wittgenstein’s theory, though possibly not the part upon which he himself would wish to lay most stress. As one with a long experience of the difficulties of logic and of the deceptiveness of theories which seem irrefutable, I find myself unable to be sure of the rightness of a theory, merely on the ground that I cannot see any point on which it is wrong. But to have constructed a theory of logic which is not at any point obviously wrong is to have achieved a work of extraordinary difficulty and importance. This merit, in my opinion, belongs to Mr Wittgenstein’s book, and makes it one which no serious philosopher can afford to neglect. B ERTRAND R USSELL . May 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus PREFACE This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding. The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. Its whole meaning could be summed up somewhat as follows: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought). The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense. How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another. I will only mention that to the great works of Frege and the writings of my friend Bertrand Russell I owe in large measure the stimulation of my thoughts. If this work has a value it consists in two things. First that in it thoughts are expressed, and this value will be the greater the better the thoughts are expressed. The more the nail has been hit on the head.—Here I am conscious that I have fallen far short of the possible. Simply because my powers are insufficient to cope with the task.—May others come and do it better. On the other hand the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved. And if I am not mistaken in this, then the value of this work secondly consists in the fact that it shows how little has been done when these problems have been solved. 1 The world is everything that is the case. * 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts. 1.21 Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same. 2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. 2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things). 2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact. 2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing. 2.0121 It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit. If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them. (A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.) Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things. If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context. 2.0122 The thing is independent, in so far as it can occur in all possible circumstances, but this form of independence is a form of connexion with the atomic fact, a form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to occur in two different ways, alone and in the proposition.) 2.0123 If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts. (Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot subsequently be found. 2.01231 In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities. 2.0124 If all objects are given, then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given. 2.013 Every thing is, as it were, in a space of possible atomic facts. I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the space. 2.0131 A spatial object must lie in infinite space. (A point in space is an argument place.) A speck in a visual field need not be red, but it must have a colour; it has, so to speak, a colour space round it. A tone must have a pitch, the object of the sense of touch a hardness, etc. 2.014 Objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs. 2.0141 The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object. 2.02 The object is simple. 2.0201 Every statement about complexes can be analysed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes. 2.021 Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound. 2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. 2.0212 It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false). 2.022 It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined world may be, it must have something—a form—in common with the real world. 2.023 This fixed form consists of the objects. 2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositions—first formed by the configuration of the objects. 2.0232 Roughly speaking: objects are colourless. 2.0233 Two objects of the same logical form are—apart from their external properties—only differentiated from one another in that they are different. 2.02331 Either a thing has properties which no other has, and then one can distinguish it straight away from the others by a description and refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things which have the totality of their properties in common, and then it is quite impossible to point to any one of them. For if a thing is not distinguished by anything, I cannot distinguish it—for otherwise it would be distinguished. 2.024 Substance is what exists independently of what is the case. 2.025 It is form and content. 2.0251 Space, time and colour (colouredness) are forms of objects. 2.026 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed form of the world. 2.027 The fixed, the existent and the object are one. 2.0271 The object is the fixed, the existent; the configuration is the changing, the variable. 2.0272 The configuration of the objects forms the atomic fact. 2.03 In the atomic fact objects hang one in another, like the links of a chain. 2.031 In the atomic fact the objects are combined in a definite way. 2.032 The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact. 2.033 The form is the possibility of the structure. 2.034 The structure of the fact consists of the structures of the atomic facts. 2.04 The totality of existent atomic facts is the world. 2.05 The totality of existent atomic facts also determines which atomic facts do not exist. 2.06 The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the reality. (The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact.) 2.061 Atomic facts are independent of one another. 2.062 From the existence or non-existence of an atomic fact we cannot infer the existence or non-existence of another. 2.063 The total reality is the world. 2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts. 2.11 The picture presents the facts in logical space, the existence and non - existence of atomic facts. 2.12 The picture is a model of reality. 2.13 To the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture. 2.131 The elements of the picture stand, in the picture, for the objects. 2.14 The picture consists in the fact that its elements are combined with one another in a definite way. 2.141 The picture is a fact. 2.15 That the elements of the picture are combined with one another in a definite way, represents that the things are so combined with one another. This connexion of the elements of the picture is called its structure, and the possibility of this structure is called the form of representation of the picture. 2.151 The form of representation is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture. 2.1511 Thus the picture is linked with reality; it reaches up to it. 2.1512 It is like a scale applied to reality. 2.15121 Only the outermost points of the dividing lines touch the object to be measured. 2.1513 According to this view the representing relation which makes it a picture, also belongs to the picture. 2.1514 The representing relation consists of the co-ordinations of the elements of the picture and the things. 2.1515 These co-ordinations are as it were the feelers of its elements with which the picture touches reality. 2.16 In order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures. 2.161 In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the one can be a picture of the other at all. 2.17 What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner—rightly or falsely—is its form of representation. 2.171 The picture can represent every reality whose form it has. The spatial picture, everything spatial, the coloured, everything coloured, etc. 2.172 The picture, however, cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth. 2.173 The picture represents its object from without (its standpoint is its form of representation), therefore the picture represents its object rightly or falsely. 2.174 But the picture cannot place itself outside of its form of representation. 2.18 What every picture, of whatever form, must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it at all—rightly or falsely—is the logical form, that is, the form of reality. 2.181 If the form of representation is the logical form, then the picture is called a logical picture. 2.182 Every picture is also a logical picture. (On the other hand, for example, not every picture is spatial.) 2.19 The logical picture can depict the world. 2.2 The picture has the logical form of representation in common with what it pictures. 2.201 The picture depicts reality by representing a possibility of the existence and non-existence of atomic facts. 2.202 The picture represents a possible state of affairs in logical space. 2.203 The picture contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it represents. 2.21 The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false. 2.22 The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation. 2.221 What the picture represents is its sense. 2.222 In the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality, its truth or falsity consists. 2.223 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality. 2.224 It cannot be discovered from the picture alone whether it is true or false. 2.225 There is no picture which is a priori true. 3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought. 3.001 “An atomic fact is thinkable”—means: we can imagine it. 3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world. 3.02 The thought contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it thinks. What is thinkable is also possible. 3.03 We cannot think anything unlogical, for otherwise we should have to think unlogically. 3.031 It used to be said that God could create everything, except what was contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is, we could not say of an “unlogical” world how it would look. 3.32 To present in language anything which “contradicts logic” is as impossible as in geometry to present by its co-ordinates a figure which contradicts the laws of space; or to give the co-ordinates of a point which does not exist. 3.0321 We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry. 3.04 An a priori true thought would be one whose possibility guaranteed its truth. 3.05 Only if we could know a priori that a thought is true if its truth was to be recognized from the thought itself (without an object of comparison). 3.1 In the proposition the thought is expressed perceptibly through the senses. 3.11 We use the sensibly perceptible sign (sound or written sign, etc.) of the proposition as a projection of the possible state of affairs. The method of projection is the thinking of the sense of the proposition. 3.12 The sign through which we express the thought I call the propositional sign. And the proposition is the propositional sign in its projective relation to the world. 3.13 To the proposition belongs everything which belongs to the projection; but not what is projected. Therefore the possibility of what is projected but not this itself. In the proposition, therefore, its sense is not yet contained, but the possibility of expressing it. (“The content of the proposition” means the content of the significant proposition.) In the proposition the form of its sense is contained, but not its content. 3.14 The propositional sign consists in the fact that its elements, the words, are combined in it in a definite way. The propositional sign is a fact. 3.141 The proposition is not a mixture of words (just as the musical theme is not a mixture of tones). The proposition is articulate. 3.142 Only facts can express a sense, a class of names cannot. 3.143 That the propositional sign is a fact is concealed by the ordinary form of expression, written or printed. (For in the printed proposition, for example, the sign of a proposition does not appear essentially different from a word. Thus it was possible for Frege to call the proposition a compounded name.) 3.1431 The essential nature of the propositional sign be	195,764
Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Friedrich Nietzsche, Duncan Large) (Z-Library).epub	Twilight of the Idols 19 For further thoughts on ‘the circular complicity of the metaphors of the eye and the ear’, cf. Jacques Derrida, ‘Tympan’, in Margins of Philosophy , trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Hassocks: Harvester, 1982), pp. ix–xxix. Twilight of the Idols 26 Cf. Daniel W. Conway, ‘Nietzsche’s Doppelgänger . Affirmation and Resentment in Ecce Homo ’, in The Fate of the New Nietzsche , ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Aldershot and Brookfield, Vt.: Avebury, 1993), 55–78. Twilight of the Idols OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS F RIEDRICH N IETZSCHE (1844–1900) was born in Röcken, Saxony, and educated at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. At the age of only 24 he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basle, but prolonged bouts of ill health forced him to resign from his post in 1879. Over the next decade he shuttled between the Swiss Alps and the Mediterranean coast, devoting himself entirely to thinking and writing. His early books and pamphlets (The Birth of Tragedy, Untimely Meditations) were heavily influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer, but from Human, All Too Human (1878) on, his thought began to develop more independently, and he published a series of ground-breaking philosophical works (The Gay Science, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals) which culminated in a frenzy of production in the closing months of 1888. In January 1889 Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from which he was never to recover, and he died in Weimar eleven years later. Twilight of the Idols (1888) is a wide-ranging critique of European philosophical and cultural values which provides a highly entertaining overview of his themes and styles. D UNCAN L ARGE is Lecturer in German at University of Wales Swansea, and Chairman of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. He has translated Sarah Kofman’s Nietzsche and Metaphor (1993) and is also translating Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo for Oxford World’s Classics. Twilight of the Idols 17 Cf. Montinari, ‘Nietzsche lesen’, 74. The intimate relation between the two texts is confirmed by Ecce Homo , where Nietzsche’s comments on The Antichrist in ‘Why I Write Such Good Books’ are included in the section ostensibly devoted to Twilight alone. Twilight of the Idols TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS * or How to Philosophize with a Hammer * Twilight of the Idols OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles — from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels — the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing . The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene , and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading . Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry , religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers . Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes . Twilight of the Idols 8 Cf. Peter Pütz, ‘Nachwort’ to Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner, Götzen-Dämmerung, Nietzsche contra Wagner , ed. Peter Pütz (Munich: Goldmann, 1988), 184. Twilight of the Idols INTRODUCTION This work of not even 150 pages, cheerful and fateful in tone, a demon that laughs—the product of so few days that I hesitate to say how many—is the absolute exception among books: there is nothing richer in substance, more independent, more subversive—more wicked. Anyone who wants to get a quick idea of how topsy-turvy everything was before I came along should make a start with this work. What the title-page calls idol is quite simply what till now has been called truth. Twilight of the Idols —in plain words: the old truth is coming to an end... (EH III ‘TI’ 1) So begins Nietzsche’s own unabashed appraisal of Twilight of the Idols in a typically hyperbolic passage from his late autobiographical text Ecce Homo , and indeed in a number of respects it is undeniably an exceptional work. The first draft was composed in just over a week, between 26 August and 3 September 1888, while Nietzsche was staying at his customary summer haunt of Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine, and this was a notable feat even by the standards of that astonishingly productive last year in his mentally active life, a year which saw him complete no fewer than six separate texts. As is evident from this passage, Nietzsche himself intended Twilight to serve as a short introduction to the whole of his philosophy, and consequently it is also the most synoptic of his books: it can be comfortably read in one or two sittings and recommends itself as giving the best single-volume overview of Nietzsche’s mature philosophical themes and styles, even if its lapidary concision makes it at the same time the most condensed and allusive of all his works. ‘My ambition’, he tells us here, ‘is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book...’ (IX 51). No sooner had he received his first printed copies of the work, in November 1888, than he began looking to have it translated into other languages, for he fully expected it to have an impact and to gain him the wider readership which had so far eluded him. One can easily see why: it is a book he greatly enjoyed writing, and his style is such that that enjoyment—the sheer delight he takes in his own ‘demonic’ mischief-making, in parading his philosophical ‘heterodoxy’ 1 —communicates itself to the reader on every page. Genesis of the Text The impression Nietzsche gives in Ecce Homo of having produced Twilight from scratch in a matter of days is a little misleading. The composition of the first draft did indeed take place at a furious pace, and on the day he sent the manuscript to his publisher, 9 September, he wrote to his friend Carl Fuchs describing how in recent weeks he had felt ‘most uncommonly inspired’: ‘I would quite often get up (or rather jump up) at two in the morning, “driven by the spirit” to dash something off (KGB III/5, 414). But the main reason it took shape so quickly was that he was able to use a good deal of material which he had already collected together with a different purpose in mind, for the book emerged as the result of an important change of tack which Nietzsche’s publication plans underwent during the summer of 1888. Despite the fact that since the early 1870s he had been publishing more or less a new book per year, since 1885 he had also been amassing a large stock of notes and drafts in preparation for launching on the world what was to have been his magnum opus, The Will to Power . He had already raided these notes for Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), and in the summer of 1888 he finally abandoned the project of The Will to Power altogether, deciding to recast the remaining material as a new four-part masterwork to be called ‘Revaluation of All Values’ (‘Umwerthung aller Werthe’). This breakthrough allowed him to overcome a rare period of writer’s block (as late as 22 August he was writing to his friend Meta von Salis that he feared the whole summer had been a ‘washout’—KGB III/5, 397), and it was at this point that his work on Twilight began—as a release, a distraction, or in the medical terms of Nietzsche’s own later Foreword, a ‘recuperation’, a ‘convalescence’. But Nietzsche’s mood in such a period of spiritual convalescence is very far removed from the sublime and tranquil piety of Beethoven’s Op. 132 quartet, with its ‘Convalescent’s Hymn of Thanksgiving to the Divinity’. In the Preface to the second edition of The Gay Science (1887), Nietzsche refers instead to ‘the intoxication of convalescence’ (GS, ‘Preface’ 1): for him, convalescence is a riot , a ‘Saturnalia of the spirit’, to be celebrated with all the renewed Dionysian strength at one’s disposal, impishly and impiously. Nietzsche’s Styles It comes as no surprise, then, that the first thing Nietzsche himself should remark on when discussing Twilight , both in Ecce Homo and in the Foreword to the work itself, is its tone: ‘fateful’ because of the enormity of the task still to be completed (the ‘gloomy and exceedingly responsible business’ which is the ‘Revaluation’), but leavened with levity, ‘cheerful’, ‘sunny’, and ‘high-spirited’. In this respect alone Nietzsche distinguishes himself in Twilight from the tradition of German academic philosophy against which he is writing. Immanuel Kant, to take one of his favourite counter-examples, concedes in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn concerning his Critique of Pure Reason (1781): ‘I completed it hastily..., with the greatest attentiveness to its content but less care about its style and ease of comprehension.’ 2 In Twilight , on the contrary, Nietzsche shows himself to be a master of stylistic virtuosity, and the speed of its execution is merely a symptom of his assuredness in this regard: of all his texts it is perhaps the best vindication of his claim (in Ecce Homo ) to have ‘the most manifold art of style any man has ever had at his disposal’ (EH III 4). In accordance with his standard practice it is divided into numbered paragraphs, but in Nietzsche’s hands the paragraph becomes an extraordinarily supple unit which can vary in length from a single line to a full three pages. Nietzsche is also keen to achieve ‘ease of comprehension’ here, as one might expect of a text which was intended, on one level at least, to be a kind of primer in his philosophy. This had not always been the case, however, for he was more used to playing a game of cat and mouse with his readers: his ambivalence over whether he actually even wanted to be read and understood is summed up by the defiant subtitle to Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-5), ‘A Book for Everyone and No One’, and in Beyond Good and Evil he states quite openly that ‘I am doing everything I can to make myself “hard to understand”’ (BGE 27). Yet in the works of 1888—by which stage he knew he was reaching a wider readership at last, since the influential Danish philosopher Georg Brandes had begun to lecture on him in Copenhagen—he becomes much more accommodating, to the point where ‘Have I been understood?’ punctuates the last paragraphs of Ecce Homo like a refrain (EH IV 7-9). In Twilight , too, Nietzsche clearly has a ‘mission to explain’: to bring out his key points he makes very frequent use of emphasis (rendered here by italics); he gives copious illustrative examples (e.g. VI 1; VII 2; IX 22) and is happy to condense ‘an essential new insight into four theses’ by way of ‘easing comprehension’ (III 6), indeed to sloganize and present memorable ‘formulas’ (144; V 4; VII 5). He devotes entire paragraphs to clarifying what he means by ‘My Idea of Freedom’ (IX 38), ‘My Idea of Genius’ (IX 44), or ‘Progress in My Sense’ (IX 48), while elsewhere the text gives the appearance of a catechism, as questions like ‘What can our doctrine be, though?’ (VI 8) are duly answered. Despite these didactic features, Twilight still does not always make things easy for its readers: the exuberance and inventiveness of Nietzsche’s philosophical mind are matched by a penchant for puns, parodies, neologisms, and other linguistic play. He jokes that his stylistic deftness will make him ‘a complete riddle to German readers’ (VIII 7), but he is still writing in the first instance for readers of German, so it is all the more unavoidable that a translator will need at times to append glosses in order to give readers the full flavour of his prose. For good measure, he is never averse to peppering his German with words and phrases from some of the other languages at his disposal—primarily French and Latin, but occasionally English, Spanish, or ancient Greek. He is writing for an educated, cosmopolitan nineteenth-century readership and naturally presupposes a knowledge of the classical and major modern European languages, but he presupposes a good deal else besides, for his range of reference and allusion in Twilight is immense—not ‘just’ the whole Western tradition in philosophy and religion, but Indian and Chinese thinkers too, classical and modern literature, history, historiography, and political theory, as well as contemporary developments across the natural sciences. As far as his own previous works are concerned, he generally (though not invariably) provides references to allow his readers to check back to them when necessary, but given their dismal sales figures this would seem more a hope than an expectation, and in any case he specializes in quoting himself out of context. Yet in one sense Nietzsche remains the most accessible of philosophers, for his style is mercifully jargon-free—and he mercilessly sends up the technical terms coined by his philosophical predecessors, such as Leibniz’s ‘principle of sufficient reason’ (VIII 4) or Kant’s ‘thing in itself (VI 3). Nietzsche is an ‘ordinary language’ philosopher avant la lettre , and it is ironic that his work was shunned by those in the ‘analytic’ tradition of philosophy who rallied under that banner. Willy-nilly, certain of his usages do inevitably assume the status of technical terms and acquire a density as they recur from one work to the next, but they are relatively few, for in stark contrast to Kant and his philosophical progeny Nietzsche does not consider the erection of monumental conceptual structures to be a proof of philosophical manhood. In fact, quite the opposite: ‘I mistrust all systematists and avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity’ (126). That is not to say that his writings will therefore amount to no more than a jumble of disconnected thoughts, as some less sympathetic commentators have supposed: systematicity and coherence are two different things. Much of Nietzsche’s notebook material was jotted down while he was away from his desk, avoiding the danger of ‘conceptual cobwebbery’ (IX 23)—we can take him literally when he writes in the Foreword of ‘run[ning] out into the sunshine’, and in any case he tells us explicitly that ‘[o]nly thoughts which come from walking have any value’ (I 34)—but what he does not mention is the effort which he then put into the compilation and redaction of the fragmentary material which inevitably resulted. Even the most loosely organized of Twilight’s sections, ‘Maxims and Barbs’, is not so much unsystematic as studiedly anti -systematic: the placement of the remark on philosophical systematists quoted above is instructive, for it disrupts a short sequence of aphorisms on woman (I 25, 27-8) which might otherwise have formed a thematic unit. But ‘Maxims and Barbs’ is an exception in the context of the work as a whole, for although it is true that Twilight is not ‘through-composed’ in the sense that, say, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) or On the Genealogy of Morals are—Nietzsche’s range of subjects here is much wider—it is perhaps surprising, given the contingencies of the text’s production, that the sections should exhibit quite such a degree of individual integrity and collective interconnection. Topsy-Turvy Truths On the technical level, then, Twilight of the Idols is a highly sophisticated rhetorical accomplishment, but the effervescent tonic is laced with vitriol, for it is also a masterpiece of polemic: as Nietzsche puts it in the Foreword, ‘this little work is a great declaration of war’ . In this sense it continues in the spirit of its immediate predecessors On the Genealogy of Morals —explicitly subtitled ‘A Polemic’—and the work which Nietzsche was still seeing to press at the time of Twilight’s composition, The Wagner Case , a casus belli which he referred to in private as ‘my “declaration of war” against Wagner’. 3 It is clear from Nietzsche’s correspondence that Twilight was intended as a companion piece to The Wagner Case —he insisted to his publisher, for example, that its presentation should be identical to that of its ‘twin’ (KGB III/5, 412)—but only in the sense that, having settled his score with Wagner, he would draw the line under some of his numerous other quarrels. For although the title, a parody of Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods , might lead one to expect another tirade against the former mentor whose histrionic aesthetic and Christianized, nationalistic ideology he now found repugnant, Nietzsche had already spent his anti-Wagnerian ammunition in the previous text (the late Nietzsche contra Wagner is a collection of slightly modified excerpts from his pre-1888 works), and references to Wagner in Twilight itself are very sparse indeed. 4 Instead, Nietzsche in Twilight is much more wide-ranging in his approach. His aim, as Walter Kaufmann and Gilles Deleuze rightly point out, is nothing less than to out-Kant Kant and mount a thoroughgoing critique of all philosophical values hitherto. 5 His targets are what he considers to be all the unexamined prejudices which have been masquerading as truths for millennia and worshipped as such by the uncomprehending ‘populace’, philosophical and non-philosophical alike, such as ‘that Socratic equation, reason = virtue = happiness’ (II 4). His method is in the strictest sense revolutionary, for it consists in debasing the highest values and toppling them from their pedestals, inverting the established hierarchies as a prelude to their deconstruction, and it is ironic—given that Nietzsche never read Marx—that in describing this procedure he should reach for the same metaphor of righting everything which was ‘topsy-turvy’ which Marx used in describing his own relation to Hegel. 6 In Twilight , Nietzsche brings to a culmination the project which he had announced a decade earlier in the programmatic first paragraph of Human, All Too Human , that of unmasking the mundane origins of seemingly transcendent goods, subjecting them to a ‘genealogical’ reduction in order to reveal that ‘the most glorious colours are derived from base, indeed from despised materials’ (HA I 1), reducing the grand explanatory gestures of idealist metaphysics to the level of ‘little unpretentious truths’ (HA I 3). 7 But Tmilight looks forwards as well as backwards—Peter Pütz reminds us that the very term ‘twilight’ is ambiguous (in English as in German) since it can connote both evening and morning 8 —so that when Nietzsche describes the book in Ecce Homo as an act of ‘subversion’ or ‘overthrowing’ (‘Umwerfung’), this term also anticipates the project of revaluation (‘Umwerthung’) to which it was intended as a prelude. In Twilight Nietzsche presents himself as an iconoclast, a destroyer of idols, for which task he equips himself with the hammer of the book’s subtitle—a veritable Swiss army hammer which tolls the death knell for philosophy as it has traditionally been understood and has the final word in the text when it speaks in section XI, boasting its hardness. There are still more aspects to this multipurpose implement, though, for in the Foreword Nietzsche develops the metaphor further, writing that ‘it is not contemporary idols but eternal idols that are being touched here with a hammer as if with a tuning fork’. Here the musical and the medical are conflated in a much more delicate operation, with Nietzsche adopting the guise of ‘The Philosopher as Cultural Physician’, 9 wielding his hammer as a diagnostic tool in order to ‘sound out’ all the hollow idols by a process of auscult(ur)ation. Despite his contention, though, it is undoubtedly both ‘eternal’ and ‘contemporary idols’ that come under Nietzsche’s diagnostic hammer in this text: on the one hand those ‘truths’ which have passed for such since the dawn of Western philosophy in ancient Greece, such as ‘The Four Great Errors’ of section VI, on the other the ills of contemporary European culture such as statism, the worship of that ‘new idol’ which he had already warned against in Thus Spake Zarathustra (Z I; cf. GS 24). In Ecce Homo Nietzsche describes another earlier text, Beyond Good and Evil , as ‘in all essentials a critique of modernity’’ (EH III ‘BGE’ 2), but ‘Critique of Modernity’ is the very title he uses for one of the paragraphs in Twilight (IX 39): he adopts the position of ‘untimely man’ here (IX) precisely in order to get a hermeneutic handle on those ‘signs of the times’ whose significance would otherwise be overlooked. As he explains to his friend Franz Overbeck in a letter discussing the text: ‘it is very “timely”: I pay my “compliments” to all possible thinkers and artists in today’s Europe.’ 10 Health of Nations The two nationalities which Dr Nietzsche singles out for particular treatment ‘in today’s Europe’ are the two which had always most absorbed him: the Germans and the French. As far as the Germans are concerned, Nietzsche certainly held no special brief for the country of his birth: from as early as 1873 and the first of his Untimely Meditations, David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer , he had mercilessly attacked the cultural wilderness which was Germany in the Bismarck era as he saw it. He never went so far as to publish a Nietzsche contra Deutschland (for one thing he had a justifiable fear of censorship), but this attitude is implicit in all but his earliest writings, and it intensifies over his philosophical career so that by 1888 he had even managed to convince himself (erroneously, as it turns out) that he was of ancient Polish stock, and the very last piece he composed was a declaration of ‘Deadly War against the House of Hohenzollern’ (KGW VIII/3, 457-61). The material which he did choose to publish as section VIII of Twilight , entitled ‘What the Germans Lack’, could scarcely be more explicit on this count, and indeed Nietzsche considered the book’s anti-German slant to be one of its main selling-points abroad, as he explained in a letter to a prospective English translator, at the same time judiciously omitting to mention the book’s no less explicit criticisms of ‘the English fatheads’ (IX 5), this ‘nation of complete cant’ (IX 12). 11 Nietzsche’s attitude towards French culture is a very different matter, though, for he had been holding up the French as an ‘antidote’ to the Germans ever since 1871, the year in which Germany united and the Reich was founded in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. He had familiarized himself with French classical drama as early as the late 1860s, when working on his first book, The Birth of Tragedy , and in the mid-i870s he had devoted a good deal of time to the writings of French philosophers such as Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Rousseau, and Voltaire (to whom he dedicated the first edition of Human, All Too Human) . He pays homage to these writers in Ecce Homo when he remarks: ‘It is really only a small number of older Frenchmen to whom I return again and again: I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself “culture” a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture...’ (EH II 3). But by the 1880s he had become increasingly fascinated with the French culture of his own century, and not so much with France’s philosophers, for whom he had scant respect, as with French literary writers (Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, George Sand), historians (Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Taine), and above all, psychologists. As he writes in Twilight: At the same moment as Germany is rising up as a great power, France is gaining a new importance as a cultural power . By now a great deal of new intellectual seriousness and passion has already moved over to Paris: the question of pessimism, for example, the question of Wagner, practically all psychological and artistic questions are given incomparably more sensitive and thorough consideration there than in Germany. (VIII 4; cf. EH II 4) This is not to say that Nietzsche saw France as somehow untainted by the cultural malaise which he diagnosed elsewhere in Europe—indeed quite the opposite, for the enthusiasm with which Paris had embraced Wagnerism provided him with an object lesson in the creeping corruption of cultural ‘health’. What made contemporary French culture different for Nietzsche was the way in which French psychological writers had developed the means with which to analyse and critique their own cultural decline, and Nietzsche in turn paid tribute to the acumen of these writers in his writings of 1888, not merely through such overt flattery as in the passage above, but also more implicitly and effectively through borrowing their terms of analysis. Thus many of Twilight’s more acerbic comments on French writers, in sections I and IX in particular, can be traced back to the Journal of the brothers Goncourt, from which Nietzsche excerpted copiously in his notebooks, and his whole conception of ‘decadence’ would be inconceivable without the ‘Theory of Decadence’ which he borrowed from the section on Baudelaire in Paul Bourget’s Essays in Contemporary Psychology (1883). 12 An important indicator of Nietzsche’s debt to Bourget is the fact that he uses the French word decadence throughout both The Wagner Case and Twilight because no German word for it had yet been coined; a similar case is the conspicuously neologistic loan-word ‘Degenerescenz’, which makes a number of appearances in Twilight after Nietzsche avidly read Charles Féré’s recently published Degenerescence and Criminality in the spring of 1888. 13 Such examples throw a new light on Nietzsche’s remark in a letter of 12 September 1888 to his friend and amanuensis Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast): ‘between ourselves, it strikes me that it is only this year that I have learnt to write German—I mean French’ (KGB III/5,417). 14 ‘Idleness of a Psychologist’ So Nietzsche’s reading of these contemporary French psychological writers had a profound impact on him which is traceable to the very terms of his philosophical analysis, and for all his attempts to present Twilight as a synopsis of his philosophy as a whole, to emphasize its continuities with his earlier works, the fact remains that along with the other works of 1888 it bristles with a register of vocabulary which is decidedly new in Nietzsche’s works, a vocabulary derived from psychology and physiology, from pathology, symptomatology (‘semiotics’ in the strict sense), and medicine. ‘For a psychologist there are few questions that are as attractive as that concerning the relation of health and philosophy’, Nietzsche writes in the Preface to the second edition of The Gay Science (GS, ‘Preface’ 2), but it is in the works of 1888, and Twilight in particular, that Nietzsche the cultural physician finally dons his surgical mask in earnest (jocularity) and enters the operating theatre. ‘A peculiar hospital air wafts towards us from many pages of Twilight of the Idols’ , comments Mazzino Montinari, co-editor of the standard German edition of Nietzsche’s works; 15 in Ecce Homo , Nietzsche himself adopts a more self-congratulatory tone in speaking of what he terms his ‘medi-cynicism’: ‘That out of my writings there speaks a psychologist who has not his equal, that is perhaps the first thing a good reader will notice’ (EH III 5). In this context it should be noted that Nietzsche originally gave Twilight of the Idols a very different working title, ‘Idleness of a Psychologist’ (‘Müssiggang eines Psychologen’), and although he eventually abandoned this title in late September 1888 at the prompting of Koselitz, who sycophantically urged him to substitute something altogether more grandiose (cf. KGB III/6, 309 f), nevertheless traces of it survive in the published text, in the Foreword and the very first aphorism in ‘Maxims and Barbs’. The etymology of ‘Müssig-gang’—’leisurely stroll’—underlines the intimate relation between thinking and walking which Nietzsche wants to establish, and the low-key, unpretentious resonances of this projected title tell us a good deal about the text as a whole, for Twilight is largely free of the declamatory heroics and overweening sense of self-importance which would surface so soon, and so spectacularly, in Ecce Homo . Despite the fact that much of the text was initially intended for The Will to Power , what is perhaps surprising is that Nietzsche the philosopher of power is largely absent here, and that the ‘grand doctrines’ which he had been working out predominantly in his notebooks of the later 1880s with The Will to Power in mind—’nihilism’, ‘perspectivism’, ‘will to power’ itself—are very much in abeyance. Instead, as in The Gay Science (GS 329), he places a premium on ‘idleness’ or ‘leisure’, a virtue with a long pedigree stretching back to Aristotle and Cicero, and one which finds its most eloquent twentieth-century advocate in that unlikeliest of Nietzscheans, Bertrand Russell. 16 (It might seem strange to the English-speaking reader that Nietzsche, that most inveterate of punsters, should have failed to exploit the obvious pun on ‘idol’/’idle’, but it was not available to him in German, and although he certainly had enough English to pun on ‘Kant’/’cant’ (IX 1), his command of the language was not extensive.) The very title of the text, then, was a late change made at the proof stage, and this is typical of the text as a whole, whose composition was altered at a number of points on the way to the final version, through additions and accretions, revisions and excisions. The main reason for this was that in the September and October of 1888 Nietzsche was working simultaneously on three texts {Twilight, The Antichrist , and, from 15 October, Ecce Homo) , and constantly facing decisions about what to include in which, generating new material all the while. Thus the first draft of Twilight actually included what would become the first twenty-four paragraphs of The Antichrist, 17 but in the weeks following completion of that draft the rest of The Antichrist took shape, so that on 30 September 1888 the divorce between the two texts was sealed when Nietzsche finished Twilight with the dated Foreword. As a consequence, though, this Foreword bears the peculiar distinction of announcing the completion of a different text from the one it precedes, ‘the first book of the Revaluation of all Values’ , i.e. The Antichrist . In the Foreword itself, as we have seen, Nietzsche sounds some of the main themes for the work to come, but stylistically the Foreword also provides us with a paradigmatic introduction to his use of metaphor. The first sentence sets up an opposition between ‘gloomy’ and ‘cheerful’ which quite naturally opens out into a broader metaphorics of darkness and light (the black question mark, the shadow, sunshine), since the German words ‘düster’ and ‘heiter’ can refer interchangeably to a person’s mood and to atmospheric conditions. The first part of the Foreword thus elaborates what one might call an extended ‘light-motif, exploiting a ‘heliotropic’ semantic field which on the one hand, of course, is that of the title, but which also links Twilight to others of Nietzsche’s works dating as far back as Daybreak (1881) and, once more, Human, All Too Human (HA I 107). 18 After the interpolated Latin quotation, however, the Foreword changes tack, and with the play on ‘evil eye’ and ‘evil ear’ the predominantly visual metaphors modulate into auditory ones (the ‘sounding out’ of idols, Nietzsche as ‘Pied Piper’), so that as well as ‘illustrating’ the metaphorical potential of the title, the passage also ‘echoes’ that of the subtitle, the hammer-as-tuning-fork. 19 Survey of the Sections It is appropriate that the first section of the book, ‘Maxims and Barbs’, should be aphoristic in character, for not only had writers such as Lichtenberg and the French moralistes , with whom Nietzsche was intimately familiar, established the aphorism as the vehicle par excellence for acute psychological observation, but the principle which forms the basis of Nietzsche’s method in Twilight , the inversion of received wisdoms, lends itself ideally to stylistic expression in this form. 20 A collection of aphorisms like this is a typical feature of Nietzsche’s earlier books (for example, the ‘Assorted Opinions and Maxims’ of Human, All Too Human , Book II (1879), Book III of The Gay Science (1882), or the ‘Maxims and Interludes’ which make up Part 4 of Beyond Good and Evil) , and indeed ‘Maxims and Barbs’ itself grew out of the ‘Maxims of a Hyperborean’ which he collected together in the spring of 1888 from earlier notebooks (KGW VIII/3, 271—4), in some cases dating back as far as 1881. 21 However, this is the first and only occasion on which Nietzsche begins a book with such a series, thus pointing up its polemical, combative character. ‘Nothing succeeds without high spirits playing their part’, we are told in the Foreword, and the first section is particularly playful, with Nietzsche often taking a proverb, homily, or otherwise ‘time-honoured truth’—such as ‘The Devil finds work for idle hands to do’ in the very first paragraph (I 1), ‘All truth is simple’ (I 4), or ‘He who laughs last, laughs longest’ (I 43)—and displacing it slightly, giving it a new twist, or completely inverting it, so as to debunk it and make us question its validity. Such saws are precisely the kind of fraudulent ‘eternal idols’ Nietzsche is out to unseat: at the beginning of the next section (II 1) he will explicitly take issue with the ‘consensus of the wise’; here he is already squaring up to ‘the wisest of all ages’ more implicitly, by disputing the claim of even the cosiest, most consensual ‘truths’ to universalizability. In the first section Nietzsche also directs his dissent at more localized targets, though—he gives us ‘barbs’ as well as (subverted) ‘maxims’—and just as he will insist that all proverbial sayings have a provenance (even if a relatively vague one, a conspiracy among ‘the wisest of all ages’), so he typically attacks not a belief, opinion, or doctrine but its exponents. He introduces us in this section to a heterogeneous population of ‘idolaters’, cowards, and hypocrites, ranging from groups such as anti-Semites (119) and nihilists (I 34), historians (124) and philosophical systematists (I 26), to whole nationalities in the cases of the English (I 12), the Russians (I 22), and the Germans (I 23): in spite of his assaults on the pettiness of nationalistic sentiment (IX 39) he is not averse to using national stereotypes as shorthand. Nothing is sacred, nothing taboo, for when Nietzsche is on the offensive he does not shy away from giving offence, and a number of his remarks on woman, in particular (I 25, 27, 28), make uncomfortable reading. This technique of personalizing the cut and thrust of philosophical argument has important implications, both methodological and stylistic. On the one hand we can immediately sense that for Nietzsche every philosophical principle needs to be approached as an expression (a ‘symptom’) of the psycho-physiology of the individual who holds it: philosophical positions, and moral codes in particular, are not abstract ‘eternal verities’ (HA In) but the products of historical circumstances and configurations of forces, so traditional philosophical analysis must be superseded by a new practice of philosophy as symptomatology, a historical taxonomy or ‘genealogy’ of human types. On the other hand, by conjuring up an array of antagonists Nietzsche animates his philosophical style and turns differences of opinion into dramatized vignettes acted out between a whole cast of characters, a plurality of voices among which the philosophical ‘I’ is but one (and not the most frequent, either). The commonest pronoun in ‘Maxims and Barbs’ is in fact the German ‘man’—the (ungendered) impersonal voice of the generality, the ‘herd’, the ‘people’ who ‘say’ 22 —but the variety of voices Nietzsche orchestrates in this opening section alone is astonishing, and he runs the whole grammatical gamut from the first person singular to the third person plural, the majority of paragraphs being (at least implicitly) polyphonic, conversational. And it is a conversation in which the reader is expressly invited to participate, whether she or he is being buttonholed by the text’s explicit interpellations in the second person singular, as in the series of ‘questions for the conscience’ with which the section draws to a close, or more indirectly addressed by Nietzsche’s rhetorical questions. Indeed, despite the fact that this opening section is entitled ‘Maxims and Barbs’, the commonest form among these short paragraphs is that of the question—there are thirty-nine question marks in all, or almost one per paragraph. Nor is this the only punctuational means by which Nietzsche invites the reader to join in the debate (more precisely, to agree with him): one of the most distinctive features of his style is the welter of dashes and dots with which he so often chooses to ‘link’ sentences. For all the forcefulness of his articulation (and exclamation marks also abound), his paragraphs themselves are but weakly articulated, by means of ‘Gedanken-striche’ (thought dashes) which call on the reader’s thoughts to bridge the gaps, and ellipses or aposiopeses where Nietzsche breaks off and leaves it to the reader to complete the sense, challenging the reader to respond and add his or her voice. In each case it is as though Nietzsche were signalling to the reader in a kind of parodic Morse code: ‘over to you’. Nietzsche cultivates non-closure in these ways throughout the work; moreover, this paratactic, elliptical style can be observed on a larger scale in the links between paragraphs and sections as well. By far the majority of all the paragraphs in Twilight end inconclusively on an ellipsis, a dash, or a question mark—in sections III, V, and X every paragraph does. Similarly, every section (including the last) ends openly in one of these ways, with the single exception of section IV, which might just as well have done since it ends with a beginning (‘INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA’). Recent Nietzsche-inspired post-structuralist commentators have stressed the openness of any text to potentially infinite interpretation, its deflection on to the reader of the responsibility for constituting meaning out of its ‘dissemination’, 23 but one need not go as far as Deleuze—’An aphorism means nothing, signifies nothing’ 24 —to note the extraordinary openness in the weave of Nietzsche’s philosophical texture which he achieves through such devices as these. The formal contrast between the first and second sections in Twilight is the sharpest in the book, engineered for maximum effect: the pithy pyrotechnics of ‘Maxims and Barbs’ give way to ‘The Problem of Socrates’, a series of linked reflections which amount to one long case history of Socrates and his decadent milieu similar in execution to The Wagner Case . Nietzsche here passes from generalized, impersonal statements of ‘wisdom’ to his archetypal representative of ‘the wisest of all ages’: he gives us his last word on the philosopher who has been one of his prime sparring partners since The Birth of Tragedy, 25 except that he now sees Socrates no longer as the instigator of Greek decadence, as in the earlier text, but rather as its expression . In ‘The Four Great Errors’ Nietzsche will repeatedly warn against confusing cause and consequence (VI I ); here, in keeping with his own injunction, he discreetly revises his earlier judgement of the philosopher—though this does not prevent him citing The Birth of Tragedy (II 2) as though his reflections here were merely a continuation in the same vein. We need to beware of such surreptitious retrospective modifications, which are typical of Nietzsche’s late writings—he will do the same again at IX 10, a striking revision of the view he had put forward in The Birth of Tragedy of the relation between the ‘Apollonian’ and the ‘Dionysian’ which is nevertheless presented as a synopsis of it. ‘Remorse is indecent’, he tells us (110), and he himself lives up to this maxim by refusing to turn his back on his own earlier works—even the very earliest, from which he has departed the furthest—but this deceptive ‘continuity’ is achieved only by dint of such undeclared adjustments. In this respect Twilight shares the same project as Ecce Homo and Nietzsche contra Wagner: it is a recuperation, not just in the medical sense of its Foreword but also in the sense that in it Nietzsche recuperates or rehabilitates his earlier philosophical positions by subtly reinterpreting them. Nietzsche’s analysis of Socrates in ‘The Problem of Socrates’ also differs from that of The Birth of Tragedy because—to use his own striking analogy (VI6)—he has ‘translated’ it into a new ‘dialect’, that of his new diagnostic disciplines, symptomatology (II 2) and pathology (II 10). The term ‘idiosyncrasy’ (II4, 9) plays a key role here, for Nietzsche exploits the original sense of the term (‘physical constitution peculiar to a person’) in order to trace the Socratic revolution in ‘taste’ and ‘manners’ (the rise of dialectics) back to such physiological factors as ‘instinctual anarchy’, a ‘superfetation of the logical’, ‘jaundiced malice’, ‘auditory hallucinations’ (II4), and so on. Socrates emerges as such a monstrous caricature—not so much a case as a head case—that one is tempted to accuse Nietzsche himself of ‘jaundiced malice’, yet there are more than just hints here of a sneaking admiration for his (in)famous forebear (a hammer, after all, is not a hatchet). Not only was Socrates apparently cunning enough to hoodwink an entire culture (II 6), he was able to do so because he had a supreme psychological understanding of the extent and nature of the crisis which that culture was then facing, and because he had already succeeded in overcoming his own decadent desires, in becoming master of himself (II 9). There are thus surprising similarities between the portrait of Socrates Nietzsche gives us here and that of Goethe later on in the text—a figure who also ‘disciplined himself into a whole’ (IX 49), whom Nietzsche himself was most tempted to idolize—or indeed Nietzsche’s parodic self-portraits in Ecce Homo , as satyr (EH, ‘Preface’ 2), decadent (EH 12), buffoon (EH IV I ). 26 For Nietzsche, Socrates’ problematic ‘case’ is the most interesting in the history of philosophy because he stands on the threshold between the ‘festive’ philosophy of figures such as Heraclitus (III 2)—‘Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks’—and the dark age of the ‘tyranny of reason’ which he himself inaugurates: he intrudes on the philosophical feast like a crepuscular Commendatore , dragging philosophy—indeed European culture as a whole—down into a netherworld from which, through Nietzsche’s own writings, it has only recently re-emerged (cf. IV). Where Freud picks on Oedipus Tyrannus as the archetype for his drama of psychosexual development, Nietzsche here constructs his own classical tyrant figure to play an equivalent role in his narrative of the fate of philosophy. In the next section,’ “Reason” in Philosophy’, he pans out again from the idiosyncrasy of one particular philosopher to the idiosyncrasies (III 1, 4) of philosophers as a class, but because the whole Western tradition in philosophy has fallen under the sway of the ‘tyranny of reason’ Nietzsche derives the same diagnosis as before: it is ‘decadent’ (III 6), afflicted by what one might call the ‘Socrates complex’. The symptoms are various: a lack of historical awareness, a disparagement of the senses and the body, a concomitant privileging of abstractions such as ‘being’ and ‘God’ (reinforced by the metaphysics inherent in language itself), and an erroneous conception of causality underpinned by an inverted temporality (this last a major theme which is introduced here and will be developed throughout section VI). In ‘Maxims and Barbs’ Nietzsche was keen to counterbalance his negative psychological observations by interspersing them with a number of passages promoting qualities he would count as virtues, such as strength in adversity (I 8), heroic isolation (114), or immoralism (136), and then ending the section on a decidedly upbeat note (I 42-4); here again we find a specific moment of perspectival inversion (III 5) when he deliberately switches over from the description and denunciation of errors to a ‘superior’ perspective which is advocated in their place. This rapid reversal of polarity from negative to positive towards the end of a section is a typical move, since for Nietzsche destruction is but the prelude to creation. 27 As he will put it later on: ‘We do not readily deny; we seek our honour in being affirmative’ (V 6; cf. VIII6), and by means of such peripeteias he carefully organizes the rhythmic structure of his text to bear this aspiration out. ‘“Reason” in Philosophy’ shows as great an awareness of the reader as ever: it begins as a response to an imagined question and concludes schematically with its main points reduced to four short summarizing propositions. The compression of this last paragraph is maintained and indeed surpassed in the next section, ‘How the “Real World” Finally Became a Fable’, a (minimally) extended gloss on it. The ‘error’ whose vicissitudes Nietzsche tracks over the brief span of this page-long ‘history’ (or ‘story’: ‘Geschichte’) is that of conceiving the ‘real world’ as divorced from and opposed to the empirical world of sense-perception, and in turn downgrading the latter to the status of mere ‘appearance’. Nietzsche here encapsulates his critique of metaphysics with breathtaking succinctness: short sections of statement alternate with parenthetic commentary couched in mischievously parabolic terms as he passes in quick succession from Plato through Christianity, Kant, and nineteenth-century positivism to his own creations, the ‘free spirits’ (the ‘self-legislators’ who have liberated themselves from previous moral prejudices—cf. HA I, ‘Preface’) and Zarathustra (founder of the dualistic religion of Zoroastrianism whom Nietzsche, from Thus Spake Zarathustra onwards, takes ‘beyond good and evil’ as a fictional symbol of the ‘self-overcoming of morality’). This section has rightly become one of the most famous passages in Nietzsche’s whole œuvre: he himself (never one to underestimate his own achievements) certainly appreciated its cogency, for it had been destined to open the first book of The Will to Power (KSA 14, 415), and Martin Heidegger was to write of it: ‘here, in a magnificent moment of vision, the entire realm of Nietzsche’s thought is permeated by a new and singular brilliance.’ 28 It is not surprising that Nietzsche should have been adopted as a crucial precursor by post-structuralist philosophers, for this short section provides an object lesson in the deconstruction of a binary opposition—in Nietzsche’s eyes the most ingrained and mystificatory of all. After this inspired interlude, Nietzsche returns to the more moderate pace of the previous two sections, and to a more sustained unmasking of philosophical error from a predominantly psychological standpoint: the stylistic caesura is bridged by the continuity of thematic concerns. Because of his decision to develop his material on Christianity into a separate book, The Antichrist , relatively little on this topic remains in Twilight , and it is concentrated in sections V—VII. In ‘Morality as Anti-Nature’, Nietzsche focuses for the first time in this text on Christian morality (as ‘inimical to life’’ —V 1), developing arguments from On the Genealogy of Morals , and especially its Third Essay, ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?’, in which he had highlighted the polymorphous perversity of the human will which ‘would even will nothingness rather than not will at all’ (GM III 1). Christian morality is criticized here in familiar terms, as a symptom of decadence (V 5), a ‘degenerates’ idiosyncrasy’ (V 6); specifically it is dismissed on the same grounds as Socratic dialectics previously (II 11)—for being anti-instinctual, in Freudian terms the product of a repression—and its apologists are unmasked as the enemies of sensuality (cf. Ill 1), what Zarathustra had called ‘Despisers of the Body’ (Z I; cf. IX 47). Nietzsche here outlines two contrasting ways of dealing with the passions: the Christian way (abnegation, asceticism, excision) and ‘our’ way (V 3)—’spiritualization’ (Freud will pick up on another of Nietzsche’s formulations (HA 11) and say ‘sublimation’). But Nietzsche is careful to point out that the answer to the Christian perversion is not to excise it in turn, for it provides a necessary counterpole to his own prescriptions: even immoralists need a morality in place (cf. I 36). Whereas Christianity craves the dissolution of oppositional forces in ‘perpetual peace’ (and Kant, author of a treatise with that title, has already been dismissed as ‘a crafty Christian, when all’s said and done’—III 6), Nietzsche argues here for ‘the value of having enemies’ (V 3), the necessity of opposition and war. Although the title of the next section, ‘The Four Great Errors’, might lead one to expect a relatively diverse discussion, it is in fact a sustained critique of the common conception of causality as the basis of all previous moralities and metaphysics: the last three ‘errors’—‘false causality’, ‘imaginary causes’, ‘free will’—are but subspecies of the first, the ‘confusion of cause and consequence’. 29 Man’s falsifying ‘causal drive’, Nietzsche argues here (VI 4), has vitiated our understanding of the world thus far by opening up an erroneous ‘inner world’ of volition, consciousness, an	373,607
Wittgenstein Philosophy in an Hour (Paul Strathern) (Z-Library).epub	Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Afterword Wittgenstein outlined his legacy in the unpublished foreword to his Philosophical Remarks. There he explains that his philosophy is intended only for those who are in sympathy with the spirit in which it was written. As Russell observed, Wittgenstein had the pride of Lucifer – but he also possessed the spiritual fanaticism of a saint. ‘What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.’ He was determined he would live his life on this level, or not at all. (The continual question of suicide was not merely a psychological inheritance, it was a moral problem.) Wittgenstein was aware that this attitude was not in ‘the spirit of the main current of European and American civilisation.’ Although he may have been the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, he spent his entire life in conflict with it. He found ‘the industry, architecture and music of our time, in its fascism and socialism … alien and uncongenial.’ Characteristically he insisted, ‘This is not a value judgment.’ In such matters he evidently considered himself to be above matters of mere human taste, or even of history. Despite this he went on to make what look curiously like value judgments about many aspects of modern culture. He refused to accept ‘what nowadays passes for architecture as architecture’ (his own effort in this field is passed over in silence). He viewed ‘what is called modern music with the greatest suspicion (though without understanding its language).’ This confession does not appear to be one of modesty but rather an indication that he considers himself above such matters. And it certainly doesn’t prevent him from passing more sweeping judgments, where arrogance is tempered with apparent compassion. ‘The disappearance of the arts does not justify judging disparagingly the human beings who make up this civilisation.’ In times like this, ‘genuine strong characters’ abandon the arts and turn to other things – such as putting an end to philosophy, perhaps. We are presented with ‘the unimpressive spectacle of a crowd whose best members work for purely private ends.’ In an age that saw the rise of popular democracy and the liberation of vast numbers of downtrodden humanity, he observed, ‘I have no sympathy for the current of European civilisation and do not understand its goals, if it has any.’ But he did concede that ‘the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value.’ Having dispensed with the cultural expression of human values, Wittgenstein introduced a philosophy that insisted we must remain silent about such matters. He left humanity gagged. Despite his protests to the contrary, Wittgenstein was curiously in accord with the spirit of his age. During his time human values were largely determined by those who had no use for philosophy – the populists and demagogues who shaped the public ethos of the twentieth century. In the private realm, be it called spiritual or personal, things remain more problematic. As a consequence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, the questions once asked by philosophy have now passed into the realms of poetry. The way poetry is going, it looks as if they won’t be asked much longer here either. We have learned to do without God, and it looks as if we will learn to do without philosophy. It will now, alas, join the ranks of subjects which are completed (and have become completely spurious), such as alchemy, astrology, platonic love, and stylitism. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Further Information From Wittgenstein’s Writings Wittgenstein opens his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with two striking remarks: 1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. He then argues: 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. This leads on to: 2 What is the case – a fact – is the existence of states of affairs. 2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things). He then claims: 2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the thing itself. Later he states his ethical position: 6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.) 6.43 If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts – not what can be expressed by means of language. He reveals that his attitude is essentially mystical: 6.432 How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference to what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the facts. This leads him to denigrate philosophy: 6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of natural science – i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. He then modestly denigrates his own philosophy: 6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) This leads to his final, controversial conclusion: 7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (trans. Pears and McGuiness) In his later work, Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein reduces his philosophy to linguistic analysis: 30. So one might say: the ostensive definition explains the use – the meaning – of the word when the overall role of the word in language is clear. He gives an example: Thus if I know that someone means to explain a color-word to me, the ostensive definition ‘That is called ‘sepia’ ‘will help me to understand the word. – And you can say this so long as you do not forget that all sorts of problems attach to the words ‘to know’ or ‘to be clear.’ He elaborates with a further example: 31. When one shows someone the king in chess and says: ‘This is the king,’ this does not tell him the use of the piece – unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king. You could imagine him having learned the rules of the game without ever having been shown an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds here to the sound or shape of the word. This eventually leads him to the conclusion: 123. A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’ But he warns: 124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is … As a result the scope of philosophy is reduced: 125. It is the business of philosophy not to resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logic-mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the state of … affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is sidestepping a difficulty.) This leads to a tangled situation from which it appears almost impossible to escape: The fundamental fact here is that we lay down rules, a technique, for a game, and that when we then follow the rules, things do not turn out as we had assumed. That we are therefore, as it were, entangled in our own rules. The entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand (i.e., get a clear view of). – Philosophical Investigations (trans. G. E. M. Anscombe) Wittgenstein insisted upon logic, and in doing so imposed severe limits upon philosophical thinking. Indeed, many have come to see this as a stranglehold which prevents us from thinking about matters that have been the traditional concerns of philosophy. In light of this, it is instructive to see how logic was viewed in the previous century by Nietzsche: Suppose there was no self-identical ‘A,’ such as is assumed by every proposition of logic (and mathematics), and this ‘A’ was already a mere appearance – in this case logic would merely be about a world of appearances. In fact, we believe in this proposition merely because our experience seems always to confirm it. The ‘thing’ – this is what really underlies ‘A.’ Our belief in things : this is the precondition of our belief in logic… Our very first acts of thought – affirmation and denial, decisions about truth and untruth – are … already influenced by our belief that we can discover true knowledge, that our judgments can be the truth… This is the origin of our basic sensualistic prejudice that sensations tell us the truth about the world – that I cannot simultaneously maintain that a thing is hard and that it is also soft… The conceptual ban on contradiction stems from our belief that we can form concepts, that these concepts not only specify the essence of a thing but also understand it. In fact, logic (just like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictions of our own creation. Logic is our attempt to understand the actual world by using a scheme which we ourselves have made up. In other words, to make it amenable to schemes of formula and calculation which we have invented for ourselves alone. – Will to Power, Sec 516 In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein reflects on a wider range of topics beyond the realms of logic and logical philosophy. Here he reveals many of the traits that made him such a difficult customer in everyday life: The reason why I cannot understand Shakespeare is that I want to find symmetry in all this asymmetry. His pieces give an impression as of enormous sketches rather than of paintings; as though they had been dashed off by someone who can permit himself anything. … Anyone who admires them as one admires, say, Beethoven, seems to me to misunderstand Shakespeare. The arrogance of this remark speaks for itself. And how anyone who doesn’t understand Shakespeare (and so aptly demonstrates this) can claim that those who do understand Shakespeare misunderstand him, can be clear only to a master logician. Alas Wittgenstein never encountered the schoolmaster who once said to me, ‘I’d like to hear your opinion on this piece of Beethoven. And remember, it is not Beethoven who is being examined here.’ When judging another great artist, Wittgenstein reveals a trait that constantly recurred in his dealings with others: If it is true that Mahler’s music is worthless, as I believe to be the case, then the question is what I think he ought to have done with his talent… Should he, say, have written his symphonies and then burned them? Or should he have done violence to himself and not written them? Should he have written them and realised that they were worthless? But how could he have realised that? I can see it, because I can compare his music with what the great composers wrote. But he could not, because … his nature is not that of other great composers. – Culture and Value (trans. Peter Winch) Such remarks would be laughable if Wittgenstein had not put them into practice. He had a nasty habit of interfering drastically in the lives of those around him. He browbeat his friend Skinner into abandoning a brilliant academic career and becoming a factory hand. Someone who sought advice about becoming a surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps was told he should volunteer for the front as a private. While at Cambridge, Wittgenstein also spent considerable effort trying to persuade the leading literary critic F. R. Leavis that he was not suited to the study of English literature and should give it up. This from the man who admitted that he didn’t understand Shakespeare. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Contents Cover Title Page Introduction Wittgenstein’s Life and Works Afterword Further Information From Wittgenstein’s Writings Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates Chronology of Wittgenstein’s Life Chronology of Wittgenstein’s Era Recommended Reading A Note on the Author Copyright About the Publisher Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR Paul Strathern has lectured in philosophy and mathematics and now lives and writes in London. A Somerset Maugham prize winner, he is also the author of books on history and travel as well as five novels. His articles have appeared in a great many publications, including the Observer (London) and the Irish Times. His own degree in philosophy was earned at Trinity College, Dublin. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Introduction If we accept Wittgenstein’s word for it, he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense – as it had been known in the twenty-five centuries since it was started by the ancient Greeks – was finished. After what he had done to philosophy, it was no longer possible. It is fitting that philosophy should end with its most limited practitioner. Ludwig Wittgenstein was a superb logician, and his solution to the problems of philosophy was to reduce them to logic. All else–metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, finally even philosophy itself – was excluded. Wittgenstein sought the ‘final solution’ for philosophy, with the aim of putting an end to it once and for all. He had one go at this, but it didn’t work; so he had a second try that did. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Copyright Harper Press An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith London W6 8JB Copyright © Paul Strathern 2001 IN AN HOUR ® is a registered trade mark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited Cover image: Portrait (detail) of Ludwig Wittgenstein by unknown 20th Century English photographer. Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library (photographer unknown) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Epub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007464975 Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 www.harpercollinsebooks.com Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Recommended Reading A. Phillips Griffiths, ed., Wittgenstein: Centenary Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1991) Anthony Kenny, ed., The Wittgenstein Reader (Blackwell, 1994) Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Viking Penguin, 1991) David Pears, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1987–1988) Joachim Schulte, Experience and Expression: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology (Oxford University Press, 1993) Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Chronology of Wittgenstein’s Life 1889 Ludwig Wittgenstein born in Vienna, April 26. 1906 Goes to Berlin to study engineering. 1908 Registers as research student at Manchester University, England. 1912 Admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study logic with Bertrand Russell. 1914 Volunteers for Austro-Hungarian army upon outbreak of World War I. 1918 Taken prisoner-of-war in Italy. 1920 Becomes schoolteacher in remote Austrian village of Trattenbach. 1921 First publication of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in Annalen der Naturphilosophie (first appears in book form with English translation a year later). 1927 Discusses philosophy with Vienna Circle in Vienna. 1929 Returns to Cambridge. 1930 Becomes fellow of Trinity College. 1939 Elected professor of philosophy at Cambridge. 1940 Works as a porter at a London hospital. 1947 Resigns chair at Cambridge and moves to remote cottage in Ireland. 1951 Dies at the age of sixty-two of cancer in Cambridge. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Wittgenstein PHILOSOPHY IN AN HOUR Paul Strathern Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Chronology of Wittgenstein’s Era 1889 Erection of Eiffel Tower in Paris. 1900 Death of Nietzsche. Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams. 1903 Curies awarded Nobel Prize for discovery of radioactivity. 1905 Einstein publishes ‘Special Theory of Relativity.’ 1912 Sinking of the Titanic. 1913 Bohr proposes Quantum Theory. 1914–1918 World War I. 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. 1919 Disintegration of Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1922 Schlick founds Vienna Circle. Publication of Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land.’ 1927 Heidegger publishes Being and Time. 1929 Wall Street crash heralds era of the Great Depression. 1939–1945 World War II. 1945 Explosion of first atomic bomb. Founding of United Nations. Era of existentialism in Paris. 1948–1949 Berlin airlift. 1950 Outbreak of Korean War. Wittgenstein: Philosophy in an Hour Wittgenstein’s Life and Works Apart perhaps from Leibniz, Wittgenstein is the only major philosopher to have produced two distinct philosophies. And when one considers that both of these were dedicated to finishing off philosophy, one begins to get a measure of the man’s perverse dedication. His father had something to do with this. It is appropriate that Wittgenstein grew up just across town from where Sigmund Freud had recently installed the world’s most famous couch. Wittgenstein’s father Karl was a tyrant. By the time young Ludwig arrived on the scene his father was one of the uncrowned industrial kings of Europe (more powerful even than Krupp) and a predominant influence on the Viennese cultural scene (Brahms would play at home after dinner, and in the art world he personally funded the Vienna Sezession). Karl Wittgenstein had a domineering personality, a first-class intellect, a deep understanding of culture, and the self-assurance that he could charm the birds from the trees (on the days when he didn’t feel like blasting them off the branches). Karl’s influence on his family was catastrophic. Young Ludwig had four older brothers, most of whom appear to have been brilliant, exceptionally highly strung, and homosexual. Three of them were to commit suicide, a possibility that Ludwig clung to like a talisman throughout his life. The other brother who survived became a concert pianist, had his right hand blown off in World War I, and afterward continued with his career, commissioning piano concertos for the left hand, including the celebrated one by Ravel. He was not considered to have been as brilliant as his other brothers, or even the best pianist. Ludwig Wittgenstein was born April 26, 1889, and brought up in a palace on the exclusive Alleegasse (now called Argentinierstrasse) in Vienna. Although Wittgenstein was predominantly Jewish by blood, his family had become Christians, and he was baptized a Roman Catholic. He was educated by private tutors amidst an atmosphere of extreme cultural intensity (suicidal genius brothers practiced at the grand piano long into the early hours; a sister commissioned her portrait by Klimt and rejected the Goyas from the family collection because ‘their tone was out of place’). At the age of ten, young Ludwig single-handedly designed and constructed out of pieces of wood and wire a model sewing machine. By the time he was fourteen he could whistle entire movements from a number of well-known symphonies. These activities would seem to be the nearest he came to playing in the manner of an ordinary child. In 1903 Wittgenstein left home for the first time to attend the Realschule in Linz, where he studied mathematics and science. Curiously, Hitler was at this school at the same time. They were both the same age and should have studied in the same class. Wittgenstein considered that he was a mediocre student, but he was nonetheless promoted to the year above his age group; Hitler records how he shone among his doltish classmates, but according to the records he was kept back in the year lower than his age group. So the whistling dolt and the supreme genius never met. After this Wittgenstein studied mechanical engineering for two years at the Technische Hochschule at Charlottenburg in Berlin; and in 1908 he left to continue his studies in England. For the next three years he did research in aeronautics at Manchester University, and conducted experiments with kites at the Upper Atmosphere Station near Glossop in Derbyshire. At this stage he showed no sign of what was to come. He knew nothing about philosophy, and was considered by his colleagues quite bright though certainly not brilliant. In the typical English manner of the period, Wittgenstein’s colleagues tended to regard him merely as an eccentric German. They were wrong: he was an eccentric Austrian – a rare but altogether more idiosyncratic breed. Wittgenstein was punctiliously well-mannered yet capable of flying into a storming rage when anything went wrong with his experiments. In his relations with others he conveyed a cosmopolitan Viennese polish, but it soon became apparent to his colleagues that he hadn’t the first idea of how to get along socially with ordinary people (which included anyone he was not likely to encounter among the geniuses, magnates, and government ministers who frequented the Wittgenstein household). He would work fanatically all day without a single break, then lie in a scalding bath all evening contemplating suicide. One Sunday when he and a colleague missed the train to Blackpool, Wittgenstein suggested they hire one for the two of them. As part of his research, Wittgenstein set about designing a propeller. The problems posed by this led him into mathematical theory, which appears to have triggered in him some unconscious impulse. Within a remarkably short time his intellect focused, assuming all the power of his intense personality. The propeller and its attendant mathematics were soon forgotten as he continued questioning ever more deeply, until he was probing the very foundations of mathematics. It was as if his mind had locked onto the need to discover some utter bedrock of certainty in the world. It is perhaps no accident that around this time his brothers began comitting suicide and his father became ill with cancer. Who knew about the foundations of mathematics? Wittgenstein was told of the recent pioneering work done by Bertrand Russell, and immediately he began reading Russell’s Principles of Mathematics, the very latest work on the subject. In this, Russell set out to prove that the fundamentals of mathematics were in fact logical, and that all pure mathematics could be derived from a few basic logical principles. But Russell’s attempt foundered on a paradox. Russell attempted to define numbers by using classes. Some classes are members of themselves, and some are not. For example, the class of human beings is not a member of itself because it is not a human being. The class of nonhuman beings, however, is a member of itself. But is the class of ‘all classes which are not members of themselves’ a member of itself? If it is, it is not. Yet if it is not, it is. The entire status of mathematics hung on this seemingly trivial paradox, which according to Russell affected ‘the very foundations of reasoning.’ He ended his book by issuing a challenge to ‘all students of logic’ to solve it. Wittgenstein immediately launched into the fray. He emerged with a radical solution, dismissing the entire concept of classes as an unwarranted assumption. Russell in his turn dismissed Wittgenstein’s solution while at the same time admiring its ingenuity. But Wittgenstein was not so easily put off. In 1911 he travelled to Cambridge to see Russell, and there he decided to study philosophy with Russell and abandon engineering, the profession his father had chosen for him. Russell had taken on a lot more than he’d bargained for. At the time he was arguably the leading philosopher in Europe; Wittgenstein had hardly read a book on the subject. Yet Wittgenstein took to turning up at Russell’s rooms at all times of day and night, insisting upon engaging him for hours on end in the most intense ‘philosophical’ speculations – sometimes to do with logic, sometimes to do with suicide. According to Russell, Wittgenstein had ‘passion and vehemence’ and a feeling that ‘one must understand or die.’ Yet when he was convinced that he did understand, nothing would persuade him to the contrary. He refused to accept Russell’s belief in empiricism, that we can gain knowledge from our experience. In Wittgenstein’s view, knowledge was limited to logic. When Russell claimed that he knew there was no rhinoceros in the room, Wittgenstein refused to accept this. It was logically possible that there was a rhinoceros in the room. Russell then asked him where this rhinoceros could possibly be, and began looking behind the chairs and under the table. Still Wittgenstein adamantly refused to accept that Russell knew for certain there was no rhinoceros in the room. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately for philosophy) Russell quickly realised that his impossibly intense and egotistical new student was more than just an obstinate, pestering bore. But he also realised that his new student needed to learn basic logic. At some inconvenience, Russell used his influence and arranged for Wittgenstein to be tutored by a leading Cambridge logician, W. E. Johnson, a fellow of Kings College. The result was a fiasco. ‘I found in the first hour that he had nothing to teach me,’ declared Wittgenstein. Johnson ironically observed, ‘At our first meeting he was teaching me.’ This arrogant rudeness and inability to listen were to become an increasingly dominant trait in Wittgenstein’s character. Russell generously characterised this period of getting to know Wittgenstein as ‘one of the most exciting intellectual adventures of my life.’ He and Wittgenstein began discussing mathematical logic, which at the time was so complex that only half a dozen people in the world could understand it. Yet according to Russell, within two years Wittgenstein ‘knew all I had to teach.’ More than this, Wittgenstein had managed to convince Russell that he would never do any creative philosophy again. It was too difficult for him. Only he, Wittgenstein, could possibly discover the way forward. Wittgenstein had thus found a substitute father and destroyed him. Fortunately Wittgenstein’s intellect was just as powerful as his personality. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to separate the two, and both had now found their purpose in life. This was more than just a psychological hatchet job by Wittgenstein. The only thing that could stop him from destroying everything, including himself, was the ‘truth.’ It is no exaggeration to compare Wittgenstein wrestling with the problems of logic to Jacob wrestling with his angel. As soon as Wittgenstein discovered philosophy, it became a matter of life and death for him. Anyone who felt it as less than this he viewed with contempt. But this period of self-realisation led to some rather less exalted discoveries. Wittgenstein realised that he was homosexual. He enjoyed spending his time in intense conversation with lonely, intellectual young men but couldn’t bring himself to sully these relationships with sensuality. This element in his nature was almost certainly relieved by rare visits to London, or occasional night pickups in the Prater, the main park in Vienna, when he went home. All this only contributed to his psychological turmoil. Here was demonic genius at its purest, aspiring to the heights yet living in shadow, driven to the point where it was all but out of control. After Wittgenstein’s father died (‘the most beautiful death I can imagine, falling asleep like a child’), he returned to Cambridge to battle the problems of logic with renewed vigor. There were moments of comparative bliss. In 1913 Wittgenstein went with his friend, the gifted young mathematician David Pinsent, on a summer holiday to Skjolden, a remote village nearly ninety miles up the Hardangerfjord in Norway. Here the two of them enjoyed themselves like thirteen-year-old schoolboys. But Wittgenstein could be an exacting travelling companion, even for an easygoing, self-effacing character like Pinsent. Each morning Wittgenstein insisted on doing logic for several hours. In Pinsent’s words: ‘When he is working he mutters to himself (in a mixture of German and English) and strides up and down all the while.’ At other times he might take extreme offense over trifles. When Pinsent stopped to photograph the scenery, or even spoke to someone else on a train, this would provoke an emotional outburst from Wittgenstein, followed by a long sulk. It is difficult to gauge how much this stemmed from his overriding need to dominate, and how much it was due to lover’s jealousy (or other conflicts arising from his unspoken love). As the holiday progressed, Wittgenstein grew increasingly eccentric and neurotic. He became convinced that he was about to die and kept harping on this to Pinsent, who concluded that ‘he was mad.’ By now Wittgenstein was breaking new ground in logic and felt he was close to solving the problems that had prevented Russell from discovering the logical foundation for mathematics. The only trouble was, he now felt sure he would die before he could publish the truth. Wittgenstein wrote to Russell, demanding that they meet ‘as soon as possible’ so that Wittgenstein could tell him where he had gone wrong. Despite this turmoil, when the two vacationers returned to England Wittgenstein informed Pinsent that this was the best holiday he had ever had. In the understatement of a true Englishman, Pinsent confided to his diary that Wittgenstein had been ‘trying at times,’ but he had enough sense to promise himself that he would never vacation with him again. Meanwhile Wittgenstein was having a series of urgent meetings with Russell. Wittgenstein was in an excited state, and Russell found it impossible to follow his complex logical arguments. But Russell became even more exasperated when Wittgenstein refused to commit himself to paper until he had brought his ideas to perfection. In the end Russell managed to persuade Wittgenstein to let a stenographer be present at their meetings, so that Wittgenstein’s answers to Russell’s probing questions could be taken down in shorthand. These stenographer’s notes form the basis of Wittgenstein’s first work, ‘Notes on Logic.’ In it he makes numerous insightful remarks, some of breathtaking simplicity (such as: ‘“A” is the same as the letter “A”’). Russell understood at once what Wittgenstein was trying to establish: in order to overcome the paradoxical difficulties of Russell’s classes, things needed to be shown in symbolic form rather than said (because they simply could not be said, and were in fact unsayable). This was difficult to grasp at the best of times. Indeed, probably only Russell really understood what Wittgenstein was getting at. And it looked like it would remain that way, for, as Russell said, ‘I told him he ought not simply to state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it, but he said arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would feel as if he was dirtying a flower with muddy hands.’ Wittgenstein was a perfectionist: either you understood perfectly, completely, and at once what he said, or there was no point in listening to what he said at all. Yet in this unpublished work Wittgenstein did include certain ideas he had about philosophy. These are remarkable for their originality: no one was thinking like this in 1912. And they also contain the conception of philosophy that he was to retain throughout his life: ‘In philosophy there are no deductions: it is purely descriptive.’ According to Wittgenstein, philosophy gave no picture of reality, and it neither confirmed nor confuted scientific investigation. ‘Philosophy consists of logic and metaphysics: logic is its basis.’ It appeared to have little connection with reality and was more concerned with the study of language. ‘Distrust of grammar is the first requisite for philosophizing.’ Wittgenstein had identified philosophy with logic. Here, in embryo, was much of his later philosophy. It could be said that from now on he devoted his life to elaborating these remarks and their implications. But before embarking upon his new philosophy, Wittgenstein decided that perhaps it was time he studied this intriguing subject. There was no harm in finding out what others had been up to. According to Pinsent, ‘Wittgenstein has only just started systematic reading [in philosophy] and he expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once worshiped in ignorance are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes.’ So much for the opposition. Wittgenstein now decided to return to Norway and live in isolation for the next two years, ‘doing logic.’ Even by Wittgenstein’s standards this was somewhat drastic. According to Ray Monk’s superb biography of Wittgenstein, Russell thought this idea ‘wild and lunatic.’ He tried his best to dissuade Wittgenstein: ‘I said it would be dark, & he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, & he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad & and he said God preserve him from sanity. (God certainly will.)’ Pinsent was deeply saddened at their farewell. (Although neither of them had the slightest inkling, this was to be their final parting.) Even Wittgenstein seems to have been peripherally perplexed by his decision but was nonetheless determined to go through with it. Wittgenstein duly sailed to Norway and soon found just the place he was looking for. This was a hut ninety miles up the Hardangerfjord, which could be reached only by rowboat from the remote village of Skjolden. It is difficult to conceive of any place in Europe farther removed from the sophisticated splendors in which he had been brought up – and this was probably the point. Wittgenstein now embarked upon a long, cold, dark winter of utter solitude, ‘doing logic.’ Not surprisingly, he was soon writing to Russell, ‘I often think I am going mad.’ But his letters to Russell also contained evidence of the startling advances he was making in logic. These followed directly from Russell’s attempt to discover a logical foundation for mathematics, but went even further – attempting to discover a foundation for logic itself. Wittgenstein asserted that a logical proposition could be shown to be true or false regardless of its constituent parts. For instance, if we say, ‘This apple is red or not red,’ this is a tautology (i.e., it is always true). And it will always be true regardless of whether the apple is red or not. Likewise, if we say, ‘This apple is neither red nor not red,’ this is a contradiction (i.e., it will always be false). If we had a method for finding out whether a logical proposition is a tautology or a contradiction, or neither, we would have a rule for determining the truth of all propositions. This rule, stated as a proposition, would be the basis of all logic. Wittgenstein would never have returned to civilisation for anything so trivial as to protect his sanity. But when he learned that his mother was ailing he felt obliged to travel to Vienna. On his arrival he found that he had inherited a fortune. But he preferred that his life not be encumbered with Wittgenstein money, so he decided to give it away. He started by making donations, anonymously, to a number of Austrian poets. His choice of recipients was revealing: one was Rilke, whose cultivated lyrics expressed an intense spirituality; another was Trakl, who hymned his obsession with guilt and decline in a series of dark enigmatic images. At the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army. His friend Pinsent enlisted with the British army and thus was on the opposing side. Wittgenstein volunteered not because he particularly believed in the cause of the German powers but because he felt it was his duty. As a Wittgenstein he could easily have become an officer, but he chose to remain in the ranks – an extremely dangerous decision. This was the farcically inefficient army of Hasek’s Good Soldier Svejk , the army whose eastern commander was to dispatch the immortal telegram: ‘The situation is hopeless but not desperate.’ Wittgenstein was sent to fight against the Russians on the eastern front, where the carnage matched that of the trenches on the western front in France. He served on a river gunboat in Galicia, then with an artillery battery. Throughout his service Wittgenstein continued to write down his philosophical ideas in notebooks. He was doing original philosophy, but he also remained constantly on the brink of suicide. Despite these distractions, Wittgenstein was an utterly fearless soldier, and his exemplary bravery won him two medals. (Among the soldiering philosophers, his only rival was Socrates.) Wittgenstein was a parody of the driven personality. Characteristically he saw no reason to try to alleviate this condition by searching for its cause in his own psychological makeup. On the contrary, if only everyone were true to his nature, he thought, everyone could be like this. Wittgenstein rationalised his condition to himself by claiming that life was ‘an intellectual problem and a moral duty.’ The intellectual and moral aspects of his personality had so far remained two distinct entities, each spurring the other on. It was only during the war that they fused. Under constant intellectual pressure (from himself) and the persistent threat of death (from both the enemy and himself), Wittgenstein once again found himself in familiar territory, on the brink of insanity. One day, during a lull in the fighting in Galicia, he came across a bookshop. Here he found Tolstoy’s Gospels in Brief, which he bought for the simple reason that there was no other book in the shop. Wittgenstein had been against Christianity – he associated it with Vienna, his family, lack of a logical foundation, meek and mild behavior, and other anathemas. But reading through Tolstoy’s book was to bring the light of religion into Wittgenstein’s life. Within days he had become a convinced Christian – though his conversion had a distinctly Wittgensteinian tenor. With typical rigor he set about integrating his beliefs into his intellectual life. Religious remarks now began appearing in the pages of his notebooks, alongside those on logic. And it soon becomes clear that these two topics have more than intellectual rigor in common. The spirit of one informs the other in compelling fashion. Even Wittgenstein’s religion had to assume a logical force and clarity: ‘I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like an eye in its visual field.’ There was something problematic about the world, and this we called its meaning. But this meaning did not lie within the world, it lay outside it. ‘The meaning of life, i.e., the meaning of the world, we can call God.’ According to Wittgenstein, to pray was to think about the meaning of life. (Which meant that he had been praying all his life, even when he didn’t believe there was a God or a meaning to life. Wittgenstein couldn’t bear to be wrong – ever.) Wittgenstein then passes on to the question of the will – an overriding element in his life, if not in his philosophy. He opens with the uncontroversial assertion that he knows his will penetrates the world. He then passes on to claim that he knows ‘my will is good or evil. Therefore good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.’ But how does Wittgenstein ‘know’ that his will is good or evil – and what precisely does he mean by these two terms? Also, if his will is within the world, and the meaning of the world lies outside it, it is difficult to see how they can be ‘somehow connected.’ Once again Wittgenstein seemed to consider that argument only spoiled the beauty of his striking assertions. Russell had tried to correct this bad philosophic habit, but by now he was locked away in a British prison for demonstrating against the war. Wittgenstein was to persist in this infuriating practice, which flawed his early philosophical work. But was it a drawback? Wittgenstein appeared to have an inkling of what he was up to. Making such striking assertions, but leaving them devoid of blurring justification or argument, gave what he said an almost oracular force. Could Wittgenstein have been more concerned with effect than with truth? He would have been horrified by such a suggestion. Yet there’s no denying this thin but distinct thread of what looks suspiciously like showmanship, which runs through his life and work. Like it or not, his was a personality of mythical proportions (and for the most part he genuinely disliked this). One can only assume that his attraction to the limelight was at least partly subconscious. In 1918 Wittgenstein was promoted to officer and transferred to the Italian front. Somehow he had managed to correspond intermittently with his friend David Pinsent throughout the war, but he now received news that Pinsent had been killed. ‘I want to tell you how much he loved you up to the last,’ wrote Pinsent’s mother, oblivious to the irony of her remark. (All the evidence indicates that Pinsent remained unaware of the true nature of Wittgenstein’s feelings for him.) Wittgenstein wrote back to her that David was ‘my first and my only friend.’ He was to dedicate his first great work to David Pinsent’s memory. In 1918 the Austro-Hungarian war effort came to an end in ignoble surrender. In Italy many of the Austrian officers simply boarded a train back to Austria, abandoning their men to their fate. But not Lieutenant Wittgenstein, who would have been incapable of such an act. (It is almost impossible to exaggerate how much Wittgenstein’s life was driven by principle. His moments of greatest despair always came when he temporarily relaxed and was able to see how far below his impossibly high principles his life was falling.) When Wittgenstein was taken prisoner by the Italians, he had in his rucksack the only manuscript of the philosophical work he had been writing throughout the war. This was eventually to be called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , and is the first great philosophical work of the modern era. Right from its opening sentences it becomes obvious that philosophy has entered a new stage. ‘1 The world is all that is the case.’ ‘1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.’ One clear, ringing assertion follows another, linked by the absolute minimum of justification or argument: ‘1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.’ ‘1.2 The world divides into facts.’ The book’s conclusion is even more memorable: ‘7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’ Few others have altered the course of philosophy in quite so striking a fashion. Such succinct perspicacity is surpassed only by Socrates (‘Know thyself’), Descartes (‘I think, therefore I am’), and Nietzsche (‘God is dead’). In those parts where it is not too technical (in the logical sense), Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is the most exciting work of philosophy ever written. Its clarity and daring leaps of argument make it at times almost poetic, as do many of its conclusions. And its basic idea is simple to grasp. The Tractatus is an attempt to delineate what we can talk about in a meaningful manner. This leads to the question, What is language? Wittgenstein claims that language gives us a picture of the world. This idea had been inspired by a newspaper report he had read about a court case in which model cars had been used to represent an accident. The model cars were like language describing the actual state of affairs. They pictured what had happened, but most important they shared the same ‘logical form’ – they both obeyed the rules of logic. The model cars (language) could also be used to describe all possibilities (near miss, traffic jam, absence of car that was alleged to have caused the accident, and so forth). But they could not describe two cars occupying the same space at once, or one car occupying two separate spaces at once. Logical form prevented this – both in reality and in language. When it is analysed down to its atomic propositions, language consists of pictures of reality. In this way propositions can represent the whole of reality, all facts – because propositions and reality have the same logical form. They cannot be illogical. The limits of language are the limits of thought, because this too cannot be illogical. We cannot go beyond language, for to do so would be to go beyond the limits of logical possibility. The logical propositions of language are a picture of the world and can be nothing else. They can say nothing about anything else. This means that certain things simply cannot be said. Unfortunately the assertions in the Tractatus fall into this category. These assertions are not pictures of the world. Wittgenstein realised this. In trying to overcome this difficulty, he clung to his earlier idea that although certain things cannot be said to be true, they can be shown to be true. He admitted that in the Tractatus he was trying to say what can in fact only be shown. But he concludes the Tractatus with his celebrated magisterial pronouncement which forbids others from trying the same: ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’ Inevitably God falls into this category of things that cannot be spoken about. We can’t say anything about God because language pictures only reality. Yet Wittgenstein claims that such things as God do exist, it’s just that they can’t be said or thought. ‘There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest . They are what is mystical.’ In common with his writings in his wartime notebooks, the end of the Tractatus is a compelling blend of logic and mysticism. It is very difficult to dismiss this as hocus-pocus, especially when it is expressed with such forceful clarity. Unfortunately it is not philosophy, though it probably qualifies as philosophic poetry of the highest order. Sadly there are a number of even more crucial objections to the Tractatus . Admittedly language and reality certainly have some relation to each other. But how do we know that this relation is in fact ‘logical form’? Wittgenstein was forced to fudge this issue (though he certainly didn’t believe this was what he was doing). Also, the category of things we cannot talk about includes a large number of things that we simply must talk about if we are to continue living in a civilised fashion. For a start, we can’t talk about good and evil (or even right and wrong). Likewise, the ‘language’ of art also falls into this category, for it is in essence illogical. In being metaphorical, a work of art is both itself and something else. And to say of a work of art that what it expresses is inexpressible is a contradiction. (Even Wittgenstein would find it difficult to argue that it doesn’t express anything at all.) Some have argued that language itself falls into this category. Wittgenstein overcomes this problem by declaring that since logical propositions are tautologous they do in fact ‘say nothing.’ This admission would appear to put an end to philosophy as such. Wittgenstein has the good grace (or overweening pride) to point this out in his preface to the Tractatus. Despite these serious objections and the admission of philosophic bankruptcy, the Tractatus was to have a profound influence. In particular, it proved an inspiration to the Vienna Circle, who formulated Logical Positivism. Philosophy may have come to an end, but it didn’t stop the Logical Positivists from developing this end into a further philosophy of their own. According to them, the meaning of any proposition lies in its manner of verification. There are two meaningful types of propositions. In the first, which are to be found in mathematics and logic, the meaning of the subject is contained in the meaning of the predicate. They are tautologous, and this can be verified by comparing the subject with the predicate – for example, ‘Twelve minus ten is two.’ The second type of proposition is verifiable by observation – for example, ‘The ball is rolling down the hill.’ If you can’t verify a statement, it is meaningless. This rules out all metaphysics, which includes theological statements such as ‘God exists.’ According to Wittgenstein, such a question as ‘Does God exist?’ is not only incapable of being answered but incapable of being asked in the first place, as it is meaningless. We simply cannot speak in any meaningful fashion about	68,672
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman) (Z-Library).epub	Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 14 T he musician must have been experiencing a maelstrom of emotions at this moment. A shy, modest, self-effacing man, a man who is forced to perform because of his talent, to share it with the world, not because he wants to, but because he simply has to. He sings in the way that a bird sings; his music is a sweet, natural thing that comes like rain, like sunlight, something that, perfectly, just is . I thought about this as I ate my impromptu dinner. I was in a fast-food restaurant for the first time in my adult life, an enormous and garish place just around the corner from the music venue. It was mystifyingly, inexplicably busy. I wondered why humans would willingly queue at a counter to request processed food, then carry it to a table which was not even set, and then eat it from the paper? Afterward, despite having paid for it, the customers themselves are responsible for clearing away the detritus. Very strange. After some contemplation, I had opted for a square of indeterminate white fish, which was coated in bread crumbs and deep fried and then inserted between an overly sweet bread bun, accompanied, bizarrely, by a processed cheese slice, a limp lettuce leaf and some salty, tangy white slime which bordered on obscenity. Despite Mummy’s best efforts, I am no epicure; however, surely it is a culinary truth universally acknowledged that fish and cheese do not go together? Someone really ought to tell Mr. McDonald. There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one. I checked my watch, then picked up my shopper and put on my jerkin. I left the remains of my dinner where it was—what, after all, is the point of eating out if you have to clear up yourself? You might as well have stayed at home. It was time. The flaw in my plan, the hamartia, was this: there were no tickets available. The man at the box office actually laughed at me. “It’s been sold out for a couple of days now, love,” he said. I explained, patiently and slowly, that I only wanted to watch the first half, the opening act, and suggested that they’d surely be able to admit one additional person, but it was impossible, apparently—fire regulations. For the second time in days, I felt tears come. The man laughed again. “Don’t cry, love,” he said. “Honestly, they’re not even that good.” He leaned over confidentially. “I helped the singer bring his gear in from his car this afternoon. Bit of an arsehole, to be honest with you. You shouldn’t let a wee bit of success go to your head, that’s all I’m saying. Nice to be nice, eh?” I nodded, wondering which singer he was talking about, and moved to the bar area to gather my thoughts. I wouldn’t gain entry without a ticket, that much was clear. And there were no tickets available. I ordered a Magners drink, remembering from last time that I’d be required to pour it myself. The barman was well over six feet tall and had created strange, enormous holes in his earlobes by inserting little black plastic circles in order to push back the skin. For some reason, I was reminded of my shower curtain. This comforting thought of home gave me the courage to examine his tattoos, which snaked across his neck and down both arms. The colors were very beautiful, and the images were dense and complex. How marvelous to be able to read someone’s skin, to explore the story of his life across his chest, his arms, the softness at the back of his neck. The barman had roses and a treble clef, a cross, a woman’s face . . . so much detail, so little unadorned flesh. He saw me looking, smiled. “Got any yourself?” I shook my head, smiled back and hurried off to a table with my drink. His words resonated in my head. Why didn’t I have any tattoos? I had never given it a moment’s thought, and I’d never consciously decided either to have or not have one. The more I thought about it, the more I was drawn to the idea. Perhaps I could have one on my face, something complex and intricate which incorporated my scar, making it a feature? Or, better still, I could have one done somewhere secret. I liked that idea. The inside of my thigh, the back of my knee, the sole of my foot, perhaps. I finished the Magners and the barman came over to remove my glass. “Same again?” he asked. “No thank you,” I said. “Can I ask you something?” I stopped picking off the remains of the nail polish. “Two things, actually. One: does it hurt, and two, how much does a tattoo cost?” He nodded, as if he’d been expecting my questions. “Hurts like fuck, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “In terms of cost, it depends on what you’re having done—there’s a big difference between Mum on your bicep and a massive tiger across your back, you know?” I nodded; this made perfect sense. “Lot of cowboys around, though,” he said, warming to his theme. “You want to go to Barry, in Thornton Street, if you’re getting one. Barry’s sound.” “Thank you very much,” I said. I hadn’t expected this outcome from the evening, but then life has a way of surprising you sometimes. Outside, I realized there was no point in waiting around. The musician would doubtless be going on to a glamorous after-party, somewhere that glittered and pulsed, to celebrate. As of tonight, I was only familiar with two venues, McDonald’s and the unpleasant bar I’d visited with Raymond, and it was hardly likely to be held in either of those. Come on, Eleanor, I told myself. Tonight was simply not meant to be. The card would remain undelivered in my shopper for the time being. I assuaged my disappointment with the consoling thought that, when it did finally happen, the encounter would be perfect, and not some short notice, ad hoc meeting in a music club. Also, I’d have broken in my new boots by then, and so would be able to walk normally. I was already tired of the glances my semi-hobbled gait had been attracting. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 11 I didn’t see Raymond on Monday, or on Tuesday. I didn’t think about him, although my mind did return to Sammy and to Mrs. Gibbons on occasion. I could, of course, visit either or both of them without Raymond being there. Indeed, both had stressed that to me on Sunday. But would it be better if he were by my side? I suspected that it would, not least because he could always fill a silence with banal, inane comments and questions should the need arise. In the meantime, I’d gone to the mobile telephone emporium with the least garish fascia in the closest location to the office and, on the highly suspect advice of a bored salesperson, had eventually purchased a reasonably priced handset and “package” which allowed me to make calls, access the Internet and also do various other things, most of which were of no interest to me. He’d mentioned apps and games; I asked about crosswords, but was very disappointed with his response. I was familiarizing myself with the manual for the new device, rather than completing the VAT details on Mr. Leonard’s invoice, when, very much against my will, I became aware of the conversation going on around me, due to its excessive volume. It was, of all things, on the topic of our annual Christmas lunch. “Yeah, but they have entertainment laid on there! And lots of other big groups go, so we can meet new people, have a laugh,” Bernadette was saying. Entertainment! I wondered if that would involve a band, and, if so, might it be his band? A very early Christmas miracle? Was this fate interceding once again? Before I could ask for details, Billy jumped in. “You just want to cop off with some drunk guy from Allied Carpets under the mistletoe,” Billy said. “There’s no way I’m paying sixty quid a head for a dry roast turkey dinner and a cheesy afternoon disco. Not just so’s you can scout for talent!” Bernadette cackled and slapped him on the arm. “No,” she said, “it’s not that. I just think it might be more fun if there’s a bigger crowd there, that’s all . . .” Janey looked slyly at the others, thinking that I hadn’t seen her. I saw her eyes flick up to my scars, as they often did. “Let’s ask Harry Potter over there,” she said, not quite sotto voce, and then turned to address me. “Eleanor! Hey, Eleanor! You’re a bit of a girl about town, aren’t you? What do you reckon: where should we go for the office Christmas lunch this year?” I looked pointedly at the office wall calendar, which, this month, displayed a photograph of a green articulated lorry. “It’s the middle of summer,” I said. “I can’t say I’ve really given it any thought.” “Yeah,” she said, “but we’ve got to get something booked up now, otherwise all the good places get taken and you get left with, like, Wetherspoons or a rubbish Italian.” “It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me,” I said. “I shan’t be going anyway.” I rubbed at the cracked skin between my fingers—it was healing, but the process was painfully slow. “Oh, that’s right,” she said, “you never go, do you? I’d forgotten about that. You don’t do the Secret Santa either. Eleanor the Grinch, that’s what we ought to call you.” They all laughed. “I don’t understand that cultural reference,” I said. “However, to clarify, I’m an atheist, and I’m not consumer oriented, so the midwinter shopping festival otherwise known as Christmas is of little interest to me.” I went back to my work, hoping it would inspire them to do the same. They are like small children, easily distracted, and content to spend what feels like hours discussing trivialities and gossiping about people they don’t know. “Sounds like somebody had a bad experience in Santa’s grotto back in the day,” said Billy, and then, thankfully, the phone rang. I smiled sadly. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the sort of bad experiences I’d had, back in the day . It was an internal call: Raymond, asking if I wanted to go and visit Sammy again with him tonight. A Wednesday. I’d miss my weekly chat with Mummy. I’d never missed one, not in all these years. But then, what could she actually do about it, after all? There couldn’t be much harm in skipping it, just this once, and Sammy was in need of nutritious food. I said yes. Our rendezvous was scheduled for five thirty. I’d insisted that we meet outside the post office, fearing the reaction of my coworkers were we to be observed leaving work together. It was a mild, pleasant evening, so we decided to walk to hospital, which would take only twenty minutes. Raymond was certainly in need of the exercise. “How was your day, Eleanor?” he said, smoking as we walked. I changed sides, trying to position myself downwind of the noxious toxins. “Fine, thank you. I had a cheese-and-pickle sandwich for lunch, with ready-salted crisps and a mango smoothie.” He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth and laughed. “Anything else happen? Or just the sandwich?” I thought about this. “There was a protracted discussion about Christmas lunch venues,” I said. “Apparently it’s been narrowed down to TGI Fridays, because ‘it’s a laugh’”—here, I tried out a little finger-waggling gesture indicating quotation marks, which I’d seen Janey doing once and had stored away for future reference; I think I carried it off with aplomb—“or else the Bombay Bistro Christmas Buffet.” “Nothing says Christmas like a lamb biryani, eh?” Raymond said. He stubbed out his cigarette, discarding it on the pavement. We arrived at the hospital and I waited while Raymond, typically disorganized, went into the shop on the ground floor. There really is no excuse for being unprepared. I had already gone to Marks & Spencer before meeting him, and had purchased some choice items there, including a tub of pumpkin seeds. I suspected Sammy was in dire need of zinc. Raymond came out swinging a carrier bag. In the lift, he opened it and showed me what he’d bought. “Haribo, the Evening Times , big tub of sour cream and chive Pringles. What more could a man ask for, eh?” he said, looking quite proud of himself. I did not dignify this with a response. We paused at the ward entrance; Sammy’s bed was surrounded by visitors. He saw us and beckoned us over. I looked around, but the stern nurse with the stripy socks was nowhere to be seen. Sammy was reclining regally on a mound of pillows, addressing the assembled throng. “Eleanor, Raymond—great to see you! Come and meet the family! This is Keith—the kiddies are at home with their mum—and this is Gary and Michelle, and this”—he indicated a blond woman who was texting with impressive focus on her mobile telephone—“is my daughter Laura.” I was aware of everyone smiling and nodding, and then they were shaking our hands, slapping Raymond’s back. It was quite overwhelming. I’d put on my white cotton gloves, rather than use the hand gel—I reasoned that I could run them through a boil wash as soon as I got home. This occasioned a certain hesitancy in the handshakes, which was strange—surely a cotton barrier between our respective skin surfaces could only be a good thing? “Thanks so much for taking care of my dad, guys,” the older brother, Keith, said, wiping his hands on the front of his trousers. “It means a lot, to know he wasn’t on his own when it happened, that he had people looking out for him.” “Hey, now,” said Sammy, nudging him with his elbow, “I’m not some doddery old invalid, you know. I can look after myself.” They smiled at one another. “Course you can, Dad. I’m just saying, it’s nice to have a friendly face around sometimes, eh?” Sammy shrugged, not conceding the point but graciously allowing it to pass. “I’ve got some good news for you two,” Sammy said to us, leaning back contentedly into his pillows while Raymond and I deposited our carrier bags like myrrh and frankincense at the foot of his bed. “I’m getting out on Saturday!” Raymond high-fived him, after some initial awkwardness whereby Sammy had no idea why a podgy hand had been thrust in his face. “He’s coming to stay at mine for a couple of weeks, just till he gets confident with the walking frame,” his daughter Laura said, finally looking up from her phone. “We’re having a wee party to celebrate! You’re both invited, of course,” she added, somewhat less than enthusiastically. She was staring at me. I didn’t mind. In fact, I actually prefer that to surreptitious, sneaky glances—from her, I got a full and frank appraisal, filled with fascination, but with no trace of fear or disgust. I brushed my hair off my face, so that she could get a better view. “This Saturday?” I said. “Now, Eleanor, don’t you dare say you’re busy,” Sammy said. “No excuses. I want you both there. End of.” “Who are we to argue?” Raymond said, smiling. I thought about it. A party. The last party I’d been to—apart from that appalling wedding reception—was on Judy Jackson’s thirteenth birthday. It had involved ice-skating and milkshakes, and hadn’t ended well. Surely no one was likely to vomit or lose a finger at an elderly invalid’s welcome home celebration? “I shall attend,” I said, inclining my head. “Here’s my card,” Laura said, passing one each to Raymond and to me. It was black and glossy, embossed with gold leaf, and said Laura Marston-Smith, Esthetic Technician, Hair Stylist, Image Consultant , with her contact details set out below. “Seven o’clock on Saturday, yeah? Don’t bring anything, just yourselves.” I tucked the card carefully into my purse. Raymond had thrust his into his back pocket. He couldn’t take his eyes off Laura, I noticed, apparently hypnotized rather in the manner of a mongoose before a snake. She was clearly aware of this. I suspected she was used to it, looking the way she did. Blond hair and large breasts are so clichéd, so obvious. Men like Raymond, pedestrian dullards, would always be distracted by women who looked like her, having neither the wit nor the sophistication to see beyond mammaries and peroxide. Raymond tore his eyes away from Laura’s décolletage and looked at the wall clock, then, pointedly, at me. “We shall depart,” I said, “and meet again on Saturday.” Once again, there was an overwhelming onslaught of salutations and handshakes. Sammy, meanwhile, was rummaging in the bags we’d brought. He held up a packet of organic curly kale. “What the hell is this?” he said, incredulous. Zinc , I whispered to myself. Raymond hustled me out of the ward rather brusquely, I felt, and before I’d even had a chance to mention that the squid salad would need to be eaten promptly. The ambient temperature in the hospital ward was very warm. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 35 W e had increased our counseling sessions to twice a week, which had sounded excessive when Maria first proposed it, but I was finding, to my surprise, that this was barely enough. I hoped I wasn’t turning into one of those needy people, though, the kind who are always droning on about themselves and their problems. Boring. I was slowly getting used to talking about my childhood, having spent the best part of thirty years studiously avoiding the subject. That said, every time the topic of Marianne came up, I sidestepped it. Before each session, I told myself that this would be the right time to talk about her, but then, when it came to it, I just couldn’t do it. Today, Dr. Temple had asked about Marianne again of course and, when I’d shaken my head, she suggested that it might be helpful to think about my childhood as two discrete periods; before and after the fire, as a way of getting to the topic of Marianne. Yes, I said, it might be helpful. But very, very painful. “So what’s your happiest memory from before the fire?” she said. I thought hard. Several minutes went by. “I remember moments here and there, fragments, but I can’t think of a complete incident,” I said. “No, wait. A picnic, at school. It must have been the end of term, or something like that—we all were outside, at any rate, in the sunshine.” It wasn’t much to go on, and certainly not a detailed recollection. “What was it about that day that made you feel so happy, d’you think?” She spoke gently. “I felt . . . safe,” I said. “And I knew Marianne was safe too.” Yes, that was it. Marianne— don’t think too hard —that’s right, her nursery class was there that day too. We all got a packed lunch, cheese sandwiches and an apple. The sunlight, the picnic. Marianne and I had walked home together after school, as we always did, going as slowly as we could and telling each other about our day. The walk home wasn’t long. It was never long enough. She was funny, a gifted mimic. It hurt to remember how much she’d made me laugh. School had been a place of refuge. Teachers asked how you got your cuts and bruises, sent you to the nurse to have them dressed. The nit nurse combed your hair gently, so gently, said you could keep the elastics because you’d been such a good girl. School dinners. I could relax at school, knowing Marianne was at nursery, safe and warm. The little ones had their own special peg to hang their coats on. She loved it there. It wasn’t long after the picnic that Mummy found out Mrs. Rose had been asking about my bruises. We were homeschooled after that, all day every day—no more escaping from nine till four, Monday to Friday. Worse and worse, quicker and quicker, hotter and hotter, fire. I’d brought it on myself as usual, my own stupid fault, stupid Eleanor, and, worst of all, I’d dragged Marianne into it too. She’d done nothing wrong. She’d never done anything wrong. Dr. Temple pushed the tissues toward me and I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “You mentioned Marianne a lot there,” she said gently, “when you were talking about your day-to-day life.” I was ready to say it out loud. “She’s my sister,” I said. We sat for a moment and I let the words crystallize. There she was: Marianne. My little sister. My missing piece, my absent friend. The tears were coursing down my cheeks now, and Maria let me sob until I was ready to speak. “I don’t want to talk about what happened to her,” I said. “I’m not ready to do that!” Maria Temple was very calm. “Don’t worry, Eleanor. We’ll take this one step at a time. Acknowledging that Marianne is your sister is a huge thing. We’ll get to the rest, in time.” “I wish I could talk about it now,” I said, furious with myself. “But I can’t.” “Of course, Eleanor,” she said, calmly. She paused. “Do you think that’s because you can’t remember what happened to Marianne? Or is it because you don’t want to?” Her voice was very gentle. “I don’t want to,” I said slowly, quietly. I rested my elbows on my knees and put my head in my hands. “Be gentle with yourself, Eleanor,” Maria said. “You’re doing incredibly well.” I almost laughed. It certainly didn’t feel like I was doing well. Before and after the fire. Something fundamental had gone missing in the flames: Marianne. “What do I do?” I said, desperate, suddenly, to move forward, to get better, to live . “How do I fix this? How do I fix me ?” Dr. Temple put down her pen and spoke firmly but gently. “You’re doing it already, Eleanor. You’re braver and stronger than you give yourself credit for. Keep going.” When she smiled at me then, her whole face crinkled into warm lines. I dropped my head again, desperate to hide the emotion that flamed there. The lump in my throat. The pricking of more tears, the swell of warmth. I was safe here, I’d talk more about my sister soon, however hard it was going to be. “See you next week, then?” I said. When I looked up, she was still smiling. Later that day, Glen and I were watching a televisual game in which people with a fatally flawed understanding of statistics (specifically, of probability theory) selected numbered boxes, each containing a check, to be opened in turn, in the hope of unearthing a six-figure sum. They based their selections on wildly unhelpful factors such as their birth date or that of a person they cared about, their house number or, worst of all, “ a good feeling ” about a particular integer. “Humans are idiots, Glen,” I said, kissing the top of her head and then burying my face into her fur, which had grown back with such resplendence that she could now afford to shed it all over my clothes and furniture with gay abandon. She purred her assent. The doorbell rang. Glen yawned extravagantly then jumped down from my lap. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I stood before the door, thinking that I ought to get one of those spy holes installed, so that I would know who was there before I unlocked it. I found the trite theatricality of it rather dull. Who’s behind the door? Boring. I don’t like pantomimes or whodunnits—I like to have all the relevant information at my disposal at the earliest opportunity, so that I can start to formulate my response. I opened the door to find Keith, Sammy’s son, standing on the doorstep and looking nervous. Mildly surprising. I invited him in. By the time Keith was sitting on my sofa with a cup of tea, Glen had disappeared. She only really enjoyed her own company. She tolerated mine, but fundamentally she was a recluse at heart, like J. D. Salinger or the Unabomber. “Thanks for the tea, Eleanor. I can’t stay long, though,” Keith said, after we’d finishing exchanging the usual pleasantries. “My wife’s got Zumba tonight, and so I need to get back for the kids.” I nodded, wondering who Zumba was. He reached into the backpack he’d brought with him, pushed a laptop to one side and took out a parcel, something wrapped in a carrier bag—a Tesco one, I noted with approval. “We’ve been clearing out Dad’s stuff,” he said, looking directly at me and keeping his voice even, as though he was telling himself to be brave. “This isn’t much, but we wondered if you might want it, as a keepsake? I remember Raymond saying how much you’d admired it, after that time you helped Dad . . .” The words snagged in his throat and he trailed off. I unwrapped the parcel carefully. It was the beautiful red sweater, the one Sammy had been wearing on the day Raymond and I found him in the street. I could smell it, still faintly scented by its wearer with apples and whiskey and love, and I squeezed it tight, feeling the softness and the warmth against my palms, the gentle, exuberant Sammyness of it. Keith had gone to the window and was staring out at the street, an action I completely understood. When you’re struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people’s, to have to try and manage theirs too. He couldn’t deal with my tears. I remember, I remember. “Thank you,” I said. He nodded, his back still turned. Everything was there, obvious to us both, but it all remained unsaid. Sometimes that was best. After he’d gone, I put the sweater on. It was far too big, of course, but that made it even better, with more of it to go around me, anytime I needed it. Sammy’s parting gift. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 6 I had barely had time to get home and divest myself of my outer garments when the doorbell rang, ten minutes earlier than I’d been expecting. Probably trying to catch me out. When I opened it, slowly, keeping the chain on, it wasn’t the person I’d been expecting. Whoever it was, she wasn’t smiling. “Eleanor Oliphant? June Mullen, Social Work,” she said, stepping forward, her progress blocked by the door. “I was expecting Heather,” I said, peering around. “Heather’s off sick, I’m afraid; we’ve no idea when she’ll be back. I’ve taken over her cases.” I asked to see some form of official identification—I mean, you can’t be too careful. She gave a tiny sigh, and began to look in her bag. She was tall, carefully dressed in a black trouser suit and white shirt. As she bent her head, I noticed the white stripe of scalp at the parting in her shiny, dark bob. Eventually, she looked up and thrust out a security pass, with a huge council logo and a tiny photo. I scrutinized it carefully, looked from the photograph to her face and back again several times. It wasn’t a flattering shot, but I didn’t hold that against her. I’m not particularly photogenic myself. In real life, she was about my age, with smooth, unlined skin and a slash of red lipstick. “You don’t look like a social worker,” I said. She stared at me but said nothing. Not again! In every walk of life, I encounter people with underdeveloped social skills with alarming frequency. Why is it that client-facing jobs hold such allure for misanthropes? It’s a conundrum. I made a mental note to return to the topic later, unhooked the chain and invited her in. I showed her into the lounge, listening to her high heels clicking across the floor. She asked if she could have a quick tour; I’d been expecting that, of course. Heather used to do that too; I assume that it’s part of the job, checking to make sure that I’m not storing my own urine in demijohns or kidnapping magpies and sewing them into pillowcases. She complimented me unenthusiastically on the interiors as we went into the kitchen. I tried to see my home through the eyes of a visitor. I’m aware that I am very fortunate to live here, social housing in this area being virtually nonexistent these days. I couldn’t possibly afford to live in this postcode otherwise, certainly not on the pittance that Bob pays me. Social Services arranged for me to move here after I had to leave my last foster placement, the summer immediately before I started university. I’d just turned seventeen. Back then, a vulnerable young person who’d grown up in care would be allocated a council flat close to her place of study without it being too much of a problem. Imagine that. It took me a while to get around to decorating, I remember, and I finally painted the place in the summer after I graduated. I bought emulsion and brushes after cashing a check I received in the post from the University Registry, along with my degree parchment; it turned out that I’d won a small prize, set up in the name of some long-dead classicist, for the best finals performance in a paper on Virgil’s Georgics . I graduated in absentia of course; it seemed pointless to process onto the stage with no one there to applaud me. The flat hadn’t been touched since then. I suppose, trying to be objective, that it was looking rather tired. Mummy always said that an obsession with home interiors was tediously bourgeois and, worse still, that any kind of “do-it-yourself” activities were very much the preserve of the hoi polloi. It’s quite frightening to think about the ideas that I may have absorbed from Mummy. The furniture was provided by a charity that helps vulnerable young people and ex-offenders when they move into a new home: donated, mismatched things for which I was most grateful at the time, and continue to be. It was all perfectly functional, so I’d never seen the need to replace any of it. I didn’t clean the place very often, I supposed, which might contribute to what I could see might be perceived as a general air of neglect. I didn’t see the point; I was the only person who ever ate here, washed here, went to sleep and woke up here. This June Mullen was the first visitor I’d had since November last year. They come around every six months or so, the Social Work visits. She’s my first visitor this calendar year. The meter reader hasn’t been yet, although I must say I prefer it when they leave a card and I can phone in my reading. I do love call centers; it’s always so interesting to hear all the different accents and try to find out a bit about the person you’re talking to. The best part is when they ask, at the end, Is there anything else I can help you with today, Eleanor? and I can then reply, No, no thank you, you’ve completely and comprehensively resolved my problems . It’s always nice to hear my first name spoken aloud by a human voice too. Apart from Social Work and the utility companies, sometimes a representative from one church or another will call round to ask if I’ve welcomed Jesus into my life. They don’t tend to enjoy debating the concept of proselytizing, I’ve found, which is disappointing. Last year, a man came to deliver a Betterware catalog, which turned out to be a most enjoyable read. I still regret not purchasing the spidercatcher, which really was a very ingenious device. June Mullen declined my offer of a cup of tea as we returned to the living room, and after sitting down on the sofa, she pulled my file from her briefcase. It was several inches thick, held together precariously by a rubber band. Some unknown hand had written OLIPHANT, ELEANOR, in marker pen on the top right-hand corner and dated it July 1987, the year of my birth. The buff folder, tattered and stained, looked like a historical artifact. “Heather’s handwriting is atrocious,” she muttered, running a manicured fingernail down the page at the top of the pile of papers. She spoke quietly, to herself rather than to me. “Biannual visits . . . continuity of community integration . . . early identification of any additional support needs . . .” She continued to read, and then I saw her face change and she glanced at me, her expression a mixture of horror, alarm and pity. She must have got to the section about Mummy. I stared her out. She took a deep breath, looked down at the papers and then exhaled slowly as she looked up at me again. “I had no idea,” she said, her voice echoing her expression. “Do you . . . you must miss her terribly?” “Mummy?” I said. “Hardly.” “No, I meant . . .” she trailed off, looking awkward, sad, embarrassed. Ah, I knew them well—these were the holy trinity of Oliphant expressions. I shrugged, having no idea whatsoever what she was talking about. Silence sat between us, shivering with misery. After what felt like days had passed, June Mullen closed the file on her lap and gave me an overly bright smile. “So, Eleanor, how have you been getting on, generally, since Heather’s last visit, I mean?” “Well, I haven’t become aware of any additional support needs, and I’m fully integrated into the community, June,” I said. She smiled weakly. “Work going OK? I see you’re a . . .” she consulted the file again “. . . you work in an office?” “Work is fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine.” “What about home?” she said, looking round the room, her eyes lingering on my big green pouf, which is shaped like a giant frog and was part of the charity furniture donation I’d received when I first moved in. I’d grown very fond of his bulbous eyes and giant pink tongue over the years. One night, a vodka night, I’d drawn a big housefly, Musca domestica , on his tongue with a pilfered Sharpie. I’m not artistically gifted in any way, but it was, in my humble opinion, a fair rendering of the subject matter. I felt that this act had helped me to take ownership of the donated item, and created something new from something secondhand. Also, he had looked hungry. June Mullen seemed unable to take her eyes off it. “Everything’s fine here, June,” I reiterated. “Bills all paid, cordial relations with the neighbors. I’m perfectly comfortable.” She flicked through the file again, and then inhaled. I knew what she was about to say, recognizing full well the change in tone—fear, hesitancy—that always preceded the subject matter. “You’re still of the view that you don’t want to know anything else about the incident, or about your mother, I understand?” No smiling this time. “That’s right,” I said. “There’s no need—I speak to her once a week, on a Wednesday evening, regular as clockwork.” “Really? After all this time, that’s still happening? Interesting . . . Are you keen to . . . maintain this contact?” “Why wouldn’t I be?” I said, incredulous. Where on earth does the Social Work Department find these people? She deliberately allowed the silence to linger, and, although I recognized the technique, I could not stop myself from filling it, eventually. “I think Mummy would like it if I tried to find out more about . . . the incident . . . but I’ve no intention of doing so.” “No,” she said, nodding. “Well, how much you want to know about what happened is entirely up to you, isn’t it? The courts were very clear, back then, that anything like that was to be entirely at your discretion?” “That’s correct,” I said, “that’s exactly what they said.” She looked closely at me, as so many people had done before, scrutinizing my face for any traces of Mummy, enjoying some strange thrill at being this close to a blood relative of the woman the newspapers still occasionally referred to, all these years later, as the pretty face of evil . I watched her eyes run over my scars. Her mouth hung slightly open, and it became apparent that the suit and the bob were an inadequate disguise for this particular slack-jawed yokel. “I could probably dig out a photograph, if you’d like one,” I said. She blinked twice and blushed, then busied herself by grappling with the bulging file, trying to sort all the loose papers into a tidy pile. I noticed a single sheet flutter down and land under the coffee table. She hadn’t seen it make its escape, and I pondered whether or not to tell her. It was about me, after all, so wasn’t it technically mine? I’d return it at the next visit, of course—I’m not a thief. I imagined Mummy’s voice, whispering, telling me I was quite right, that social workers were busybodies, do-gooders, nosy parkers. June Mullen snapped the elastic band around the file, and the moment to mention the sheet of paper had passed. “I . . . is there anything else you’d like to discuss with me today?” she asked. “No thank you,” I said, smiling as broadly as I could. She looked rather disconcerted, perhaps even slightly frightened. I was disappointed. I’d been aiming for pleasant and friendly. “Well then, that seems to be that for the time being, Eleanor; I’ll leave you in peace,” she said. She continued talking as she packed away the file in her briefcase, adopting a breezy, casual tone. “Any plans for the weekend?” “I’m visiting someone in hospital,” I said. “Oh, that’s nice. Visits always cheer a patient up, don’t they?” “Do they?” I said. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never visited anyone in hospital before.” “But you’ve spent a lot of time in hospital yourself, of course,” she said. I stared at her. The imbalance in the extent of our knowledge of each other was manifestly unfair. Social workers should present their new clients with a fact sheet about themselves to try to redress this, I think. After all, she’d had unrestricted access to that big brown folder, the bumper book of Eleanor, two decades’ worth of information about the intimate minutiae of my life. All I knew about her was her name and her employer. “If you know about that, then you’ll be aware that the circumstances were such that the police and my legal representatives were the only visitors permitted,” I said. She gawped at me. I was reminded of those clowns’ heads in fairgrounds, the ones where you try to throw a Ping-Pong ball into their gaping mouths in order to win a goldfish. I opened the door for her, watching her eyes swivel repeatedly toward the giant customized frog. “I’ll see you in six months then, Eleanor,” she said reluctantly. “Best of luck.” I closed the door with excessive gentleness behind her. She hadn’t remarked upon Polly, I thought, which was odd. Ridiculously, I felt almost slighted on Polly’s behalf. She’d been sitting in the corner throughout our meeting, and was clearly the most eye-catching thing in the room. My beautiful Polly, prosaically described as a parrot plant, sometimes referred to as a Congo cockatoo plant, but always known to me, in her full Latinate glory, as Impatiens niamniamensis . I say it out loud, often: niamniamensis . It’s like kissing, the “m’s forcing your lips together, rolling over the consonants, your tongue poking into n’s and over the s’s.” Polly’s ancestors came all the way from Africa, originally. Well, we all did. She’s the only constant from my childhood, the only living thing that survived. She was a birthday present, but I can’t remember who gave her to me, which is strange. I was not, after all, a girl who was overwhelmed with gifts. She came with me from my childhood bedroom, survived the foster placements and children’s homes and, like me, she’s still here. I’ve looked after her, tended to her, picked her up and repotted her when she was dropped or thrown. She likes light, and she’s thirsty. Apart from that, she requires minimal care and attention, and largely looks after herself. I talk to her sometimes, I’m not ashamed to admit it. When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life. A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a potted plant, is she certifiable? I’m confident that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It’s not as though I’m expecting a reply. I’m fully aware that Polly is a houseplant. I watered her, then got on with some other household chores, thinking ahead to the moment when I could open my laptop and check whether a certain handsome singer had posted any new information. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Windows into a world of marvels. While I was loading the washing machine, my telephone rang. A visitor and a phone call! A red-letter day indeed. It was Raymond. “I rang Bob’s mobile and explained the situation to him, and he dug out your number from the personnel files for me,” he said. I mean, really. Was all of me on show in buff folders, splayed wide for anyone to flick open and do with as they wished? “What a gross abuse of my privacy, not to mention an offense against the Data Protection Act,” I said. “I’ll be speaking to Bob about that next week.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Well?” I said. “Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry. It’s just, you said you would call and you didn’t, and, well, I’m at the hospital now. I wondered, you know . . . if you wanted to bring the old guy’s stuff in? We’re at the Western Infirmary. Oh, and his name’s Sami-Tom.” “What?” I said. “No, that can’t be right, Raymond. He’s a small, fat, elderly man from Glasgow. There is absolutely no possibility of him being christened Sami-Tom .” I was beginning to develop some serious concerns about Raymond’s mental capacities. “No, no, Eleanor—it’s Sammy as in . . . short for Samuel. Thom as in T-h-o-m.” “Oh,” I said. There was another long pause. “So . . . like I said, Sammy’s in the Western. Visiting starts at seven, if you want to come in?” “I said I would, and I’m a woman of my word, Raymond. It’s a bit late now; tomorrow, early evening, would suit me best, if that’s acceptable to you?” “Sure,” he said. Another pause. “Do you want to know how he’s doing?” “Yes, naturally,” I said. The man was an extremely poor conversationalist, and was making this whole exchange terribly hard work. “It’s not good. He’s stable, but it’s serious. Just to prepare you. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.” “In that case, I can’t imagine he’ll have much use for his Irn-Bru and lorne sausage tomorrow, will he?” I asked. I heard Raymond take a breath. “Look, Eleanor, it’s entirely up to you whether you visit or not. He’s in no rush for his stuff, and I guess you should throw out anything that won’t keep. Like you say, the poor old soul isn’t going to be making a fry-up anytime soon.” “Well, quite. In fact, I imagine that fry-ups are exactly what got him into this situation in the first place,” I said. “I’ve got to go now, Eleanor,” he said, and put the phone down rather abruptly. How rude! I was on the horns of a dilemma; there seemed little point in traveling to hospital to see a comatose stranger and drop off some fizzy pop at his bedside. On the other hand, it would be interesting to experience being a hospital visitor, and there was always an outside chance that he might wake up when I was there. He had rather seemed to enjoy my monologue while we were waiting for the ambulance; well, insofar as I could tell, given that he was unconscious. As I was pondering, I picked up the fallen page from the file and turned it over. It was slightly yellowed around the edges, and smelled institutional: metallic, like filing cabinets, and grubby, touched by the unwashed skin of multiple, anonymous hands. Banknotes have a similar odor, I’ve noticed. DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK NOTE OF CASE MEETING March 15, 1999, 10 a.m. Case Meeting: OLIPHANT, ELEANOR (07/12/1987) Present: Robert Brocklehurst (Deputy Head, Children and Families, Social Work Department); Rebecca Scatcherd (Senior Case Worker, Social Work Department); Mr. and Mrs. Reed (foster carers). The meeting took place at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Reed, whose children, including Eleanor Oliphant, were at school at the time. Mr. and Mrs. Reed had requested the meeting, which was outside the regular scheduled sessions, in order to discuss their growing concerns about Eleanor. Mrs. Reed reported that Eleanor’s behavior had deteriorated since it was last raised at a case meeting some four months earlier. Mr. Brocklehurst requested examples, and Mr. and Mrs. Reed cited the following: Eleanor’s relationship with their other children had almost completely broken down, particularly with John (14), the eldest; Eleanor was insolent and rude to Mrs. Reed on a daily basis. When Mrs. Reed attempted to discipline her, for example, by sending her upstairs to the spare room to reflect on her behavior, she had become hysterical and, on one occasion, physically violent; Eleanor had, on occasion, pretended to faint in an attempt to avoid being disciplined, or else in response to being disciplined; Eleanor was terrified of the dark and kept the family awake with hysterical crying. She had been provided with a night-light and reacted with violent sobbing and tremors to any suggestion that she should give it up, being too old for it now; Eleanor often refused to eat the food which was provided for her; mealtimes had become a source of conflict at the family table; Eleanor refused point-blank to assist with simple household chores, such as lighting the fire or clearing out the ashes. Mr. and Mrs. Reed reported that they were extremely concerned about the effects of Eleanor’s behavior on their other three children (John, 14, Eliza, 9 and Georgie, 7) and, in light of these concerns and also those raised previously during scheduled case meetings, they wished to discuss the best way forward for Eleanor. Mr. and Mrs. Reed again requested more information about Eleanor’s past history, and Mr. Brocklehurst explained that this would not be possible, and indeed was not permitted. Miss Scatcherd had sought a school report from Eleanor’s head teacher in advance of the meeting, and it was noted that Eleanor was performing well, achieving excellent grades in all subjects. The head teacher commented that Eleanor was an exceptionally bright and articulate child, with an impressive vocabulary. Her class teachers had reported that she was quiet and well behaved during lessons, but did not participate in discussions, although she was an active listener. Several members of the staff had noticed that Eleanor was very withdrawn and isolated during break times, and did not appear to socialize with her peers. After lengthy discussion, and in light of the concerns raised and reemphasized by Mr. and Mrs. Reed about the impact of Eleanor’s behavior on their other children, it was agreed that the most appropriate course of action would be to remove Eleanor from the family home. Mr. and Mrs. Reed were content with this outcome, and Mr. Brocklehurst informed them that the department would be in touch in due course regarding next steps. File note: on November 12, 1999 a Children’s Panel Review of Compulsory Supervision Order concerning Eleanor Oliphant took place, at which Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Scatcherd were present (minutes attached). The Children’s Panel concluded that, on account of Eleanor’s challenging behavior in this and previous placements, foster care in a family environment was not appropriate at the current time. It was therefore agreed that Eleanor should be placed in a residential care home for the time being, and that the decision of the panel would be reviewed in twelve months. (Action: R. Scatcherd to investigate availability of places in local facilities and notify Mr. and Mrs. Reed of expected date of removal.) R. Scatcherd, 11/12/99 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 10 O f course Raymond didn’t have a car. I would guess he was in his midthirties, but there was something adolescent, not fully formed, about him. It was partly the way he dressed, of course. I had yet to see him in normal, leather footwear; he wore training shoes at all times, and seemed to own a wide range of colors and styles. I have often noticed that people who routinely wear sportswear are the least likely sort to participate in athletic activity. Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe. At secondary school, PE was simply unfathomable. We had to wear special clothes and then run endlessly around a field, occasionally being told to hold a metal tube and pass it to someone else. If we weren’t running, we were jumping, into a sandpit or over a small bar on legs. There was a special way of doing this; you couldn’t simply run and jump, you had to do some strange sort of hop and skip first. I asked why, but none of the PE teachers (most of whom, as far as I could ascertain, would struggle to tell you the time) could furnish me with an answer. All of these seemed strange activities to impose on young people with no interest in them, and indeed I’m certain that they merely served to alienate the majority of us from physical activity for life. Fortunately, I am naturally lithe and elegant of limb, and I enjoy walking, so I have always kept myself in a reasonable state of physical fitness. Mummy has a particular loathing for the overweight (“Greedy, lazy beast,” she’d hiss, if one waddled past us in the street) and I may perhaps have internalized this view to some extent. Raymond wasn’t overweight, but he was doughy and a bit paunchy. None of his muscles were visible, and I suspect he only ever used the ones in his forearms with any degree of regularity. His sartorial choices did not flatter his unprepossessing physique: slouchy denims, baggy T-shirts with childish slogans and images. He dressed like a boy rather than a man. His toilette was sloppy too, and he was usually unshaven—it was not a beard as such, but patchy stubble, which merely served to make him look unkempt. His hair, a mousy, dirty blond, was cut short and had been given minimal attention—at most, perhaps a rub with a grubby towel after washing. The overall impression was of a man who, whilst not exactly a vagrant, had certainly slept rough in a flophouse or on a stranger’s floor the previous evening. “Here’s our bus, Eleanor,” Raymond said, nudging me rudely. I had my travel pass ready but, typically, Raymond did not possess one, preferring	561,464
Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell) (Z-Library).epub	Fangirl SEVEN When Cath saw Abel’s name pop up on her phone, she thought at first that it was a text, even though the phone was obviously ringing. Abel never called her. They e-mailed. They texted—they’d texted just last night. But they never actually talked unless it was in person. “Hello?” she answered. She was waiting in her spot outside Andrews Hall, the English building. It was really too cold to be standing outside, but sometimes Nick would show up here before class, and they’d look over each other’s assignments or talk about the story they were writing together. (It was turning into another love story; Nick was the one turning it that way.) “Cath?” Abel’s voice was gravelly and familiar. “Hey,” she said, feeling warm suddenly. Surprisingly. Maybe she had missed Abel. She was still avoiding Wren—Cath hadn’t even eaten lunch at Selleck since Wren drunked at her. Maybe Cath just missed home. “Hey. How are you?” “I’m fine,” he said. “I just told you last night that I was fine.” “Well. Yeah. I know. But it’s different on the phone.” He sounded startled. “That’s exactly what Katie said.” “Who’s Katie?” “Katie is the reason I’m calling you. She’s, like, every reason I’m calling you.” Cath cocked her head. “What?” “Cath, I’ve met someone,” he said. Just like that. Like he was in some telenovela. “Katie?” “Yeah. And it’s, um, she made me realize that … well, that what you and I have isn’t real.” “What do you mean?” “I mean our relationship, Cath—it isn’t real.” Why did he keep saying her name like that? “Of course it’s real. Abel. We’ve been together for three years.” “Well, sort of.” “Not sort of,” Cath said. “Well … at any rate”—his voice sounded firm—“I met somebody else.” Cath turned to face the building and rested the top of her head against the bricks. “Katie.” “And it’s more real,” he said. “We’re just … right together, you know? We can talk about everything—she’s a coder, too. And she got a thirty-four on the ACT.” Cath got a thirty-two. “You’re breaking up with me because I’m not smart enough?” “This isn’t a breakup. It’s not like we’re really together.” “Is that what you told Katie?” “I told her we’d drifted apart.” “Yes,” Cath spat out. “Because the only time you ever call is to break up with me.” She kicked the bricks, then instantly regretted it. “Right. Like you call me all the time.” “I would if you wanted me to,” she said. “Would you?” Cath kicked the wall again. “Maybe.” Abel sighed. He sounded more exasperated than anything else—more than sad or sorry. “We haven’t really been together since junior year.” Cath wanted to argue with him, but she couldn’t think of anything convincing. But you took me to the military ball, she thought. But you taught me how to drive. “But your grandma always makes tres leches cake for my birthday.” “She makes it anyway for the bakery.” “Fine.” Cath turned and leaned back against the wall. She wished she could cry—just so that he’d have to deal with it. “So noted. Everything is noted. We’re not broken up, but we’re over.” “We’re not over,” Abel said. “We can still be friends. I’ll still read your fic—Katie reads it, too. I mean, she always has. Isn’t that a coincidence?” Cath shook her head, speechless. Then Nick rounded the corner of the building and acknowledged her the way he always did, looking her in the eye and quickly jerking up his head. Cath lifted her chin in answer. “Yeah,” she said into the phone. “Coincidence.” Nick had set his backpack on a stone planter, and he was digging through his books and notebooks. His jacket was unbuttoned, and when he leaned over like that, she could kind of see down his shirt. Sort of. A few inches of pale skin and sparse black hair. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Oh,” Abel said. “Okay. Do you still want to hang out over Thanksgiving?” “I’ve got to go,” she said, and pressed End. Cath took a slow breath. She felt lightheaded and strained, like something too big was hatching inside her ribs. She pushed her shoulders back into the bricks and looked down at the top of Nick’s head. He looked up at her and smiled crookedly, holding out a few sheets of paper. “Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it’s awesome. It’s probably awesome. Tell me it’s awesome, okay? Unless it sucks.” * * * Cath texted Wren just before Fiction-Writing started, hiding her phone behind Nick’s broad shoulders. “abel broke up with me.” “oh god. sorry. want me to come over?” “yeah. at 5?” “yeah. you OK?” “think so. end tables end.” * * * “Have you cried yet?” They were sitting on Cath’s bed, eating the last of the protein bars. “No,” Cath said, “I don’t think I’m going to.” Wren bit her lip. Literally. “Say it,” Cath said. “I don’t feel like I have to. I never thought that not saying it would be this satisfying.” “Say it.” “He wasn’t a real boyfriend! You never liked him like that! ” Wren pushed Cath so hard, she fell over. Cath laughed and sat back up, drawing her legs up into her arms. “I really thought I did, though.” “How could you think that?” Wren was laughing, too. Cath shrugged. It was Thursday night, and Wren was already dressed to go out. She was wearing pale green eyeshadow that made her eyes look more green than blue, and her lips were a shiny red. Her short hair was parted on one side and swept glamorously across her forehead. “Seriously,” Wren said, “you know what love feels like. I’ve read you describe it a thousand different ways.” Cath pulled a face. “That’s different. That’s fantasy. That’s … ‘Simon reached out for Baz, and his name felt like a magic word on his lips.’” “It’s not all fantasy…,” Wren said. Cath thought of Levi’s eyes when Reagan teased him. She thought of Nick tapping his short, even teeth with the tip of his tongue. “I can’t believe Abel told me this girl’s ACT score,” she said. “What am I supposed to do with that? Offer her a scholarship?” “Are you sad at all?” Wren reached under the bed and shook an empty protein bar box. “Yeah … I’m embarrassed that I held on for so long. That I really thought we could go on like we were. And I’m sad because it feels like now high school is finally over. Like Abel was this piece of a really happy time that I thought I could take with me.” “Do you remember when he bought you a laptop power cord for your birthday?” “That was a good gift,” Cath said, pointing at her sister. Wren grabbed her finger and pulled it down. “Did you think of him every time you booted up?” “I needed a new power cord.” Cath leaned back against the wall again, facing Wren. “He kissed me that day, on our seventeenth birthday, for the first time. Or maybe I kissed him.” “Was it charged with passion?” Cath giggled. “ No. But I remember thinking … that he made me feel safe.” She rubbed her head back against the painted cinder blocks. “I remember thinking that me and Abel would never be like Dad and Mom, that if Abel ever got tired of me, I’d survive it.” Wren was still holding on to Cath’s hand. She squeezed it. Then she laid her head against the wall, mirroring Cath. Cath was crying now. “Well, you did,” Wren said. “Survive it.” Cath laughed and pushed her fingers up behind her glasses to wipe her eyes. Wren took hold of that hand, too. “You know my stand on this,” she said. “Fire and rain,” Cath whispered. She felt Wren’s fingers circle her wrists. “We’re unbreakable.” Cath looked at Wren’s smooth brown hair and the glint of steel, the crown of gray, that circled the green in her eyes. You are, she thought. “Does this mean no more tres leches cake on our birthday?” Wren asked. “There’s something else I want to tell you,” Cath said before she could think it through. “There’s, I mean, I think there’s … this guy.” Wren raised her eyebrows. But before Cath could say anything more, they heard voices and a key in the door. Wren let go of Cath’s wrists, and the door swung open. Reagan barreled in and dropped her duffel bag on the floor. She rushed out again before Levi even made it into the room. “Hey, Cath,” he said, already smiling, “are you—?” He looked at the bed and stopped. “Levi,” Cath said, “this is my sister, Wren.” Wren held out her hand. Levi’s eyes were as wide as Cath’d ever seen them. He grinned at Wren and took her hand, shaking it. “Wren,” he said. “Such fascinating names in your family.” “Our mom didn’t know she was having twins,” Wren said. “And she didn’t feel like coming up with another name.” “Cather, Wren…” Levi looked like he’d just now discovered sliced bread. “Catherine.” Cath rolled her eyes. Wren just smiled. “Clever, right?” “Cath,” Levi said, and tried to sit next to Wren on the bed, even though there wasn’t enough room. Wren laughed and scooted toward Cath. Cath scooted, too. Reluctantly. If you give Levi an inch … “I didn’t know you had a mother,” he said. “Or a sister. What else are you hiding?” “Five cousins,” Wren said. “And a string of ill-fated hamsters, all named Simon.” Levi opened his smile up completely. “Oh, put that away,” Cath said with distaste. “I don’t want you to get charm all over my sister—what if we can’t get it out?” Reagan walked back through the open door and glanced over at Cath. She noticed Wren and shuddered. “Is this your twin?” “You knew about the twin?” Levi asked. “Wren, Reagan,” Cath said. “Hello,” Reagan said, frowning. “Don’t take any of this personally,” Cath said to Wren. “They’re both like this with everyone.” “I have to go anyway.” Wren slid cheerfully off the bed. She was wearing a pink dress and brown tights, and brown ankle boots with heels and little green buttons up the side. They were Cath’s boots, but Cath was never brave enough to wear them. “Nice meeting you, everybody,” Wren said, smiling at Reagan and Levi. “See you at lunch tomorrow,” she said to Cath. Reagan ignored her. Levi waved. As soon as the door closed, Levi popped his eyes again. Bluely. “ That’s your twin sister?” “Identical,” Reagan said, like she had a mouth full of hair. Cath nodded and sat down at her desk. “Wow.” Levi scooted down the bed so he was sitting across from her. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Cath said, “but I think it’s offensive.” “How can the fact that your identical twin sister is super hot be offensive to you?” “Because,” Cath said, still too encouraged by Wren and, weirdly, by Abel, and maybe even by Nick to let this get to her right now. “It makes me feel like the Ugly One.” “You’re not the ugly one.” Levi grinned. “You’re just the Clark Kent.” Cath started checking her e-mail. “Hey, Cath,” Levi said, kicking her chair. She could hear the teasing in his voice. “Will you warn me when you take off your glasses?” Agatha Wellbelove was the loveliest witch at Watford. Everyone knew it—every boy, every girl, all the teachers … The bats in the belfry, the snakes in the cellars … Agatha herself knew it. Which you might think would detract from her charm and her beauty. But Agatha, at fourteen, never used this knowledge to harm or hold over others. She knew she was lovely, and she shared it like a gift. Every smile from Agatha was like waking up to a perfect sunny day. Agatha knew it. And she smiled at everyone who crossed her path, as if it were the most generous thing she could offer. —from chapter 15, Simon Snow and the Selkies Four, copyright © 2007 Gemma T. Leslie Fangirl TWENTY Her dad and Wren came home on the same day. Saturday. Her dad was already talking about going back to work—even though his meds were still off, and he still seemed alternately drunk or half-asleep. Cath wondered if he’d stay on them through the weekend. Maybe it would be okay if he went off his meds. She and Wren were both home now to watch out for him. With everything that had happened, Cath wasn’t quite sure whether she and Wren were on speaking terms. She decided that they were; it made life easier. But they weren’t on sharing terms—she still hadn’t told Wren anything about Levi. Or about Nick, for that matter. And she didn’t want Wren to start talking about her adventures with their mom. Cath was sure Wren had some mother–daughter Christmas plans. At first, all Wren wanted to talk about was school. She felt good about her finals, did Cath? And she’d already bought her books for next semester. What classes was Cath taking? Did they have any together? Cath mostly listened. “Do you think we should call Grandma?” Wren asked. “About what?” “About Dad.” “Let’s wait and see how he does.” All their friends from high school were home for Christmas. Wren kept trying to get Cath to go out. “You go,” Cath would say. “I’ll stay with Dad.” “I can’t go without you. That would be weird.” It would seem weird to their high school friends to see Wren without Cath. Their college friends would think it was weird if they showed up anywhere together. “Somebody should stay with Dad,” Cath said. “Go, Cath,” their dad said after a few days of this. “I’m not going to lose control sitting here watching Iron Chef. ” Sometimes Cath went. Sometimes she stayed home and waited up for Wren. Sometimes Wren didn’t come home at all. “I don’t want you to see me shit-faced,” Wren explained when she rolled in one morning. “You make me uncomfortable.” “Oh, I make you uncomfortable,” Cath said. “That’s priceless.” Their dad went back to work after a week. The next week he started jogging before work, and that’s how Cath knew he was off his meds. Exercise was his most effective self-medication—it’s what he always did when he was trying to take control. She started coming downstairs every morning when she heard the coffeemaker beeping. To check on him, to see him off. “It’s way too cold to jog outside,” she tried to argue one morning. Her dad handed her his coffee—decaf—while he laced up his shoes. “It feels good. Come with me.” He could tell she was trying to look in his eyes, to take his mental temperature, so he took her chin and let her. “I’m fine,” he said gently. “Back on the horse, Cath.” “What’s the horse?” she sighed, watching him pull on a South High hoodie. “Jogging? Working too much?” “Living,” he said, a little too loud. “Life is the horse.” Cath would make him breakfast while he ran—and after he ate and left for work, she’d fall back to sleep on the couch. After a few days of this, it already felt like a routine. Routines were good for her dad, but he needed help sticking to them. Cath would usually wake up again when Wren came downstairs or came home. This morning, Wren walked into the house and immediately headed into the kitchen. She came back into the living room with a cold cup of coffee, licking a fork. “Did you make omelettes?” Cath rubbed her eyes and nodded. “We had leftovers from Los Portales, so I threw them in.” She sat up. “That’s decaf.” “He’s drinking decaf? That’s good, right?” “Yeah…” “Make me an omelette, Cath. You know I suck at it.” “What will you give me?” Cath asked. Wren laughed. It’s what they used to say to each other. What will you give me? “What do you want?” Wren asked. “Do you have any chapters you need betaed?” It was Cath’s turn to say something clever, but she didn’t know what to say. Because she knew that Wren didn’t mean it, about betaing her fic, and because it was pathetic how much Cath wished that she did. What if they spent the rest of Christmas break like that? Crowded around a laptop, writing the beginning of the end of Carry On, Simon together. “Nah,” Cath said finally. “I’ve got a doctoral student in Rhode Island editing all my stuff. She’s a machine.” Cath stood up and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make you an omelette; I think we’ve got some canned chili.” Wren followed. She jumped up onto the counter next to the stove and watched Cath get the milk and eggs from the refrigerator. Cath could crack them one-handed. Eggs were her thing. Breakfasts, really. She’d learned to make omelettes in junior high, watching YouTube videos. She could do poached eggs, too, and sunny side up. And scrambled, obviously. Wren was better at dinners. She’d gone through a phase in junior high when everything she made started with French onion soup mix. Meat loaf. Beef Stroganoff. Onion burgers. “All we need is soup mix,” she’d announced. “We can throw all these other spices away.” “You girls don’t have to cook,” their dad would say. But it was either cook or hope that he remembered to pick up Happy Meals on the way home from work. (There was still a toy box upstairs packed with hundreds of plastic Happy Meal toys.) Besides, if Cath made breakfast and Wren made dinner, that was at least two meals their dad wouldn’t eat at a gas station. “QuikTrip isn’t a gas station,” he’d say. “It’s an everything-you-really-need station. And their bathrooms are immaculate.” Wren leaned over the pan and watched the eggs start to bubble. Cath pushed her back, away from the fire. “This is the part I always mess up,” Wren said. “Either I burn it on the outside or it’s still raw in the middle.” “You’re too impatient,” Cath said. “No, I’m too hungry. ” Wren picked up the can opener and spun it around her finger. “Do you think we should call Grandma?” “Well, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” Cath said, “so we should probably call Grandma.” “You know what I mean.…” “He seems like he’s doing okay.” “Yeah…” Wren cranked open the can of chili and handed it to Cath. “But he’s still fragile. Any little thing could throw him off. What’ll happen when we go back to school? When you’re not here to make breakfast? He needs somebody to look out for him.” Cath watched the eggs. She was biding her time. “We still have to go shopping for Christmas dinner. Do you want turkey? Or we could do lasagna—in Grandma’s honor. Maybe lasagna tomorrow and turkey on Christmas—” “I won’t be here tomorrow night.” Wren cleared her throat. “That’s when … Laura’s family celebrates Christmas.” Cath nodded and folded the omelette in half. “You could come, you know,” Wren said. Cath snorted. When she glanced up again, Wren looked upset. “What?” Cath said. “I’m not arguing with you. I assumed you were doing something with her this week.” Wren clenched her jaw so tight, her cheeks pulsed. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this alone.” Cath held up the spatula between them. “ Making you? I’m not making you do anything. I can’t believe you’re even doing this when you know how much I hate it.” Wren shoved off the counter, shaking her head. “Oh, you hate everything. You hate change. If I didn’t drag you along behind me, you’d never get anywhere.” “Well, you’re not dragging me anywhere tomorrow,” Cath said, turning away from the stove. “Or anywhere, from now on. You are hereby released of all responsibility, re: dragging me along.” Wren folded her arms and tilted her head. The Sanctimonious One. “That’s not what I meant, Cath. I meant … We should be doing this together.” “Why this? You’re the one who keeps reminding me that we’re two separate people, that we don’t have to do all the same things all the time. So, fine. You can go have a relationship with the parent who abandoned us, and I’ll stay here and take care of the one who picked up the pieces.” “Jesus Christ”—Wren threw her hands in the air, palms out—“could you stop being so melodramatic? For just five minutes? Please?” “No.” Cath slashed the air with her spatula. “This isn’t melodrama. This is actual drama. She left us. In the most dramatic way possible. On September eleventh. ” “ After September eleventh—” “ Details. She left us. She broke Dad’s heart and maybe his brain, and she left us.” Wren’s voice dropped. “She feels terrible about it, Cath.” “Good!” Cath shouted. “So do I!” She took a step closer to her sister. “I’m probably going to be crazy for the rest of my life, thanks to her. I’m going to keep making fucked-up decisions and doing weird things that I don’t even realize are weird. People are going to feel sorry for me, and I won’t ever have any normal relationships—and it’s always going to be because I didn’t have a mother. Always. That’s the ultimate kind of broken. The kind of damage you never recover from. I hope she feels terrible. I hope she never forgives herself.” “Don’t say that.” Wren’s face was red, and there were tears in her eyes. “I’m not broken.” There weren’t any tears in Cath’s eyes. “Cracks in your foundation.” She shrugged. “Fuck that.” “Do you think I absorbed all the impact? That when Mom left, it hit my side of the car? Fuck that, Wren. She left you, too.” “But it didn’t break me. Nothing can break me unless I let it.” “Do you think Dad let it? Do you think he chose to fall apart when she left?” “Yes!” Wren was shouting now. “And I think he keeps choosing. I think you both do. You’d rather be broken than move on.” That did it. Now they were both crying, both shouting. Nobody wins until nobody wins, Cath thought. She turned back to the stove; the eggs were starting to smoke. “Dad’s sick, Wren,” she said as calmly as she could manage. She scraped the omelette out of the pan and dropped it onto a plate. “And your omelette’s burnt. And I’d rather be broken than wasted.” She set the plate on the counter. “You can tell Laura to go fuck herself. Like, to infinity and beyond. She doesn’t get to move on with me. Ever.” Cath walked away before Wren could. She went upstairs and worked on Carry On. * * * There was always a Simon Snow marathon on TV on Christmas Eve. Cath and Wren always watched it, and their dad always made microwave popcorn. They’d gone to Jacobo’s the night before for popcorn and other Christmas supplies. “If they don’t have it at the supermercado, ” their dad had said happily, “you don’t really need it.” That’s how they ended up making lasagna with spaghetti noodles, and buying tamales instead of a turkey. With the movies on, it was easy for Cath not to talk to Wren about anything important—but hard not to talk about the movies themselves. “Baz’s hair is sick,” Wren said during Simon Snow and the Selkies Four. All the actors had longer hair in this movie. Baz’s black hair was swept up into a slick pompadour that started at his knifepoint widow’s peak. “I know,” Cath said, “Simon keeps trying to punch him just so he can touch it.” “Right? The last time Simon swung at Baz, I thought he was gonna brush away an eyelash.” “Make a wish,” Cath said in her best Simon voice, “you handsome bastard.” Their dad watched Simon Snow and the Fifth Blade with them, with a notebook on his lap. “I’ve lived with you two for too long,” he said, sketching a big bowl of Gravioli. “I went to see the new X-Men movie with Kelly, and I was convinced the whole time that Professor X and Magneto were in love.” “Well, obviously,” Wren said. “Sometimes I think you’re obsessed with Basilton,” Agatha said onscreen, her eyes wide and concerned. “He’s up to something,” Simon said. “I know it.” “That girl is worse than Liza Minnelli,” their dad said. An hour into the movie, just before Simon caught Baz rendezvousing with Agatha in the Veiled Forest, Wren got a text and got up from the couch. Cath decided to use the bathroom, just in case the doorbell was about to ring. Laura wouldn’t do that, right? She wouldn’t come to the door. Cath stood in the bathroom near the door and heard her dad telling Wren to have a good time. “I’ll tell Mom you said hi,” Wren said to him. “That’s probably not necessary,” he said, cheerfully enough. Go, Dad , Cath thought. After Wren was gone, neither of them talked about her. They watched one more Simon movie and ate giant pieces of spaghetti-sagna, and her dad realized for the first time that they didn’t have a Christmas tree. “How did we forget the tree?” he asked, looking at the spot by the window seat where they usually put it. “There was a lot going on,” Cath said. “Why couldn’t Santa get out of bed on Christmas?” her dad asked, like he was setting up a joke. “I don’t know, why?” “Because he’s North bi-Polar.” “No,” Cath said, “because the bipolar bears were really bringing him down.” “Because Rudolph’s nose just seemed too bright.” “Because the chimneys make him Claus-trophobic.” “Because—” Her dad laughed. “—the highs and lows were too much for him? On the sled, get it?” “That’s terrible,” Cath said, laughing. Her dad’s eyes looked bright, but not too bright. She waited for him to go to bed before she went upstairs. Wren still wasn’t home. Cath tried to write, but closed her laptop after fifteen minutes of staring at a blank screen. She crawled under her blankets and tried not to think about Wren, tried not to picture her in Laura’s new house, with Laura’s new family. Cath tried not to think of anything at all. When she cleared her head, she was surprised to find Levi there underneath all the clutter. Levi in gods’ country. Probably having the merriest Christmas of them all. Merry. That was Levi 365 days a year. (On leap years, 366. Levi probably loved leap years. Another day, another girl to kiss.) It was a little easier to think about him now that Cath knew she’d never have him, that she’d probably never see him again. She fell asleep thinking about his dirty-blond hair and his overabundant forehead and everything else that she wasn’t quite ready to forget. * * * “Since there isn’t a tree,” their dad said, “I put your presents under this photo of us standing next to a Christmas tree in 2005. Do you know that we don’t even have any houseplants? There’s nothing alive in this house but us.” Cath looked down at the small heap of gifts and laughed. They were drinking eggnog and eating two-day-old pan dulce, sweet bread with powdery pink icing. The pan dulce came from Abel’s bakery. They’d stopped there after the supermercado. Cath had stayed in the car; she figured it wasn’t worth the awkwardness. It’d been months since she stopped returning Abel’s occasional texts, and at least a month since he’d stopped sending them. “Abel’s grandma hates my hair,” Wren said when she got back into the car. “ ¡Qué pena! ¡Qué lástima! ¡Niño!” “Did you get the tres leches cake?” Cath asked. “They were out.” “Qué lástima.” Normally, Cath would have a present from Abel and one from his family under the tree. The pile of presents this year was especially thin. Mostly envelopes. Cath gave Wren a pair of Ecuadorian mittens that she’d bought outside of the Union. “It’s alpaca,” she said. “Warmer than wool. And hypoallergenic.” “Thanks,” Wren said, smoothing out the mittens in her lap. “So I want my gloves back,” Cath said. Wren gave Cath two T-shirts she’d bought online. They were cute and would probably be flattering, but this was the first time in ten years that Wren hadn’t given her something to do with Simon Snow. It made Cath feel tearful suddenly, and defensive. “Thanks,” she said, folding the shirts back up. “These are really cool.” iTunes gift certificates from their dad. Bookstore gift certificates from their grandma. Aunt Lynn had sent them underwear and socks, just to be funny. After their dad opened his gifts (everybody gave him clothes), there was still a small, silver box under the Christmas tree photo. Cath reached for it. There was a fancy tag hanging by a burgundy ribbon— Cather, it said in showy, black script. For a second Cath thought it was from Levi. (“Cather,” she could hear him say, everything about his voice smiling.) She untied the ribbon and opened the box. There was a necklace inside. An emerald, her birthstone. She looked up at Wren and saw a matching pendant hanging from her neck. Cath dropped the box and stood up, moving quickly, clumsily toward the stairs. “Cath,” Wren called after her, “let me explain—” Cath shook her head and ran the rest of the way to her room. * * * Cath tried to picture her mom. The person who had given her this necklace. Wren said she was remarried now and lived in a big house in the suburbs. She had stepkids, too. Grown ones. In Cath’s head, Laura was still young. Too young , everyone always said, to have two big girls. That always made their mom smile. When they were little and their mom and dad would fight, Wren and Cath worried their parents were going to get divorced and split them up, just like in The Parent Trap. “I’ll go with Dad,” Wren would say. “He needs more help.” Cath would think about living alone with her dad, spacey and wild, or alone with her mom, chilly and impatient. “No,” she said, “I’ll go with Dad. He likes me more than Mom does.” “He likes both of us more than Mom does,” Wren argued. “Those can’t be yours,” people would say, “you’re too young to have such grown-up girls.” “I feel too young,” their mom would reply. “Then we’ll both stay with Dad,” Cath said. “That’s not how divorce works, dummy.” When their mom left without either of them, in a way it was a relief. If Cath had to choose between everyone, she’d choose Wren. * * * Their bedroom door didn’t have a lock, so Cath sat against it. But nobody came up the stairs. She sat on her hands and cried like a little kid. Too much crying , she thought. Too many kinds. She was tired of being the one who cried. “You’re the most powerful magician in a hundred ages.” The Humdrum’s face, Simon’s own boyhood face, looked dull and tired. Nothing glinted in its blue eyes.… “Do you think that much power comes without sacrifice? Did you think you could become you without leaving something, without leaving me, behind?” —from chapter 23, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie Fangirl THIRTY-SIX Cath had been writing for four hours, and when she heard someone knocking at her door, it felt like she was standing at the bottom of a lake, looking up at the sun. It was Levi. “Hey,” she said, putting on her glasses. “Why didn’t you text? I would have come down.” “I did,” he said, kissing her forehead. She took her phone out of her pocket. She’d missed two texts and a call. Her ringer was turned off. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Let me just pack up.” Levi fell onto her bed and watched. Seeing him there, leaning against the wall, brought back so many memories and so much tenderness, she climbed onto the bed and started kissing his face all over. He grinned and draped his long arms around her. “Do you have much writing to do?” “Yeah,” she said, rubbing her chin into his. “‘Miles to go before I sleep.’” “Have you shown anything to your professor yet?” Cath had just started to bite his chin and she pulled away, looking at the teeth marks. “What do you mean?” “Have you been turning stuff in piece by piece, or are you waiting until the whole story is done?” “I’m … I’ve been working on Carry On. ” “No, I know,” he said, smiling and smoothing his hand over her hair. “But I was wondering about your Fiction-Writing project. I want you to read it to me when you’re done.” Cath sat back on the bed. Levi’s hands didn’t leave her head and her hip. “I’m … I’m not doing that,” she said. “You don’t want to read it to me? Is it too personal or something?” “No. I’m not. I’m just … I’m not going to do it.” Levi’s smile faded. He still didn’t understand. “I’m not writing it,” she said. “It was a mistake to say that I would.” His hands tightened on her. “No, it wasn’t. What do you mean? You haven’t started?” Cath sat back farther, stepping off the bed and going to pack her laptop. “I was wrong when I told my professor I could do it—I can’t. I don’t have an idea, and it’s just too much. I’m not sure I’m even going to finish Carry On. ” “Of course you’ll finish.” She looked up at him sharply. “I’ve only got nine days left.” Levi still seemed confused. And maybe a little hurt. “You’ve got twelve days left until the end of the semester. And about fourteen before I go back to Arnold, but as far as I can tell, you’ve got the rest of your life to finish Carry On. ” Cath felt her face go hard. “You don’t understand,” she said. “At all.” “So explain it to me.” “ Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance comes out in nine days. ” Levi shrugged. “So?” “So I’ve been working two years toward this.” “Toward finishing Carry On ?” “Yes. And I have to finish before the series ends.” “Why? Did Gemma Leslie challenge you to a race?” Cath jammed the knotted power cord into her bag. “You don’t understand.” Levi sighed harshly and ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. I don’t.” Cath’s hands were trembling as she pushed them through the arms of her jacket, a thick cable-knit sweater lined with fleece. “I don’t understand how you could throw this class away twice, ” Levi said, frowning and flustered. “I have to fight for every grade I get—I’d kill for a second chance at most of my classes. And you’re just walking away from this assignment because you don’t feel like it, because you’ve got this arbitrary deadline, and it’s all you can see.” “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said. “You don’t want to talk at all.” “You’re right. I don’t have time right now to argue with you.” It was the wrong thing to say. Levi looked up at her, stricken. Cath fumbled for something else to say, but everything in her reach was wrong. “Maybe I should just stay here tonight.” His eyes swept over her, more coolly than she would have thought possible. There were two deep lines between his eyebrows. “Right,” he said, standing up. “See you in nine days.” He was out the door before she could stutter out, “What?” Cath wasn’t trying to pick a nine-day fight; she’d just wanted to escape from tonight—she didn’t have time to feel guilty about Fiction-Writing. Even thinking about that stupid story made Cath feel clawed up and open. She lay down on her bed and started to cry. Her pillow didn’t smell like Levi. It didn’t smell like either of them. He didn’t understand. When the last Simon Snow book came out, it was over. Everything. All these years of imagining and reimagining. Gemma T. Leslie would get the last word, and that would be it; everything Cath had built in the last two years would become alternate universe. Officially noncompliant … The thought made her giggle wetly, pathetically, into her pillow. As if beating GTL to the punch made any difference. As if Cath could actually make Baz and Simon live happily ever after just by saying it was so. Sorry, Gemma, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but I think we can all agree that it was supposed to end like this. It wasn’t a race. Gemma T. Leslie didn’t even know Cath existed. Thank God. And yet … when Cath closed her eyes, all she could see was Baz and Simon. All she could hear was them talking in her head. They were hers, the way they’d always been hers. They loved each other because she believed they did. They needed her to fix everything for them. They needed her to carry them through. Baz and Simon in her head. Levi in her stomach. Levi somewhere, gone. In nine days, it would be over. In twelve days, Cath wouldn’t be a freshman anymore. And in fourteen … God, she was an idiot. Was she always going to be this stupid? Her whole miserable life? Cath cried until it felt pointless, then stumbled off the bed to get a drink of water. When she opened her door, Levi was sitting in the hallway, his legs bent in front of him, hunched forward on his knees. He looked up when she stepped out. “I’m such an idiot,” he said. Cath fell between his knees and hugged him. “I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “I can’t even go nine hours without seeing you.” “No, you’re right,” Cath said. “I’ve been acting crazy. This whole thing is crazy. It isn’t even real.” “That’s not what I meant—it is real. You have to finish.” “Yeah,” she said, kissing his chin, trying to remember where she’d left off. “But not today. You were right. There’s time. They’ll wait for me.” She pushed her hands inside his jacket. He held her by her shoulders. “You do what you have to,” he said. “Just let me be there. For the next two weeks, okay?” She nodded. Fourteen days. With Levi. And then curtains closed on this year. “Maybe fighting him isn’t the answer,” Simon said. “What?” Baz was leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. His hair was hanging in slimy tendrils, and his face was smeared with muck and blood. Simon probably looked even worse. “You’re not giving up now,” Baz said, reaching for Simon’s chest and pulling him forward, fiercely, by the buckled straps of his cape. “I won’t let you.” “I’m not giving up,” Simon said. “I just … Maybe fighting isn’t the answer. It wasn’t the answer with you.” Baz arched an elegant brow. “Are you going to snog the Humdrum—is that your plan? Because he’s eleven. And he looks just like you. That’s both vain and deviant, Snow, even for you.” Simon managed a laugh and raised a hand to the back of Baz’s neck, holding him firmly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m done fighting, Baz. If we go on like this, there won’t be anything left to fight for.” —from Carry On, Simon, posted April 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath Fangirl SIXTEEN Cath didn’t wake up when the door swung open. But she jumped when it slammed closed. That’s when she felt Levi sprawled out beneath her, the warm scrape of his chin against her forehead. Then she woke up. Reagan was standing at the end of Cath’s bed, staring at them. She was still wearing last night’s jeans, and her silvery blue eyeshadow had drifted onto her cheeks. Cath sat up. And Levi sat up. Groggily. And Cath felt her stomach barreling up into her throat. Levi reached for Cath’s phone and looked at it. “Shit,” he said. “I’m two hours late for work.” He was up then and putting on his coat. “Fell asleep reading,” he said, half to Reagan, half to the floor. “Reading,” Reagan said, looking at Cath. “Later,” Levi said, more to the floor than to either of them. And then he was gone. And Reagan was still standing at the end of Cath’s bed. Cath’s eyes were sticky and sore, and suddenly full of tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling it. Feeling it in her stomach and in every sore muscle between her shoulders. “Oh my God.” “Don’t,” Reagan said. She was obviously furious. “I … I’m just so sorry.” “ Don’t. Do not apologize.” Cath crossed her legs and hunched over, holding her face. “But I knew he was your boyfriend.” Cath was crying now. Even though it would probably just make Reagan more angry. “He’s not my boyfriend,” Reagan said, very nearly shouting. “Not anymore. Not … for a long time, actually. So just, don’t.” Reagan inhaled loudly, then let it out. “I just didn’t expect this to happen,” she said. “And, if it did happen, I didn’t expect it to bother me. I just … it’s Levi. And Levi always likes me best.” He’s not her boyfriend? “He still likes you best,” Cath said, trying not to whimper. “Don’t be an idiot, Cather.” Reagan’s voice was serrated. “I mean, I know that you are. About this. But try not to be an idiot right this moment.” “I’m sorry…,” Cath said, trying and failing to look up at her roommate. “I still don’t know why I did it. I swear I’m not that kind of girl.” Reagan finally turned away. She dropped her bag on the bed and grabbed her towel. “What kind of girl is that, Cath? The girl kind?… I’m gonna take a shower. When I come back, I’ll be over this.” * * * And when she came back, she was. Cath had curled up on her bed and let herself cry like she hadn’t all Thanksgiving weekend. She found The Outsiders wedged between the bed and the wall, and threw it on the floor. Reagan saw the book when she came back to the room. She was wearing yoga pants and a tight gray hoodie, and square brown glasses instead of contacts. “Oh, fuck,” she said, picking up the book. “I was supposed to help him study.” She looked over at Cath. “Were you actually just reading?” “Not just,” Cath said, her voice a hiccupy wheeze. “Stop crying,” Reagan said. “I mean it.” Cath closed her eyes and rolled toward the wall. Reagan sat at the end of her own bed. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said solemnly. “And I knew he liked you—he was here constantly. I just didn’t know that you liked him back.” “I thought he was here constantly because he was your boyfriend,” Cath said. “I didn’t want to like him back. I tried to be mean to him.” “I thought you were just mean,” Reagan said. “I liked that about you.” Cath laughed and rubbed her eyes for the five hundredth time in twelve hours. She felt like she had pink eye. “I’m over it,” Reagan said. “I was just surprised.” “You can’t be over it,” Cath said, sitting up and leaning against the wall. “Even if I didn’t kiss your boyfriend, I thought I was kissing your boyfriend. That’s how I was going to repay you for all the nice things you’ve done for me.” “Wow…,” Reagan said, “when you put it that way, it is pretty fucked up.” Cath nodded miserably. “So why’d you do it?” Cath thought of Levi’s warmth against her arm last night. And his ten thousand smiles. And his forty-acre forehead. She closed her eyes, then pressed the heels of her hands into them. “I just really, really wanted to.” Reagan sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I’m hungry, and I have to finish reading The Outsiders. Levi likes you, you like him—I’m over it. It could get weird around here real fast if you start dating my high school boyfriend, but there’s no turning back, you know?” Cath didn’t answer. Reagan kept talking. “If he were still my boyfriend, we’d have to throw down. But he’s not. So let’s go have lunch, okay?” Cath looked up at Reagan. And nodded her head. * * * Cath had already missed her morning classes. Including Fiction-Writing. She thought about Nick, and right at that moment it was like thinking about almost anybody. Reagan was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. “Okay,” she said, stabbing her spoon at Cath, “now what?” “Now what, what?” Cath said, her mouth full of grilled cheese. “Now what with Levi?” Cath swallowed. “Nothing. I don’t know. Do I have to know what?” “Do you want my help with this?” Cath looked at Reagan. Even without her makeup and hair, the girl was terrifying. There was just no fear in her. No hesitation. Talking to Reagan was like standing in front of an oncoming train. “I don’t know what this is,” Cath said. She clenched her fists in her lap and forced herself to keep talking. “I feel like … what happened last night was just an aberration. Like it could only have happened in the middle of the night, when he and I were both really tired. Because if it had been daylight, we would have seen how inappropriate it was—” “I already told you,” Reagan said, “he’s not my boyfriend.” “It’s not just that.” Cath turned her face toward the wall of windows, then back at Reagan, earnestly. “It was one thing when I had a crush on him and he was totally unattainable. But I don’t think I could actually be with someone like Levi. It would be like interspecies dating.” Reagan let her spoon drop sloppily into her cereal. “What’s wrong with Levi?” “Nothing,” Cath said. “He’s just … not like me.” “You mean, smart?” “Levi’s really smart,” Cath said defensively. “I know,” Reagan said, just as defensively. “He’s different, ” Cath said. “He’s older. He smokes. And he drinks. And he’s probably had sex. I mean, he looks like he has.” Reagan raised her eyebrows like Cath was talking crazy. And Cath thought—not for the first time, but for the first time since last night—that Levi had probably had sex with Reagan. “And he likes to be outside,” Cath said, just to change the subject. “And he likes animals. We don’t have anything in common.” “You’re making him sound like he’s some rowdy mountain man who, like, smokes cigars and has sex with prostitutes.” Cath laughed, despite herself. “Like a dangerous French fur trapper.” “He’s just a guy,” Reagan said. “Of course he’s different from you. You’re never going to find a guy who’s exactly like you—first of all, because that guy never leaves his dorm room.…” “Guys like Levi don’t date girls like me.” “Again—the girl kind?” “Guys like Levi date girls like you.” “And what does that mean?” Reagan asked, tilting her head. “Normal,” Cath said. “Pretty.” Reagan rolled her eyes. “No,” Cath said, “seriously. Look at you. You’ve got your shit together, you’re not scared of anything. I’m scared of everything. And I’m crazy. Like maybe you think I’m a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, I’m a complete disaster.” Reagan rolled her eyes again. Cath made a mental note to stop rolling her eyes at people. “What would we do together?” Cath asked. “He’d want to go to the bar, and I’d want to stay home and write fanfiction.” “I’m not going to talk you into this,” Reagan said, “especially if you’re going to be stupid. But I will say this: You’re being stupid. He already likes you. He even likes your creepy fanfiction, he won’t stop talking about it. Levi’s just a guy. A really, really good—maybe even the best —guy, and nobody’s saying you have to marry him. So stop making everything so hard, Cath. You kissed him, right? The only question is, do you want to kiss him again?” Cath clenched her fists until her fingernails bit into her palms. Reagan started stacking the empty dishes on her tray. “Why did you break up?” Cath blurted. “I kept cheating on him,” Reagan said flatly. “I’m a pretty good friend, but I’m a shitty girlfriend.” Cath picked up her tray and followed Reagan to the trash. * * * She didn’t see Levi that night. He worked Wednesday nights. That’s when Cath realized that she knew Levi’s work schedule. But he texted her about a party Thursday at his house. “party? thursday? my house?” Cath didn’t text him back—she tried to. She kept starting messages and deleting them. She almost sent back just a smiley-face emoticon. Reagan got home from work late that night and went straight to bed. Cath was at her desk, writing. “Levi killed our Outsiders quiz,” Reagan said, stifling a yawn. Cath smiled down at her laptop. “Did you talk about me?” “No. I didn’t think you’d want me to. I told you, I’m a pretty good friend.” “Yeah, but you’re more Levi’s friend than mine.” “Bros before hos,” Reagan said. Before she left the room the next morning, Reagan asked Cath if she wanted to go to Levi’s party. “I don’t think so,” Cath said. “I have class Friday morning at eight thirty.” “Who registers for a class that meets Friday morning at eight thirty?” Cath shrugged. She didn’t want to go to Levi’s party. Even though she liked him, she didn’t like parties. And she didn’t want the first time she saw him after what had happened to be at a party. With party people. With any people. * * * Cath was pretty sure she was the only person in Pound Hall tonight. She tried to tell herself that it was kind of cool to have a twelve-story building to herself. Like being trapped in the library overnight. This is why I can’t be with Levi. Because I’m the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight—and Levi can’t even read. Cath immediately felt bad for thinking that. Levi could read. (Sort of.) She’d always thought that either people could read or they couldn’t. Not this in-between thing that Levi had, where his brain could catch the words but couldn’t hold on to them. Like reading was one of those rip-off claw games they had at the bowling alley. But Levi clearly wasn’t dumb. He remembered everything. He could quote extensively from the Simon Snow movies, and he knew everything there was to know about bison and piping plovers.… And why was she even arguing this point with herself? It’s not like she was going to send Abel Levi’s ACT scores. She should have texted him back. (Levi, not Abel.) But that would have been engaging in this situation. Like moving a chess piece. Or kicking off from the ground on a teeter-totter. Better to leave Levi up in the air for a day or two than to end up stuck there by herself.… The fact that she was thinking about whatever this was in terms of playground equipment showed that she wasn’t ready for it. For him. Levi was an adult. He had a truck. And facial hair. And he’d slept with Reagan; she’d practically admitted it. Cath didn’t want to look at a guy and picture the people he’d slept with.… Which had never been an issue with Abel. Nothing was ever an issue with Abel. Because, she could hear Wren screaming, you didn’t like him! Cath liked Levi. A lot. She liked looking at him. She liked listening to him—though sometimes she hated listening to him talk to other people. She hated the way he passed out smiles to everyone he met like it didn’t cost him anything, like he’d never run out. He made everything look so easy.… Even standing. You didn’t realize how much work everyone else put into holding themselves upright until you saw Levi leaning against a wall. He looked like he was leaning on something even when he wasn’t. He made standing look like vertical lying down. Thinking about Levi’s lazy hips and loose shoulders just dragged Cath’s memory back to her bed. She’d spent the night with a boy. Slept with him. And never mind that that’s all they’d done, because it was still a huge deal. She wished she could talk to Wren about this.… Fuck Wren. No … Damn her. Never mind her. All Wren did lately was complicate Cath’s world. Cath had slept with a boy. With a guy. And it was awesome. Warm. And tangly. What would have happened if they’d woken up any other way? Without Reagan barging in. Would Levi have kissed her again? Or would he still have rushed off with nothing more than a “later”? Later … Cath stared at her laptop. She’d been working on the same paragraph for two hours. It was a love scene (a pretty mild one), and she kept losing track of where Baz and Simon’s hands were supposed to be. It was confusing sometimes with all the he s and the him s, and she’d been staring at this paragraph for so long, she was starting to feel like she’d written every sentence before. Maybe she had. She s	610,142
Radio Silence (Alice Oseman) (Z-Library).epub	Radio Silence POWER STATION “I don’t know whether you’re aware,” I said, as we walked down the road in the complete opposite direction to Aled’s house, “but this is not the way to Aled’s house.” “You’re so amazingly intelligent,” Daniel said. “Did you get your four A’s?” “Yep. Did you?” “Yup.” “Nice.” Then I shook my head. “So where are we going? I’m not exactly dressed to go out.” Daniel was walking a couple of steps ahead. He spun round and started walking backwards, looking at me, his face brought out of the dark by the streetlamps. “We thought we’d camp in the field,” he said. “Is that legal?” “Probably not.” “Aw, you’re breaking a rule! I’m so proud.” He just turned away from me. Hilarious. “I haven’t seen you and Aled hanging out much this summer,” I said. He didn’t look at me. “So?” “I don’t know. Have you been on holiday?” He laughed. “I wish.” “You said you hadn’t seen much of him.” “When did I say that?” “Erm.” I was getting the sense that I was venturing into awkward territory. “You know, before my history exam, you came to talk to me …” “Oh. No, we’ve just been busy. I work, like, five days a week at Frankie & Benny’s in town. And you know he’s not very good at replying to texts.” He always replied to my texts, but I didn’t say that to Daniel. “How’d you two get so close anyway?” he said with a frown. “I rescued him from a club,” I said, and Daniel didn’t say anything. He looked away and stuffed his hands into his pockets. The sky wasn’t quite black yet, it was still sort of dark blue and hazy, but you could see the moon and a few stars, which was nice, I guess. We climbed over the stile and into the empty field next to the village and I was struck by how quiet it was. There wasn’t any wind, any cars, any anything . I felt like I hadn’t been anywhere so quiet my whole life, even though I’ve lived here, in the countryside, since I was born. In a patch of dry earth in the middle of the field was a small campfire and next to that was a large tent, and next to that was Aled Last, his whole body glowing gold from the fire. He was wearing his actual school uniform, which fitted him, because he’d worn it within the past two months, but it still looked sort of odd on him, probably because I was used to seeing him dressed in interestingly-coloured shorts and oversized knitwear. How was he eighteen? How could anyone I knew possibly be eighteen years old? I ran past Daniel and his ankle swingers, ran through the grass, and fell on top of Aled. An hour later and we were three quarters of the way through a bottle of vodka, which did not bode well for me because alcohol just makes me fall asleep. Aled had opened his present – it was a radio shaped like a skyscraper. The windows lit up in time with the audio that was playing. He told me that it was the best thing he’d ever seen in his whole life, which was probably a lie, but I was glad he liked it. It was battery-operated so we put Radio 1 on in the background and there was some kind of electronic-themed show going on, lots of mellow synth and low bass. The lights of the town and the power station flickered in the distance. Daniel took one look at it and then said, “Jesus fucking Christ. You know about Universe City , don’t you.” Drunk Daniel was only more sarcastic and more sweary and more patronising than Sober Daniel, but somehow that made it easier to laugh at him rather than punch him in the face. “Er,” I said. “Er,” Aled said. “Don’t er me, I can see right through you both.” Daniel threw his head back and laughed. “Well, it was only a matter of time before someone worked it out.” He leaned towards me. “How long’ve you been listening? Were you there when I used to play bass in the theme tune?” I laughed. “You play bass?” “Not any more.” Aled interrupted before I could say anything else. For the last half an hour he’d been setting a stick alight and making shapes with the fire in the air like a sparkler. “She’s the new artist.” Daniel frowned. “Artist?” “Yeah, she made the gif for last week’s episode.” “Oh.” Daniel’s voice quietened a little. “I haven’t listened to last week’s yet.” Aled grinned. “You’re such a fake fan.” “Shut up, I’m obviously a fan.” “Fake fan.” “I was the first person to even subscribe .” “Fake fan.” Daniel chucked a handful of dirt at Aled and Aled laughed and rolled over to avoid it. This whole evening was silly. I didn’t really understand why we were hanging out. Aled wasn’t in my year group; he didn’t go to my school. Daniel didn’t even like me. What sort of a friendship group is two boys and one girl? Daniel and Aled started talking about their results. “I’m just … really relieved,” Daniel was saying. “Like, getting into a good uni to do biology … I’ve wanted it for, like, six years. I’d hate myself if I messed it up now.” “I’m really pleased for you,” said Aled, who was lying on his side, still poking a stick into the fire. “You must be really pleased for you though.” “Haha, yeah, I don’t know,” said Aled, which I didn’t really get. Why wouldn’t he be pleased about his results? “It’s good. I just don’t think I care about anything that much.” “You care about Universe City ,” I said. Aled glanced at me. “Ah, yeah. Okay. That’s true.” I could feel myself getting tired and my eyes shutting. Carys popped into my head – we’d got drunk like this on the same day two years ago, results night, at that house party. That had been a bad night. When exactly was I going to bring Carys up with Aled? “Well, I saw a lot of people crying about their grades this morning, so I think you should be celebrating,” said Daniel. He passed the vodka and Coke bottles to Aled. “Drink up, birthday boy.” I knew I’d reach the next level of drunk soon where I’d say stuff I’d regret later. Maybe I’d fall asleep before then, but maybe I wouldn’t. I ripped some grass out of the ground and started scattering it into the fire. Radio Silence Radio Silence POWER Carys never lied about anything. She also never told the full truth, which felt worse, somehow. Not that I realised that until she was long gone. She dominated our train conversations with stories about her life. About arguments with her mum and her school friends and teachers. About terrible essays she’d written and exams she’d failed. About sneaking out to parties and getting drunk and all the gossip in her year group. She was everything I wasn’t – she was drama, emotion, intrigue, power. I was nothing. Nothing happened to me. But she never did tell the full truth and I didn’t notice. I was so dazed by the way she shone so brightly, her incredible stories and her platinum hair, that I didn’t find it weird that she and Aled arrived at the train station separately in the mornings and he walked twenty metres behind us in the afternoons. I didn’t find it weird that they never spoke nor sat together. I didn’t question anything. I wasn’t paying attention. I was blinded, and I failed, and I’m never letting that happen again. Radio Silence WINTER OLYMPIAN “Frances, when’re your Cambridge interviews?” I was walking past the school hall’s backstage door when Daniel spoke to me for the first time since September. He was standing next to the stage curtain with a Winter Olympian who had come to give a speech in front of Years 7, 8 and 9. Daniel obviously had good reason to be angry with me, and since I wasn’t head girl any more I had no reason to even be around him. So I hadn’t been surprised when he started refusing to make eye contact with me in the school corridors. I didn’t have anywhere urgent to be, so I walked into the backstage area. He hadn’t even asked his question in a particularly rude manner. “December the tenth,” I said. It was mid-November so I had a few weeks left. I hadn’t read everything I’d said I’d read on my personal statement yet. I just hadn’t had time to prepare for the interviews and keep up with my coursework at the same time. “Ah,” he said. “Same.” He looked slightly different from the last time I’d spoken to him. I thought he’d maybe let his hair grow a little longer, but I couldn’t really tell, since he kept it swept back into a quiff every day. “How’s it going?” I asked. “You ready? Know your stuff about … like … bacteria and … skeletons and stuff?” “Bacteria and skeletons …” “What? I don’t know what you do in biology.” “You did it at GCSE though.” I folded my arms. “The nucleus is the powerhouse of the cell. The cell membrane – what does the cell membrane do? I hope you know what the cell membrane does. They might ask you.” “They’re probably not going to ask me what the cell membrane does.” “What are they going to ask you?” He gave me a long look. “Nothing that you would understand.” “Good thing I’m not applying to do biology then, isn’t it.” “Yup.” I suddenly noticed that Raine was backstage with us. She was currently interrogating the Winter Olympian, and I felt a bit sorry for him – he could only have been a couple of years older than us and he seemed kind of nerdy and awkward for an athlete, super tall with massive glasses and jeans that were slightly too short for him. He looked a little panicked at the fact that he had to talk for twenty minutes to Years 7 to 9, and Raine was doing nothing to help. Apparently he used to go to the grammar school across town, Aled’s school, and now he was here to talk about his success and achievement and stuff. Daniel saw me looking at her, and he rolled his eyes. “She wanted to meet him.” “Oh.” “Anyway, here’s the thing,” Daniel continued, looking me in the eye. “I need a lift to Cambridge.” “You need a lift …?” “Yeah. My parents are working and I don’t have the money to get to Cambridge by myself.” “Can’t your parents give you money for the train?” He sort of ground his teeth like he really didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “My parents don’t give me money for things,” he said. “And I had to quit my job because of schoolwork.” “They won’t even give you money for Cambridge ?” “They don’t really see it as a very big deal.” He shook his head slightly. “They don’t even think I need to go to university. My dad— My dad just wants me to come work for him … he runs this, like, electronics shop …” His voice faded away. I stared at him. And I suddenly felt really bloody sorry for him. “I was gonna get the train there,” I said. “My mum’s working.” Daniel nodded and looked down. “Ah, okay. Yeah. That’s all right.” Raine leaned over from the chair she was straddling. The Olympian guy looked sort of relieved. “I’ll drive you guys,” she said. “If you want.” “What?” I said. “What?” Daniel said. “I’ll drive you.” Raine grinned broadly and rested her chin in her hand. “To Cambridge.” “You’ll have school,” said Daniel, very quickly. “So?” “So … you’re just gonna skip?” She shrugged. “I’ll fake an absence note. Works every time.” Daniel looked extremely conflicted. It was still very weird to me that Daniel had drunkenly poured out his heart to a girl he has absolutely nothing in common with. Then again, maybe that was why he did it. “Okay,” he said, trying and failing to mask the irritated tone of his voice. “Yeah. That’ll be great.” “Yeah, thanks,” I said. “That’s really kind.” There was an awkward pause for a couple of seconds, and then a teacher gestured from the other side of the stage for Daniel to come on and introduce the Olympian guy, which he did, and then the Winter Olympian walked on to the stage and Daniel walked off. Daniel and I didn’t say anything to each other while the guy was talking. To be honest, he wasn’t a very good public speaker – he kept losing the point of his talk. I think he was supposed to be inspiring people to work hard in school and explain about sports-related careers and he seemed to be fairly confident in what he was saying, but he kept throwing things in like “I didn’t really get along well with academia,” and “I felt a bit alienated with school,” and “I just think we don’t all have to have our lives laid out by the grades that we get in our exams.” After the guy finished, Daniel and I smiled and thanked him for coming and all that stuff, and he asked if it was okay and we obviously said it was. He was then whisked off by a teacher, and Daniel and I started making our way back to the common room. As we were walking through the hallways, I asked him, “Have you been seeing Aled much?” And he looked at me and said, “You know about us, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, he doesn’t talk to me any more.” “Why?” “I don’t know. He just stopped texting me one day.” “For no reason?” He paused and almost seemed to sway as he walked, as if the weight of this whole thing was about to crush him into the ground. “We had an argument on his birthday.” “About what?” I don’t know why I was surprised. People move on quicker than I can comprehend. People forget you within days, they take new pictures to put on Facebook and they don’t read your messages. They keep on moving forward and shove you to the side because you make more mistakes than you should. Maybe that was fair. Who was I to judge, really? He said, “It doesn’t matter.” I said, “He doesn’t talk to me either.” And neither of us said anything after that. Radio Silence WEIRD I walked back into my room to find Aled crouching next to the bed, holding a coat hanger like it was a machete. As I entered he spun round to face me, his eyes all wild and his hair – too long – sticking out in all directions from where he’d slept. I guess he looked sort of … well … petrified. Fair enough. It took me a few seconds to decide what to say. “Were you … planning to decapitate me with a coat hanger?” He blinked once, and then lowered his weapon and stood up straight, his terror subsiding a little. I gave him a once-over – of course, he was still in the same outfit as last night, Daniel’s burgundy jumper, and dark jeans, but for the first time I noticed that he was wearing these really excellent lime green plimsolls with fluorescent purple laces and I really wanted to ask him where he’d got them. “Oh. Frances Janvier,” he said. And he still pronounced my surname correctly. Then he let a long breath out and sat down on my bed. It was like I was seeing an entirely different person. Now that I knew he was the Creator, the voice of Radio Silence, he didn’t even look like Aled Last any more – not the Aled Last I knew. Not Daniel Jun’s silent shadow, not the boy who didn’t even seem to have a personality at all. Not the boy who just smiled and agreed with you whatever you said to him and generally, to be honest, seemed to be the most boring, basic individual in the known universe. He was Radio Silence . He’d been making a YouTube show for over two years . A beautiful, limitless, explosion of a story. I was on the verge of having a fangirl meltdown, for Christ’s sake. How embarrassing is that? “Jesus Christ,” he said. His voice was so quiet now he was sober, it was like he wasn’t quite used to normal conversation or something, like he had to force himself to speak out loud. “I thought I’d been kidnapped.” Then he put his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. He stayed like that for quite a while. I stayed standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Er … sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologising for. “You, like, you did ask. I didn’t just lure you into my house. I didn’t have any ulterior motives.” He looked up at me, eyes wide again, and I groaned. “Oh, yeah, sounds like something someone with ulterior motives would say.” “This is really awkward,” he said, his mouth twisting into a sort of half-smile. “I’m the one who should be apologising.” “Yeah, this is really awkward.” “Do you want me to just leave?” “Er …” I paused. “Well, I’m not gonna, like, stop you from leaving. I’m seriously not a kidnapper.” Aled gave me a long look. “Wait,” he said. “We didn’t … did we, like, hook up?” The idea sounded so completely idiotic that I actually let out a laugh. In hindsight, I think that might have been a bit rude. “Oh, no. No. You’re good.” “Okay,” he said. He looked down and I couldn’t really tell what he was thinking. “Yeah. That’d be really weird.” There was a pause again. I needed to say something about Universe City before he went. He clearly didn’t remember anything about that. I’m a rubbish liar, and I can’t keep secrets either. He finally put down the coat hanger that he’d been clutching in one hand. “You have a really cool room, by the way,” he said shyly. He nodded towards my Welcome to Night Vale poster. “I love Welcome to Night Vale .” Of course he did. Welcome to Night Vale was another Internet podcast show that I adored, just like I did Universe City . I preferred Universe City though – I liked the characters more. “I didn’t know you were into stuff like that,” he continued. “Oh.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Well, yeah.” “I just thought you … you know … liked studying and … erm … being head girl, and … yeah.” “Oh, right.” I let out an awkward laugh. School was my life and soul and everything about me. So I guess he was right. “Well, yeah … my grades are pretty important, and being head girl and stuff … like, I’m applying to Cambridge, so I need to— I have to study quite a lot, so … yeah.” He watched me as I spoke, nodding slowly, and said, “Ah, yeah, fair enough,” but it didn’t sound like he cared half as much about that as he had about my Welcome to Night Vale poster. He then realised he was staring, so he looked down and said, “Sorry, I’m making this even weirder.” He stood up, flattening his hair with one hand. “I’ll just leave. It’s not like we’re gonna see each other much any more.” “What?” “Because I’ve left school and stuff.” “Oh.” “Haha.” We stared at each other. It was so awkward. My pyjama bottoms had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them. “You told me you make Universe City ,” I said so quickly that I was immediately scared he hadn’t heard me. My reasoning was that since there was no easy way to bring this up, I might as well just blurt it out. This is how I get through most of my life. Aled said nothing, but his face dropped and he actually stepped backwards a little. “I told you …” he said, but his voice drifted into silence. “I don’t know how much you remember, but, like, I’m literally …” I stopped myself before I said something that made me sound truly insane. “I really, really love your show. I’ve been listening to it since it started.” “What?” he said, and he sounded genuinely surprised. “But that’s, like, over two years …” “Yeah.” I laughed. “How weird is that?” “That’s really …” His voice got a little louder. “That’s really cool.” “Yeah, I seriously love it, like, I don’t know, the characters are all just so well-rounded and relatable. Especially Radio, the whole agender thing is literal genius, like, when the girl voice first appeared I listened to the episode, like, twenty times. But it’s so good when you’re not sure whether it’s a boy voice or a girl voice, those are amazing. I mean … none of the voices are girl or boy voices, are they? Radio doesn’t have a gender. Anyway, yeah, the sidekicks are all so brilliant as well, but there’s not all the Doctor Who sexual tension, they’re just their own people, and it’s so good how they’re not always BFFs with Radio, sometimes they’re enemies. And every single story is so hilarious but you really can’t guess what’s going to happen, but all the ongoing plots are good too, like, I still have no idea why Radio can’t take their gloves off or what’s being kept in the Dark Blue Building or whether Radio’s ever going to meet Vulpes, and I’m not even gonna bother asking you about the February Friday conspiracy because, like, that would ruin the whole thing. Yeah, it’s just … it’s so good, I can’t explain how much I love it. Seriously.” Throughout this, Aled’s eyes got wider and wider. Halfway through, he sat back down on to my bed. Near the end, he covered his hands with his sleeves. When I’d finished, I instantly regretted everything. “I’ve never met a fan of the show before,” he said, his voice quiet again, almost inaudible. And then he laughed. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth like he had last night, and I wondered, not for the first time, why he did that. I glanced to one side. “Also …” I continued, thinking that was when I was going to tell him that I was Toulouse, the fan artist that he contacted on Twitter. It flashed through my head, me telling him, him freaking out, me showing him my thirty-seven sketchbooks, him freaking out even more, him calling me weird, him running away, me never seeing him ever again. I shook my head. “Erm, I forgot what I was about to say.” Aled lowered his hand. “Okay.” “You should have seen my face yesterday when you told me,” I said, with a forced laugh. He smiled, but he looked nervous. I looked down. “So … yeah. Anyway. Erm. You can go home now, if you want. Sorry.” “Don’t apologise,” he said, in that whispery voice. It took quite a lot of effort not to say sorry for saying sorry. He stood up, but didn’t go to walk out of the door. He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t know which words to choose. “Or … I could get you some breakfast? If you want? No pressure, you don’t have to …” “Ah … I’d feel bad,” he said, but he was smiling faintly and for the first time I felt like I knew what he was thinking. “It’s fine. People don’t come round my house very often, so, erm … it’s nice!” I realised how sad I sounded as soon as I said it. “Okay,” he said. “If you don’t mind.” “Cool.” He glanced around my room one last time. I saw him spot my desk and the messy worksheets and revision notes scattered everywhere, including on the floor. He looked at my bookshelves, which had a mix of classic literature I was planning to read for my Cambridge interview and some DVDs on them, including the entire Studio Ghibli collection Mum got me for my sixteenth birthday. He looked outside my window towards his house. I didn’t know which window of his house belonged to him. “I never told anyone about Universe City ,” he said, glancing back at me. “I thought they’d think I was weird.” There were a hundred things I could have said in reply to that, but I just said: “Same.” And then we were silent again. I think we were just trying to absorb what was happening. To this day I have no idea whether he was particularly happy about this revelation. Sometimes I think maybe everything would have been better if I’d never told him that I knew. Other times I think it’s the best thing I’d ever said in my whole life. “So … breakfast?” I said, because there was no way this conversation, this meeting, this stupidly extreme coincidence was ending here. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and though his voice was still all quiet and shy, he really sounded like he did want to stay, just so he could talk to me for a bit longer. Radio Silence ARTISTIC WAS DISAPPOINTING? “You’re probably aware of the reason I needed to speak to you, Frances.” I was sitting in Dr Afolayan’s office in the third week of September in a chair that was awkwardly positioned at the side of the room so I had to turn my head to look at her. I was completely unaware of the reason why she needed to talk to me, which is probably why I’d felt especially shocked when I got a note in the register that morning calling me to her office during break. Afolayan was a pretty good head teacher, not gonna lie. She was mostly known for her annual speech about how she got from a tiny village in Nigeria to getting a PhD from the University of Oxford. She had her PhD certificate on her office wall in an ornate wooden frame, just to remind everyone who came in here that underachievement is unacceptable. I never really liked her, to be honest. She crossed her legs and interlocked her fingers on her desk. She gave me a small smile which said, ‘You are very disappointing to me.’ “Erm, no,” I said with a vague laugh at the end as if that would make anything better. She raised her eyebrows. “Right.” There was a pause as she leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands together over one crossed leg. “You seem to have been involved with a viral Internet video that gives a very bad impression of what we’re all about here at the Academy.” Oh. “Oh,” I said. “Yes, it’s a very entertaining video,” she said with absolutely no expression. “And it contains a lot of … well, ‘propaganda’.” I’m not too sure what face I was making at that point. “It’s garnered quite a lot of attention, hasn’t it?” she continued. “Almost 200,000 views now? A few parents have been asking questions.” “Oh,” I said. “Who— who told you about it?” “I heard about it from a student.” “Oh,” I said again. “So I was just wondering, really, why you would post something like that? Are your views the same as—” she glanced at a Post-it note “— Universe City ’s? Do you think we should abolish the school system and all go and live in the woods and learn to start fires? Buy food by trading chickens and grow our own vegetables? End capitalism?” There were several reasons I disliked Dr Afolayan. She was unnecessarily rude to students and believed passionately in ‘thinking tools’. But I couldn’t quite remember the last time I’d disliked someone as much as I did right then. If there’s one thing that makes me properly angry, it’s people patronising me. “No,” I said, because if I’d tried to say anything else, I would have either started shouting or started crying. “So why did you post it?” I was drunk. “I thought it was artistic,” I said. “ Right .” She smirked. “Well then. That’s … well, I’ve got to say, that’s really very disappointing. I expected better.” Artistic was disappointing? I was zoning out of this conversation. I was trying really hard not to cry. “Yeah,” I said. She looked at me. “I’m going to have to remove you as head girl, Frances,” she said. “Oh,” I said, but I’d seen it coming, I’d seen it coming from a mile away. “You’re just not presenting an appropriate image for the school. We need a head boy and girl who really believe in the school and care about its success, which clearly you don’t.” And I’d had enough. “I think that’s a bit unfair,” I said. “The video was obviously a mistake, and I’m sorry, but to be fair, the only reason you even know I was in it is because someone else has told you, it wasn’t even from a YouTube account that belongs to me, and you’re just assuming that I had all the same views. Plus, what I do outside of school shouldn’t factor into me being head girl anyway.” Afolayan’s expression changed as soon as I started to speak. Now she looked angry. “If the things you do outside of school affect the school, then they affect your place as head girl,” she said. “This video has gone viral around many of our students.” “What, so I’m supposed to just base my whole life and everything I do around the fact that I’m head girl and someone might accidentally see what I’m doing?” “I think you’re being very immature.” I stopped speaking. There was no point trying to argue. There was no way she was going to even attempt to listen to me. They never do, do they? They never even try to listen to you. “Okay,” I said. “Not a very good start to Year 13, eh?” She raised her eyebrows again and produced a slightly pitying smile that said ‘You should probably leave now before I have to ask you to.’ “Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t know why because I had nothing to thank her for. I got up out of my chair and walked towards the doorway. “Oh, I’ll need your head girl badge back,” said Afolayan. I turned around and she was holding out her hand. “Oh God, Frances, what’s wrong? Are you all right?” Only one of my friends – Maya – was sitting at our ILC table when I got there. I was crying, which was embarrassing – not loudly or anything, but my eyes were wet and I had to keep wiping them so my mascara didn’t run. I explained to her what had happened. Maya seemed a bit uncomfortable about the fact that I was crying. None of them had seen me cry before. “It’s okay – it’s not gonna really affect anything, is it?” Maya laughed awkwardly. “I mean, at least you won’t have to do any of those speeches or events any more!” “It’s messed up my UCAS application … like, an entire paragraph of my personal statement was about me being head girl, it was literally the only reason I wanted to be head girl in the first place, something I could say that I did … I don’t have any other hobbies, or … Cambridge want to see you in some kind of … kind of leadership role …” Maya just listened and made a sympathetic face and rubbed my back and tried to be helpful, but I could tell she didn’t get it, so I just said I was going to the bathroom to sort out my makeup, but just ended up sitting in a cubicle and trying to calm down and hating myself for crying in front of other people and for letting other people make me cry in the first place. Radio Silence FEBRUARY FRIDAY My Tumblr got over 1,000 new followers in one day. I was flooded with asks telling me how much they loved my art and congratulations for getting to work with the show that I’d been obsessed about, along with a few asks telling me how much they hated it, and me, obviously. I was everywhere in the Universe City Tumblr tag – my art, my blog, my Twitter, me . They still didn’t know anything about me, really, which I was actually grateful for. Internet anonymity can be a good thing sometimes. Aled knowing I was Toulouse, the Universe City artist, was fine, but the idea of anyone else finding out still terrified me. And of course, once my involvement with Universe City was revealed, I was bombarded with tweets and questions on Tumblr asking who the Creator was. I had expected it, but that didn’t mean it failed to stress me out. I couldn’t post anything online for several days after the episode without a fresh wave of questions about who I was and who the Creator was. As soon as I showed Aled the messages, he panicked. We were sitting in my lounge on the sofa watching Spirited Away . He read the messages in my Tumblr inbox. As he scrolled, he put a hand on his forehead. Then he started saying, “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, God,” under his breath. “It’s okay, it’s not like I’m gonna tell them …” “We can’t let them find out.” I didn’t really know why Aled wanted to keep Universe City a secret. I assumed it was just because he liked his privacy; he didn’t want his face on the Internet. It felt a bit invasive to ask. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got an idea,” said Aled. He opened Twitter on his laptop and typed out a tweet. RADIO @UniverseCity February Friday – i still believe, i still listen. “February Friday,” I said. “Yes. Good idea.” February Friday, or the ‘Letters to February’ segment, produces probably the biggest conspiracy theories within the Universe City fandom. The fandom wiki explained it quite well. February Friday and Fandom Theories It is commonly believed within the Universe City fandom that the entire series is a gift from the Anonymous Creator to a person they are/were in love with. The large majority of the early episodes (2011) and around half of the later episodes ( 2012 -onwards) contain a passage, usually towards the end of the episode, directed towards a character who never makes any appearance or has any story arc, February Friday . In these segments, Radio Silence typically laments their inability to communicate with February Friday, muddled in with abstract imagery and indeterminable metaphors. Usually the segment is largely nonsensical, leading the fandom to believe that they are mostly comprised of personal jokes which the Anonymous Creator shares with the person IRL represented by February Friday. As these segments contribute nothing to Universe City’s plot, and have no sequential plot of their own, the fandom argues that they must contain some significance to the Creator. Many attempts have been made to determine the meaning of what has become known as the Letters to February , but all attempts are merely guesswork and objective analyses. So Radio tweeting about February Friday obviously caused a fandom shitstorm. A brief, inconclusive one, but an undeniable shitstorm . And everyone was completely distracted from sending me messages demanding to know who I am and who Radio is. Since getting to know Aled, I’d thought a lot about the February Friday conspiracy – about who February might be, if they were a representation of somebody he knew. My immediate thoughts went to Carys, but I rejected that idea, since the Letters to February were so romantic. I even considered me at one point, before realising that Aled hadn’t even known me when he started making Universe City . Of course, being friends with Aled now meant that I had the opportunity to ask about February Friday. Which I did. “So … just putting this out there …” I rolled over on the sofa so I was facing him. “Am I allowed to know the secret of February Friday?” Aled bit his lip and genuinely thought about it. “Hmm …” He rolled over so he was facing me too. “Okay, don’t be offended, but I think it needs to stay an ultimate secret.” And I thought that was fair enough. Radio Silence HOURS AND HOURS It was abysmal. It was a terrible episode. Radio barely spoke any full sentences. There was no discernible plot. No characters appeared. It was just Radio rambling on for twenty minutes about things nobody but Aled could possibly understand. And that February Friday mention at the end? What was that ? Hadn’t seen them for years? Wasn’t February Friday Daniel? Aled had seen Daniel only a few months ago. Was he just exaggerating? Surely he was just exaggerating. Daniel had said that Aled was writing about his life in Universe City , which sounded ridiculous at the time, but after hearing this … I mean, February Friday was a real person. Aled had essentially confirmed that. Maybe the rest of it was real too. I sat up. I wasn’t tired. February Friday was Daniel. Or – I don’t know. If Aled had been literal in saying they hadn’t seen each other for years … I decided to re-listen to the episode to see if there were any more clues in there, but all that ended up doing was reminding me of how tired Aled’s voice sounded, how much he stumbled over his words and didn’t seem to know where he was going. He hadn’t bothered to pitch-change his voice – it was just him, here, putting on that silly old-time radio accent. Even that slipped a few times. This wasn’t like him. If there was one thing Aled cared about, one thing he never allowed to be half-hearted, it was Universe City . Something was wrong. I tried to sleep, but it took me hours and hours. Radio Silence DARK BLUE The next thing I remember is waking up on the carpet freezing cold in the dark – maybe it was 3am, maybe 4am – my mouth tasting like something you’d use in a chemistry lesson, everything around me dead, dust floating in the air, Aled and Daniel gone. I desperately needed to pee so I got out of the bundle of blankets and wandered out of the room towards the bathroom, but stopped immediately when I heard voices coming from the kitchen. They didn’t see me in the doorway because it was almost completely dark. I could barely see them either – they were just slightly moonlit splotches – but I didn’t really need to. They were sitting at the dining table, Aled with his head on his arm, Daniel with his chin in one hand, looking at each other. Daniel took a sip from a bottle that might have been wine, I wasn’t sure. There was a long pause before either of them said anything. “Yeah, but it’s not about people knowing,” said Aled. “It’s not about anyone else, I literally don’t care what anyone else would think about it.” “You’ve quite clearly been avoiding me,” said Daniel. “We’ve barely seen each other all summer.” “You— you were busy. You were working …” “Yeah, but I’d make time for you if you wanted me to. You just don’t seem like you want me to.” “I do want you to!” “Then can’t you just tell me what the issue is?” Daniel sounded annoyed. Aled’s voice got even quieter. “There’s not an issue.” “If you don’t like me, just say it. There’s no point lying.” “Well, obviously I like you.” “I mean like that .” Aled raised his free hand and poked Daniel on the arm, but as he replied, he seemed to be talking almost entirely to himself. “Well, why would we do this if I didn’t like you like that?” Daniel was staying quite still. “Well, exactly.” “Exactly.” I think that’s when I realised what was happening. Seconds before it happened. I don’t even remember feeling surprised. I don’t know what I felt. Maybe a bit lonely. Aled raised his head and lifted his arms. Daniel leaned into them and rested his head on Aled’s chest and Aled hugged him tightly, rubbing a hand slowly across Daniel’s back. When they drew apart, Aled sat there, waiting for it to happen. Daniel lifted a hand and ran it through Aled’s hair and said, “You need a haircut,” and then leaned in and kissed him. I turned around. I didn’t need to see any more. I woke up some time later on the carpet, freezing in the dark, and Aled was breathing like he was an astronaut running out of oxygen, sitting up next to me with his head bent forwards and his face completely covered by his hands. Daniel wasn’t here. Aled kept breathing and breathing and holding his head and I sat up and put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Aled,” but he didn’t look at me, he just kept shaking and I suddenly realised that he was crying . I tried to move so he could look at me and I said, “Aled,” again, but nothing happened, and then he made a really horrible moaning noise and it wasn’t just crying, this was worse, this was the crying where you want to scratch out your eyes and smash a wall and I couldn’t stand it, I can’t ever stand it when other people cry, especially like this. I put my arms around him and held him and his whole body was shaking and I didn’t know what else to do so I just stayed like that and said, “What’s wrong?” probably a billion times, but he just kept shaking his head and I didn’t know what that meant. When I managed to get him to lie down I asked it again and he just said, “I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” and minutes later he said, “I don’t want to go to university,” and I think he might still have been crying when I fell asleep. The next time I woke up, Daniel was on the sofa inside a sleeping bag like he was camping under the stars. I realised, suddenly, that Daniel was February Friday. Of course he was. Secret romance, childhood best friend – could this get any more romantic? Not that I knew anything about that stuff. I thought I’d feel happy about finally knowing, but I didn’t feel anything. I looked up at the ceiling, half-expecting to find some stars there, but there wasn’t anything at all. I needed to pee again urgently, so I sat up and glanced at Aled, who was asleep again, lying next to me on the floor, his head turned towards me, one hand curled under his cheek, and I squinted and I thought that the skin under his eyes was kind of purple, which was weird, but I suppose it might have been the light, which seemed to be stuck in a permanent state of dark blue. Radio Silence 3. AUTUMN TERM (b) Radio Silence UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 140 – fine UniverseCity 96,231 views do you think this is all some sort of a joke? Scroll down for transcript >>> […] I wonder why you’re even listening to this in the first place! Are you just turning your radio on each week to listen to some funny story about silly old Radio and their friends zapping a new monster and solving the mystery like we’re the bloody twenty-sixth century Scooby Doo gang? I can see you now. Having a right old laugh to yourselves while we’re here, slowly dying from the city fumes, being murdered in our sleep. I bet you have the power to contact us, but you just can’t be bothered. Have you even been listening to anything I’ve been saying? You’re just the same as everyone I knew in the old world. You can’t be bothered to do anything. […] Radio Silence UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 32 – cosmic noise UniverseCity 110,897 views Have you been listening so far? Scroll down for transcript >>> […] I think by now, February, we’ve, as they say, ‘lost touch’. Not that we ever touched in the first place. In the end I’m still only ever looking where you’ve looked, I’m only ever walking where you’ve walked, I’m in your dark blue shadow and you never seem to turn around to find me there. I wonder sometimes whether you’ve exploded already, like a star, and what I’m seeing is you three million years into the past, and you’re not here any more. How can we be together here, now, when you are so far away? When you are so far ago ? I’m shouting so loudly, but you never turn around to see me. Perhaps it is I who have already exploded. Either way, we are going to bring beautiful things into the universe. […] Radio Silence UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 1 – dark blue UniverseCity 109,982 views In Distress. Stuck in Universe City. Send Help. Scroll down for transcript >>> Hello. I hope somebody is listening. I’m sending out this call via radio signal – long out-dated, I know, but perhaps one of the few methods of communication the City has forgotten to monitor – in a dark and desperate cry for help. Things in Universe City are not what they seem. I cannot tell you who I am. Please call me … please just call me Radio. Radio Silence . I am, after all, only a voice on a radio, and there may not be anyone listening. I wonder – if nobody is listening to my voice, am I making any sound at all? […] Radio Silence UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 141 – nothing day UniverseCity 85,927 views I didn’t do anything today Scroll down for transcript >>> […] Every week something happens and it feels strained. The truth is, old sport, sometimes there isn’t anything to report. Sometimes I might exaggerate a bit, just so I have something exciting to say. That time I told you I surfed the BOT22 down to Leftley Square? Well – that was a lie. It was only a BOT18. I lied. I really, really lied. And I am sorry. I feel a bit like a BOT18 sometimes. Old and rusty, aching and sleepy. Wandering through the city, lost, circling, alone. No gears left in my heart, no code whirring in my brain. Just kinetic energy, being pushed gently onwards by other forces – sound, light, dust waves, the quakes. I’m as lost as ever, friends. Can you tell? I’d like it if someone were to rescue me soon. Oh, I’d like that very much. I’d like that. I’d like that very much indeed. […] Radio Silence ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to everyone who supported me during the writing of my second book. It took a long time, but here we are! Thanks to the most important people in my career – my agent Claire and my editors Lizzie, Sam and Jocelyn. You keep me believing that what I’m doing is great and not terrible and everything is fine. I wouldn’t be anywhere without you. Thanks to my parents and brother, as always, for being the best family ever. Thanks to my beautiful friends from home, whom I can always rely on for laughs and hugs and sing-a-long car rides. Thanks to my beautiful housemates from university, who genuinely keep me sane. Thanks to my very important friend, Lauren James – you kept me believing in this book every step of the way. Thanks to Welcome to Night Vale , a major inspiration for Universe City and a genuinely excellent podcast. And thanks to you, reader. Whether you’re new, or whether you knew me back when I was posting on Tumblr in 2010 about how desperately I wanted to be an author. Whoever you are and however you found this book – I wrote it for all of us. Radio Silence LIKE THIS On Thursday night I was at Aled’s later than usual because his mum had gone away for a few days to visit other family. It was only nine thirty and I know Aled was eighteen years old, but we both still felt like tiny babies, to be honest. Neither of us could quite work out how to use his washing machine. We were sitting at his kitchen table, waiting for some Morrisons pizzas to cook, and I was obviously talking about something completely ridiculous, and Aled was just listening quietly and contributing things here and there, and everything was normal. Well, it wasn’t. “Is everything good?” asked Aled, once we’d come to a natural pause in conversation. “At school and stuff?” This surprised me because Aled hardly ever asked generic questions like that. “Yeah. Yeah.” I laughed. “So tired though. I swear I don’t get any sleep any more.” The oven timer bleeped and Aled clapped his hands together and went to get them out the oven and I started singing the word “pizza” repeatedly. He was leaving for university in two days. Once we were eating, I said, “I needed to tell you something kind of important.” Aled stopped chewing for a second. “Yeah?” “Do you know Raine Sengupta?” “Only vaguely.” “She told me yesterday she knows about Universe City . That you’re the Creator.” Aled completely stopped eating and met my eyes. Oh. I’d probably said something I shouldn’t have. Again. Why did this keep happening? Why did I keep finding these things out? “Oh.” Aled ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus …” “She said she wasn’t going to tell anyone.” “Yeah, she says .” “She also said …” I stopped. I’d been about to say that she knew about Aled and Daniel, but then I remembered that he didn’t even know that I knew. Aled was staring at me and actually looked a little scared. “Oh, God, what?” “Erm, okay, she knows about … erm, you and Daniel.” There was a horrifying silence. Aled stayed very still. “What about us?” Aled said slowly. “You know …” But I couldn’t finish my sentence. “Oh,” said Aled. I shifted in my seat. Aled let out a breath and looked down at his plate. “Did you already know?” I had no idea why I hadn’t told him already. I think I just hate bringing up things that just cause people pain and embarrassment. “I saw you kiss on your birthday,” I said, then followed up with a hurried, “Nothing else! That was it. And then a bit later on I woke up and you were just … like … sobbing.” Aled ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, yeah. I thought you might have been too drunk to remember that.” I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, so I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” He met my eyes again and I saw how sad they were. Then he chuckled. “Honestly, same reason I didn’t let you meet my mum. You’re like … in a separate place to all the … difficult things going on in my life …” He laughed. “Oh my God, what a douchey thing to say. Sorry.” I laughed too, because it had sounded like a very douchey thing to say, but I got what he was trying to say. It was not as simple as ‘Daniel and I are in a relationship.’ Nothing was ever simple, was it? “Why were you crying?” I asked. Aled looked at me for a second more, and then looked back to his food, picking at a pizza crust with one hand. “I can’t remember. I was probably just really drunk.” He laughed, but I could tell it was fake. “I’m an emotional drunk.” “Oh.” I didn’t believe him, but he obviously didn’t want to tell me. “So is Daniel gay?” I said, because there was no way I couldn’t just say it. “Yeah,” he said. “Hm.” I was still pretty shocked I hadn’t guessed. “You know … I’m bisexual.” Aled’s eyes widened. “What— Are you?” “Haha, yeah. I told you I kissed Carys, didn’t I?” “Yeah, you did, but …” Aled shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it very hard.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” “I don’t know,” I began, but that was a lie. “I’ve never told anyone before.” Aled suddenly looked very sad. “Haven’t you?” “No …” We both took a bite of pizza. “When did you realise you were bi?” Aled said it almost so quietly I didn’t hear him over the sound of my chewing. I hadn’t been expecting that question at all. I almost didn’t want to answer him. But then I sort of realised why he was asking. “There wasn’t, like, one moment,” I said. “It was like … well, I found out what it was on the Internet and then it just made sense …” I’d never tried to explain this to anyone before. Not even myself, really. “Like … this sounds really stupid, but I’ve always been able to imagine being with a boy or a girl. I mean, obviously they’re slightly different, but, like, the general feelings are the same … does that make sense? None of this makes sense …” “No, it makes sense,” he said. “Why haven’t you told your school friends?” I looked at him. “There was never really anyone worth telling.” His eyes widened a little. Maybe he realised that he was basically my only friend. I sort of hoped he didn’t realise. It just made me feel sorry for myself. I continued, “Like, it’s one of the reasons that I got so into Universe City in the first place. Because Radio falls in love with all sorts of people, boys and girls and other genders and … like, aliens and stuff.” I laughed and he smiled too. “I think everyone’s a bit bored with boy-girl romances anyway,” he said. “I think the world’s had enough of those, to be honest.” I wanted so badly to ask him. But that’s the one thing you can’t just ask. You’ve just got to wait until they tell you. When the front door opened, both of us jumped so hard I nearly knocked the bottle of lemonade over. Aled’s mum entered the kitchen and blinked at me, a Tesco tote bag over one shoulder and her car keys in one hand. “Oh, hello, Frances, love,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “Didn’t expect you to be here so late.” I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly 10pm. I leapt up from my chair. “Oh, God, yeah, sorry, I’d better go home …” She barely seemed to be listening to me, but after dumping her bag on the kitchen counter, she interrupted, “Don’t be silly, you’re right in the middle of your dinne	438,580
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen C Chbosky) (Z-Library).epub	The Perks of Being a Wallflower acclaim for stephen chbosky’s the perks of being a wallflower “Charlie’s loving instincts are very strong. Again and again throughout the book he exhibits pure wisdom we all like to read about and witness. And Stephen Chbosky doesn’t let us down. The language is plain and springy and blunt… In this culture where adolescence is a dirty word, I hope nothing bad ever happens to this [protagonist].” — LA Times “Charlie, his friends and family are palpably real… [he] develops from an observant wallflower into his own man of action.… This report on his life will engage teen readers for years to come.” — School Library Journal , starred review “Chbosky captures adolescent angst, confusion, and joy as Charlie reveals his innermost thoughts while trying to discover who he is and whom he is to become. Intellectually precocious, Charlie[’s]… reflections… are compelling. He vacillates between full involvement in the crazy course of his life and backing off completely. Charlie is a likeable kid whose humor-laced trials and tribulations will please both adults and teens.” — Booklist “Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists.… [The protagonist] oozes with sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.)… A plain-written narrative suggesting passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety.” — Kirkus An Amazon.com #1 Young Adult Bestseller The Perks of Being a Wallflower For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com The Perks of Being a Wallflower The Perks of Being a Wallflower PERSON/A PAPER/A PROMISE by Dr. Earl Reum used with author’s permission A PERSON/A PAPER/A PROMISE REMEMBERED by Patrick Comeaux used with author’s permission This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. An Original Publication of MTV Books/Pocket Books GALLERY BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 1999 by Stephen Chbosky MTV Music Television and all related titles, logos, and characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 ISBN-13: 978-0-671-02734-6 ISBN-10: 0-671-02734-4 eISBN-13: 978-1-439-12243-3 First MTV Books/Pocket Books trade paperback printing February 1999 40 39 38 37 36 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc. Art direction by Stacy Drummond and Tracy Boychuk Design by Stacy Drummond Photography by Jason Stang Printed in the U.S.A. The Perks of Being a Wallflower For my family The Perks of Being a Wallflower acknowledgments I just wanted to say about all those listed that there would be no book without them, and I thank them with all of my heart. Greer Kessel Hendricks Heather Neely Lea, Fred, and Stacy Chbosky Robbie Thompson Christopher McQuarrie Margaret Mehring Stewart Stern Kate Degenhart Mark McClain Wilson David Wilcox Kate Ward Tim Perell Jack Horner Eduardo Braniff And finally… Dr. Earl Reum for writing a beautiful poem and Patrick Comeaux for remembering it wrong when he was 14. The Perks of Being a Wallflower part 1 The Perks of Being a Wallflower August 25, 1991 Dear friend, I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don’t try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don’t want you to do that. I will call people by different names or generic names because I don’t want you to find me. I didn’t enclose a return address for the same reason. I mean nothing bad by this. Honest. I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist. I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and appreciate what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength and friendship and it’s that simple. At least that’s what I’ve heard. So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be. I try to think of my family as a reason for me being this way, especially after my friend Michael stopped going to school one day last spring and we heard Mr. Vaughn’s voice on the loudspeaker. “Boys and girls, I regret to inform you that one of our students has passed on. We will hold a memorial service for Michael Dobson during assembly this Friday.” I don’t know how news travels around school and why it is very often right. Maybe it was in the lunchroom. It’s hard to remember. But Dave with the awkward glasses told us that Michael killed himself. His mom played bridge with one of Michael’s neighbors and they heard the gunshot. I don’t really remember much of what happened after that except that my older brother came to Mr. Vaughn’s office in my middle school and told me to stop crying. Then, he put his arm on my shoulder and told me to get it out of my system before Dad came home. We then went to eat french fries at McDonald’s and he taught me how to play pinball. He even made a joke that because of me he got to skip an afternoon of school and asked me if I wanted to help him work on his Camaro. I guess I was pretty messy because he never let me work on his Camaro before. At the guidance counselor sessions, they asked the few of us who actually liked Michael to say a few words. I think they were afraid that some of us would try to kill ourselves or something because they looked very tense and one of them kept touching his beard. Bridget who is crazy said that sometimes she thought about suicide when commercials come on during TV. She was sincere and this puzzled the guidance counselors. Carl who is nice to everyone said that he felt very sad, but could never kill himself because it is a sin. This one guidance counselor went through the whole group and finally came to me. “What do you think, Charlie?” What was so strange about this was the fact that I had never met this man because he was a “specialist” and he knew my name even though I wasn’t wearing a name tag like they do in open house. “Well, I think that Michael was a nice guy and I don’t understand why he did it. As much as I feel sad, I think that not knowing is what really bothers me.” I just reread that and it doesn’t sound like how I talk. Especially in that office because I was crying still. I never did stop crying. The counselor said that he suspected that Michael had “problems at home” and didn’t feel like he had anyone to talk to. That’s maybe why he felt all alone and killed himself. Then, I started screaming at the guidance counselor that Michael could have talked to me. And I started crying even harder. He tried to calm me down by saying that he meant an adult like a teacher or a guidance counselor. But it didn’t work and eventually my brother came by the middle school in his Camaro to pick me up. For the rest of the school year, the teachers treated me different and gave me better grades even though I didn’t get any smarter. To tell you the truth, I think I made them all nervous. Michael’s funeral was strange because his father didn’t cry. And three months later he left Michael’s mom. At least according to Dave at lunchtime. I think about it sometimes. I wonder what went on in Michael’s house around dinner and TV shows. Michael never left a note or at least his parents didn’t let anyone see it. Maybe it was “problems at home.” I wish I knew. It might make me miss him more clearly. It might have made sad sense. One thing I do know is that it makes me wonder if I have “problems at home” but it seems to me that a lot of other people have it a lot worse. Like when my sister’s first boyfriend started going around with another girl and my sister cried for the whole weekend. My dad said, “There are other people who have it a lot worse.” And my mom was quiet. And that was that. A month later, my sister met another boy and started playing happy records again. And my dad kept working. And my mom kept sweeping. And my brother kept fixing his Camaro. That is, until he left for college at the beginning of the summer. He’s playing football for Penn State but he needed the summer to get his grades right to play football. I don’t think that there is a favorite kid in our family. There are three of us and I am the youngest. My brother is the oldest. He is a very good football player and likes his car. My sister is very pretty and mean to boys and she is in the middle. I get straight A’s now like my sister and that is why they leave me alone. My mom cries a lot during TV programs. My dad works a lot and is an honest man. My Aunt Helen used to say that my dad was going to be too proud to have a midlife crisis. It took me until around now to understand what she meant by that because he just turned forty and nothing has changed. My Aunt Helen was my favorite person in the whole world. She was my mom’s sister. She got straight A’s when she was a teenager and she used to give me books to read. My father said that the books were a little too old for me, but I liked them so he just shrugged and let me read. My Aunt Helen lived with the family for the last few years of her life because something very bad happened to her. Nobody would tell me what happened then even though I always wanted to know. When I was around seven, I stopped asking about it because I kept asking like kids always do and my Aunt Helen started crying very hard. That’s when my dad slapped me, saying, “You’re hurting your aunt Helen’s feelings!” I didn’t want to do that, so I stopped. Aunt Helen told my father not to hit me in front of her ever again and my father said this was his house and he would do what he wanted and my mom was quiet and so were my brother and sister. I don’t remember much more than that because I started crying really hard and after a while my dad had my mom take me to my room. It wasn’t until much later that my mom had a few glasses of white wine and told me what happened to her sister. Some people really do have it a lot worse than I do. They really do. I should probably go to sleep now. It’s very late. I don’t know why I wrote a lot of this down for you to read. The reason I wrote this letter is because I start high school tomorrow and I am really afraid of going. Love always, Charlie September 7, 1991 Dear friend, I do not like high school. The cafeteria is called the “Nutrition Center,” which is strange. There is this one girl in my advanced english class named Susan. In middle school, Susan was very fun to be around. She liked movies, and her brother Frank made her tapes of this great music that she shared with us. But over the summer she had her braces taken off, and she got a little taller and prettier and grew breasts. Now, she acts a lot dumber in the hallways, especially when boys are around. And I think it’s sad because Susan doesn’t look as happy. To tell you the truth, she doesn’t like to admit she’s in the advanced english class, and she doesn’t like to say “hi” to me in the hall anymore. When Susan was at the guidance counselor meeting about Michael, she said that Michael once told her that she was the prettiest girl in the whole world, braces and all. Then, he asked her to “go with him,” which was a big deal at any school. They call it “going out” in high school. And they kissed and talked about movies, and she missed him terribly because he was her best friend. It’s funny, too, because boys and girls normally weren’t best friends around my school. But Michael and Susan were. Kind of like my Aunt Helen and me. I’m sorry. “My Aunt Helen and I.” That’s one thing I learned this week. That and more consistent punctuation. I keep quiet most of the time, and only one kid named Sean really seemed to notice me. He waited for me after gym class and said really immature things like how he was going to give me a “swirlie,” which is where someone sticks your head in the toilet and flushes to make your hair swirl around. He seemed pretty unhappy as well, and I told him so. Then, he got mad and started hitting me, and I just did the things my brother taught me to do. My brother is a very good fighter. “Go for the knees, throat, and eyes.” And I did. And I really hurt Sean. And then I started crying. And my sister had to leave her senior honors class and drive me home. I got called to Mr. Small’s office, but I didn’t get suspended or anything because a kid told Mr. Small the truth about the fight. “Sean started it. It was self-defense.” And it was. I just don’t understand why Sean wanted to hurt me. I didn’t do anything to him. I am very small. That’s true. But I guess Sean didn’t know I could fight. The truth is I could have hurt him a lot worse. And maybe I should have. I thought I might have to if he came after the kid who told Mr. Small the truth, but Sean never did go after him. So, everything was forgotten. Some kids look at me strange in the hallways because I don’t decorate my locker, and I’m the one who beat up Sean and couldn’t stop crying after he did it. I guess I’m pretty emotional. It has been very lonely because my sister is busy being the oldest one in our family. My brother is busy being a football player at Penn State. After the training camp, his coach said that he was second string and that when he starts learning the system, he will be first string. My dad really hopes he will make it to the pros and play for the Steelers. My mom is just glad he gets to go to college for free because my sister doesn’t play football, and there wouldn’t be enough money to send both of them. That’s why she wants me to keep working hard, so I’ll get an academic scholarship. So, that’s what I’m doing until I meet a friend here. I was hoping that the kid who told the truth could become a friend of mine, but I think he was just being a good guy by telling. Love always, Charlie September 11, 1991 Dear friend, I don’t have a lot of time because my advanced english teacher assigned us a book to read, and I like to read books twice. Incidentally, the book is To Kill a Mockingbird. If you haven’t read it, I think you should because it is very interesting. The teacher has assigned us a few chapters at a time, but I do not like to read books like that. I am halfway through the first time. Anyway, the reason I am writing to you is because I saw my brother on television. I normally don’t like sports too much, but this was a special occasion. My mother started crying, and my father put his arm around her shoulder, and my sister smiled, which is funny because my brother and sister always fight when he’s around. But my older brother was on television, and so far, it has been the highlight of my two weeks in high school. I miss him terribly, which is strange, because we never really talked much when he was here. We still don’t talk, to be honest. I would tell you his position, but like I said, I would like to be anonymous to you. I hope you understand. Love always, Charlie September 16, 1991 Dear friend, I have finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book. My advanced english teacher asked me to call him “Bill” when we’re not in class, and he gave me another book to read. He says that I have a great skill at reading and understanding language, and he wanted me to write an essay about To Kill a Mockingbird. I mentioned this to my mom, and she asked why Bill didn’t recommend that I just take a sophomore or junior english class. And I told her that Bill said that these were basically the same classes with more complicated books, and that it wouldn’t help me. My mom said that she wasn’t sure and would talk to him during open house. Then, she asked me to help her by washing the dishes, which I did. Honestly, I don’t like doing dishes. I like eating with my fingers and off napkins, but my sister says that doing so is bad for the environment. She is a part of the Earth Day Club here in high school, and that is where she meets the boys. They are all very nice to her, and I don’t really understand why except maybe the fact that she is pretty. She really is mean to these boys. One boy has it particularly hard. I won’t tell you his name. But I will tell you all about him. He has very nice brown hair, and he wears it long with a ponytail. I think he will regret this when he looks back on his life. He is always making mix tapes for my sister with very specific themes. One was called “Autumn Leaves.” He included many songs by the Smiths. He even hand-colored the cover. After the movie he rented was over, and he left, my sister gave me the tape. “Do you want this, Charlie?” I took the tape, but I felt weird about it because he had made it for her. But I listened to it. And loved it very much. There is one song called “Asleep” that I would like you to listen to. I told my sister about it. And a week later she thanked me because when this boy asked her about the tape, she said exactly what I said about the song “Asleep,” and this boy was very moved by how much it meant to her. I hope this means I will be good at dating when the time comes. I should stick to the subject, though. That is what my teacher Bill tells me to do because I write kind of the way I talk. I think that is why he wants me to write that essay about To Kill a Mockingbird. This boy who likes my sister is always respectful to my parents. My mom likes him very much because of this. My dad thinks he’s soft. I think that’s why my sister does what she does to him. This one night, she was saying very mean things about how he didn’t stand up to the class bully when he was fifteen or something like that. To tell you the truth, I was just watching the movie he had rented, so I wasn’t paying very close attention to their fight. They fight all the time, so I figured that the movie was at least something different, which it wasn’t because it was a sequel. Anyway, after she leaned into him for about four movie scenes, which I guess is about ten minutes or so, he started crying. Crying very hard. Then, I turned around, and my sister pointed at me. “You see. Even Charlie stood up to his bully. You see.” And this guy got really red-faced. And he looked at me. Then, he looked at her. And he wound up and hit her hard across the face. I mean hard. I just froze because I couldn’t believe he did it. It was not like him at all to hit anybody. He was the boy that made mix tapes with themes and hand-colored covers until he hit my sister and stopped crying. The weird part is that my sister didn’t do anything. She just looked at him very quietly. It was so weird. My sister goes crazy if you eat the wrong kind of tuna, but here was this guy hitting her, and she didn’t say anything. She just got soft and nice. And she asked me to leave, which I did. After the boy had left, she said that they were “going out” and not to tell mom or dad what happened. I guess he stood up to his bully. And I guess that makes sense. That weekend, my sister spent a lot of time with this boy. And they laughed a lot more than they usually did. On Friday night, I was reading my new book, but my brain got tired, so I decided to watch some television instead. And I opened the door to the basement, and my sister and this boy were naked. He was on top of her, and her legs were draped over either side of the couch. And she screamed at me in a whisper. “Get out. You pervert.” So, I left. The next day, we all watched my brother play football. And my sister invited this boy over. I am not sure when he left the previous night. They held hands and acted like everything was happy. And this boy said something about how the football team hasn’t been the same since my brother graduated, and my dad thanked him. And when the boy left, my dad said that this boy was becoming a fine young man who could carry himself. And my mom was quiet. And my sister looked at me to make sure I wouldn’t say anything. And that was that. “Yes. He is.” That’s all my sister could say. And I could see this boy at home doing his homework and thinking about my sister naked. And I could see them holding hands at football games that they do not watch. And I could see this boy throwing up in the bushes at a party house. And I could see my sister putting up with it. And I felt very bad for both of them. Love always, Charlie September 18, 1991 Dear friend, I never told you that I am in shop class, did I? Well, I am in shop class, and it is my favorite class next to Bill’s advanced english class. I wrote the essay for To Kill a Mockingbird last night, and I handed it in to Bill this morning. We are supposed to talk about it tomorrow during lunch period. The point, though, is that there is a guy in shop class named “Nothing.” I’m not kidding. His name is “Nothing.” And he is hilarious. “Nothing” got his name when kids used to tease him in middle school. I think he’s a senior now. The kids started calling him Patty when his real name is Patrick. And “Nothing” told these kids, “Listen, you either call me Patrick, or you call me nothing.” So, the kids started calling him “Nothing.” And the name just stuck. He was a new kid in the school district at the time because his dad married a new woman in this area. I think I will stop putting quotation marks around Nothing’s name because it is annoying and disrupting my flow. I hope you do not find this difficult to follow. I will make sure to differentiate if something comes up. So, in shop class Nothing started to do a very funny impersonation of our teacher, Mr. Callahan. He even painted in the mutton-chop sideburns with a grease pencil. Hilarious. When Mr. Callahan found Nothing doing this near the belt sander, he actually laughed because Nothing wasn’t doing the impersonation mean or anything. It was just that funny. I wish you could have been there because it was the hardest I’ve laughed since my brother left. My brother used to tell Polish jokes, which I know is wrong, but I just blocked out the Polish part and listened to the jokes. Hilarious. Oh, incidentally, my sister asked for her “Autumn Leaves” mix tape back. She listens to it all the time now. Love always, Charlie September 29, 1991 Dear friend, There is a lot to tell you about the last two weeks. A lot of it is good, but a lot of it is bad. Again, I don’t know why this always happens. First of all, Bill gave me a C on my To Kill a Mockingbird essay because he said that I run my sentences together. I am trying now to practice not to do that. He also said that I should use the vocabulary words that I learn in class like “corpulent” and “jaundice.” I would use them here, but I really don’t think they are appropriate in this format. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where they are appropriate to use. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t know them. You should absolutely. But I just have never heard anyone use the words “corpulent” and “jaundice” ever in my life. That includes teachers. So, what’s the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don’t understand that. I feel the same way about some movie stars who are terrible to watch. Some of these people must have a million dollars at least, and yet, they keep doing these movies. They blow up bad guys. They yell at their detectives. They do interviews for magazines. Every time I see this one particular movie star on a magazine, I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for her because nobody respects her at all, and yet they keep interviewing her. And the interviews all say the same thing. They start with what food they are eating in some restaurant. “As ___________ gingerly munched her Chinese Chicken Salad, she spoke of love.” And all the covers say the same thing: “___________ gets to the bottom of stardom, love, and his/her hit new movie/television show/album.” I think it’s nice for stars to do interviews to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it’s all a big lie. The problem is I don’t know who’s lying. And I don’t know why these magazines sell as much as they do. And I don’t know why the ladies in the dentist’s office like them as much as they do. A Saturday ago, I was in the dentist’s office, and I heard this conversation. “Did you see that movie?” as she points to the cover. “I did. I saw it with Harold.” “What do you think?” “She is just lovely.” “Yeah. She is.” “Oh, I have this new recipe.” “Low-fat?” “Uh-huh.” “Do you have some time tomorrow?” “No. Why don’t you have Mike fax it to Harold?” “Okay.” Then, these ladies started talking about the one star I mentioned before, and they both had very strong opinions. “I think it’s disgraceful.” “Did you read the interview in Good Housekeeping?” “A few months back?” “Uh-huh.” “Disgraceful.” “Did you read the one in Cosmopolitan?” “No.” “God, it was practically the same interview.” “I don’t know why they give her the time of day.” The fact that one of these ladies was my mom made me feel particularly sad because my mom is beautiful. And she’s always on a diet. Sometimes, my dad calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear him. Incidentally, my dad is a very good husband. He’s just pragmatic. After the dentist’s office, my mom drove me to the cemetery where a lot of her relatives are buried. My dad does not like to go to the cemetery because it gives him the creeps. But I don’t mind going at all because my Aunt Helen is buried there. My mom was always the pretty one, as they say, and my Aunt Helen was always the other one. The nice thing was my Aunt Helen was never on a diet. And my Aunt Helen was “corpulent.” Hey, I did it! My Aunt Helen would always let us kids stay up and watch Saturday Night Live when she was baby-sitting or when she was living with us and my parents went to another couple’s house to get drunk and play board games. When I was very little, I remember going to sleep, while my brother and sister and Aunt Helen watched Love Boat and Fantasy Island. I could never stay awake when I was that little, and I wish I could, because my brother and sister talk about those moments sometimes. Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad. And maybe it’s just the fact that we loved Aunt Helen, especially me, and this was the time we could spend with her. I won’t start listing television episode memories, except one because I guess we’re on the subject, and it seems like something everyone can relate to in a small way. And since I don’t know you, I figure that maybe I can write about something that you can relate to. The family was sitting around, watching the final episode of MASH , and I’ll never forget it even though I was very young. My mom was crying. My sister was crying. My brother was using every ounce of strength he had not to cry. And my dad left during one of the final moments to make a sandwich. Now, I don’t remember much about the program itself because I was too young, but my dad never left to make a sandwich except during commercial breaks, and then he usually just sent my mom. I walked to the kitchen, and I saw my dad making a sandwich… and crying. He was crying harder than even my mom. And I couldn’t believe it. When he finished making his sandwich, he put away the things in the refrigerator and stopped crying and wiped his eyes and saw me. Then, he walked up, patted my shoulder, and said, “This is our little secret, okay, champ?” “Okay,” I said. And Dad picked me up with the arm that wasn’t holding the sandwich, and carried me to the room that had the television, and put me on his lap for the rest of the television episode. At the end of the episode, he picked me up, turned off the TV, and turned around. And my dad declared, “That was a great series.” And my mom said, “The best.” And my sister asked, “How long was it on the air?” And my brother replied, “Nine years, stupid.” And my sister responded, “You… stupid.” And my dad said, “Stop it, right now.” And my mom said, “Listen to your father.” And my brother said nothing. And my sister said nothing. And years later I found out my brother was wrong. I went to the library to look up the figures, and I found out that the episode we watched is the highest watched anything of television history, which I find amazing because it felt like just the five of us. You know… a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace. For me personally, as much as I don’t understand my mom and dad and as much as I feel sorry for both of them sometimes, I can’t help but love them very much. My mom drives to visit the cemetery of people she loves. My dad cried during MASH , and trusted me to keep his secret, and let me sit on his lap, and called me “champ.” Incidentally, I only have one cavity, and as much as my dentist asks me to, I just can’t bring myself to floss. Love always, Charlie October 6, 1991 Dear friend, I feel very ashamed. I went to the high school football game the other day, and I don’t know exactly why. In middle school, Michael and I would go to the games sometimes even though neither of us were popular enough to go. It was just a place to go on Fridays when we didn’t want to watch television. Sometimes, we would see Susan there, and she and Michael would hold hands. But this time, I went alone because Michael is gone, and Susan hangs around different boys now, and Bridget is still crazy, and Carl’s mom sent him to a Catholic school, and Dave with the awkward glasses moved away. I was just kind of watching people, seeing who was in love and who was just hanging around, and I saw that kid I told you about. Remember Nothing? Nothing was there at the football game, and he was one of the few people who was not an adult that was actually watching the game. I mean really watching the game. He would yell things out. “C’mon, Brad!” That’s the name of our quarterback. Now, normally I am very shy, but Nothing seemed like the kind of guy you could just walk up to at a football game even though you were three years younger and not popular. “Hey, you’re in my shop class!” He’s a very friendly person. “I’m Charlie.” I said, not too shy. “And I’m Patrick. And this is Sam.” He pointed to a very pretty girl next to him. And she waved to me. “Hey, Charlie.” Sam had a very nice smile. They both told me to have a seat, and they both seemed to mean it, so I took a seat. I listened to Nothing yell at the field. And I listened to his play-by-play analysis. And I figured out that this was a kid who knew football very well. He actually knew football as well as my brother. Maybe I should call Nothing “Patrick” from now on since that is how he introduced himself, and that is what Sam calls him. Incidentally, Sam has brown hair and very very pretty green eyes. The kind of green that doesn’t make a big deal about itself. I would have told you that sooner, but under the stadium lights, everything looked kind of washed out. It wasn’t until we went to the Big Boy, and Sam and Patrick started to chain-smoke that I got a good look at her. The nice thing about the Big Boy was the fact that Patrick and Sam didn’t just throw around inside jokes and make me struggle to keep up. Not at all. They asked me questions. “How old are you, Charlie?” “Fifteen.” “What do you want to do when you grow up?” “I don’t know just yet.” “What’s your favorite band?” “I think maybe the Smiths because I love their song ‘Asleep,’ but I’m really not sure one way or the other because I don’t know any other songs by them too well.” “What’s your favorite movie?” “I don’t know really. They’re all the same to me.” “How about your favorite book?” “This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.” “Why?” “Because it was the last one I read.” This made them laugh because they knew I meant it honest, not show-off. Then they told me their favorites, and we sat quiet. I ate the pumpkin pie because the lady said it was in season, and Patrick and Sam smoked more cigarettes. I looked at them, and they looked really happy together. A good kind of happy. And even though I thought Sam was very pretty and nice, and she was the first girl I ever wanted to ask on a date someday when I can drive, I did not mind that she had a boyfriend, especially if he was a good guy like Patrick. “How long have you been ‘going out’?” I asked. Then, they started laughing. Really laughing hard. “What’s so funny?” I said. “We’re brother and sister,” Patrick said, still laughing. “But you don’t look alike,” I said. That’s when Sam explained that they were actually stepsister and stepbrother since Patrick’s dad married Sam’s mom. I was very happy to know that because I would really like to ask Sam on a date someday. I really would. She is so nice. I feel ashamed, though, because that night, I had a weird dream. I was with Sam. And we were both naked. And her legs were spread over the sides of the couch. And I woke up. And I had never felt that good in my life. But I also felt bad because I saw her naked without her permission. I think that I should tell Sam about this, and I really hope it does not prevent us from maybe making up inside jokes of our own. It would be very nice to have a friend again. I would like that even more than a date. Love always, Charlie October 14, 1991 Dear friend, Do you know what “masturbation” is? I think you probably do because you are older than me. But just in case, I will tell you. Masturbation is when you rub your genitals until you have an orgasm. Wow! I thought that in those movies and television shows when they talk about having a coffee break that they should have a masturbation break. But then again, I think this would decrease productivity. I’m only being cute here. I don’t really mean it. I just wanted to make you smile. I meant the “wow” though. I told Sam that I dreamt that she and I were naked on the sofa, and I started crying because I felt bad, and do you know what she did? She laughed. Not a mean laugh, either. A really nice, warm laugh. She said that she thought I was being cute. And she said it was okay that I had a dream about her. And I stopped crying. Sam then asked me if I thought she was pretty, and I told her I thought she was “lovely.” Sam then looked me right in the eye. “You know you’re too young for me, Charlie? You do know that?” “Yes, I do.” “I don’t want you to waste your time thinking about me that way.” “I won’t. It was just a dream.” Sam then gave me a hug, and it was strange because my family doesn’t hug a lot except my Aunt Helen. But after a few moments, I could smell Sam’s perfume, and I could feel her body against me. And I stepped back. “Sam, I’m thinking about you that way.” She just looked at me and shook her head. Then, she put her arm around my shoulder and walked me down the hallway. We met Patrick outside because they didn’t like to go to class sometimes. They preferred to smoke. “Charlie has a Charlie-esque crush on me, Patrick.” “He does, huh?” “I’m trying not to,” I offered, which just made them laugh. Patrick then asked Sam to leave, which she did, and he explained some things to me, so I would know how to be around other girls and not waste my time thinking about Sam that way. “Charlie, has anyone told you how it works?” “I don’t think so.” “Well, there are rules you follow here not because you want to, but because you have to. You get it?” “I guess so.” “Okay. You take girls, for example. They’re copying their moms and magazines and everything to know how to act around guys.” I thought about the moms and the magazines and the everythings, and the thought made me nervous, especially if it includes TV. “I mean it’s not like in the movies where girls like assholes or anything like that. It’s not that easy. They just like somebody that can give them a purpose.” “A purpose?” “Right. You know? Girls like guys to be a challenge. It gives them some mold to fit in how they act. Like a mom. What would a mom do if she couldn’t fuss over you and make you clean your room? And what would you do without her fussing and making you do it? Everyone needs a mom. And a mom knows this. And it gives her a sense of purpose. You get it?” “Yeah,” I said even though I didn’t. But I got it enough to say “Yeah” and not be lying, though. “The thing is some girls think they can actually change guys. And what’s funny is that if they actually did change them, they’d get bored. They’d have no challenge left. You just have to give girls some time to think of a new way of doing things, that’s all. Some of them will figure it out here. Some later. Some never. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” But I guess I did worry about it. I’ve been worrying about it ever since he told me. I look at people holding hands in the hallways, and I try to think about how it all works. At the school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to “their song.” In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys’ jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are. Bill looked at me looking at people, and after class, he asked me what I was thinking about, and I told him. He listened, and he nodded and made “affirmation” sounds. When I had finished, his face changed into a “serious talk” face. “Do you always think this much, Charlie?” “Is that bad?” I just wanted someone to tell me the truth. “Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.” “Is that bad?” “Yes.” “I think I participate, though. Don’t you think I am?” “Well, are you dancing at these dances?” “I’m not a very good dancer.” “Are you going on dates?” “Well, I don’t have a car, and even if I did, I can’t drive because I’m fifteen, and anyway, I haven’t met a girl I like except for Sam, but I am too young for her, and she would always have to drive, which I don’t think is fair.” Bill smiled and continued asking me questions. Slowly, he got to “problems at home.” And I told him about the boy who makes mix tapes hitting my sister because my sister only told me not to tell mom or dad about it, so I figured I could tell Bill. He got this very serious look on his face after I told him, and he said something to me I don’t think I will forget this semester or ever. “Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.” I just stood there, quiet. Bill patted my shoulder and gave me a new book to read. He told me everything was going to be okay. I usually walk home from school because it makes me feel like I’ve earned it. What I mean is that I want to be able to tell my kids that I walked to school like my grandparents did in the “old days.” It’s odd that I’m planning this considering I’ve never had a date, but I guess that makes sense. It usually takes me an extra hour or so to walk as opposed to taking the bus, but it’s worth it when the weather is nice and cool like it was today. When I finally got home, my sister was sitting on a chair. My mom and my dad were standing in front of her. And I knew that Bill had called home and told them. And I felt terrible. It was all my fault. My sister was crying. My mom was very very quiet. My dad did all the talking. He said that my sister was not allowed to see the boy who hit her anymore, and he was going to have a talk with the boy’s parents tonight. My sister then said that it was all her fault, that she was provoking him, but my dad said it was no excuse. “But I love him!” I had never seen my sister cry that much. “No, you don’t.” “I hate you!” “No, you don’t.” My dad can be very calm sometimes. “He’s my whole world.” “Don’t ever say that about anyone again. Not even me.” That was my mom. My mom chooses her battles carefully, and I can tell you one thing about my family. When my mom does say something, she always gets her way. And this time was no exception. My sister stopped crying immediately. After that, my dad gave my sister a rare kiss on the forehead. Then, he left the house, got in his Oldsmobile, and drove away. I thought he probably was going to talk to the boy’s parents. And I felt very sorry for them. His parents, I mean. Because my dad doesn’t lose fights. He just doesn’t. My mom then went into the kitchen to make my sister’s favorite thing to eat, and my sister looked at me. “I hate you.” My sister said it different than she said it to my dad. She meant it with me. She really did. “I love you,” was all I could say in return. “You’re a freak, you know that? You’ve always been a freak. Everyone says so. They always have.” “I’m trying not to be.” Then, I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be. By the way, I figure you are probably curious about my dad. Did he hit us when we were kids or now even? I just thought you might be curious because Bill was, after I told him about that boy and my sister. Well, if you are wondering, he didn’t. He never touched my brother or sister. And the only time he ever slapped me was when I made my Aunt Helen cry. And once we all calmed down, he got on his knees in front of me and said that his stepdad hit him a lot, and he decided in college when my mom got pregnant with my older brother that he would never hit his kids. And he felt terrible for doing it. And he was so sorry. And he would never hit me again. And he hasn’t. He’s just stern sometimes. Love always, Charlie October 15, 1991 Dear friend, I guess I forgot to mention in my last letter that it was Patrick who told me about masturbation. I guess I also forgot to tell you how often I do it now, which is a lot. I don’t like to look at pictures. I just close my eyes and dream about a lady I do not know. And I try not to feel ashamed. I never think about Sam when I do it. Never. That’s very important to me because I was so happy when she said “Charlie-esque” since it felt like an inside joke of sorts. One night, I felt so guilty that I promised God that I would never do it again. So, I started using blankets, but then the blankets hurt, so I started using pillows, but then the pillows hurt, so I went back to normal. I wasn’t raised very religiously because my parents went to Catholic school, but I do believe in God very much. I just never gave God a name, if you know what I mean. I hope I haven’t let Him down regardless. Incidentally, my dad did have a serious talk with the boy’s parents. The boy’s mother was very very angry and screamed at her son. The boy’s father kept quiet. And my dad didn’t get too personal with them. He didn’t tell them they did a “lousy job” raising their son or anything. As far as he was concerned, the only important thing was getting their help to keep their son away from his daughter. Once that was settled, he left them to deal with their family and came home to deal with his. At least that’s how he put it. The one thing I did ask my dad was about the boy’s problems at home. Whether or not he thought the parents hit their son. He told me to mind my own business. Because he didn’t know and would never ask and didn’t think it mattered. “Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it’s no excuse.” That’s all he said. And then we went to watch television. My sister is still mad at me, but my dad said I did the right thing. I hope that I did, but it’s hard to tell sometimes. Love always, Charlie October 28, 1991 Dear friend, I’m sorry I haven’t written to you in a couple of weeks, but I have been trying to “participate” like Bill said. It’s strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book. Also, when I write letters, I spend the next two days thinking about what I figured out in my letters. I do not know if this is good or bad. Nevertheless, I am trying to participate. Incidentally, the book Bill gave me was Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. I know what you’re thinking. The cartoon Peter Pan with the lost boys. The actual book is so much better than that. It’s just about this boy who refuses to grow up, and when Wendy grows up, he feels very betrayed. At least that’s what I got out of it. I think Bill gave me the book to teach me a lesson of some kind. The good news is that I read the book, and because of its fantasy nature, I could not pretend that I was in the book. That way I could participate and still read. In terms of my participation in things, I am trying to go to social events that they set up in my school. It’s too late to join any clubs or anything like that, but I still try to go to the things that I can. Things like the homecoming football game and dance, even if I don’t have a date. I cannot imagine that I will ever come home for a homecoming game after I leave here, but it was fun to pretend that I was. I found Patrick and Sam sitting in their normal spot in the bleachers, and I started acting like I hadn’t seen them in a year even though I had seen them that afternoon in lunch when I ate my orange, and they smoked cigarettes. “Patrick, is that you? And Sam… it’s been so long. Who’s winning? God, college is such a trial. My professor is making me read twenty-seven books this weekend, and my girlfriend needs me to paint signs for her protest rally Tuesday. Let those administrators know we mean business. Dad is busy with his golf swing, and Mom has her hands full with tennis. We must do this again. I would stay, but I have to pick my sister up from her emotional workshop. She’s making real progress. Good to see ya.” And then I walked away. I went down to the concession stand and bought three boxes of nachos and a diet coke for Sam. When I returned, I sat down and gave Patrick and Sam the nachos and Sam her diet coke. And Sam smiled. The great thing about Sam is that she doesn’t think I’m crazy for pretending to do things. Patrick doesn’t either, but he was too busy watching the game and screaming at Brad, the quarterback. Sam told me during the game that they were going over to their friend’s house later for a party. Then, she asked me if I wanted to go, and I said yes because I had never been to a party before. I had seen one at my house, though. My parents went to Ohio to see a very distant cousin get buried or married. I don’t remember which. And they left my brother in charge of the house. He was sixteen at the time. My brother used the opportunity to throw a big party with beer and everything. I was ordered to stay in my room, which was okay because that’s where everyone kept their coats, and it was fun looking through the stuff in their pockets. Every ten minutes or so, a drunk girl or boy would stumble in my room to see if they could make out there or something. Then, they would see me and walk away. That is, except for this one couple. This one couple, whom I was told later were very popular and in love, stumbled into my room and asked if I minded them using it. I told them that my brother and sister said I had to stay here, and they asked if they could use the room anyway with me still in it. I said I didn’t see why not, so they closed the door and started kissing. Kissing very hard. After a few minutes, the boy’s hand went up the girl’s shirt, and she started protesting. “C’mon, Dave.” “What?” “The kid’s in here.” “It’s okay.” And the boy kept working up the girl’s shirt, and as much as she said no, he kept working it. After a few minutes, she stopped protesting, and he pulled her shirt off, and she had a white bra on with lace. I honestly didn’t know what to do by this point. Pretty soon, he took off her bra and started to kiss her breasts. And then he put his hand down her pants, and she started moaning. I think they were both very drunk. He reached to take off her pants, but she started crying really hard, so he reached for his own. He pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees. “Please. Dave. No.” But the boy just talked soft to her about how good she looked and things like that, and she grabbed his penis with her hands and started moving it. I wish I could describe this a little more nicely without using words like penis, but that was the way it was. After a few minutes, the boy pushed the girl’s head down, and she started to kiss his penis. She was still crying. Finally, she stopped crying because he put his penis in her mouth, and I don’t think you can cry in that position. I had to stop watching at that point because I started to feel sick, but it kept going on, and they kept doing other things, and she kept saying “no.” Even when I covered my ears, I could still hear her say that. My sister came in eventually to bring me a bowl of potato chips, and when she found the boy and the girl, they stopped. My sister was very embarrassed, bu	330,429
Where The Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens) (Z-Library).epub	Where the Crawdads Sing Contents Cover Also by Delia Owens Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Map PART 1 \| The Marsh Prologue 1. Ma 2. Jodie 3. Chase 4. School 5. Investigation 6. A Boat and a Boy 7. The Fishing Season 8. Negative Data 9. Jumpin’ 10. Just Grass in the Wind 11. Croker Sacks Full 12. Pennies and Grits 13. Feathers 14. Red Fibers 15. The Game 16. Reading 17. Crossing the Threshold 18. White Canoe 19. Something Going On 20. July 4 21. Coop PART 2 \| The Swamp 22. Same Tide 23. The Shell 24. The Fire Tower 25. A Visit from Patti Love 26. The Boat Ashore 27. Out Hog Mountain Road 28. The Shrimper 29. Seaweed 30. The Rips 31. A Book 32. Alibi 33. The Scar 34. Search the Shack 35. The Compass 36. To Trap a Fox 37. Gray Sharks 38. Sunday Justice 39. Chase by Chance 40. Cypress Cove 41. A Small Herd 42. A Cell 43. A Microscope 44. Cell Mate 45. Red Cap 46. King of the World 47. The Expert 48. A Trip 49. Disguises 50. The Journal 51. Waning Moon 52. Three Mountains Motel 53. Missing Link 54. Vice Versa 55. Grass Flowers 56. The Night Heron 57. The Firefly Acknowledgments About the Author Table of Contents Cover Cover Title Page Start i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 Cover, Where the Crawdads Sing Also by Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing Also by Delia Owens WITH MARK OWENS Secrets of the Savanna The Eye of the Elephant Cry of the Kalahari Title Page, Where the Crawdads Sing Copyright, Where the Crawdads Sing G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS Publishers Since 1838 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2018 by Delia Owens Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Excerpts from “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students” from Three Books by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1993 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. “Evening” from Above the River: The Complete Poems © 1990 by Anne Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Owens, Delia, author. Title: Where the crawdads sing / Delia Owens. Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018010775\| ISBN 9780735219090 (hardback) \| ISBN 9780735219113 (epub) Subjects: \| BISAC: FICTION / Literary. \| FICTION / Coming of Age. \| FICTION / Contemporary Women. Classification: LCC PS3615.W447 W48 2018 \| DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010775 p. cm. Map and illustrations by Meighan Cavanaugh This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Version_1 Dedication, Where the Crawdads Sing To Amanda, Margaret, and Barbara Here’s to’d ya If I never see’d ya I never knowed ya. I see’d ya I knowed ya I loved ya, Forever. Contents, Where the Crawdads Sing Contents Also by Delia Owens Title Page Copyright Dedication Map PART 1 \| The Marsh Prologue 1. Ma 2. Jodie 3. Chase 4. School 5. Investigation 6. A Boat and a Boy 7. The Fishing Season 8. Negative Data 9. Jumpin’ 10. Just Grass in the Wind 11. Croker Sacks Full 12. Pennies and Grits 13. Feathers 14. Red Fibers 15. The Game 16. Reading 17. Crossing the Threshold 18. White Canoe 19. Something Going On 20. July 4 21. Coop PART 2 \| The Swamp 22. Same Tide 23. The Shell 24. The Fire Tower 25. A Visit from Patti Love 26. The Boat Ashore 27. Out Hog Mountain Road 28. The Shrimper 29. Seaweed 30. The Rips 31. A Book 32. Alibi 33. The Scar 34. Search the Shack 35. The Compass 36. To Trap a Fox 37. Gray Sharks 38. Sunday Justice 39. Chase by Chance 40. Cypress Cove 41. A Small Herd 42. A Cell 43. A Microscope 44. Cell Mate 45. Red Cap 46. King of the World 47. The Expert 48. A Trip 49. Disguises 50. The Journal 51. Waning Moon 52. Three Mountains Motel 53. Missing Link 54. Vice Versa 55. Grass Flowers 56. The Night Heron 57. The Firefly Acknowledgments About the Author Map, Where the Crawdads Sing PART 1 \| The Marsh, Where the Crawdads Sing PART 1 The Marsh 1. Ma, Where the Crawdads Sing 1. Ma 1952 The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron’s wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap. Standing on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of worn-out suds. No sounds now but her own breathing. Who had left the shack? Not Ma. She never let the door slam. But when Kya ran to the porch, she saw her mother in a long brown skirt, kick pleats nipping at her ankles, as she walked down the sandy lane in high heels. The stubby-nosed shoes were fake alligator skin. Her only going-out pair. Kya wanted to holler out but knew not to rouse Pa, so opened the door and stood on the brick-’n’-board steps. From there she saw the blue train case Ma carried. Usually, with the confidence of a pup, Kya knew her mother would return with meat wrapped in greasy brown paper or with a chicken, head dangling down. But she never wore the gator heels, never took a case. Ma always looked back where the foot lane met the road, one arm held high, white palm waving, as she turned onto the track, which wove through bog forests, cattail lagoons, and maybe—if the tide obliged—eventually into town. But today she walked on, unsteady in the ruts. Her tall figure emerged now and then through the holes of the forest until only swatches of white scarf flashed between the leaves. Kya sprinted to the spot she knew would bare the road; surely Ma would wave from there, but she arrived only in time to glimpse the blue case—the color so wrong for the woods—as it disappeared. A heaviness, thick as black-cotton mud, pushed her chest as she returned to the steps to wait. Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn’t recall their ages. They lived with Ma and Pa, squeezed together like penned rabbits, in the rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks. Jodie, the brother closest to Kya, but still seven years older, stepped from the house and stood behind her. He had her same dark eyes and black hair; had taught her birdsongs, star names, how to steer the boat through saw grass. “Ma’ll be back,” he said. “I dunno. She’s wearin’ her gator shoes.” “A ma don’t leave her kids. It ain’t in ’em.” “You told me that fox left her babies.” “Yeah, but that vixen got ’er leg all tore up. She’d’ve starved to death if she’d tried to feed herself ’n’ her kits. She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good. Ma ain’t starvin’, she’ll be back.” Jodie wasn’t nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya. Her throat tight, she whispered, “But Ma’s carryin’ that blue case like she’s goin’ somewheres big.” • • • T HE SHACK SAT BACK from the palmettos, which sprawled across sand flats to a necklace of green lagoons and, in the distance, all the marsh beyond. Miles of blade-grass so tough it grew in salt water, interrupted only by trees so bent they wore the shape of the wind. Oak forests bunched around the other sides of the shack and sheltered the closest lagoon, its surface so rich in life it churned. Salt air and gull-song drifted through the trees from the sea. Claiming territory hadn’t changed much since the 1500s. The scattered marsh holdings weren’t legally described, just staked out natural—a creek boundary here, a dead oak there—by renegades. A man doesn’t set up a palmetto lean-to in a bog unless he’s on the run from somebody or at the end of his own road. The marsh was guarded by a torn shoreline, labeled by early explorers as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” because riptides, furious winds, and shallow shoals wrecked ships like paper hats along what would become the North Carolina coast. One seaman’s journal read, “rang’d along the Shoar . . . but could discern no Entrance . . . A violent Storm overtook us . . . we were forced to get off to Sea, to secure Ourselves and Ship, and were driven by the Rapidity of a strong Current . . . “The Land . . . being marshy and Swamps, we return’d towards our Ship . . . Discouragement of all such as should hereafter come into those Parts to settle.” Those looking for serious land moved on, and this infamous marsh became a net, scooping up a mishmash of mutinous sailors, castaways, debtors, and fugitives dodging wars, taxes, or laws that they didn’t take to. The ones malaria didn’t kill or the swamp didn’t swallow bred into a woodsmen tribe of several races and multiple cultures, each of whom could fell a small forest with a hatchet and pack a buck for miles. Like river rats, each had his own territory, yet had to fit into the fringe or simply disappear some day in the swamp. Two hundred years later, they were joined by runaway slaves, who escaped into the marsh and were called maroons, and freed slaves, penniless and beleaguered, who dispersed into the water-land because of scant options. Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch was lean. Layers of life—squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl, fish, shrimp, oysters, fatted deer, and plump geese—were piled on the land or in the water. A man who didn’t mind scrabbling for supper would never starve. It was now 1952, so some of the claims had been held by a string of disconnected, unrecorded persons for four centuries. Most before the Civil War. Others squatted on the land more recently, especially after the World Wars, when men came back broke and broke-up. The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep. No one cared that they held the land because nobody else wanted it. After all, it was wasteland bog. Just like their whiskey, the marsh dwellers bootlegged their own laws—not like those burned onto stone tablets or inscribed on documents, but deeper ones, stamped in their genes. Ancient and natural, like those hatched from hawks and doves. When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks. • • • M A DIDN ’ T COME BACK that day. No one spoke of it. Least of all Pa. Stinking of fish and drum likker, he clanked pot lids. “Whar’s supper?” Eyes downcast, the brothers and sisters shrugged. Pa dog-cussed, then limp-stepped out, back into the woods. There had been fights before; Ma had even left a time or two, but she always came back, scooping up whoever would be cuddled. The two older sisters cooked a supper of red beans and cornbread, but no one sat to eat at the table, as they would have with Ma. Each dipped beans from the pot, flopped cornbread on top, and wandered off to eat on their floor mattresses or the faded sofa. Kya couldn’t eat. She sat on the porch steps, looking down the lane. Tall for her age, bone skinny, she had deep-tanned skin and straight hair, black and thick as crow wings. Darkness put a stop to her lookout. Croaking frogs would drown the sounds of footsteps; even so, she lay on her porch bed, listening. Just that morning she’d awakened to fatback crackling in the iron skillet and whiffs of biscuits browning in the wood oven. Pulling up her bib overalls, she’d rushed into the kitchen to put the plates and forks out. Pick the weevils from the grits. Most dawns, smiling wide, Ma hugged her—“Good morning, my special girl”—and the two of them moved about the chores, dancelike. Sometimes Ma sang folk songs or quoted nursery rhymes: “This little piggy went to market.” Or she’d swing Kya into a jitterbug, their feet banging the plywood floor until the music of the battery-operated radio died, sounding as if it were singing to itself at the bottom of a barrel. Other mornings Ma spoke about adult things Kya didn’t understand, but she figured Ma’s words needed somewhere to go, so she absorbed them through her skin, as she poked more wood in the cookstove. Nodding like she knew. Then, the hustle of getting everybody up and fed. Pa not there. He had two settings: silence and shouting. So it was just fine when he slept through, or didn’t come home at all. But this morning, Ma had been quiet; her smile lost, her eyes red. She’d tied a white scarf pirate style, low across her forehead, but the purple and yellow edges of a bruise spilled out. Right after breakfast, even before the dishes were washed, Ma had put a few personals in the train case and walked down the road. • • • T H E NEXT MORNING , Kya took up her post again on the steps, her dark eyes boring down the lane like a tunnel waiting for a train. The marsh beyond was veiled in fog so low its cushy bottom sat right on the mud. Barefoot, Kya drummed her toes, twirled grass stems at doodlebugs, but a six-year-old can’t sit long and soon she moseyed onto the tidal flats, sucking sounds pulling at her toes. Squatting at the edge of the clear water, she watched minnows dart between sunspots and shadows. Jodie hollered to her from the palmettos. She stared; maybe he was coming with news. But as he wove through the spiky fronds, she knew by the way he moved, casual, that Ma wasn’t home. “Ya wanta play explorers?” he asked. “Ya said ya’re too old to play ’splorers.” “Nah, I just said that. Never too old. Race ya!” They tore across the flats, then through the woods toward the beach. She squealed as he overtook her and laughed until they reached the large oak that jutted enormous arms over the sand. Jodie and their older brother, Murph, had hammered a few boards across the branches as a lookout tower and tree fort. Now, much of it was falling in, dangling from rusty nails. Usually if she was allowed to crew at all it was as slave girl, bringing her brothers warm biscuits swiped from Ma’s pan. But today Jodie said, “You can be captain.” Kya raised her right arm in a charge. “Run off the Spaniards!” They broke off stick-swords and crashed through brambles, shouting and stabbing at the enemy. Then—make-believe coming and going easily—she walked to a mossy log and sat. Silently, he joined her. He wanted to say something to get her mind off Ma, but no words came, so they watched the swimming shadows of water striders. Kya returned to the porch steps later and waited for a long time, but, as she looked to the end of the lane, she never cried. Her face was still, her lips a simple thin line under searching eyes. But Ma didn’t come back that day either. 2. Jodie, Where the Crawdads Sing 2. Jodie 1952 After Ma left, over the next few weeks, Kya’s oldest brother and two sisters drifted away too, as if by example. They had endured Pa’s red-faced rages, which started as shouts, then escalated into fist-slugs, or backhanded punches, until one by one, they disappeared. They were nearly grown anyway. And later, just as she forgot their ages, she couldn’t remember their real names, only that they were called Missy, Murph, and Mandy. On her porch mattress, Kya found a small pile of socks left by her sisters. On the morning when Jodie was the only sibling left, Kya awakened to the clatter-clank and hot grease of breakfast. She dashed into the kitchen, thinking Ma was home frying corn fritters or hoecakes. But it was Jodie, standing at the woodstove, stirring grits. She smiled to hide the letdown, and he patted the top of her head, gently shushing her to be quiet: if they didn’t wake Pa, they could eat alone. Jodie didn’t know how to make biscuits, and there wasn’t any bacon, so he cooked grits and scrambled eggs in lard, and they sat down together, silently exchanging glances and smiles. They washed their dishes fast, then ran out the door toward the marsh, he in the lead. But just then Pa shouted and hobbled toward them. Impossibly lean, his frame seemed to flop about from poor gravity. His molars yellow as an old dog’s teeth. Kya looked up at Jodie. “We can run. Hide in the mossy place.” “It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” he said. • • • L ATER , NEAR SUNSET , Jodie found Kya on the beach staring at the sea. As he stepped up beside her, she didn’t look at him but kept her eyes on the roiling waves. Still, she knew by the way he spoke that Pa had slugged his face. “I hafta go, Kya. Can’t live here no longer.” She almost turned to him, but didn’t. Wanted to beg him not to leave her alone with Pa, but the words jammed up. “When you’re old enough you’ll understand,” he said. Kya wanted to holler out that she may be young, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew Pa was the reason they all left; what she wondered was why no one took her with them. She’d thought of leaving too, but had nowhere to go and no bus money. “Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don’t go in the house. They can get ya there. Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo’ tracks; I learned ya how. And ya can hide from Pa, too.” When she still didn’t speak, he said good-bye and strode across the beach to the woods. Just before he stepped into the trees, she finally turned and watched him walk away. “This little piggy stayed home,” she said to the waves. Breaking her freeze, she ran to the shack. Shouted his name down the hall, but Jodie’s things were already gone, his floor bed stripped bare. She sank onto his mattress, watching the last of that day slide down the wall. Light lingered after the sun, as it does, some of it pooling in the room, so that for a brief moment the lumpy beds and piles of old clothes took on more shape and color than the trees outside. A gnawing hunger—such a mundane thing—surprised her. She walked to the kitchen and stood at the door. All her life the room had been warmed from baking bread, boiling butter beans, or bubbling fish stew. Now, it was stale, quiet, and dark. “Who’s gonna cook?” she asked out loud. Could have asked, Who’s gonna dance? She lit a candle and poked at hot ashes in the woodstove, added kindling. Pumped the bellows till a flame caught, then more wood. The Frigidaire served as a cupboard because no electricity came near the shack. To keep the mold at bay, the door was propped open with the flyswatter. Still, greenish-black veins of mildew grew in every crevice. Getting out leftovers, she said, “I’ll tump the grits in lard, warm ’em up,” which she did and ate from the pot, looking through the window for Pa. But he didn’t come. When light from the quarter moon finally touched the shack, she crawled into her porch bed—a lumpy mattress on the floor with real sheets covered in little blue roses that Ma had got at a yard sale—alone at night for the first time in her life. At first, every few minutes, she sat up and peered through the screen. Listening for footsteps in the woods. She knew the shapes of all the trees; still some seemed to dart here and there, moving with the moon. For a while she was so stiff she couldn’t swallow, but on cue, the familiar songs of tree frogs and katydids filled the night. More comforting than three blind mice with a carving knife. The darkness held an odor of sweetness, the earthy breath of frogs and salamanders who’d made it through one more stinky-hot day. The marsh snuggled in closer with a low fog, and she slept. • • • F OR THREE DAYS Pa didn’t come and Kya boiled turnip greens from Ma’s garden for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She’d walked out to the chicken coop for eggs but found it bare. Not a chicken or egg anywhere. “Chicken shits! You’re just a bunch of chicken shits!” She’d been meaning to tend them since Ma left but hadn’t done much of anything. Now they’d escaped as a motley flock, clucking far in the trees beyond. She’d have to scatter grits, see if she could keep them close. On the evening of the fourth day, Pa showed up with a bottle and sprawled across his bed. Walking into the kitchen the next morning, he hollered, “Whar’s ev’body got to?” “I don’t know,” she said, not looking at him. “Ya don’t know much as a cur-dawg. Useless as tits on a boar hog.” Kya slipped quietly out the porch door, but walking along the beach searching for mussels, she smelled smoke and looked up to see a plume rising from the direction of the shack. Running as fast as she could, she broke through the trees and saw a bonfire blazing in the yard. Pa was throwing Ma’s paintings, dresses, and books onto the flames. “No!” Kya screamed. He didn’t look at her, but threw the old battery-operated radio into the fire. Her face and arms burned as she reached toward the paintings, but the heat pushed her back. She rushed to the shack to block Pa’s return for more, locking eyes with him. Pa raised his backhand toward Kya, but she stood her ground. Suddenly, he turned and limp-stepped toward his boat. Kya sank onto the brick ’n’ boards, watching Ma’s watercolors of the marsh smolder into ash. She sat until the sun set, until all the buttons glowed as embers and the memories of dancing the jitterbug with Ma melted into the flames. Over the next few days, Kya learned from the mistakes of the others, and perhaps more from the minnows, how to live with him. Just keep out of the way, don’t let him see you, dart from sunspots to shadows. Up and out of the house before he rose, she lived in the woods and water, then padded into the house to sleep in her bed on the porch as close to the marsh as she could get. • • • P A HAD FOUGHT G ERMANY in the Second World War, where his left femur caught shrapnel and shattered, their last source of pride. His weekly disability checks, their only source of income. A week after Jodie left, the Frigidaire stood empty and hardly any turnips remained. When Kya walked into the kitchen that Monday morning, Pa pointed to a crumpled dollar and loose coins on the kitchen table. “This here’ll get ya food fer the week. Thar ain’t no such thang as handouts,” he said. “Ever’thang cost sump’m, and fer the money ya gotta keep the house up, stove wood c’lected, and warsh the laundree.” For the first time ever Kya walked alone toward the village of Barkley Cove to buy groceries— this little piggy went to market. She plodded through deep sand or black mud for four miles until the bay glistened ahead, the hamlet on its shore. Everglades surrounded the town, mixing their salty haze with that of the ocean, which swelled in high tide on the other side of Main Street. Together the marsh and sea separated the village from the rest of the world, the only connection being the single-lane highway that limped into town on cracked cement and potholes. There were two streets: Main ran along the oceanfront with a row of shops; the Piggly Wiggly grocery at one end, the Western Auto at the other, the diner in the middle. Mixed in there were Kress’s Five and Dime, a Penney’s (catalog only), Parker’s Bakery, and a Buster Brown Shoe Shop. Next to the Piggly was the Dog-Gone Beer Hall, which offered roasted hot dogs, red-hot chili, and fried shrimp served in folded paper boats. No ladies or children stepped inside because it wasn’t considered proper, but a take-out window had been cut out of the wall so they could order hot dogs and Nehi cola from the street. Coloreds couldn’t use the door or the window. The other street, Broad, ran from the old highway straight toward the ocean and into Main, ending right there. So the only intersection in town was Main, Broad, and the Atlantic Ocean. The stores and businesses weren’t joined together as in most towns but were separated by small, vacant lots brushed with sea oats and palmettos, as if overnight the marsh had inched in. For more than two hundred years, sharp salty winds had weathered the cedar-shingled buildings to the color of rust, and the window frames, most painted white or blue, had flaked and cracked. Mostly, the village seemed tired of arguing with the elements, and simply sagged. The town wharf, draped in frayed ropes and old pelicans, jutted into the small bay, whose water, when calm, reflected the reds and yellows of shrimp boats. Dirt roads, lined with small cedar houses, wound through the trees, around lagoons, and along the ocean on either end of the shops. Barkley Cove was quite literally a backwater town, bits scattered here and there among the estuaries and reeds like an egret’s nest flung by the wind. Barefoot and dressed in too-short bib overalls, Kya stood where the marsh track met the road. Biting her lip, wanting to run home. She couldn’t reckon what she’d say to people; how she’d figure the grocery money. But hunger was a pushing thing, so she stepped onto Main and walked, head down, toward the Piggly Wiggly on a crumbling sidewalk that appeared now and then between grass clumps. As she approached the Five and Dime, she heard a commotion behind her and jumped to the side just as three boys, a few years older than she, sped by on bikes. The lead boy looked back at her, laughing at the near miss, and then almost collided with a woman stepping from the store. “CHASE ANDREWS, you get back here! All three of you boys.” They pedaled a few more yards, then thought better of it and returned to the woman, Miss Pansy Price, saleslady in fabric and notions. Her family had once owned the largest farm on the outskirts of the marsh and, although they were forced to sell out long ago, she continued her role as genteel landowner. Which wasn’t easy living in a tiny apartment above the diner. Miss Pansy usually wore hats shaped like silk turbans, and this morning her headwear was pink, setting off red lipstick and splotches of rouge. She scolded the boys. “I’ve a mind to tell y’all’s mamas about this. Or better, yo’ papas. Ridin’ fast like that on the sidewalk, nearly runnin’ me over. What ya got to say for yo’self, Chase?” He had the sleekest bike—red seat and chrome handlebars, raised up. “We’re sorry, Miss Pansy, we didn’t see ya ’cause that girl over yonder got in the way.” Chase, tanned with dark hair, pointed at Kya, who had stepped back and stood half inside a myrtle shrub. “Never mind her. You cain’t go blamin’ yo’ sins on somebody else, not even swamp trash. Now, you boys gotta do a good deed, make up fer this. There goes Miss Arial with her groceries, go help carry ’em to her truck. And put yo’ shirttails in.” “Yes, ma’am,” the boys said as they biked toward Miss Arial, who had taught them all second grade. Kya knew that the parents of the dark-haired boy owned the Western Auto store, which was why he rode the snazziest bike. She’d seen him unloading big cardboard boxes of merchandise from the truck, packing it in, but she had never spoken a word to him or the others. She waited a few minutes, then, head low again, walked toward the grocery. Inside the Piggly Wiggly, Kya studied the selection of grits and chose a one-pound bag of coarse ground yellow because a red tag hung from the top—a special of the week . Like Ma taught her. She fretted in the aisle until no other customers stood at the register, then walked up and faced the checkout lady, Mrs. Singletary, who asked, “Where’s ya mama at?” Mrs. Singletary’s hair was cut short, curled tight, and colored purple as an iris in sunlight. “Doin’ chores, ma’am.” “Well, ya got money for the grits, or don’t ya?” “Yes’m.” Not knowing how to count the exact amount, she laid down the whole dollar. Mrs. Singletary wondered if the child knew the difference in the coins, so as she placed the change into Kya’s open palm she counted slowly, “Twenty-five, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, eighty-five and three pennies. ’Cause the grits cost twelve cents.” Kya felt sick to her stomach. Was she supposed to count something back? She stared to the puzzle of coins in her palm. Mrs. Singletary seemed to soften. “Okay, then. Git on with ya.” Kya dashed from the store and walked as fast as she could toward the marsh track. Plenty of times, Ma had told her, “Never run in town or people’ll think you stole something.” But as soon as Kya reached the sandy track, she ran a good half mile. Then speed-walked the rest. Back home, thinking she knew how to fix grits, she threw them into boiling water like Ma had done, but they lumped up all together in one big ball that burned on the bottom and stayed raw in the middle. So rubbery she could only eat a few bites, so she searched the garden again and found a few more turnip greens between the goldenrod. Then boiled them up and ate them all, slurping down the pot likker. In a few days she got the hang of fixing grits, although no matter how hard she stirred, they lumped up some. The next week she bought backbones—marked with a red tag—and boiled them with grits and collard greens in a mush that tasted fine. Kya had done the laundry plenty with Ma, so knew how to scrub clothes on the rub board under the yard spigot with bars of lye soap. Pa’s overalls were so heavy wet she couldn’t wring them out with her tiny hands, and couldn’t reach the line to hang them, so draped them sopping over the palmetto fronds at the edge of the woods. She and Pa did this two-step, living apart in the same shack, sometimes not seeing each other for days. Almost never speaking. She tidied up after herself and after him, like a serious little woman. She wasn’t near enough of a cook to fix meals for him—he usually wasn’t there anyway—but she made his bed, picked up, swept up, and washed the dishes most of the time. Not because she’d been told, but because it was the only way to keep the shack decent for Ma’s return. • • • M A HAD ALWAYS SAID the autumn moon showed up for Kya’s birthday. So even though she couldn’t remember the date of her birth, one evening when the moon rose swollen and golden from the lagoon, Kya said to herself, “I reckon I’m seven.” Pa never mentioned it; certainly there was no cake. He didn’t say anything about her going to school either, and she, not knowing much about it, was too afraid to bring it up. Surely Ma would come back for her birthday, so the morning after the harvest moon she put on the calico dress and stared down the lane. Kya willed Ma to be walking toward the shack, still in her alligator shoes and long skirt. When no one came, she got the pot of grits and walked through the woods to the seashore. Hands to her mouth, she held her head back and called, “ Kee-ow, kee-ow, kee-ow. ” Specks of silver appeared in the sky from up and down the beach, from over the surf. “Here they come. I can’t count as high as that many gulls are,” she said. Crying and screeching, the birds swirled and dived, hovered near her face, and landed as she tossed grits to them. Finally, they quieted and stood about preening, and she sat on the sand, her legs folded to the side. One large gull settled onto the sand near Kya. “It’s my birthday,” she told the bird. 3. Chase, Where the Crawdads Sing 3. Chase 1969 The rotted legs of the old abandoned fire tower straddled the bog, which created its own tendrils of mist. Except for cawing crows, the hushed forest seemed to hold an expectant mood as the two boys, Benji Mason and Steve Long, both ten, both blond, started up the damp staircase on the morning of October 30, 1969. “Fall ain’t s’posed to be this hot,” Steve called back to Benji. “Yeah, and everythang quiet ’cept the crows.” Glancing down between the steps, Steve said, “Whoa. What’s that?” “Where?” “See, there. Blue clothes, like somebody’s lyin’ in the mud.” Benji called out, “Hey, you! Whatchadoin’? ” “I see a face, but it ain’t movin’.” Arms pumping, they ran back to the ground and pushed their way to the other side of the tower’s base, greenish mud clinging to their boots. There lay a man, flat on his back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee. His eyes and mouth wide open. “Jesus Christ!” Benji said. “My God, it’s Chase Andrews.” “We better git the sheriff.” “But we ain’t s’posed to be out here.” “That don’t matter now. And them crows’ll be snooping ’round anytime now.” They swung their heads toward the cawing, as Steve said, “Maybe one of us oughta stay, keep them birds off him.” “Ya’re crazy if you think I’m gonna stick ’round here by maself. And I’m bettin’ a Injun-head you won’t either.” With that, they grabbed their bikes, pedaled hard down the syrupy sand track back to Main, through town, and ran inside the low-slung building where Sheriff Ed Jackson sat at his desk in an office lit with single lightbulbs dangling on cords. Hefty and of medium height, he had reddish hair, his face and arms splotched with pale freckles, and sat thumbing through a Sports Afield . Without knocking, the boys rushed through the open door. “Sheriff . . .” “Hey, Steve, Benji. You boys been to a fire?” “We seen Chase Andrews flat out in the swamp under the fire tower. He looks dead. Ain’t movin’ one bit.” Ever since Barkley Cove had been settled in 1751, no lawman extended his jurisdiction beyond the saw grass. In the 1940s and ’50s, a few sheriffs set hounds on some mainland convicts who’d escaped into the marsh, and the office still kept dogs just in case. But Jackson mostly ignored crimes committed in the swamp. Why interrupt rats killing rats? But this was Chase. The sheriff stood and took his hat from the rack. “Show me.” Limbs of oak and wild holly screeched against the patrol truck as the sheriff maneuvered down the sandy track with Dr. Vern Murphy, lean and fit with graying hair, the town’s only physician, sitting beside him. Each man swayed to the tune of the deep ruts, Vern’s head almost banging against the window. Old friends about the same age, they fished together some and were often thrown onto the same case. Both silent now at the prospect of confirming whose body lay in the bog. Steve and Benji sat in the truck bed with their bikes until the truck stopped. “He’s over there, Mr. Jackson. Behind them bushes.” Ed stepped from the truck. “You boys wait here.” Then he and Dr. Murphy waded the mud to where Chase lay. The crows had flown off when the truck came, but other birds and insects whirred above. Insolent life thrumming on. “It’s Chase, all right. Sam and Patti Love won’t survive this.” The Andrewses had ordered every spark plug, balanced every account, strung every price tag at the Western Auto for their only child, Chase. Squatting next to the body, listening for a heartbeat with his stethoscope, Vern declared him dead. “How long ya reckon?” Ed asked. “I’d say at least ten hours. The coroner’ll know for sure.” “He must’ve climbed up last night, then. Fell from the top.” Vern examined Chase briefly without moving him, then stood next to Ed. Both men stared at Chase’s eyes, still looking skyward from his bloated face, then glanced at his gaping mouth. “How many times I’ve told folks in this town something like this was bound to happen,” the sheriff said. They had known Chase since he was born. Had watched his life ease from charming child to cute teen; star quarterback and town hot shot to working for his parents. Finally, handsome man wedding the prettiest girl. Now, he sprawled alone, less dignified than the slough. Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show. Ed broke the silence. “Thing is, I can’t figure why the others didn’t run for help. They always come up here in a pack, or at least a couple of ’em, to make out.” The sheriff and doctor exchanged brief but knowing nods that even though he was married, Chase might bring another woman to the tower. “Let’s step back out of here. Get a good look at things,” Ed said, as he lifted his feet, stepping higher than necessary. “You boys stay where you are; don’t go making any more tracks.” Pointing to some footprints that led from the staircase, across the bog, to within eight feet of Chase, Ed asked them, “These your prints from this morning?” “Yessir, that’s as far as we went,” Benji said. “Soon as we seen it was Chase, we backed up. You can see there where we backed up.” “Okay.” Ed turned. “Vern, something’s not right. There’s no footprints near the body. If he was with his friends or whoever, once he fell, they would’ve run down here and stepped all around him, knelt next to him. To see if he was alive. Look how deep our tracks are in this mud, but there’re no other fresh tracks. None going toward the stairs or away from the stairs, none around the body.” “Maybe he was by himself, then. That would explain everything.” “Well, I’ll tell you one thing that doesn’t explain. Where’re his footprints? How did Chase Andrews walk down the path, cross this muck to the stairs so he could climb to the top, and not leave any footprints himself?” 4. School, Where the Crawdads Sing 4. School 1952 A few days after her birthday, out alone barefooting in mud, Kya bent over, watching a tadpole getting its frog legs. Suddenly she stood. A car churned through deep sand near the end of their lane. No one ever drove here. Then the murmur of people talking—a man and a woman—drifted through the trees. Kya ran fast to the brush, where she could see who was coming but still have ways to escape. Like Jodie taught her. A tall woman emerged from the car, unsteadily maneuvering in high heels just like Ma had done along the sandy lane. They must be the orphanage people come to get her. I can outrun her for sure. She’d fall nose-first in them shoes. Kya stayed put and watched the woman step to the porch’s screen door. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home? Truant officer here. I’ve come to take Catherine Clark to school.” Now this was something. Kya sat mute. She was pretty sure she was supposed to go to school at six. Here they were, a year late. She had no notion how to talk to kids, certainly not to a teacher, but she wanted to learn to read and what came after twenty-nine. “Catherine, dear, if ya can hear me, please come on out. It’s the law, hon; ya gotta go to school. But ’sides that, you’ll like it, dear. Ya get a hot lunch every day for free. I think today they’re havin’ chicken pie with crust.” That was something else. Kya was very hungry. For breakfast she’d boiled grits with soda crackers stirred in because she didn’t have any salt. One thing she already knew about life: you can’t eat grits without salt. She’d eaten chicken pie only a few times in her life, but she could still see that golden crust, crunchy on the outside, soft inside. She could feel that full gravy taste, like it was round. It was her stomach acting on its own that made Kya stand up among the palmetto fronds. “Hello, dear, I’m Mrs. Culpepper. You’re all grown up and ready to go to school, aren’t ya?” “Yes’m,” Kya said, head low. “It’s okay, you can go barefoot, other chillin do, but ’cause you’re a li’l girl, you have to wear a skirt. Do you have a dress or a skirt, hon?” “Yes’m.” “Okay then, let’s go get ya dressed up.” Mrs. Culpepper followed Kya through the porch door, having to step over a row of bird nests Kya had lined up along the boards. In the bedroom Kya put on the only dress that fit, a plaid jumper with one shoulder strap held up with a safety pin. “That’s fine, dear, you look just fine.” Mrs. Culpepper held out her hand. Kya stared at it. She hadn’t touched another person in weeks, hadn’t touched a stranger her whole life. But she put her small hand in Mrs. Culpepper’s and was led down the path to the Ford Crestliner driven by a silent man wearing a gray fedora. Sitting in the backseat, Kya didn’t smile and didn’t feel like a chick tucked under its mother’s wing. Barkley Cove had one school for whites. First grade through twelfth went to a brick two-story at the opposite end of Main from the sheriff’s office. The black kids had their own school, a one-story cement block structure out near Colored Town. When she was led into the school office, they found her name but no date of birth in the county birth records, so they put her in the second grade, even though she’d never been to school a day in her life. Anyhow, they said, the first grade was too crowded, and what difference would it make to marsh people who’d do a few months of school, maybe, then never be seen again. As the principal walked her down a wide hallway that echoed their footsteps, sweat popped out on her brow. He opened the door to a classroom and gave her a little push. Plaid shirts, full skirts, shoes, lots of shoes, some bare feet, and eyes—all staring. She’d never seen so many people. Maybe a dozen. The teacher, the same Mrs. Arial those boys had helped, walked Kya to a desk near the back. She could put her things in the cubbyhole, she was told, but Kya didn’t have any things. The teacher walked back to the front and said, “Catherine, please stand and tell the class your full name.” Her stomach churned. “Come now, dear, don’t be shy.” Kya stood. “Miss Catherine Danielle Clark,” she said, because that was what Ma once said was her whole name. “Can you spell dog for us?” Staring at the floor, Kya stood silent. Jodie and Ma had taught her some letters. But she’d never spelled a word aloud for anybody. Nerves stirred in her stomach; still, she tried. “ G-o-d .” Laughter let loose up and down the rows. “Shh! Hush, y’all!” Mrs. Arial called out. “We never laugh, ya hear me, we never laugh at each other. Y’all know better’n that.” Kya sat down fast in her seat at the back of the room, trying to disappear like a bark beetle blending into the furrowed trunk of an oak. Yet nervous as she was, as the teacher continued the lesson, she leaned forward, waiting to learn what came after twenty-nine. So far all Miss Arial had talked about was something called phonics, and the students, their mouths shaped like O’s, echoed her sounds of ah , aa , o , and u , all of them moaning like doves. About eleven o’clock the warm-buttery smell of baking yeast rolls and pie pastry filled the halls and seeped into the room. Kya’s stomach panged and fitted, and when the class finally formed a single file and marched into the cafeteria, her mouth was full of saliva. Copying the others, she picked up a tray, a green plastic plate, and flatware. A large window with a counter opened into the kitchen, and laid out before her was an enormous enamel pan of chicken pie crisscrossed with thick, crispy pastry, hot gravy bubbling up. A tall black woman, smiling and calling some of the kids by name, plopped a big helping of pie on her plate, then some pink-lady peas in butter and a yeast roll. She got banana pudding and her own small red-and-white carton of milk to put on her tray. She turned into the seating area, where most of the tables were full of kids laughing and talking. She recognized Chase Andrews and his friends, who had nearly knocked her off the sidewalk with their bikes, so she turned her head away and sat at an empty table. Several times in quick succession, her eyes betrayed her and glanced at the boys, the only faces she knew. But they, like everyone else, ignored her. Kya stared at the pie full of chicken, carrots, potatoes, and little peas. Golden brown pastry on top. Several girls, dressed in full skirts fluffed out wide with layers of crinolines, approached. One was tall, skinny, and blond, another round with chubby cheeks. Kya wondered how they could climb a tree or even get in a boat wearing those big skirts. Certainly couldn’t wade for frogs; wouldn’t even be able to see their own feet. As they neared, Kya stared at her plate. What would she say if they sat next to her? But the girls passed her by, chirping like birds, and joined their friends at another table. For all the hunger in her stomach, she found her mouth had gone dry, making it difficult to swallow. So after eating only a few bites, she drank all the milk, stuffed as much pie as she could into the milk carton, carefully so nobody would see her do it, and wrapped it and the roll in her napkin. The rest of the day, she never opened her mouth. Even when the teacher asked her a question, she sat mute. She reckoned she was supposed to learn from them, not them from her. Why put maself up for being laughed at? she thought. At the last bell, she was told the bus would drop her three miles from her lane because the road was too sandy from there, and that she had to walk to the bus every morning. On the way home, as the bus swayed in deep ruts and passed stretches of cord grass, a chant rose from the front: “MISS Catherine Danielle Clark!” Tallskinnyblonde and Roundchubbycheeks, the girls at lunch, called out, “Where ya been, marsh hen? Where’s yo’ hat, swamp rat?” The bus finally stopped at an unmarked intersection of tangled tracks way back in the woods. The driver cranked the door open, and Kya scooted out and ran for nearly half a mile, heaved for breath, then jogged all the way to their lane. She didn’t stop at the shack but ran full out through the palmettos to the lagoon and down the trail that led through dense, sheltering oaks to the ocean. She broke out onto the barren beach, the sea opening its arms wide, the wind tearing loose her braided hair as she stopped at the tide line. She was as near to tears as she had been the whole day. Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano. Shrieking and crying, they circled over the marsh and above the sand as she threw piecrust and yeast rolls onto the beach. Legs hanging down, heads twisting, they landed. A few birds pecked gently between her toes, and she laughed from the tickling until tears streamed down her cheeks, and finally great, ragged sobs erupted from that tight place below her throat. When the carton was empty she didn’t think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else. But the gulls squatted on the beach around her and went about their business of preening their gray extended wings. So she sat down too and wished she could gather them up and take them with her to the porch to sleep. She imagined them all packed in her bed, a fluffy bunch of warm, feathered bodies under the covers together. Two days later she heard the Ford Crestliner churning in the sand and ran into the marsh, stepping heavily across sandbars, leaving footprints as plain as day, then tiptoeing into the water, leaving no tracks, doubling back, and taking off in a different direction. When she got to mud, she ran in circles, creating a confusion of clues. Then, when she reached hard ground, she whispered across it, jumping from grass clump to sticks, leaving no trace. They came every two or three days for a few more weeks, the man in the fedora doing the search and chase, but he never even got close. Then one week no one came. There was only the cawing of crows. She dropped her hands to her sides, staring at the empty lane. Kya never went back to school a day in her life. She returned to heron watching and shell collecting, where she reckoned she could learn something. “I can already coo like a dove,” she told herself. “And lots better than them. Even with all them fine shoes.” • • • O NE MORNING , a few weeks after her day at school, the sun glared white-hot as Kya climbed into her brothers’ tree fort at the beach and searched for sailing ships hung with skull-and-crossbones flags. Proving that imagination grows in the loneliest of soils, she shouted, “Ho! Pirates ho!” Brandishing her sword, she jumped from the tree to attack. Suddenly pain shot through	555,027
Alone Reflections on Solitary Living (Daniel Schreiber) (Z-Library).epub	How the Country House Became English Farewells I returned to a spring that seemed unable to chase away the cold and dark of winter. The parks, streets and squares of Berlin still seemed to be doused in twilight, to be half asleep, but, in people’s interactions, something seemed to be simmering away beneath the surface. Everyday encounters could trigger emotional responses that I didn’t know how to deal with. People’s sense of how to relate to one another seemed to have been collectively shaken. Everywhere you met people who knew better than anyone else how to defeat the pandemic once and for all. Everyone seemed to feel particularly disadvantaged by the political measures designed to tackle the stillvertiginous infection rates, believing that it was only their age group, only their family type or profession that had to bear the brunt of these changes. The spirited calls for ‘solidarity’ the year before had now largely disappeared from public discourse. For the first time in history, vaccines against a dangerous virus had been developed in just one year. But instead of a sense of gratitude for this until recently unimaginable medical advance, there was a wide-spread frustration about the fact that a few countries were managing to vaccinate their populations faster. Everyone seemed to be so used to being among the most privileged people in the world that being relegated to second place seemed unbearable. But despite all this, a few glimmers of hope did manage to break through the cold and the grey spring clouds. ON THE VERY FIRST DAY after I arrived, I inspected the plants on my terrace, freed them from their winter covers, fertilized and watered them, trimmed the bay and the yuzu trees and put them back outside together beside the variegated geraniums. To my relief, the large black bamboo had survived the harsh winter; some of its shoots had suffered frost damage, but it was covered in leaf buds, which would sprout in a few weeks’ time. A few chervil and parsley leaves were already ready to be harvested; the tarragon, angelica and Swiss mint were sprouting; a few brave shiso seeds had sown themselves and were already germinating. The black cherry plum was covered with thick flower buds that would burst open in a few days and envelop the tree in a lavishly beautiful veil of soft, serene pink, ready to do battle with the Berlin sky. I called Sylvia to find out how the garden in Wandlitz that I had helped her create a year and a half earlier was doing. Outside of the microclimate of the city, things seemed to be relatively quiet from a botanical point of view. But there, too, the change in the weather and the mood that the coming weeks would bring had already been heralded. The Lenten and Christmas roses were in full bloom; snowdrops had sprouted everywhere; the Indian yellow, cerulean blue and purple-striped crocuses that we had planted were blossoming. Over the past year I had only been able to see the garden a few times and each of those occasions had made me very happy. Despite many problems, something had almost always been in bloom: from the winter-flowering honeysuckle, already displaying its first ivory-coloured flowers in January, to the last cosmoses, Japanese anemones and chrysanthemums of the year, which painted the greyish-brown Brandenburg November in bright rosy, lilac and crimson brushstrokes. The irises, tulips and Siberian buglosses had made marks that were almost impressionistic. The peonies, foxgloves and Heliopsis had unfolded their splendour; lush false goat’s beard, phloxes, perennial sunflowers, perovskias, white gaura, tall grasses and large wild fennel plants had followed. The garden lived, grew and breathed. It was unfinished and beautiful. SOME YEARS AGO , an acquaintance had tried to explain to me over and over again that one had to learn to live with unresolved problems. He said this so often and in so many different situations that it came to resemble a curious form of self-invocation that I couldn’t comprehend. I believed that almost all problems could be solved if one tried hard enough, sought help, took the right steps, got involved. Maybe it was only now, in the pandemic, that I understood what he meant. For Audre Lorde, this insight came when she was confronted with her cancer. ‘One of the hardest things to accept’, she wrote in A Burst of Light , ‘is learning to live with uncertainty and neither deny nor hide behind it.’ One must learn to listen to the ‘messages of uncertainty’ without being immobilized by them, she continues. The trick is not to settle into what has not yet happened, despite everything. Of course, you have to believe in a future in some way and work towards it, but it is only in the present that you can live your life to the fullest. 1 Lorde’s words and those of my acquaintance kept running through my head as spring really arrived. The cherry plum on my terrace faded and was replaced by the lilac, the mock orange and the pale-red umbels of the red-leaved elder. The pineapple sage, the lemon verbena, the signet marigold, the lovage and the lavender shot up; the geranium blossoms began to dance their radiant, delicate round that, if all went well, would last all summer. The city’s trees were plunged into a dense bright green that made the idea that only a few weeks earlier everything had been bare seem almost amusing. The year entered its bucolic phase, in which every front garden, every flower bed, every park sank under luxuriant carpets of blossoms that enveloped you in a new cloud of fragrance wherever you strolled. It was now easy to get tested for the virus wherever you went, which made daily life much easier. Little by little, an increasing number of people received their first vaccinations, some already their second. I, too, was vaccinated for the first time and began to feel a little bit more secure while going about my daily life. There was a sense of a new dawn, though it did not yet feel possible to say what this new era would bring. So many people had been sick. So many had been permanently impaired by the disease. So many had died. They were barely talked about in public, perhaps because their dying was too real to deal with. No one could really estimate how long the immunization from the vaccinations would last or how they would hold up against future variants of the virus. Most experts seemed to assume that a relatively relaxed summer lay ahead, but that afterwards the virus would keep causing new foci of infection, with smaller epidemics flaring up regionally. It was assumed that, as with influenza, vaccines would change annually. However, it was clear that at any time, a new, even more rapidly transmissible and deadly variant of the virus could shatter these predictions. I went on long walks in the countryside around Berlin with Frederik, a friend I knew from New York who was going through a divorce. Sylvia came to Berlin and we went to our hairdresser’s together, not far from the street where we had lived together many years ago. Kristof and Gunnar, a couple I’m friends with, picked me up from home and we walked along the Landwehrkanal and ate grilled chicken with toum , a Lebanese garlic sauce. Marie came over to help me assemble and hang a large mirrored cabinet for the bathroom that I had just purchased. I had bought it because I wanted to see myself more clearly in the morning, with my new wrinkles, my greying temples, my changing body. I made plans to visit my parents and siblings, started going to exhibitions again and looked forward to the reopening of the city’s concert halls, operas, theatres and cinemas. I thought about what I was going to cook for the first dinner party I was going to host in over a year. Sometimes I managed to briefly smile back when men flirted with me in the street. I had started hugging people again. IT WAS POSSIBLE to make out on the horizon the end of that period of liminality that the pandemic represented, the end of that limbo in which we found ourselves. You could sense, everywhere, a desire to forget the time that had past, to enjoy this new freedom and to act as if the pandemic had never happened at all. But every attempt to live out that desire only masked the beginning of a new era of uncertainty. There was no escaping the fact that whatever kind of ‘return to normality’ most of us wanted, it was unlikely to ever happen. We would have to learn to live with a problem that – despite the many successes in combating it – was, at its core, unresolved and likely to remain so. In most wealthy countries, health systems had only just managed to meet the challenges of the virus. Elsewhere, the pandemic raged on inexorably, delivering wave after wave of death, spawning new variant after new variant. For a long time, Europe, America and China watched on, largely impassive, despite the fact that these variants would inevitably spread among their populations too. And this added to the fact that the destruction of natural habitats, the main cause of viral transmission from animals to humans, carried on apace. Sooner or later, a new epidemic might break out, with a virus that might be much less easy to control. There were numerous other problems too that had preoccupied us before the pandemic and which had also not disappeared; indeed, they had intensified. The events of the past year and a half had fed the engine of neoliberal redistribution, responsible for so many of our social, economic and environmental hardships. While the majority of people became poorer, the richest in the world managed to profit from what had happened, increasing their fortunes to once-unimaginable new heights. A number of geopolitical flashpoints began to reignite. We ignored the fact that more and more people had to flee to other parts of the world, that everywhere forests were on fire again and rivers bursting their banks, that the rainforest continued to be decimated at record speed, that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was suddenly widening again, that in Greenland the largest iceberg on record had detached from the mainland and that, according to most climate researchers, the dreaded tipping points had been reached, leading, irrevocably, to global warming with its extreme weather patterns, our vital ocean currents shifting, sea levels rising. The liminality of the pandemic had protected us from the realization that we were already living in an era determined by what the anthropologist Árpád Szakolczai has aptly called ‘permanent liminality’. 2 It became clear again that much of what we have taken for granted in our everyday lives would continue to disappear. That the much-vaunted ‘end of normality’ had already been set in motion many years ago. We were going through a transitional period, the outcome of which could not be foreseen and was beyond our comprehension. This feeling of permanent liminality is both a social and a personal problem. It upsets our inner ecology of affects and emotions, makes our lives feel paradoxical, creating a sense of unreality. 3 Despite the fact that my everyday life felt freer and lighter, this sense of paradox did not loosen its grip on me. I felt what Roland Barthes, in dialogue with psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, described as the ‘fear of what has happened’, the fear of ‘a catastrophe that has already occurred’. 4 I had the impression that my understanding was lagging behind what was happening, and that what I was afraid of had long since become a reality. I knew, and at the same time did not want to accept, that above all, the pandemic had given us a glimpse of the changes that awaited us in the future, that this glimpse had already cost us so much, demanded so much of us, and that it was far graver than a mere warning. The pandemic gave us an understanding of what it would look like, this end of the world whose narratives we have been familiar with for so long. In a sense, it was the catastrophe, it was the collapse that had already happened. DURING THIS TIME , I was going through some old notes and came across a sheet of paper with a list I had made in therapy a few years back. The therapist had suggested I write out, in bullet points, how I imagined my own, very private future. This list included that I wanted to live in an old farmhouse near Berlin – not alone, but together with someone I loved, someone with whom I had endless conversations, someone whom I desired, with whom I shared my life. It was to be an open house; there would always be room for visitors and time for feasts. I would grow vegetables and fruits in the garden that were hard to buy elsewhere and that tasted so much better freshly harvested: mulberries, sour cherries, apricots and various kinds of peaches, cima di rapa, Castelfranco radicchio, borlotti beans. I would earn enough from my writing to build up a pension and live a quieter life. I would no longer constantly doubt the meaning of everything, my place in this life. I stared at the sheet of paper entranced and read the points over and over again. Suddenly I understood that, in my hands, I was holding a very unambiguous list of my ambiguous losses. It detailed variations on desires and hopes that I had carried around for many years and that I had probably shared with many people. I held in my hands a testimony to what the writer Deborah Levy, in her book Real Estate , laconically refers to as her ‘unreal estate’, an illusory, fantasy property. In one of the most touching passages in this novelistic essay, Levy talks to a friend about her very own fantasy property, a house on a river, with a mooring and a boat, with pomegranate and mimosa trees, somewhere on the Mediterranean. All her life, she says, she has carried this house inside her. Her friend asks her if the weight of this fantasy is not too great, if it would not be better to let it go. Levy’s answer was that she would collapse if she didn’t have this house, collapse if there wasn’t this future life to look forward to. 5 I understood what she meant. I had long been sustained by this fantasy of a life with someone else in a big farmhouse with sweeping gardens. But a part of me knew, even then when I made that list, that I had already begun to grieve the ambiguous losses gathered together on that piece of paper. A few weeks later, I had broken off the therapy. One reason was the conversation about the list. The therapist had wanted me to feel that I could achieve this life if I just wanted it enough and worked hard enough for it. In a way, his goal was to re-establish in me that very thing that Lauren Berlant calls our ‘cruel optimism’. I knew that one of the foundations of treatment for depression was instilling a sense of self-efficacy, a sense of being in control of one’s own life, knew that the therapist was doing his job. And yet I felt that there was something illusory in this outlook. I had reached a point at which I had to put into perspective those expectations that were increasingly unlikely to ever become reality. Perhaps it was even time to say goodbye to them for good. The therapist seemed unable to comprehend this. For him, his view of the world felt right; it had been confirmed to him again and again. He was, in fact, convinced that we can all control our lives and realize our dreams, at least for the most part. I knew people like him. I had friends and acquaintances like him. They assumed that what they wished for would, to all intents and purposes, come true. They could not grasp that they could only maintain this belief because they were privileged. That one only had this belief confirmed over and over again if one came from a certain social class and certain parts of the country, had a certain skin colour and a certain sexual orientation, if one had certain biographical and psychological prerequisites. I did not belong to these people; nor, anymore, did I want to. The question that ran through my head as I read the points on the list over and over again was who I might be without them. What might my life look like if I were not trying to realize these fantasies? Pauline Boss, who spent so many years exploring how we deal with ambiguous loss, found again and again that people are surprisingly resilient. One of the central messages of her work is that we can succeed in living with the ambivalence that defines our existence. Sometimes, says Boss, solutions to our problems simply cannot be found because these solutions do not exist. Sometimes ambiguity cannot be dealt with or treated. Sometimes pressing questions remain unanswered because they have no answer. Our task then is to accept this ambiguity and, in this acceptance, to look for new possibilities for ourselves. Even though ambiguous losses can be traumatic, we are still able to shape our lives, live them fully and find contentment. For Boss, this had nothing to do with passivity, with stoicism or adaptation, but with establishing a certain inner freedom. 6 We go through life with the assumption that we have to ‘get over’ everything. Often that’s exactly what doesn’t work; often, in order to find our way, it is precisely this assumption that we have to get over. MY FAVOURITE GARDEN , by the way, the garden that touches me most, is not by Piet Oudolf, whom I admire so much. Nor does it radiate the classical beauty of the gardens of Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, Karl Foerster or Vita Sackville-West. It is in Dungeness, in Kent, two hours southeast of London, not far from a nuclear power station that dominates that flat coastal landscape. It is only a few hundred yards from a stony beach on the English Channel and belongs to a small house called Prospect Cottage, made of black-stained wood with neon-yellow window frames. The garden was created by the gay painter and filmmaker Derek Jarman. I had visited it with Andrew, a friend from London, the year before the pandemic. Jarman came across Prospect Cottage by chance in 1986 while doing research for a film. He already had contracted HIV , the disease that would kill him almost eight years later. 7 The conditions for gardening in Dungeness were highly challenging. The landscape was barren, the stony ground was too dry and too nutrient-poor for most garden plants; briny easterly winds and strong sunlight burnt their leaves. With the help of a friend, Jarman carted in manure, improved the soil, built raised beds and beehives behind the house, experimented with different varieties of plants and found out what kind of protection they needed from the adverse weather conditions there. What began with a frail dog rose and the indestructible accidental seedling of a red-leaved sea kale developed over the years into a remarkably beautiful garden in which blossomed gorse, marigolds, tea roses, Lenten roses, hollyhocks, poppies, lavender, hyssop, acanthus, fennel, caraway and a small fig tree. Among the plants were sculptures Jarman had created from driftwood, metal objects and stones that he had found during his walks on the beach. Jarman’s passion for this project had much to do with his illness and approaching death. But Prospect Cottage was not only a symbol of his life as a gay man under the most adverse social conditions; it was a symbol of so much more. In Modern Nature , his diary of the last few years of his life, he describes how he had chained himself to the inhospitable coastal landscape and how his garden saved him time and again from the whole ‘demon Disney World’ in which he was living. The AIDS crisis, forest dieback, the hole in the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, the Chernobyl disaster, the nuclear threat at the height of the Cold War – all of these things created in him a sense of impending apocalypse. He took a few seeds, some cuttings and some driftwood and began to transform this feeling of the end of the world into art, thus alleviating its horror. 8 I knew of no better example of how to live with those problems that cannot be solved, with questions for which there are no answers. Jarman had created meaning in a world that had lost its meaning, confidence in an age that knew little of it. He had, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, listened to the messages of uncertainty that defined his life without being immobilized or intimidated by them. He took full advantage of the here and now. In the shadow of a nuclear power station and in the shadow of his approaching death, he managed to brace himself against the ambiguity of the future and to bid farewell to many of the ambiguous losses of his life. I wondered if, under different circumstances and on a different scale, I might not be able to attempt something similar. I WAS STILL HOLDING my list of future fantasies for a life with a partner in a pastoral property. It was written on a page I had torn out of one of the unassuming legal pads I bring back from my visits to the States because I like their colour so much. Neapolitan yellow with light-blue lines, a thin, vertical red line to denote the margin. The even arcs of my handwriting on the surface, in indigo blue. In between all the stories we tell ourselves in order to live, and in between all of our attempts to discard those stories when we realize that they are distorting our view of things and that they are becoming prisons of our own making, there are moments of stillness. I had the impression that I was experiencing just such a moment. They are moments of great openness, when everything seems possible and impossible at the same time. Moments of confusion, of disappointment and optimism, of not knowing and of not having to know. They are moments in which, sometimes, without realizing it, you take a step forward and move in a new direction. It is in precisely these moments that life rewrites itself. I had to think of all those people who had accompanied me through my life and wondered how they would fit into my future in this big house. Of all those people I loved in my own way and who loved me in their own way, likeable, kind, quirky, exhausting, clever, demanding, fascinating and damaged people who went through life despite briny easterly winds and burning sunshine. People I could sometimes rely on and sometimes not, who left me alone and yet accompanied me, helped me through the days and made my life, this life alone, possible in the first place. People with whom I wanted to share my future and with whom I would share it. PERHAPS THIS IS WHAT the philosopher Simone Weil meant when she described the existence of friendships as a ‘miracle’, as ‘a miracle, like the beautiful’. 9 Friendships and the balancing act they perform between closeness and distance were, for her, a prime example of how we might live with ambiguity. The fact that friendships exist despite their inherent uncertainty was, to her, like a gift, a grace. 10 This may sound full of pathos, but for Weil it was an insight that she had wrung out from her hard, often-lonely life between the wars, a life rich in historic catastrophes. A life in which it looked more than once as if the world was about to stop turning, as if there would be no future. I thought long and hard about what to do with the list in my hand. I was already on my way to the kitchen to throw it into the bin with the rest of the waste paper. But then I turned back. Without being able to say why, I smoothed it out and put it back with my notes. How the Country House Became English Bodywork P eople have always been lonely. They have experienced this feeling always and everywhere, and they have used all their strength to try and evade it. Loneliness is not a modern or even a contemporary phenomenon. No matter what our beliefs are about earlier eras and cultures, no matter what pastoral, religious and social idylls we project onto the past, loneliness is something that has always been recorded in philosophy and literature. In one way or another, in different culturally specific variations. The ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh , the origins of which go back to the early third millennium BC , deals with loneliness. It tells the story of a friendship between Gilgamesh, demigod and king of Uruk, and Enkidu, but it also focuses on Gilgamesh’s grief and loneliness after the death of his friend. In ancient Greece, we find the myths of Prometheus, Oedipus and Sisyphus and how they experienced social isolation and pain in their different ways. In the Old Testament, God created Eve and thus humanity, because he understood that man should not be alone. Ovid’s Metamorphoses gave us the myth of Narcissus, who perishes in the face of the loneliness of his permanent self-reflection and his inability to break out of his mental prison. And, when you take a closer look, you also notice that the centuries-old literature of friendship is, ultimately, a literature of loneliness, of solitude and grief. As Jacques Derrida points out in his book The Politics of Friendship , these texts were written almost exclusively from a testamentary perspective. They memorialize deceased friends and in doing so reflect on what it meant for the author to be left behind. 1 None of us can escape loneliness. It is an unavoidable, existential experience. Perhaps also a necessary one. TOWARDS THE END of our stay on Lanzarote, I realized that I did not want to return to Berlin under any circumstances. I was shocked by the strength of this feeling. Maybe it was the company of Rafa and David, maybe it was the hiking in the mountains, the sun, the extraordinary landscape, the verdant spring, the sound of the Atlantic waves. I suddenly became aware of the weight I had been carrying around with me for the past months, the whole time, everywhere I went. I understood that I was stuck and was just about to take the first steps to getting myself out of my predicament, and that these first steps were actually having an effect. I was afraid that this process would stop again in Berlin and that I would be infected by the city’s tired, dark mood, which seemed to have reached a nadir around that time. A few weeks earlier, I had reread Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary , written after the death of his mother. In this slim book, what becomes palpable is the fact that being alive can sometimes feel like a problem. Like an inescapable problem for which there is no solution. I felt much the same way. I recognized the signs of an approaching depression and knew that I would not get through another one. A few years earlier, a psychiatrist had recommended that I spend my winters in the south, in the sun. The idea had always seemed absurd to me, too expensive and also impracticable because my schedule was usually full of lectures and readings. But, during the pandemic, there were no events, and those that took place were online. I talked it over with David and Rafa, scraped together all the money I had left in my account and asked Tim, my neighbour in Berlin, if he would continue emptying my mailbox and taking care of the not completely hardy patio plants that I had put in the kitchen to overwinter. Then I rented a holiday apartment in a small coastal town on Fuerteventura, the neighbouring Canary Island. THERE WAS, OF COURSE , a paradox in me deliberately seeking solitude while struggling with feelings of loss and loneliness. But even as I stood on the deck of the ferry, breathing in the sea air and watching the island landscape of Lanzarote slowly dissipate on the horizon, I had the feeling that maybe this wasn’t as absurd as it had at first seemed. And once I had moved into my little apartment, unpacked my suitcase, put my hiking boots by the door and my laptop on the dining table, I knew that I had made the right decision. It felt like I had given myself space, space to think, space to write and to read, space to breathe. In a way, my year of being alone had prepared me for this situation, made it possible for me to retreat here and give myself the space for a kind of psychological convalescence, for easing the noise in my head, the volume of which I thought I had become accustomed to. It felt like an act of emancipation, an act of self-care. I would end up staying for two months. ‘Self-care’, of course, is a concept that has become ubiquitous today. It has become the defining contemporary approach to healing oneself, largely and thankfully replacing notions of self-optimization that had long dominated popular psychological discourses. Self-care today is anything but radical; it describes instead an elusive, in some respects problematic, smorgasbord of practices, ranging from spa treatments and social-media breaks to Ayurvedic and meditation retreats, as well as therapeutic interventions. It is so omnipresent today that one has to wonder if the reason that we celebrate self-care the way we do is because we can no longer do the very thing it aims to achieve: take care of ourselves in a comprehensive way. My intuitive reaction to today’s invocations of self-care is a negative one, not least because its commercialization rubs me up the wrong way. Fundamentally, I cannot help suspecting that it represents the ultimate victory of neoliberal late capitalism. We seem to have agreed to leave countless structural problems unresolved while taking on full responsibility for the resulting psychological consequences. Yet self-care is one of the most important aspects of my life: over the years, practising it has helped me time and again to accept things I did not want to accept and to find solutions to situations that seemed hopeless. Surprisingly, the core concept of our contemporary concern for the self goes back, in large part, to the American poet, essayist and political activist Audre Lorde. Lorde, whose work I was rereading during those weeks, casually summed up her concept of self-care in the epilogue to her influential diary essay A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer . ‘Caring for myself’, she writes, ‘is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’ 2 She wrote down this much-quoted sentence three years after her second cancer diagnosis and five years before her death. She had survived breast cancer, but now a metastasis of the original tumour had formed in her liver. In her essay, the reader, silent, breath held, accompanies Lorde through this period of her life. You witness her despair and her affirmation of life; her grief, love and lust for life; learn how she uses all of the conventional, holistic and homeopathic remedies at her disposal, leaving no stone unturned in her fight against her illness; how she divides her energies, teaches, writes, meditates, reads and with what love she meets her partner Frances and their two children. One is impressed by the clarity and strength with which she confronts the racism that accosts her from all sides every day as a Black woman, the virulent misogyny and homophobia of the 1980s, the countless acts of resistance, moments of ostracism and discrimination that everyday life has in store for her. In Lorde’s beautiful and hard-earned life as a writer and activist – a life that society had not intended for her – self-care amounted to a form of ‘self-preservation’. Self-preservation in a world hostile to her, her family and her community. By caring for herself, she expanded that hostile world to include a space that did not yet exist, a space where a life like hers could be lived and the power of the rampant fantasies of superiority that are masculinity, heterosexuality and white skin colour could be resisted, or at least put in check. This meant changing the world in small, enduring ways and making it a better place. It also meant living rather than just surviving. Self-care in this sense is an exceedingly radical idea. AGAINST THE BACKDROP of the pandemic, Lorde’s essay read differently. I felt connected to her in a new way and, faced with all the disease and death around us, I felt I better grasped her radicalism. I would get up early, read for a while, slice up a papaya or a pineapple for breakfast and write. I continued my daily walks, now along the island’s sea cliffs overlooking a constantly stormy sea with sometimes gigantic waves. I started eating better and more healthily again, something I had completely neglected in the year leading up to my trip. On the very first day of my stay, I had also bought a yoga mat. Like a lot of other people, yoga had helped me many times throughout my life. During personal crises, I had usually found my way back to a regular practice, but later, when I was feeling better again, I always stopped. When I rolled out my new mat on the floor of the apartment, I hadn’t done yoga for over a year and a half. My body still remembered the backbends and stretches, all the asanas it had once performed, but it was no longer capable of doing them all. For some reason, though, I still managed to get my mat out every afternoon. ALL PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK starts with the body. I knew that, had experienced it several times, but always forgot it again. When we talk about bodies, we almost always talk about their surfaces, what they look like, how to transform them and protect them from the effects of ageing. As British psychotherapist Susie Orbach points out, we understand our bodies today as something that we are meant to create, fabricate and optimize. We live in a cultural climate, says Orbach, in which perfecting our bodies is perceived as a personal duty, a kind of self-competence. 3 Much has happened in recent years to address this climate around the body and its virulent visual grammar. But even the critiques of problematic body images that we have internalized are still only really aimed at the body’s surface, at liberating ourselves from the pressure to make our bodies more beautiful. What is forgotten in these discussions is the internal experience – what it is like to live in our bodies, to inhabit them, what emotional world they generate. However, as Olivia Laing argues in her book Everybody , which draws on the psychoanalytic theory of Wilhelm Reich, this is the experience that really matters, the experience that really counts. 4 During my afternoon yoga practice, I kept thinking about the idea of the trauma body. Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk has argued in his seminal book The Body Keeps the Score that traumatic experiences leave their mark not only on our culture, our history, our families and of course our psyches, but also on the biochemical balance of our brains, on our bodies themselves. Trauma alters our ability to sense, process and deal with emotions, transforming neurological connections, hormonal processes, the rhythms of our hearts and the way our immune systems function. Trauma can deprive the body of its ability to sense itself, to be aware that it is alive. For van der Kolk, yoga is one of the ways in which we can get back in touch with our body, our organism. According to his observations, it helps us to do exactly what we often try and avoid, especially in difficult phases in our lives, and what the culturally conditioned view of the surfaces of our bodies prevents us from doing: to look inwards. 5 I had a similar experience doing yoga on the island. Every afternoon, I followed the instructions and explanations of yoga teachers online for an hour and gave myself over to the flow of the asanas and to my breath. At first it was a huge challenge. Partly because I was out of shape, of course, but also because I shied away from looking inside, because I didn’t seem able to cope with the sensations that the exercises evoked in me. But I stuck with it. The practice made me feel like I was getting to know my body all over again, a body that had not felt anything for so long, that had not been embraced or touched for so long, whose needs I had ignored for so long. Each yoga session led to an improvement in my relationship with myself that was at first barely perceptible. The exercises forced me to accept my limitations and seemed to make me understand, again and again, that, in the end, even situations that are unpleasant and exhausting will eventually pass. And that one can still do something for one’s inner balance, whatever challenges one is faced with. Gradually, my body began to open up on the mat, to take up space and release the tension, resistance and fear that were stored up in it, the uncertainties and traumas of the past year. Yoga does not promise a cure, a miraculous liberation of our psyches. But if you do it regularly, you will eventually find that you learn to look at your inner shadows, focus on where it hurts. After a few days and weeks, I experienced feelings of relaxation and gratitude on a more regular basis. Gratitude for this body that I was living in, for this life that I was leading, for the fact that all of this was possible here, despite the dramatic situation in the world. THE LITERATURE of the hermit and the great Robinsonades of modernity – from Thoreau’s Walden , to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe itself, to Jean-Paul Sartre’s quintessential novel of loneliness, Nausea – show that, in the final analysis, it is rarely the case that one is ever truly alone. Thoreau repeatedly conversed with hikers during his exile in the woods and went home once a week to be cooked for by his mother. Robinson even managed to find a companion on a remote Caribbean island onto whom he could project all of his colonial fantasies. And, once a week, Antoine Roquentin, Sartre’s Existentialist poster boy, disappointed in love and gripped by a nausea about the world, slept wordlessly with the bar owner Françoise. For modern literary hermits, complete solitude, solitude in a comprehensive sense, is no longer possible. Fundamentally, it is not possible for any of us, no matter how much we long to retreat. There is a certain comfort to be found in this. I learned some Spanish so that I could exchange a few words with the retail staff at the HiperDino supermarkets, as well as my landlady. The steady flow of emails didn’t stop in the coastal town. I took part in my support group meetings via Zoom. The monthly French book club that had emerged from my French course also took place via Zoom during the pandemic. Of course, I was in regular contact with some of my friends. I was incredibly grateful that I had access to all of these means of communication: email, Zoom, social media. They alleviated my solitude and helped me cope with my everyday life on the island. Of course, as the social scientist Sherry Turkle analyses in her books Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation , these types of media are not without their dangers. According to Turkle, they can lead to us losing the ability to be relaxed when we are on our own and instead become accustomed to constant distraction and social stimulation. While they help us to have relationships, they also open up the possibility of keeping the people with whom we have these relationships at a distance, so that we demand less of each other and settle for less real compassion, less real attention, less real closeness. According to Turkle, contemporary means of communication often give us a sense of connection without confronting us with the real demands of friendship and intimacy. 6 I believe that Turkle is both right and wrong. Her astute analyses have helped shape the discourses around our digital lifestyles because they describe aspects of our engagement with these technologies that we are all familiar with. But such analyses age as quickly as the technologies they analyse. The arguments eventually resemble those historical arguments about the dangers of reading novels when they were first popularized, of telephones and radios when they were introduced, or of television when it was invented. Each new communication technology has led to warnings that it was going to destroy everything that makes us human. In their day, all of these considerations were, to some extent, justified. But, with a little historical distance, it becomes clear that these fears do not describe our relationships to these technologies, but only capture the anxieties around the particular moment in which we integrate them into our everyday lives and first have to become competent at dealing with them. The idea that digitally mediated relationships would eventually replace our real interpersonal relationships seemed almost absurd to me given our experiences in the pandemic. Almost all the people I spoke to on the phone or on Zoom made it clear that what they missed most were other people. Almost all of them, even if they were in relationships or were firmly ensconced in their everyday family lives, complained about a certain isolation, a certain loneliness, a self-evident longing to meet up with their friends again. OVER THOSE TWO MONTHS , a certain kind of acceptance set in. I had the impression that I was able to face my loneliness and thus my neediness. I required this long period of self-imposed solitude to understand that I had no other choice. Not only during the exceptional situation of the pandemic, but in general. It is probably true that the majority of us have no other choice. We probably all have to learn to accept this at some point, whether we resist it or not. It is something that philosophers like Odo Marquard certainly believe. According to Marquard, the crux of loneliness lies not in the pain it causes, but in our ability to deal with this pain, in our ‘capacity for loneliness’. 7 For him, it is only in the ‘strength to be alone’, the ‘capacity to endure isolation’ and the ‘art of living so as to experience loneliness positively’ that it becomes truly possible to encounter oneself and other people. The truth is that even painful emotions can gift us something. It is hard to see this at the time. When one is caught up in them and is doing everything one can to avoid them, one feels, of course, that one would be better off without them. But they often teach us things that we wouldn’t otherwise have learnt. Loneliness, writes the psychologist Clark E. Moustakas, always contains something deeply positive, despite its horrors. Only the realization that we are alone in a fundamental sense, despite the people in our lives who love us, ensures that we become aware of ourselves. 8 Without this insight, we cannot take responsibility for ourselves and our lives, cannot build a good relationship with ourselves and really take care of ourselves. If we close ourselves off too much from our existential loneliness, Moustakas says, if we only repress and deny it, then we fence off an important path to inner growth. 9 The experience of loneliness, in other words, brings with it a form of self-awareness that we cannot otherwise attain. It is precisely the pain that accompanies it that allows us to uncover a new kind of compassion in ourselves, for ourselves and other people, that opens up new ways of living and allows us to deal with issues within ourselves in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Without this pain, we would not be able to seek closeness to other people, we would not be able to love. Positive experiences of loneliness are as central to our humanity as the anguish this feeling causes. Christian mystics welcomed loneliness because, in their minds, it created a special closeness to their God. Michel de Montaigne also appreciated solitude. For him, it was the basis of a particularly intimate form of the interior monologue. 10 Many philosophers who followed in his footsteps thought that this form of solitary interior monologue was necessary to achieve any kind of self-knowledge. According to Hannah Arendt, without solitude there would be no vita contemplativa ; indeed thinking itself would be inconceivable. As she wrote in her book On the Life of the Mind , it is only in the conscious withdrawal from our busy lives, in a withdrawal from the world, that a space emerges in which something like a ‘quest for meaning’ becomes possible and in which ‘thinking self’ can occur, a conversation with something ‘invisible’. 11 And for Emmanuel Lévinas, it is only in the ‘solitude of existing’ that the possibility of breaking through the boundaries of the ego is revealed. Only through the experience of our existential solitude, according to the philosopher, can we truly come ‘face-to-face’ with another person and understand that this person, in their own humanity and otherness, cannot be appropriated by us, cannot even be fully understood. For Lévinas, without experiences of loneliness, people are not able to escape the limitations of their egos and enter into real relationships with other people. 12 It was only during those two months on the island that I began to understand that this was more than just philosophical theory. My time there was marked by a degree of self-care that I had never before allowed myself. Unexpectedly, a certain sense of peace entered into my life. I enjoyed my little daily routines, the reading, writing and yoga, the long walks and the Spanish lessons in the evening, the island’s barren nature, the blazing sun, the tempestuous Atlantic. I had the impression that I was learning something about myself, discovering a new side of myself. And in a certain sense, I needed this phase of solitude to pierce through my own egotism, which I had not wanted or been able to see until then. My feelings of abandonment had been so defining that, whenever I thought about my friends, it always left me with a lingering sense of disappointment and reproach, with an underlying anger at being deserted by them at a time like this. No matter how much compassion I tried to muster for them, I could not accept the fact that I could not rely on them as much as I had always hoped. Nor could I accept that my wish to not feel alone was simply impossible to fulfil in these exceptional times. I suddenly realized that I had been too focused on myself over the past months, that I had been too preoccupied with my own fears and problems, with my everyday life in the pandemic, to be genuinely receptive to the fears and problems that those people close to me were struggling with. And that they probably felt the same way. We were all trying, somehow, to cope with a situation that made it difficult for us to do just that and forced us to turn our internal spotlight back on ourselves. In doing so, we inevitably paid less attention to the lives of the people we loved. Not because we wanted to, not out of malice or because we were bad people, but simply because the world we lived in had changed so much that it suddenly became a necessity. It was only then that I grasped that I had disregarded perhaps the only basic rule of friendship: that friendships are based on freedom, not on social constraints or institutionalized obligations. Friends do not have to conform to one’s own wishes, expectations and demands; one does not, in fact, have to demand anything from them. This remarkable freedom is the condition for our friendships to exist. I had disregarded what Jacques Derrida had described as the declaration of amicable love par excellence: ‘I renounce you, I have decided to.’ BY THE END of my stay on the island, I felt better than I had in a long time. I could sense it in my body, that I was moving through the world with greater ease. Looking in the mirror on the morning of my departure, I noticed that my sun-tanned face looked a little narrower and its contours more prominent than when I had arrived. A few wrinkles had become visible around my eyes that I had not noticed before. I looked at them for a few minutes, contemplating their shape, tracing their course with my fingertips, trying to smooth them out. But gradually I noticed how my slight dismay increasingly gave way to a feeling of calm. The wrinkles did not bother me. They were signs of all those experiences, of all those startling changes, of all those psychological ups and downs of the past year. Traces of a reality that I had lived through, that had become an indelible part of my life. They suited my face. I found them beautiful. How the Country House Became English How the Country House Became English ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are some people without whom I would not want to lead my life, this life alone. People who accompany me and are there for me whenever they can be. I am grateful to all of them. Some of them have appeared in these pages with their first names; others have remained anonymous or are present in imagined parentheses. I would like to print a list of all their names here. But I hope they know that I am talking about them and that they have a firm place in my heart. One of these people appearing in these pages but staying anonymous is Ben Fergusson, who, in addition to being a wonderful writer, is a very talented and skilled translator and to my delight agreed to translate Alone into English. I cannot thank him enough – for his brilliant work, his patience with my Americanized ear battling his British diction and for his great friendship. And finally, I’d like to especially thank Gabriele von Arnim, Sylvia Bahr, Isabel Bogdan, Theresia Enzensberger, Beatrice Fassbender, Julia Graf, Franziska Günther, Karsten Kredel, Kristof Magnusson, Lina Muzur, Marie Naumann, Maria-Christina Piwowarski, Anne Scharf, Olaf Wielk and Hanya Yanagihara. And not to forget Jacob Hochrein and Esther Mikuszies from the Goethe-Institut Nancy, and Carole Barmettler, Manuel Berger and Walter Willy Willimann from the Beau Séjour in Lucerne. We have shared many conversations about the reflections in this book, forming its foundation. They have provided me with time and emotional support in the form of writing residencies, generously shared their initial impressions of the book with me or gave me essential intellectual insight. Without them, Alone would not exist. How the Country House Became English Never So Lonely A t some point in our lives, most of us reach a moment in which we realize that all is not wh	243,704
Alonement How to be alone and absolutely own it (Francesca Specter) (Z-Library).epub	9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-1 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-2 This ebook published in 2021 by Quercus Editions Ltd Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK company Copyright © 2021 Francesca Specter The moral right of Francesca Specter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library HB ISBN 978 1 52941 261 1 TPB ISBN 978 1 52941 260 4 Ebook ISBN 978 1 52941 263 5 Illustration on p.127 © Amber Anderson Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention. Quercus Editions Ltd hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information contained in this book. Ebook by CC Book Production www.quercusbooks.co.uk 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-3 For Mum, Dad, Rachel & Zoe 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-4 Preface I used to be terrified of being alone. Thankfully, solitude wasn’t really on the agenda. I grew up in a loving, nuclear family. I have a close-knit group of friends. Aged 24, I thought I’d found the missing piece of the puzzle: the man I believed would one day be my husband. We described ourselves as a ‘team’. We shared our social life, a Google Calendar and, on occasion, a toothbrush. When we spoke of the future, it would never be with the conditional ‘if’, but always the certain ‘when’. ‘Let me be your constant,’ he urged me. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Our relationship was meant to be the long-term solution to my fear of loneliness. Except, after the initial honeymoon stage – of about 18 months – love wasn’t quite enough. Our peers were moving in together, getting married and having children. With every engagement announcement on Facebook and every talk we had about the future, it became painfully apparent that our relationship wasn’t built to last. We stayed together for a further eight months because neither of us wanted to be single and alone , talking into the early hours as we tried to piece ‘us’ together like a logic puzzle. But a week-long argument (about the most polarising issue in the history of heterosexual relationships: throw cushions) spelled the beginning of the end. As we reached rock bottom – a shouting row in Zara Home, our words like vomited-up acid, the check-out staff genuinely scared – we decided to call time on our team of two. Reader, it wasn’t about the throw cushions. That day, we went home, empty-handed, and sat at opposite ends of the sofa, the gulf between us made up of so much more than teal upholstery: spite, resentment, recrimination. We were over; any one of our fellow customers in Zara Home could have told you that. Yet, even after Throw-Cushion Gate, ending the relationship was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Looking back, it’s baffling that we spent so long in denial; that letting all that negativity fester between us felt preferable to the spectre of lives apart. But I’ve since realised our situation wasn’t uncommon. It’s no coincidence that, as social scientists at the University of Toronto observed, the fear of being single is an all-too-reliable indicator of whether a person will stay in a failing relationship. 1 Listening to my gut instinct – even in the face of all this fear – was a desperate last resort. Being alone, back then, felt like a punishment. Alonement, the word that came to define my journey towards learning to appreciate alone time, was more like atonement for giving up my most co-dependent adult relationship in favour of – what exactly? I had no idea. The decision to end a relationship is, inevitably, a leap of faith – and, in my case, one I made when all other options were exhausted. Deciding to call time on what I once believed was the best thing that had ever happened to me felt like wilfully staying in a bad dream. In the wake of a break-up, you step, blindly, into the Great Unknown; having spent so much time focused on the magnitude of what you’re losing that you have little capacity to imagine anything else. In ending the relationship, I waved goodbye to the conventional life trajectory I thought would fortify me against loneliness: cohabiting, marriage, kids. I chose sleeping alone instead of being tucked inside the cradle of his arms; I chose cooking for one; I chose living alone; I chose having no one to wake up to and no one to say ‘Goodnight’ to. I chose myself, and it felt like insanity. At the time, alone and lonely were inextricable concepts to me. I lived alone during a period when almost all of my closest friends were in relationships, and I felt my ex-boyfriend’s absence like a hole in the chest. Time alone was a bitter pill I had to swallow – a tax bill; a dental filling – the price I had to pay for saying goodbye to the wrong version of Happily Ever After. Yet, over time, the end of one relationship made way for another which was greater still: a relationship with myself. If I could go back in time, I’d tell myself this. First of all, congratulations for making a bold decision to change your life for the better. I can’t fast-forward your pain, but I’m excited for your bright future, even if you can’t be. There is someone with strong, capable arms waiting for you on the other side, and that someone is you . This is how alonement came to be my happy ending. 1 Stephanie Spielmann et al., ‘Settling for less than out of fear of being single’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2013) 105 (6): 1049–1073. http://individual.utoronto.ca/sspielmann/Spielmann_et_al_inpress_JPSP.pdf 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-5 Contents Alonement Title Copyright Dedication Preface Introduction Why we need alonement Getting to know you Doing time (alone) Self-care Doing your thing Alone and proud Solo travel Making space for alonement Single and alone Alone, together Alone forever? Glossary Recommended reading Acknowledgements 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-6 Introduction Your relationship with yourself is, by default, the most important one you will ever have. Like it or not, you entered into a non-negotiable, lifelong commitment to yourself in the hospital delivery room. Unlike any other relationship you have throughout your life, there is no room for manoeuvre. No moving out or trial separation. No ‘taking it slow’ or accepting you’ve grown apart. Family, friends and romantic partners may come and go, but your monogamous partnership with yourself is the only constant, unalterable relationship status you’ll ever have. I know! Deep breaths. The opposite is true of our relationships with other people – the ones we spend our whole lives forming, refining and fighting for. These are inextricably connected with the certainty of loss. Statistically, half your existing friendships have a seven-year sell-by date. 2 Around 39 per cent of cohabiting couples break up. 3 Almost half of all marriages end in divorce. Even if you have the best of romantic relationships – the most rose-tinted of pairings, the ‘we’ve been together for 70 years and now we finish each other’s—’ ‘—sentences’ type – then I hate to break it to you, but (more deep breaths) 100 per cent of people die. I don’t say any of this to scare you, but to help you realise that, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, you and, well, you , are in it for the long haul. Relationship status: Alone You are a single-person household within your own mind. This isn’t a radical thing to say. We’re all capable of daydreaming about the person sitting opposite us on the train without them ever knowing about it, or spending the bulk of an hour-long meeting thinking about what we want to eat for lunch. We have a perpetual choice to stay inside our own minds, or to engage with the world around us. What is radical is to actually acknowledge this essential ‘aloneness’ – that we all live, first and foremost, inside our own heads – because we typically invest a lot of time in trying to escape this home ownership, throwing out the mortgage agreement and losing the keys. Think about how you spend an average day. All those hours making small talk with your colleagues; WhatsApping your friends; swiping on dating apps; chatting to your mum on the phone; sweet-talking your Springer Spaniel; soothing your toddler; deciding what to have for dinner with your partner; calling British Gas (don’t let the bastards get you down); replying to your boss’s email out of hours; keeping up with the godforsaken Kardashians; falling asleep to an audiobook. Sound familiar? Trust me, you’re not the only one avoiding your own thoughts. As a society, we are regularly coming up with ingenious solutions to stop us looking inwards. In one well-known study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, a group of participants were given the option of sitting alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes or administering themselves an electric shock. The majority went for the latter option. 4 But that’s OK, you reason. People need people. We’re social animals. It’s about being connected. Nobody wants to be lonely. It’s natural . That might all be true – yet how natural is it to be so scared of being left in a room with your own thoughts that you’ll electrocute yourself, just for a distraction? As a baby, introspection comes naturally. You are born at the centre of your own universe and, even in the presence of others, you are naturally in tune with yourself. You cry when you’re hungry, tired or cold. You stare in awe at a ceiling fan for twenty minutes or laugh unrestrainedly at your dad’s peekaboo. The world is laid before you, and you see it from your own saucer-eyed point of view, never stopping to second-guess your reactions, or getting distracted by the presence of someone else. You begin life intimately acquainted with your wants, needs and curiosities. Around the age of two or three, you become aware of how other people see you – and modify accordingly (i.e. a bit less throwing food and randomly getting naked in supermarkets). It’s not that you entirely lose your ability to behave in an instinctive way or to feel that all-encompassing sense of reverie; it’s just you’ll probably only act that way when no one else is around; when you’re alone. Trouble is, from here on, opportunities to fly solo are pretty scarce. You follow an accepted pattern of life whereby you spend the bulk of it searching for meaningful connections with other people – from the family home to the playground to the nightclub to the workplace to the altar to the family home (again) to the old people’s home to the graveyard. You begin your life as part of a family unit. A good childhood is considered to be a socially connected one where your parents are around a lot and you ideally have at least one sibling, for fear of being a much-pitied only child (despite the fact that the ‘only child syndrome’ myth has been disproved time and time again). 5 You start school, where it’s expected that you will play with other children in the playground and develop social skills. Speaking up in class, working well in a group and excelling at team sports are all seen as key markers of achievement as you move through the school system. University begins with Freshers’ Week: a whole week (pandemic permitting) devoted not to academia but to meeting others at an accelerated pace, in drunken, sometimes regrettable set-ups. This continues into working life: open-plan offices; a constant stream of Slack messages; ‘morale-boosting’ mass emails from Kelly in HR; company meetings; presentations; networking evenings; Friday Happy Hour with your colleagues. Around this time, your parents take a keen interest in whether you’ve ‘met someone’, and once you hit your late twenties being romantically unattached is regarded as a problem to be solved. How’s dating going? Are you on any apps? Your coupled-up friends become well-meaning coconspirators ( I have a single friend . . . ). And then – praise be! – you enter into a relationship, with the standard tick-box milestones of cohabitation, lifelong commitment and eventually creating another human or two together. Any indication that you’re spending time apart – holidaying separately or not moving in together quickly enough – is considered to be a warning sign. From this point onwards, your greatest social approval comes in the form of a ‘she said yes!’ announcement, a confetti-dotted wedding snap or a baby bump reveal. You start a family. You grow old together. But, as you become a partner, a wife, a husband, a parent and eventually a grandparent – throughout your life – you are defined by what you are to other people. At what point, during all of this, do you get back in touch with yourself? Alone: Heaven or hell? Today, we’re more surrounded than ever by other people’s voices. There are, God help us, over a million podcasts on the App Store, Twitter has 330 million monthly active users and you can download just about any book from the Great Kindle Library In The Sky. Should you wish to, you can avoid ever being ‘alone’ with your thoughts – save, perhaps, in the shower (and even then, there are waterproof Bluetooth speakers). And yet, despite all those other voices doing their utmost to distract you, the inconvenient reality remains: your #nofilter inner voice can never truly be drowned out (something I’ll discuss more in Chapter 2). It’s intriguing that so many of us run away from the opportunity to intimately know ourselves by opting out of our own company. We might like to hear the candid, confessional, no-holds-barred voices of others – exemplified by the huge sales of Tara Westover’s Educated and Michelle Obama’s Becoming , books centred around inspirational people who have gone on a journey of self-knowledge – yet we regularly pass up the unique opportunity we all have to get to know ourselves. That’s a pretty strange decision, if you think about it; like having an access-all-areas, backstage pass to Glastonbury and choosing, instead, to stay among the screaming, beer-swilling, moshing masses. In his 1956 book The Art of Loving , psychologist Erich Fromm claims that we all occupy a ‘prison of aloneness’: the terrifying reality that, yup, you’re on your own, pal, and there is no escaping it. It’s not like Fromm was against this state of aloneness. He was actually fairly pro, claiming that ‘the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love’ (more on this later, in Chapter 10). But he considered the drive to escape ‘aloneness’ the most essential part of the human experience. He writes: ‘The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.’ Adding later: ‘Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life and find atonement.’ Were Fromm still alive today, I’d have good news and bad news for him. The good news is, we have, as a society, come up with the best solution yet to this so-called prison of aloneness: the smartphone. I mean, you can imagine the conversation. Hey, Erich, you know that mildly invasive landline phone that occasionally interrupts your workflow? You’re going to need to sit down for this one . . . I imagine Fromm would likely have revisited his views, had he been around to witness the invention of broadband in 1992, or the first 3G-enabled smartphone – from the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo – in 2001. Aloneness, he might have written, has become more like a drop-in centre than a prison. The bad news – not just for Fromm, but for all of us? The internet may have thrown open the gate and wedged a doorstop in front of our proverbial prison cells, but as a result we attribute little value to being alone. It’s as if we got so excited during the jailbreak process that we forgot to consider what we were leaving behind. The ‘ability to be alone’ – that quality Fromm considered so inherently necessary to love another person – has become a lost art. We’ve become socially conditioned to see our phones as the solution to every challenging thought. Feeling anxious about your 10am meeting? Scroll Instagram. Putting off the gym? Text a friend. Don’t know whether to have boiled or scrambled eggs? Make a poll on Twitter! We’re able to avoid the reality of aloneness at the touch of a button, and returning to it feels, more than ever, like a prison cell. But what if we could make it a haven instead? What if we could, against all odds, learn to celebrate and relax into our aloneness, to recline into it; to exhale and feel safe, inspired; without shame or embarrassment or guilt? Alonement is the story you tell yourself There are consolations to your essential aloneness: As much as alone might feel like a scary word, it also means unique. You are alone in being you. To acknowledge aloneness is to embrace the gift of your uniqueness, your freedom, your capacity for self-knowledge. Alone is when you are at your most authentic. You reconnect with that primal ability I mentioned earlier: to respond to your needs, desires and curiosities. It may seem isolating that you are the only person capable of hearing the voice in your head, but look at it another way. Isn’t it mind-blowing that you can intimately know yourself in a way that you can never know another person – that you can read your own mind? Being alone means the freedom to act as an individual, not part of a pack. When we avoid time alone, we fail to discover and capitalise on our superpowers. The change begins once you tell yourself a different story about your aloneness, and about what being alone represents. We all know that solitude can go one of two ways. Either it’s a positive experience: pleasurable, comfortable and associated with a longer-term sense of fulfilment. Or (as we’re socially conditioned to assume) it’s a lonely, excruciating experience to be endured rather than sought out. James R. Averill, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, has concluded that an individual’s ability to enjoy solitude is based on the narrative they construct around that time. 6 Generally, we want these stories to involve a sense of choice. Averill writes: ‘What tips the balance between positive experiences of solitude and immoderate loneliness? This question can be answered in one word: Choice . What we call authentic solitude is typically based on a decision to be alone; in contrast, pseudo solitude , in which loneliness predominates, involves a sense of abandonment or unwanted isolation.’ It’s exactly the reason why spending a sunny bank holiday relaxing in your garden might feel like bliss if you’ve made a proactive decision to give yourself some downtime; or hell, if you start second-guessing your lack of barbecue invitation (don’t Sanjay and Grace normally organise something for this bank holiday Monday?) and spend your day trawling Instagram for evidence of your dwindling social status. ‘Behind every choice is a story,’ Averill writes. To choose to spend time alone – for an hour, for a day, for a week – based on the benefits you think it might bring to you is a valuable step in enjoying alonement. The author and founder of the School of Life, Alain de Botton, introduced a similar idea on my podcast, Alonement, which I launched in March 2020. Alain was the first of a brilliant line-up of thinkers, authors and media personalities I’ve interviewed about their own alonement. He said: ‘If we’re looking for how to cure or solve the problem of loneliness, what we have to start with is changing what being on your own means. In a way, at times, all of us can feel quite comfortable being on our own, but other times it’s anguishing.’ So, how do you change the narrative? Saying yes to time alone Ostensibly, there is a straightforward solution to learning how to be alone, and that’s simply (drum roll) spending time alone. Psychologist Carl Jung called the state of being alone ‘the animation of the psychic atmosphere’, 7 because it’s where our physical solitude reflects our internal aloneness: alone in body, alone in mind. This can be an invaluable time for self-discovery. We’re at one with ourselves, and our surroundings. We acknowledge and process our feelings. Our inner voices become amplified. Our ideas are most authentic. Our imaginations wander. . . . in theory, that is. These days, most of us aren’t very good at spending time alone, so it has the potential to end up being a bit of a shitshow, not to mention the perfect breeding ground for loneliness, unhealthy habits or addictive behaviours. It’s no wonder that we fear what Michael Harris, the author of Solitude , calls ‘the bogeyman of our naked self’. For most of us, learning to be alone isn’t as simple as subjecting ourselves to isolation – first, we have to tackle the scary task of coming to terms with who we actually are, which is vital groundwork for alonement. If you think this isn’t for you, I get it. I spent the best part of three decades avoiding the bogeyman, thinking silence, introspection and solitude simply weren’t compatible with who I was and how I lived. Escaping aloneness felt easy and normal; facing up to it felt immeasurably harder. But just because something’s easy and normalised doesn’t mean it’s right for you, or that you won’t have to pay for it further down the line (after all, life’s a long song, as my father’s fond of saying). I understand all too well the discomfort that comes with facing up to your aloneness. I still feel that discomfort every single day, but, to a greater extent, I feel so many more things: strength, clarity, curiosity and a deep-seated sense of calm. Spending time alone may be your greatest fear now – as it was for me – but it could also prove your profoundest source of power. As this book explores, in a world full of ways to escape ever being alone, you will set yourself apart by embracing it. However, the answer is not simply being alone. It is alonement. Alonement: What is it? Alonement is a word I coined in 2019 to fill a gap in the English language (I’ll take that money via bank transfer, Oxford English Dictionary). Broken down, it means ‘the state of being alone’ – a state we should raise up and celebrate. Reverse the syllables, and you think about alone time as an intention: ‘ meant to be alone’. The way I define it, alonement is quality time spent alone; it is to value and respect the time you spend with yourself. It means to be alone and absolutely own it. The closest term, someone might butt in and suggest, is solitude; but even solitude (which, FYI, has its roots in Old French and Latin terms for ‘loneliness’) has an ambiguity to it: you have to qualify whether an experience is ‘positive solitude’, whereas alonement is, crucially, an inherently positive and valuable experience. Alonement is the direct opposite of loneliness. Think of it as a spectrum: Loneliness < Alone > Alonement As a dictionary entry, it would look a bit like this: Alonement noun Quality time spent alone. I had some really good alonement this weekend. The experience of joy and/or fulfilment when you are by yourself. Alonement for me is a brisk walk first thing in the morning . Pleasurable solitude; also (of a solo experience) associated with a positive feeling. It’s been a hectic few months; I need an alonement holiday. The value of cherishing the time you spend alone. Alonement is important for me and my boyfriend. Without the word ‘alonement’, I struggled to speak about being alone in a way that reflected how I felt about it. While ‘alone’ is ostensibly a neutral word, saying ‘I feel alone’ is tinged with negativity. We’ve all seen the Insta-cliché doing the rounds, ‘Alone doesn’t mean lonely’; but, for me, it never went far enough. If alone doesn’t have to mean the same thing as lonely – what’s the alternative? When alone is good, what is it called? Enter: alonement. Most people get what alonement – which is to say they can usually think of one time in their daily routine where alone time is pretty damn good, whether that’s the hot shower they take first thing or the satisfying ritual of chopping up peppers for dinner. Yet the importance of having an actual word to describe the positive feelings that being alone can generate cannot be understated. It’s like Ludwig Wittgenstein said: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. If you don’t have the word to describe something, it’s hard to give it value and validity. You can’t be what you can’t see, and you can’t practise what you can’t define. New words bring to life phenomena that we may have long observed but never had the language to describe. This isn’t only the case for positive, empowering words; take, for instance, ‘gaslighting’ – in my view, one of the most important contributions to the conversation about abuse and control in relationships. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where one partner attempts to make another question their own memory, perception and judgement, typically through denial or misinformation. The term first originated in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light , about a woman whose husband manipulates her into thinking she’s going insane. It became part of psychological literature in the 1990s and has entered popular parlance over the last few years – most notably during an uproar when a recent Love Island contestant was accused by the charity Women’s Aid of gaslighting two of the women on the show, prompting a heated national debate and a slew of articles and op-eds. Clearly, simply having a word for something can begin a cultural shift. Alonement is my contribution to the English lexicon because I see it as embodying a necessary change in the way we acknowledge and value alone time. I’ve since trademarked it, and hope to one day get it into the dictionary. (If ‘chirpse’, ‘awesomesauce’ and ‘promposal’ all became dictionary-official last year, I like to think this isn’t an impossible goal.) Occasionally you’ll get someone who says you ‘can’t just make up words’. Of course you can (once again, see the surprisingly versatile ‘chirpse’); that’s literally how language was created. It’s designed to serve us, and we use it to navigate the vast and ever-evolving human experience. For instance, there are many words in other languages that we don’t have in English, like the Greek meraki , ‘to do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself in your work’. Language is power, and having a word for something previously unidentified can unlock a little part of you, or your experience, that you never quite acknowledged. Alonement, in no uncertain terms, changed my life – and I have a sneaking suspicion it might change yours, too. Incidentally, I really, really like identifying new language to describe the ‘alonement’ experience. Along that principle, sprinkled throughout this book will be other terms I’ve adopted to help navigate our relationship with being alone, which I’ve listed in a glossary at the back. Among these, there’s ‘rubbernecking’ – a term to define turning one’s head to gaze at something we shouldn’t, usually associated with drivers slowing down to look at car accidents. 8 I find it an apt term to describe our tendency to look at the lives of other people when we should be focusing on our own lives, instead – like scrolling someone else’s night out on Instagram during your summer holiday. There’s also Only Me-ism – a term I invented to describe our tendency to deprive ourselves of basic comforts and considerations (a fresh cafetiere, a home-cooked meal) if it’s ‘only me’ – even though we should be our own priority. Why me? Learning to spend time alone isn’t always easy. Take it from me: as a writer, I have one of the most solitary professions possible. I also wrote a book on being alone. While living alone. As a single person. During a pandemic. Before my life became a giant social experiment of my own making, I was a highly sociable person: I used to love the regular Happy Hours that came with a busy office environment. Plonk me down at a first date or a large glitzy party where I know no one, and I’ll be absolutely fine. ‘If you’re such an extrovert, why did you decide to start a platform about spending time alone?’ asked comedian John Robins on an episode of my Alonement podcast. He had a point. The truth is, I started writing and podcasting about alonement because I didn’t want people to fall into the same trap I had. Up until the age of 27, I was too afraid to even contemplate time alone. For most of my life, I had pursued meaningful human company above all else, while alone time held next to no value for me. Learning to spend time alone began as a challenge to myself, which took the form of a New Year’s resolution: ‘learn to be alone and enjoy it’. Initially, it went against everything I had ever believed in or valued – like the thirty-six hours I once spent following the Paleo diet. It felt as natural as writing with my left hand. I’d consciously avoid making plans on a Sunday and then panic about that empty window of time as the weekend grew closer. I’d book an Odeon ticket for one, then frantically Google whether it was refundable. Meanwhile, well-meaning friends and family grew worried, assuming my uncharacteristic Greta Garbo act was simply the bravado of someone who, newly single, lacked people to hang out with when I wanted company (luckily, this was rarely the case – despite losing some couple friends in the ‘divorce’). But I persisted with my resolution, despite everything (and everyone) telling me not to, and it transformed my life. Think of me, if you like, as a recovering social addict – someone who went so far towards one extreme, in my complete avoidance of alone time, that I can now speak with authority on what happens when it’s lacking. I hope to convince anyone reading that if I – someone who couldn’t spend so much as an hour alone – can learn to enjoy my own company, then you can too. Others who have written about being alone include Sara Maitland, who wrote the fantastic How To Be Alone . She lives in a remote, rural part of Scotland and purposefully distances herself from the likes of smartphones and television. There’s also Alice Koller, who wrote The Stations of Solitude while living alone in Nantucket Island during the dead of winter, and Henry Thoreau, who decamped to the woods for two years to write Walden . Do these writers have interesting backstories? Sure. Do they know a lot about solitude? No doubt, and Maitland’s book in particular has proved important source material for my own. But how many of us can realistically drop everything to go and live in the woods? I know I can’t. This is where alonement comes in – it’s something we can all benefit from and integrate into our existing lifestyles, whatever they are. I’m telling you now because I wish I’d been able to hear it from someone who was up to their neck in a busy, socially connected city existence, rather than living a lifestyle I couldn’t really relate to and didn’t want to emulate. I hope you can be inspired by my experience to go on to create your own alonement. I’m not someone who has always instinctively spent time alone, nor do I intend to spend long periods of time alone without the mitigating influence of another person. I still consider myself an extrovert who regularly ‘powers up’ through other people – my close friends and family are among the primary blessings of my life. But, despite all this, my eyes have been opened to the very real consequences of a fear of being alone, and I can’t go back. Alonement is about moderation We don’t really ‘do’ moderation in British culture. We’re weekend warriors; we’re crash dieters; we’re intermittent fasters; we’re ‘work hard, play hard’. Media representations of being alone are typically extreme. We read about national loneliness epidemics, people getting married to themselves, and during the coronavirus lockdown, there was a particular appetite for stories of solo mountain climbers and around-the-world sailors and island hermits. Headline-grabbing, yes. Relatable? Not so much. Looking to history for solitary icons, you might think of artists or composers, like Mozart, Kafka and Wordsworth. Through romanticising the reclusive genius – obsessive, cut off from society and almost exclusively white and male – and imagining theirs as the only way to be alone, we’re left with something that’s completely removed from our everyday lives. How could we ever emulate this intense behaviour? Would we even want to? To be honest, just the word ‘solitude’ has a loftiness that I kind of resent. That’s where learning to appreciate alonement comes in: quality time alone, often for short lengths of time, like a quiet afternoon or a languid weekend. While for a select few, being alone for an extended period of time might be a failsafe recipe for an epiphany (see Taylor Swift and other geniuses – yes, the folklore album is a work of genius – who created masterpieces during lockdown), for others this might not work out so well. I was certainly challenged by the long stretch of alone time while living alone during the first coronavirus lockdown – four months without a hug is tough – even though I spent it writing a book about spending time alone. Did I mention I was essentially living in a social experiment of my own making? ‘Just eat a balanced diet’ is possibly the least marketable weight loss advice, but long term it’s the most rewarding, and this analogy equally applies to spending time alone. According to Michael Harris: ‘Solitude and connection are elements in a larger social diet. We need both – just like we need carbohydrates and fats – but we can do damage to ourselves by consuming too much of either.’ Rather than undertaking long periods of solitude, most of us benefit from a balance of regular moments of retreat from others. Social connection and alone time require a delicate balancing act, and alonement is a word that acknowledges the importance of both. As I mentioned earlier, simply being alone is rarely a magic bullet for any sort of self-growth. We all know – some more than others – how alone time can devolve into our most destructive tendencies and addictive behaviours, including everything from obsessively checking social media and the news to eating and exercise disorders, drugs and alcohol dependency. Or else, alone time can be spent in a sort of relatively harmless, hedonistic way: binge-watching box sets, mindlessly snacking, idly scrolling Instagram. You might be alone – but you sure as hell won’t be reaping any benefits typically associated with solitude. Alonement means thinking proactively about how you can turn this time into a positive experience. It’s about quality – not quantity. By focusing on alonement as a value used to inform your day-to-day life, you’ll find it easier to settle on a version that works for your situation. Because, while alonement can be a solo trip to another country, it’s more often the ten minutes before work you spend making coffee and sitting down to savour it, or the hour of phone-free time you give yourself before bed to journal or rearrange your sock drawer or simply stare into space. Taking this time may not seem like a particularly big deal, and you may question whether it’s enough to really impact your life. Bear with me. One thing you can be certain of with alonement is that you get back more than you put in. Try making a little space for it in your life, and you’ll begin to see just how powerful it can be. What counts as ‘alone’? As I write this, sitting by myself in a one-bed flat, I am alone in perhaps the most obvious way. My phone is on Airplane mode, the radio is off and – given that I live by myself – I’d be shocked if someone else walked in through the front door. The only way I could be more ‘alone’ is if you were to relocate this set-up to the Outer Hebrides. Or maybe Mars. Yet, this is far from the only way to be alone. I consider alonement to be in action when I write in the café down the road. On holiday with friends, I seek out alonement by going for a walk alone on the beach, or swimming far out into the sea and looking out into the horizon. When I worked in an open-plan office, alonement was disappearing off to a different floor and hiding in a booth, or else it was wearing noise-cancelling headphones at my desk. Sometimes alonement is when I let my mind wander, the way I used to get lost in my imagination during maths lessons. Alonement is, actually, all around (that sounds even better if you imagine Hugh Grant saying it) – and I’m going to show you how to find it and get the most from it. The multi-textured joy of being alone Alonement isn’t just about having a good time. Don’t get me wrong – it totally lends itself to joy. As you become more and more comfortable with the idea of spending time alone, alonement can simply be a comfy night in watching Friends in your flannel pyjamas, with fish and chips and a glass of rosé (now there’s a plan, I’ll be doing exactly that later on). That’s the kind of evening that can be all sorts of fun whether or not anyone else is there. Plus, there’s often a deliciousness inherent in choosing exactly what you want to do, right down to the precise volume of the television. That said, alonement offers another type of satisfaction; a more meaningful, life-affirming type of pleasure. Aristotle termed this ‘eudaimonic’ happiness: a loftier sort of satisfaction derived from living with meaning and purpose. Your pyjama-clad night in watching Friends looks more like what the ancient Greeks called ‘hedonic’ pleasure: a more straightforward, fleeting pleasure-based kind of happiness. Basically, alonement is when time alone is positive, and this might be because it’s enjoyable, or because it’s valuable, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be both. Sure, you can experience hedonic pleasure as a person alone, and often that happens in a much purer and authentically ‘you’ way than it might with another person: tucking into a meal you love, dancing like no one’s watching (because no one’s watching). But other times alonement serves as a space of regeneration and self-growth: writing in a journal, or going to bed early rather than staying up again to binge-watch Netflix with your housemates. Both are worth practising, for different reasons. When it comes to hedonic pleasure, it’s crucial for us to acknowledge to ourselves (and indeed to others) that it is valid to do things alone purely for your own pleasure (and I don’t just mean a night in with your vibrator). As an extrovert, I used to draw almost all of my hedonic pleasures from being around other people, where there’s a momentum and an energy which is harder to find in solitude. Yet, it is still possible with the right planning to have a fun (and in no way highbrow) evening alone. Some of my happiest times have been spent reading fiction or watching trashy TV. That said, while fleeting pleasures are all well and good, alonement is fertile ground for finding meaning and purpose in your life. As I’ll discuss in Chapter 5, spending time alone is not only a key ingredient for productivity and creativity, it’s also a space where you can reflect on where that meaning and purpose lies. Who is this book for? For me, living alone as a single person – latterly, during a pandemic – has been an incubation state for getting to know myself very well. But this is by no means a book aimed solely at ‘single’ people or those who live alone. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, married, or ‘not putting a label on things’ with Greg, 34, from Plenty of Fish, your relationship with yourself is the only one guaranteed to be lifelong. Certainly, being single, divorced or widowed can present opportunities for working out who you are as an individual, in a similar way to how other major life changes – career shifts, moving house, parenthood, a worldwide pandemic – force us to re-evaluate who we are. That said, having been in multiple serious relationships, I’ve established that being one half of a couple in no way immunises you from loneliness or suppresses a need for self-knowledge; in fact, it’s all too often the opposite. Learning to thrive alone – whether that’s travelling solo or simply learning to relish the nights your partner or flatmate is away from home – is something we can all work on. Being alone is how we come into the world and how we die; we will all at some point in our lives be alone. Of course, there are times when we lean on kindness from others, and interpersonal relationships will play a huge part in our lives. But alonement will fortify you in a deeper way than your relationships with others ever can. This book is for anyone who struggles to spend time alone. This book is for anyone who is naturally good at spending time alone but worries deep down that it’s a bad thing. This book is for those worried they will never meet ‘The One’. This book is for those who have met ‘The One’ and wonder why they still don’t feel happy with their lives. This book is for those whose friends have all coupled up and they’re sick with envy, secretly hoping a right-swipe on Tinder could make all the building blocks of their life fall into place. This book is for couples who struggle to maintain their independence. This book is for anyone who’s ever struggled with their identity outside of their friends, family or wider community. This book is for anyone who avoids pursuing their passions, because they can’t find someone to take along with them. This book is for everyone in a relationship with themselves. This book is for, well, everyone. How this book works It’s almost time for you to go forth and conquer your alone time; but first, a little about how I put this book together. I’m well aware – as someone who never ‘got’ alone time – why you might need a little convincing, so when writing this book, it felt important to balance the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of being alone. I wanted to give a bit of theory to debunk the way we, as a society, see alone time and shift the stigma, but also to provide plenty of practical tips for actually making alonement happen. As I’ve already mentioned, alonement isn’t just being by yourself – it’s proactive quality time that requires work, just like any relationship – so I’ve packed each chapter full of ways to harness your alonement and make it work for you. From self-care to making time for your passions and physically carving out your own space wherever you are, I want to show you how to make the world your alonement oyster. As for actually reading the book, I’d advise starting at the beginning (groundbreaking, I know) and reading the first two chapters before you skip ahead to anything else, as they are essential for understanding the concept of alonement. Ideally, from there, you’ll just keep on reading as nature (I’m nature, in this instance) intended. But if you’re looking for specific advice – say you’ve got an upcoming solo holiday or are feeling the need for some breathing space in your relationship – feel free to jump ahead to the relevant chapter (that’s Chapter 7 and Chapter 10 in those cases). A quick disclaimer: I want to stress that this book won’t change your life by itself. Yes, you did read that correctly. Think of this initial investment simply as a leaping-off point – because the work goes beyond your bookshelf. You don’t just follow @dailyselfgrowth104 on Instagram in January and, hey presto, you’re a self-actualised human having scrolled through 23 post updates. It doesn’t work like that. The only way you can discover the value of time alone is experiencing it first hand yourself, by integrating it in both little and large ways into your regular routine. There may be some discomfort and doubt along the way, but I guarantee that it will snowball into something that is truly life-affirming. Once you understand the value of alonement, it’s self-sustaining and will stay with you your whole life. Your practice will ebb and flow (in the face of relationships and work pressures, for instance) but you will regularly feel the pull to return to yourself, like a beloved friend, and make that time and space for alonement. As I say, this book won’t change your life. But you can. Lastly, whatever you do, I suggest you read this book when you’re alone: phone in a drawer and/or on mute, partner or housemate also on mute (or at least politely requested to respect your reading time) and your full attention. No social media (plenty of time to post the cover on the grid later). For now, this is your time. Welcome to alonement. 2 NWO, ‘Half of Your Friends Lost in Seven Years, Social Network Study Finds’, Science Daily , 27 May 2009. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090527111907.htm 3 Harry Benson and Steve McKay, ‘Commit or Quit: Living Together Longer?’, Marriage Foundation , May 2020. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NEW-STUDY-Living-Together-Longer-Commit-or-Quit-Marriage-Week-May-2020.pdf 4 Nadia Whitehead, ‘People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts’, Science , 3 July 2014. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts 5 ‘Only child syndrome: Proven reality or long-standing myth’, Healthline , 23 October 2019. https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/only-child-syndrome 6 James R. Averill and Louise Sundararajan, ‘Experiences of solitude: Issues of assessment, theory, and culture’. http://indigenouspsych.org/Discussion/forum/Solitude%20final.pdf 7 ‘The value of isolation, loneliness and solitude’, Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences . https://jungiancenter.org/the-value-of-isolation-loneliness-and-solitude 8 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rubbernecking 9781529412635_Alonement_-_EPUB-7 1 Why we need alonement For most of my life, I was my least favourite person to spend time with. OK, I’d have drawn the line at a candlelit dinner with, say, Josef Fritzl, but looking back, I am amazed at the lengths I went to just to avoid alone time. I’d jump at any opportunity to socialise. A last-minute invite to a bar in the furthest part of Peckham? I’d be straight on that bus – all 75 minutes of it. A friend of a friend’s cousin was hosting a barbecue, and asked if I wanted to join? Why not! If a Tinder date suggested meeting up on a work night in mid-November, I’d be like, yeah, sure, I love Wetherspoons – 9pm sounds perfect . Overcommitted, overstretched and overspent; my raison d’être , it seemed, was to get as far away from myself as I could. It wasn’t self-loathing as much as a deeply held belief that being around other people was what gave my life meaning. Time alone was just a drab waiting room to tolerate until real life resumed; it held so little value to me. Solitude was a chore, something I was lumbered with doing enough of already. That’s why, when deliberating between spending a night by myself or pursuing pretty much any other option, I’d so often pick the latter. Up until the age of 27, I had always lived with other people: family, flatmates, partners. I struggled with a couple of living arrangements where I lived with just one other person – meaning I would be alone some of the time. Rather than relishing the nights my flatmate was out to have a bit of ‘me-time’, I’d check our shared wall calendar and try to make plans so I was out, too. When being physically around people wasn’t possible, I’d connect with others virtually – firing off dozens of messages into a WhatsApp group or sharing my life in an Instagram Story. I couldn’t even watch a film alone without messaging throughout. I spoke to author and journalist Poorna Bell about this in an episode of my Alonement podcast. Poorna discovered her love of alonement in her thirties and, before then, she – like me – had never stopped to consciously schedule ‘alone time’. ‘Thinking about being alone or actively carving out time to be alone is something I don’t think I was even aware of [when I was younger]. In a way, you go from your family home to being at school to uni, where you’re with people all the time, and you go from uni to flat shares. I don’t think that I ever really gave it much thought. I didn’t actively say, do I need to do XYZ, do I need to make sure that I’ve got time for myself on the weekend? I would just react to whatever was going on and whoever would invite me out.’ Learning to value alone time is, without a doubt, the most radical and important lesson I’ve learnt in my life to date. So, what was it that stopped me from spending any time alone for the best part of three decades? I think it came down to three factors: The fact that we live in a society where being sociable is disproportionately rewarded A deep, despairing fear of time alone and all it stands for Being digitally connected 24/7, courtesy of a multi-billion-dollar tech in	408,515

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