[I finally got around to reading The Fault in Our Stars and the hype is not ill-warranted. I am beginning to think that I enjoy such books, having read Perks of Being a Wallflower and Speak and A Day No Pigs Would Die and The Outsiders and more. The problem with such books is that they make me want to write, and I just don't have the patience with myself anymore. I want to write something long-form, not three lines, but three lines is all I can manage, and that only once a week or less. What happened to me? Was angst the only driving factor in my creativity? Can not happiness also promote creation, or is the suffering artist the only artist?]
It was odd, to have this connection to this book--any book, for that matter, but especially one with whose characters I have so little in common. But I feel their pain more keenly for the loss. Unique and lovely, wonderful and kind, self-absorbed and intelligent, they stand and mock me from their unassailable perch. I watch as they play out their vignettes on the edge of an endless chasm, walking back and forth on the edge, begging me to love them as I beg them not to jump. Finally, both acquiesce, and I love them more for having finally listened to my plaintive calls. They turn from the destruction and of course the cliff's edge gives way. Fool! To think that anything beautiful could last. Child! To think that your cajoling could change the mind of a fiction. Animal intelligence! To expect anything but death from a world so cruel.
I wrap myself in blankets and cast the away and roll to the floor and crawl to the bathroom, sobs unwonted and heedless building behind my eyes. This is the pain I have caused others, though fragmented and unknown, and here I receive its full force unstopping and reckless. I pull myself to full height as if to reinforce my own masculinity somehow in this moment of crushing despair over a fictional relationship between two people who will never exist.
And I cry. I want to, but I cannot find the release I need in a simple half-choked sob. This book has taken me, and I have read it nearly non-stop since I picked it up this early afternoon, and I am so close to finishing that I just want to read it and be done, but the tears won't come out. I seek release from a pain, and catharsis has abandoned me. Well, if the Greek is not my refuge, let me try Deutsch. I Seeleschrei with all of me. The house reverberates with the sound of my voice. I scream with fear that I will never stop feeling. I want it out, but it cannot get out with enough speed. The screams accelerate they tear out of me they fly through the walls they cannot be enough they must they must they must. And just as I run out of breath and I don't think the screams can continue, I feel the final, blissful release of an actual unforced sob.
When I finish wiping the tears from my puffy face, I turn the page.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think I may have to read this book.
ReplyDeleteI think the only one mentioned here that I've read is The Outsiders, if that is indeed the one by S.E. Hinton (if so, it made me cry each of the three times I've read it).
I so identify with this, though. So many times the act of reading a good story has been...difficult to explain.
I really liked "Well, if the Greek is not my refuge, let me try Deutsch." I read it, and was like, Yes, I understand, and yes, I see Robby doing this. :) Oh, I do miss being around you all (even though I know you're not around them either).
I hope the book is kind to you/does not tear you apart.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, people who are happy are far too busy living their lives to want to waste time capturing one that doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteGood stories have conflict, yes? They have obstacles to overcome, no? Most people think that happiness means a lack of obstacles, a lack of conflict, or perhaps freedom from it.
I don't think people really understand happiness, for all we want it. I want to reference *Cabin Pressure* here, but instead I'll reference people's take on Milton's *Paradise Lost.*
Many critics say Milton really respected/liked/preferred Satan to the other characters, that Adam was flat and boring what with all his perfect happiness.
I don't know; I think you once said sadness felt more real to you than happiness, and I don't think most of humanity will think you wrong. I think most people don't even try to capture happiness because it always comes off false unless it's bittersweet, and that makes me think most people don't think it even exists.
This has been *free association with nonsense.* And since I don't feel like erasing all the two minutes' worth of work I've done, I'll publish it. You're ... welcome.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHm. Sadness just feels so much more important for me because it's transient. I'm mostly quite content. It's more meaningful because it applies more directly to what's at hand. It's more powerful because I can see it's effects in contrast to my normative state.
But whether sadness is worth looking for is an entirely different problem. In life? I don't think so. In relationships? Definitely not. In a book? I don't really know for sure. It would seem like books are a safe place to be sad.
I have also heard happiness described as health. People don't usually notice when they're healthy. They notice when they're sick, because it's a deviation from the norm.
ReplyDeleteBlah, blah, blah, the world is sick. Groaning. We're caught up in the fight between health and dysfunction that existed before we did, and it is all we know.
The greater the conflict, the greater the capacity for sadness (heartbreak).
I don't think I've ever seen a relationship that didn't come with sadness. Dating, friendship, family. Obviously, looking for it there isn't healthy, but I don't think running away from it is always the best thing to do, either.
I still say people tend to find sadness more interesting. Maybe it's a Tolstoy thing. I dunno.
In truth, I don't know that it is a bad thing to find sadness more interesting. At what other point in the history of the universe will anyone ever know what it feels like to have injustice perpetrated on them?
ReplyDeleteNever, I hope.
We are living in a time of utterly unique emotions and consequences, and if we do not take the time to understand the depravity of our status, we will never be able to communicate even a whisper of it to the angels.
I think I get what you're saying, but I just ... everyone's been watching, right? And the angels have been trying to help, and ... do I have to spend my time re-living Earth?
ReplyDeleteThe way you wrote that comment opens doors to being enamored of sadness and pain, and that just seems unhealthy. Right? I mean, it has been, in my experience.
CS Lewis was always like, The man who understands sin the best is the one who has resisted and conquered it.
Yeah, I know, "know thine enemy," and then there's the argument that "to know is to love" and then we all start playing Ender's Game.
I suppose at this point I am contradicting myself. Have we had the conversation where I said sometimes I was afraid of Heaven because I love stories so much, and there aren't any good stories without conflict?
Anyhow, I still love stories, and I want to be able to tell them, and sometimes I am enamored of sadness and pain and misery and anger and so forth. But I don't think it's a good thing. I fear to lose it, but I still don't think it's good.
Ah, but I don't everything will come easily in heaven. You know, like learning a new thing takes practice and time and you sometimes mess up, you play the wrong notes, hit the wrong pitch, throw the ball the wrong way. Messing up while learning something new isn't a sin. It might be smaller conflict, but there will still be tension. All the negative connotations will be gone, but there will still be adventures. Otherwise I don't know if I'd love stories as well as I do.
ReplyDeleteAlso, yes, the book did tear at me. It's an imperfect specimen, but there were tears. I don't think one has to be enamored of any emotion to understand it, but I do think stories provide a chance for some emotions that one may not have had access to to be made accessible.
I asked my father, who seems wise, why God would let me identify as a storyteller when stories will be irrelevant in Heaven (the greatest story arc having come to a close at last).
ReplyDeleteHe suggested the possibility I shared above; namely, that we will be the parties responsible for ensuring sin's permanent demise. My song for endless ages will be the glory of Christ's death for me and all that.
I don't think I'll get tired of it once I know what it truly was.
Right now, through a glass darkly and all that.
I think your father's wise also. I never thought about it quite like that, but it speaks to me. I mean, we're supposed to spend a thousand years searching the records, right? How are these records accessible? How will we know how to look? We talk a lot in my classes about how the past can't be known, and from a human perspective, that's correct. Archives can only give partial evidence. But God's archives! Well, they're the best there are because He will have the whole story told.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I think there's need for storytellers in heaven and beyond. Certainly one day someone will ask why and what and how, and we'll finally have answers. Because being in the story right now doesn't preclude us from telling the story afterward. Bilbo wrote There and Back Again, and Frodo wrote of the downfall of the Lord of the Rings, and Sam kept the manuscript and told his children the stories and Pippin had it copied several times, one of which was sent to Minas Tirith, and they were all a part of the stories they told. :)
Again, history written by the victors, no?
ReplyDeleteLike-- they want to write history, to confirm their place, their choices, to remember and to understand something they can see as beautiful.
Or something.
Scientists and intellectuals seem to take pleasure in mocking people who believe in God for putting Him in the places we don't understand, but I don't think faith is willful ignorance. I think part of it, at least, is trusting that there are answers that will satisfy, that there is a grand design and therefore there must be a place for you in it.
I don't think I can express properly how much I have missed this. And you.
I put a reminder on my phone to write every day again. It helps, but it's nothing like enough. I need to find the internal impulse.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I will have a struggle in heaven.
I am glad you did. Where did the impulse go?
ReplyDeleteI think Ashlee already talked about struggles in heaven somewhere. I agree with her. :-)