As I was re-reading David Foster Wallace online, I received a forwarded email. It was from an aunt whose emails usually contain blinking/singing American flags and/or truisms that would have been cross-stitched on a pillow a generation ago. He would have loved her. The emails implicitly assume that I voted for Bush in both cycles because of his pro-whatever and anti-whatevers. ["he's a good man, you know"] They assume that I am shocked by the same things that apparently shock good people everywhere: gay marriage, skepticism about the literal truth of the Bible, and Those Unpatriotic Ones Who Don't Support the Troops. Unless I am feeling particularly smug, I delete these emails without reading.
But this time I read the email, and learned that the extended family is having a special fast for my cousin's dying baby. A quick introduction for the uninitiated: a fast is a period in which people don't eat or drink. It's done as an offering to God, a offer to transact. I will briefly starve myself, offer my body's primal needs up in return for what I want-need-desire from God. It's generally reserved for something important. I spent much of my youth in a prayer and fasting cycle, trying to wail my [now dead] mother into good health. It's what Mormons do. They talk about the process the way other people might talk about putting money in savings--it's serious, but commonplace. Probably a lot of other fundamentalist-type denominations do the same too. I don't know. Maybe a group fast is just a communal prayer with your whole bodies.
It's not that I don't believe in God, because I think I do. But I just don't think [or hope] that God does trades. After all, my mom did die, in a spectacularly ugly and drawn-out sort of death. As do many people. It happens. Plus, there is Africa. You can't think about asking God for favors without thinking about Africa [as in why would there be mass starvation, war, slavery in Africa if God could intervene]? The standard Mormon answer to this is -- people have to feel the consequences of their choices, it's a fallen world.--these rationales look limp and weak, even on the page. Really, really, what are the chances that any God would change course because of a desperate trade offered by two young parents and their families? But not change course if the trade wasn't offered. Perhaps I am just concerned about the efficiency of this whole process: we stop eating and hope that that the world will stand still, that nature will reverse course, that Superman will fly around the earth fast enough to disrupt time or cause and effect.
Parents have wept over more dead children than there are people alive today. Many of them were pious. Many were evil. Many of them prayed. Many of them cursed God. But what has stopped modern children from dying is not a supernatural force. It's a systemic decision by scientists to stop looking up for relief, and start looking around them. Medical advances stem from scientific techniques established during the Enlightenment [observation over argument, sensual perception over faith and so on]. My asthmatic son is alive because somebody figured out what chemicals would relax his overly tight bronchioles. The men and women who figure these things out were looking around at what was, and not what should have been, surrounding them. The noticed what they smelled, tasted, heard, touched, and saw, not what they yearned to feel.
But when there is no scientific cure, then the senses fail. When what you see is a tiny and frail body whimpering on an oscillator, bleeding out of every orifice, his eyes yellow, his lungs rotting in fungus, you can close your eyes. You don't want to see. You don't want to taste. You want oblivion. The senses are too sharp to bear. And you retreat into a hope that there is something out there, something you haven't tasted or smelled, something out there that will do a little alchemy while your eyes are closed. And that when you open your eyes again, nature will have inexplicably moved in your direction.
And so my family fasts and prays.
DFW was a master recognizing and describing the actual day-in-day-out sights that most of us see, as opposed to the occasional extraordinary experiences that other writers prefer. The creepy plastic bags we carry tasteless soft bagels in, the professional smiles we walk by at the mall, and the vacant eyes of overweight, polyester-clad gamblers in a Motel lobby in Reno. The reds and greens, and the unpleasantly fetid greens. His exquisite mind constantly composed a never-ending footnote to search for some reason to stay, and to keep his eyes open.
And I wonder, if perhaps, maybe, in some cases, it is better to retreat--from our bodies, from what we perceive.
Note: I posted this earlier on The Great Whatsit, under another pseudonym.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Stuff
In my mother's era, part of being a member of the Mormon women's auxiliary meant having an endless supply of creative Jello recipes [mayonnaise anyone? carrots? celery?]. It's different now. Everyone in my generation can make a chicken salad with nuts and grapes in it, blind. Or a nearly inedible, but rich, potato casserole to go with the ham eaten after a funeral.
In my era, as in hers, one rule is sacrosanct: a Mormon woman is expected to help someone in crisis. And so, I have found myself, on more than one occasion, helping clean because of evictions, illness, and death. I have tried, and failed, to help women tunnel through their overcrowded homes. I have examined the mummified remains of rats, deceased decades earlier. I have had to put the avocado-green-1977-cat-pee-stained curtains back upon the unusable bed because I could not convince the owner to discard them. I have stumbled through halls piled with old newspapers. And seen bags of petrified animal feces. And meandered through mazes of flimsy plastic bags. I have entered storage units containing nothing but catalogs for electronic parts. I have gazed upon piles of terrible, terrible, paintings. I have watched, helpless, as people figuratively drowned in their own possessions, unable to part with any of it.
This deluge of stuff seems seems to me to be a product of modern culture. A culture obsessed with thinness creates anorexics and bulemics. A society fixated on having the right possessions creates hoarders. But this illness is not only a product of capitalistic materialism. Dante's 4th circle of hell included two dueling armies of Hoarders and Wasters. Most religions warn against the draw of things. Primates like bright, shiny things. Rats collect everything. Maybe it's simply mammalian.
My husband is a collector, and if he could, would live as one of these lost hoarding souls, stumbling through unusable space. In his hidden places, I have found maps of places he has never visited. And boxes of obscure mathematical calculations. And shelves of books in Mayan and obscure Indian dialects. It is true that he is brilliant, and that he [rightly] considers himself the kind of person who can greet a Ghanian in Twi, or explain how lightning works. And that kind of person should have books in Twi. And yet no box is ever big enough for the person he wants to be. He needs to think of himself as a person who will one day be able to discuss politics in Tohono O'odham, or recite classics verbatim. And so he can't let go of the books that will one day make that possible. He wants to know everything. If he owns it, he may one day know it.
I assume that other people hoard for similar reasons: for the future and the past. An ancient woman keeps her unread tomes about the Rolling Stones because she was happy as a hippie, briefly, in the 60s. Another can't let go of ragged dolls because of some soft association in her childhood. And another holds onto those unflattering shoes she wore that one night. And the unworn wedding dress.
Some experts think that hoarders have social disorders, or experienced material deprivation during formative years. Others believe that the illness caused due to informational processing disorders, or perfectionism. Perhaps it is a natural state, kept only in check in the general population through some miracle gene.
Tyler Durden exploded his possessions in Fight Club because "You don’t own the things-the things own you." And there was no other way to get rid of the overbearing master. The abusive, unrelenting masters, cluttering not only our physical landscape, but our minds and hearts. And yet, we cannot wrest free from the clattering chains.
I too, collect. I have fossils and cookbooks, and various other small collections. Not enough to alert the Department of Health. But just enough to know that I have a problem. To discard my pizzelle maker [or crepe maker, or fondue pot] would be to discard that imaginary girl who makes wonderful, exotic, warm things. And I like that girl. She is competent. Whereas I am just me--and without my things, and without my hopes imbued in those things, I am a naked mole rat, as vulnerable as the day I was born.
In my era, as in hers, one rule is sacrosanct: a Mormon woman is expected to help someone in crisis. And so, I have found myself, on more than one occasion, helping clean because of evictions, illness, and death. I have tried, and failed, to help women tunnel through their overcrowded homes. I have examined the mummified remains of rats, deceased decades earlier. I have had to put the avocado-green-1977-cat-pee-stained curtains back upon the unusable bed because I could not convince the owner to discard them. I have stumbled through halls piled with old newspapers. And seen bags of petrified animal feces. And meandered through mazes of flimsy plastic bags. I have entered storage units containing nothing but catalogs for electronic parts. I have gazed upon piles of terrible, terrible, paintings. I have watched, helpless, as people figuratively drowned in their own possessions, unable to part with any of it.
This deluge of stuff seems seems to me to be a product of modern culture. A culture obsessed with thinness creates anorexics and bulemics. A society fixated on having the right possessions creates hoarders. But this illness is not only a product of capitalistic materialism. Dante's 4th circle of hell included two dueling armies of Hoarders and Wasters. Most religions warn against the draw of things. Primates like bright, shiny things. Rats collect everything. Maybe it's simply mammalian.
My husband is a collector, and if he could, would live as one of these lost hoarding souls, stumbling through unusable space. In his hidden places, I have found maps of places he has never visited. And boxes of obscure mathematical calculations. And shelves of books in Mayan and obscure Indian dialects. It is true that he is brilliant, and that he [rightly] considers himself the kind of person who can greet a Ghanian in Twi, or explain how lightning works. And that kind of person should have books in Twi. And yet no box is ever big enough for the person he wants to be. He needs to think of himself as a person who will one day be able to discuss politics in Tohono O'odham, or recite classics verbatim. And so he can't let go of the books that will one day make that possible. He wants to know everything. If he owns it, he may one day know it.
I assume that other people hoard for similar reasons: for the future and the past. An ancient woman keeps her unread tomes about the Rolling Stones because she was happy as a hippie, briefly, in the 60s. Another can't let go of ragged dolls because of some soft association in her childhood. And another holds onto those unflattering shoes she wore that one night. And the unworn wedding dress.
Some experts think that hoarders have social disorders, or experienced material deprivation during formative years. Others believe that the illness caused due to informational processing disorders, or perfectionism. Perhaps it is a natural state, kept only in check in the general population through some miracle gene.
Tyler Durden exploded his possessions in Fight Club because "You don’t own the things-the things own you." And there was no other way to get rid of the overbearing master. The abusive, unrelenting masters, cluttering not only our physical landscape, but our minds and hearts. And yet, we cannot wrest free from the clattering chains.
I too, collect. I have fossils and cookbooks, and various other small collections. Not enough to alert the Department of Health. But just enough to know that I have a problem. To discard my pizzelle maker [or crepe maker, or fondue pot] would be to discard that imaginary girl who makes wonderful, exotic, warm things. And I like that girl. She is competent. Whereas I am just me--and without my things, and without my hopes imbued in those things, I am a naked mole rat, as vulnerable as the day I was born.
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