Could you not watch with Me one night? He said, and what then will He say
To those who spend their nights as I:
Blind to Your calls, deaf to Your hands,
Drunk with animal labor, so as to seem
As one of those who don't know God?
How will they say she spent her last night
Before she went spinning out of time,
Before she shattered into shivering roses?
There are a thousand ways to die
And just a few to live. Sometimes
I smell mine, just above my head, between
The bookcase and the crown molding;
Or in dazed passing taste it, or a trace of it: Strange honey in the corner of my mouth.
Give me Your Word, show me Your way, That my soul might live and not die.
Sometimes when I stop or when I wonder,
Sometimes when I cry then I remember
That You want all my startled stoppings,
All my quiet reachings, all my tears -
So it would seem, for You reserved them
At a high price: at the price of blood.
Perdition pulls; tomorrow I may fade;
Intentions drift like vapor; words are gray;
But while we're here, for what it's worth -
Remembering the life You breathed that day - I will love You with all of my heart I will love You with all of my mind I will love You with all of my strength I'll love You with everything
be kind, be kind to the wayfarers, the wanderers
be kind, be kind to the strangers, the sojurners
be kind, be kind to the travelers on their way
they may be homeless, they may be hungry
they may be lost, they may be lonely
they may be world-weary just as you.
Acquaintance: I can understand learning about tangible things like biology and film, but what do you learn in a literature class? As far as I can tell, all you do is read about made-up stuff that never happened in real life and then talk about your feelings about it.
Your question is much like one I've gotten several times this semester now - strangely enough, from English majors as often as not: "All we talk about in this class is [insert: death, sex, God, love!] Our [insert: curriculum, professor] is a little obsessive, don't you think?" Honestly I think now. What else do you think worth talking about? What else is there? What makes Biology a worthwhile major, or Film? Isn't it the ideas behind them - the very ideas we think about in Lit classes? Without a purpose, Biology is just a lot of random chemical reactions between molecules in motion, with some innate rhythm but no inherent reason. Without a subject, Film is just a manipulation of light waves, with some aesthetic merit but no particular meaning. In fact, it doesn't really have any aesthetic meaning either, unless by aesthetic meaning you mean that it sparks chemical responses in a particular portion of our brains.
If you don't mind getting philosophical, the things you're calling "real" or "tangible" are mere "particulars" and the ideas we get from reading and thinking about literature are the "universals" that give the particulars meaning. As Schaeffer explains in "How Should We Then Live," when we attempt to function solely on the basis of particulars, we quickly discover there isn't much point. When we divorce particulars from universals, the particulars lose their meaning. If you don't mind my referring to "made-up stuff that never happened in real life," you're making the same mistake Ivan Ilych makes in Tolstoy's short novel "The Death of Ivan Ilych." He lives on the particulars of life - parties, promotions, salaries, sicknesses - refusing to think seriously about either life or death. Yet which is more real: conscience or fashion? Which is more real: love or lampshades? In willfully forgetting the serious questions of life and death, Ivan Ilych forfeits the ability to cope with either when they come crashing into his self-made world. That's one mistake I don't want to make; and one thing I can do to avoid it is study literature.
We who study literature are acting on instincts of self-preservation. We panic before the onslaught described in DeLillo's "White Noise," the onslaught of sounds, seductions, images, impressions, and we flee to literature for a little escape. however, we are interested not only in emotional self-preservation but in moral and intellectual self-preservation as well. The disconnected bits of information bombarding us represent countless contradictory, temporary fads. We want a little oxygen, a little a little foothold: something to breathe, somewhere to stand. We don't usually demand to know all the answers right away; but we would like to get a feel for what the real questions are. Literature, which deals with universal issues rather than the hot topics of popular culture, helps us refocus. When we read, we aren't necessarily looking for final satisfaction, but we are looking for a little permanence, a little substance. And in literature, we often find that.
We who study literature are something like Gatsby in Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby." We aren't content with the tangibles of life: the money the mansions - or even with the less tangible particulars: the popularity, the power. Whether muddling through Lit classes or loitering in public libraries or hiding out under our beds, we read literature to keep alive in ourselves the desire we share with Gatsby: the desire for something more. We read to sustain our great hope that though what we want eludes us in an empty confusion of flashing lights and hollow laughter, one day we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . and one fine morning discover that our hope was not in vain. "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world," C. S. Lewis suggested. Reading literature keeps us from contenting ourselves with dissatisfaction of what we find in this world. Literature feeds us ideas that keep our homeless desires and inordinate hopes alive.
We who study literature are somewhat more aware of the greatness of everything, so we are acutely more aware of our inability to express it all. Naturally, we seek out others' words to say the things we can't. As Langston Hughes observed in his boyhood, in books, "if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables as we did in Kansas." With our without literature, we experience the suffering and the joy of life, but without literature, our suffering and joy lack form and dignity. Many of us have experienced the lostness and dread of Alfred J. Prufrock; but only one of us has written "The Love Song." And it relieves the rest of us. Reading literature, we come to understand our own experiences better and get inspiration to express them with our own voices.
Those are a few of the reasons I study literature. There's a place for studying Biology and Film, too; I'm by no means immune to those fascinations. But they aren't enough by themselves. If you understand the internal workings of a planarian or a camera, you'll only ever be able to manipulate a planarian or a camera. But if you understand the ideas we deal with in our Lit classes, and understand how people in other ages have put those ideas to work, you'll be able to manipulate your whole world.
She looked for closed-in places
She wanted small and empty spaces
To shut out interference of voices, noises, lies
To isolate reality
Or to isolate herself? She didn't know
Which she sought, or if it even mattered
She didn't like relief, colloquialisms, baby food
They confused her and put her in pain
They hurt her and made her afraid
She needed definition, acuteness
She thought maybe she could find it
If only she could get really alone
So she went around and around, smaller and smaller
Folding in further to greater and greater emptiness
Maybe people would call her an introvert
But she was past caring what they called things now.
It was almost 5:00 when she walked in. The doctor was in the back; __ had gone home. __ was waiting for me in the car. Nurse and Receptionist and I were going so clock out when the bell rang and a woman appeared in the doorway.
I did not particularly notice her at first, but there seemed to be a long interval between the moment she appeared in the doorway and the moment she stood at the counter. I didn't hear what she asked, but I heard Receptionist say, "No, this is not a free clinic."
"Well, what is it, then?"
"It's a doctor's office." Receptionist was using what I had always imagined as her welfare patient voice: very even and civil.
"Well, can I see the doctor?" She was hard to understand; she mumbled. She was young, with straight brown hair and strangely swollen eyes.
"Well, do you have any insurance?" Receptionist asked.
She didn't. She was leaning her elbows on the counter, her chin on the heel of her hand. "Can't you give me a pregnancy test?"
"This is not a free clinic," Receptionist said. Or maybe she said, "This is not a GYN."
"Oh, really," the woman mumbled sarcastically. Except it didn't seem to come out as sarcastic as she had meant it. Her eyes were closed. There was a silence. Receptionist asked helpfully, "What did you want to be seen for?"
The woman seemed to gather herself and leaned forward on the counter. Her eyes were open now. She still mumbled, but she seemed to be making a great effort toward coherency. "Look," she said, "I had an abortion a year ago. They messed it up or something. I haven't gotten my period since then. Except I bleed when . . . just once I bled . . . I went to the doctor and they did tests on me . . . "
It was hard to understand her. Or maybe it was just hard to hear her. I felt that I kept missing things. And as she talked, she kept falling asleep.
"It sounds like you would need to go to a GYN," Receptionist told her.
"But it's my back, too," the woman said. Now I began to feel sick. She was not whining; her voice was too hoarse and toneless. She did not seem to be trying to manipulate anyone; she was simply like a child who has not yet learned the proper way to ask for help. "I'm really sick; I sleep all the time and my back hurts; I could hardly walk across here . . . "
"If you're in that much pain, you should go to the ER," Receptionist said.
"I did - five times. They did some tests and it scared me really bad because when the nurse gave me back my results she had this funny look on her face . . . That's what they told my mom, before, when she got sick, so it scared me . . . "
Please, I thought, just don't cry. Maybe her voice had broken, or maybe she had just nodded off again. Or . . . There is fear.
Receptionist asked if they hadn't given her any pain relief medicine at the ER.
She said no. "Can't you give me some pain pills?"
Receptionist said the doctor only prescribed pain pills to established patients. She moved over to let me sign out.
"Can't I see the doctor?"
"It would cost forty or fifty dollars just for him to see you."
I clocked out and left. I held the door for the woman. She was only a girl, really. When she turned from the counter, I was startled by how thin she was. She wore a white tank top and a long denim skirt with a slit up the front, and sandals. She moved very slowly, and not in a straight line. I did not watch her as she staggered across the waiting room. She passed me on her way out, close. She was not drunk, I thought, only sick.
I remembered the girl on the steps of the metro station in St. Petersburg. Leka and I had been little then, and we had been too shy to talk with her because we thought she was a boy. But she was a girl, and she was dying of AIDS . . .
Maybe she would be dead next week.
Outside she took a long drag from a cigarette that had been lying on the concrete windowsill. I hesitated, then smiled at her and crossed the sidewalk to the car. Through the front window I wanted her. She watched Nurse exit the building, then Receptionist. When Receptionist got into her car, the girl staggered off down the sidewalk.
What do we fear, that we passed her by? What was I afraid of, that I smiled at her and walked quickly on in a mist of tears, leaving her standing on the sidewalk, staring dully after me?
What if she had AIDS? What if she were pregnant? What if she had slumped over on the sidewalk and fallen asleep for the last time? What if she were not died then and there but later, half-consciousness dragging on and on to cost us time and money and effort? What if someone else would have helped her instead?
Am I afraid of contracting a contagious disease? Am I afraid of smelling a foul smell? Am I afraid of looking foolish? Perhaps more than any of these (perhaps involving them all, perhaps unrelated to any of them) I am afraid of my life changing dramatically and irrevocably, of life as I know it being suddenly over. The best thing that could happen to me, and I left her standing on the sidewalk.
We pray for Christ to reach out to the people we see, but we are His body. He is not magic, He is Christ, and we are His hands and feet.
I could compose a piece of music for her. I could write a happy ending for this story. But how can I ask You to help her when You would have used me? On Judgment Day maybe I will see her swollen eyes . . . or maybe she was an angel . . . or maybe she was You.
