June - The Liars 2 страница

"All of theory is a big open conversation. Anyone can add to it. Footnotes are there in order to see who the author was talking to and who they were talking about. Sometimes criticism seems like a big gossip party because you're literally saying, 'they said this and that is so not true, this is what is true.' A lot of criticism can be just bad rumors that people follow around in the foot and end notes of the piece. Theorist and critics together, especially within the academy, are not far off from this 'pit of vipers' mentality, too. That is the only downside of my job right now. But I am convinced that there are some good things here, too. You can always add to the conversation and the person does not have to be alive to hear it. It is worth pursuing, it is worth adding to the collective conversation, even if it only ends up being a murmur," he concluded, and he had won me over. His use of the word collective reminded me of Lydia and Jasmine, and I felt closer to him instinctually. I had also heard what he had finally told me, though it was only small and slight. I could not image what would happen to Jasmine or Gerard if they were to walk in here; it must roar like it did with him.

"So," he stated again. He held out his arm and moved us back into the middle area of the library. "Shall we begin?"

I nodded and we began to walk. I had no idea of the order that he was talking me through the library. Already within our conversations he had jumped around time periods and disobeyed the historical narrative track. If a theorist didn't have to be alive in order for them to hear my qualms, then I supposed it didn't matter if we started the book at the end, and worked our way back to the beginning. The Professor did not need to look anything up; he just began to walk as if he already knew where he was going. Maybe he had the codes memorized, or maybe he was following that one particular voice that caught his attention. I followed behind obediently, and listened to him as he talked away.

"Borges once said that he believed heaven was a type of library," he began. "I think that's because there are so many options to choose from and so many realities at play all at once. He was clearly talking about fiction, but fiction does have its merit within the conversation of the critics as well. Novels and stories, they merely have the characters acting out the criticism. Ray Bradbury proved the power of censorship with his book Fahrenheit 451 when all the books in the world were to be burned. You take away these stories, the fiction, the made-up stuff that people like to think is merely fantasy and play, and you take away the power of people just as much as if you were to suppress historical fact. You take away the right to think critically and for people to work out their conversations with the critics when you suppress fantasy. People use fiction and fantasy in different ways than criticism and theory, but they are related. They are dependent on one another. Half the time, criticism is about the texts that give us meaning and would not exist without it."

I cut in then, seeing a play where I could voice my opinions. "See, that's what I don't like about critics. It seems like they tear apart a work for no reason, when they should just enjoy its beauty. The book is a book, and it seems foolish to tear apart the quality of writing or content if you're not going to do anything about it."

"Ah, you see, you are thinking of minor critics who just tear apart the work on the surface level. I mean the people who get underneath the meaning of the text itself and find the holes the authors left for us to go exploring in. I want you to think more about those critics who address the root causes for the text being written and analyze the representations at hand."

I was not sure what he meant, and I asked him to explain. He thought for a while, and then began from where we were yesterday again. "You remember me carrying Madame Bovary?"

I nodded. I told him I had not read it, but he cut me off before I could continue.

"But right, right, you know the gist of it. I got it. You should read it sometime, it's a beautiful piece of work, like you say, but it is also extremely problematic." The Professor began to tell me about another book by the author Edward Said and then how he had been asked by the summer school affiliate in International Development Studies Department to go and give a lecture on Orientalism. "It's when people from the West - white people, like us who think they're artists - decide to depict the Eastern cultures. Usually when this is done, stereotypes are exceeded and an appropriation of their struggle and real daily life is used. People tend to get this monolith image of the East because of it, and judge real people and real experience through their own warped interpretation from the art that is produced using this image. Madame Bovary is an example of that. It uses Orientalism to increase its artistic and exotic appeal, to make the book seem more cutting edge than it really is, when it merely harps on old stereotypes." He paused, gauging my reaction, then added. "Or so the story goes."

He turned a corner on the stacks, and kept walking in silence for a bit, letting it sink into me. Since I had not read the book, I was not sure of the validity of the claim, but it made sense. It left a bad taste in my mouth, to think that art, in spite of being beautiful, had also hurt people in the process. It didn't seem possible that a book could do all that damage, or at least contribute to the larger damage as a whole. But then I thought of other stereotypes that existed and were perpetuated through books and through cultures. I thought of the magazines in the waiting room at the clinic and contrasted those images of what ideal womanhood and pregnancy was with the images that I had from Lydia and from her alternative birthing center. All of the images that I had had about pregnant women in my mind were completely destroyed within the past few months because the reality that I was given with through stories and these media images, were proved false through Jasmine and Hilda's. Jasmine had even mentioned to me that there had been a transgender man at that center who was pregnant, but he had left shortly after her first class in order to have his baby. She told me this when I kept referring to pregnant women instead of pregnant people, and it had been another watershed moment where my previous perceptions were altered. It was hard for me to correct myself at first and I began to wonder if this was because I had never seen any stories or fiction about them. Who would represent their struggle, and not in an exploitative way, but with beauty and expertise? Was this one of the holes The Professor was talking about? One that I should have been adventuring in for the name of criticism? I thought about my own work, and the work I had done over the past year, and wondered if it was representing what it needed to. I began to feel my brain working in ways that it had never done before, or at least, not done in a long time.

But The Professor was talking again: "To produce a work of art is to let something go into the collective unconscious, or so Carl Jung says."

"I know Jung," I stated, thinking of Alexa.

"From your friends, again?" he smiled and went on. "To produce something that ends up there means that you need to be made accountable for it. You need to understand what type of affect its having. I'm tearing apart Madame Bovary for this lecture because I need to tell people that while yes, this is beautiful, you should also know this about it. I don't want to erase the work, and I certainly don't want to deny its beauty, but I also want them to know that this isn't the full story. There is always another side to the story, Frank, always. I'm doing this lecture because I want to add to the conversation that's happening in front of the collective unconscious. You always need to be a part of both realms, or at least, be aware that they both exist. It's a fine balance. Do you see what I'm saying?"

I thought about it, but it was hard to follow his words and metaphors. I was relieved that he was not dumbing down his speech to make it less academic and more accessible for me, but I was not egoistical enough to hide that some of it went over my head. These were new words and others used in different contexts. I had produce images in my mind to keep up and situate myself inside the metaphors he was talking about in order to understand. First, I took Madame Bovary and I put it in front of me, as a narrative, as a whole, and then I sliced it through. I fractured the book in the same way I had been fracturing Gerard in my mind. His beauty, altered by the facts about his illness, became parallel to the book's beauty and the facts about Orientalism, which then broke us through to the dominant conversation of the critics. I imaged the art existing in the background of this giant room and then groups of people talking in front of it. Then I layered more people talking about people talking over top of that. I imagined all these stratums, and then, when I finally got to the end of the corridor filled with these things, it was just The Professor and I, staring at one another, and the books roaring all around us.

"Yes," I said. "I think I get it."

"Good. I want you to be aware of the fine line between the two when you read. Especially when you begin to argue."

"Argue? I thought we were just having a conversation."

"An argument is how you win those conversations. You need to improve your reasoning skills so you can be ready for anything. Were you ever on the debate team in high school?" I shook my head, and he made a tsk-tsk noise, then went on. "Well, debate is the mediocre version of what critics do and what philosophers do when they have another person willing to listen to them for extended periods of time. My job is to argue. And read books, and then teach other people how to argue and read books."

I laughed. It seemed so simple, so... not artistic? I took the image that I had of The Professor as Rodin's The Thinker and I tried to slice through that and add fact upon fact to it. But I couldn't. I didn't know enough yet to obscure the image, and hearing the word argument, getting the same visceral response that criticism first had, made me not want to obscure the image anymore. I debated asking The Professor his name again, but I didn't. It would close the gap and get him into the conversation too deeply.

"I thought philosophy was more about life, you know? Finding the meaning of it and finding purpose of it?" I asked. Saying those words out loud crystallized the urge I had been searching to fill on another level. I was not looking for school, not looking for games or winning, but looking for someone to tell me how to live my life at the end of the day. I bit my lip, realizing how vulnerable this now made me, exposing my desire like that.

"Life is about life, Frank," he told me, waving his hands. "I argue and read for a living."

"But don't philosophers talk about the meaning of life?"

"They do, all of them do. Even the fiction writers. Everyone talks about the meaning of life."

"So that is what you do for a living, then? " I said, then apologized. "I'm sorry, I'm confused."

"It's okay. Confusion is a part of life and that's why we're here." He sighed. "I'll say it again. Life is about life. Philosophers talk about it, but philosophers argue about it. But the point is, you're never going to find the right answer here. For anything. Everyone is going to saying something different. That's why it's a roar of conversation, and not a chorus."

"So why bother looking if I can't find it out?" I had been so used to right and wrong, art or not art, passion or not passion. Working full time with Mikey had made me deal with ambiguities better, with compromise, but I had thought... I didn't know what I thought anymore. School was for answers, wasn't it? Why couldn't there be a right one that I knew I was working towards?

"This is why I say that Life is about life. Philosophers and critics - this is their own interpretation. And you need to know it, you need to know how to argue it, so you can have your own interpretation heard. You need to read what came before and understand the history and the legacy before you can even attempt to stake your claim in what's rightfully yours."

"If it's what's rightfully mine, then why do I need to spend time learning the history? Shouldn't it just be mine?"

He smiled, a little sadly. "It should, it really should. But this is also real life too. People will always try to make you feel inferior, like you’re wrong, and will try to take the right answer from you. The reality is that there is no right answer, only people who think they have the right answer. You need to know how to defend your answer and to beat them at their own game. You need to learn reason and argument so that when you do finally find your own answer, you can hold onto it. And then articulate it, and add it to the big roar around us."

I nodded, and he seemed satisfied. He seemed tired, actually; he wasn't moving as frantically as he had been at first. It had been a long day for him and the library was becoming overwhelming. Without much more fuss, he took me to the section that he wanted to start me on. It was lined with books with brown leather covers, missing jackets, and old, aged pages. It smelled funny, but it was a comforting smell. He seemed to breathe it in like oxygen after being deprived for so long. Names like Stuart Mills, John Locke, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Nietzsche stared back at me. I had no idea where to begin and waited for some type of instruction.

He gave none. He just told me to read what was around me, to see what fit and what didn't, and try to find my answers in between the pages of the books and behind the names of authors. "You know some things already. See what else you can cram into your mind now," he said, and then began to leave.

"Hey, wait. Aren't you staying?"

He shook his head, but did not turn around.

"When will I see you again? What do I do with this?" I asked, getting a little desperate. He had seemed so involved in this work a minute ago, and now he had just dropped me here and abandoned me. I knew he didn't owe me anything, but something, anything was good at this point.

"You need to do this for yourself. Free education, right?" He turned around and smiled. He lowered his voice, not realizing he had been disturbing the people around him. He stopped, but did not move any closer, and gave me one last chance to get all I needed to from him.

"But... what do I do after I read?" I asked.

"You meet me again, of course. Next week, but in my office." He stayed where he was, but drew out a few crumpled pieces of paper from his shirt pocket, inspected them, and began to write details down for me. I walked over, noticed that he had chosen the same day of the week and the same time again, four-thirty. "Until then I want you to read. And ask questions. But don't expect an answer yet."

I was about to call after him one more time, to ask something else, but he was gone. It took me a moment, gathering myself at the beginning of the stack again, before I realized he had been right. I couldn't really expect an answer, especially from him, right now. I started at the beginning, pulled off a book, and began to read.

I stayed at the library until about seven, until I really couldn't take it anymore. I had started with Stuart Mills and it had been productive and a good read. His plight was familiar to me. Mills had talked a lot about freedom for women and giving them equal rights; reading his work made me wonder if Jasmine had mentioned him in the past, and the name had stuck with me all this time, buried in my mind to emerge again at this moment. His writings were good, but a little dense at times. When I got to his work on Utilitarianism, and the general rule of happiness, I started to pay attention again. If The Professor wasn't going to help me find what I needed, I wondered if I could find the meaning of life between these pages instead. Happiness seemed to be the never-ending question in everyone's mind in this section tonight, and it made me feel a little feeble in my chair as I read.

I was happy now, wasn't I? Sure a lot of things depressed me and I was worried sick about Gerard if I let my mind go down that path for too long, but I was happy. I was sure of it. I thought back to what The Professor was saying about emotional logic and how I used that part of my brain to think, and how I should usher reason in a bit more. But it seemed difficult. How did one talk about emotions like happiness, love, and freedom using logic? These were emotional response and I always thought they would stay that way. But philosophers like Mills and Locke were attempting to put these emotions into context. Locke kept using an analogy about grapes that I thought was dizzying to untangle and kept making me hungry. I had brought some food here, not knowing how long I would be, but by the time I had eaten something small, I still couldn't read any more about happiness and how they were equated with grapes. I moved onto Nietzsche, only to feel more drained. He discussed death and the more negative aspect of life, tending slant his arguments toward the complete and utter futility of existence. When I realized that he had been one of the first people to openly declare that god was dead, I began to read more about him, figuring that The Professor was familiar with him and liked his work. But it was hard, and not just with the language and word choices he was using. If god was dead to Nietzsche, then it became harder to find meaning in life. I looked at the back of the book and learned that he had gone crazy in his old age, and some of his last works were completely arduous and impossible to read. This must be some of the "batshit crazy" stuff that The Professor had talked about, I thought to myself, though it did not make me want to match that crazy. In spite of his later deferral to the philosophical canon, the man had said some really good things. They were just too heavy for me right then. I did not want to think that life was meaningless, because from my own experience, I saw so much meaning there. Even when things were going wrong with Gerard and I began to feel overwhelmed as I read, I would look outside. There were small trees evenly placed, in addition to some small flower beds, along the perimeter of the library, and it made me feel more at peace. It made me think of the garden that I had at home, of Jasmine, and of Gerard. That had so much meaning to me, and therefore, I was convinced, there was a meaning to life. And those things made me happy. I was filling my mind with theory after theory and trying to apply it to my own life, but I was applying it carefully, not wanting to completely dissect and ruin. My life was good, I knew it was, but these books pulled me in. The Professor pulled me in. I needed a place to go every day, where I was expected and where I could learn. Although I could not articulate exactly what bothered me about some of these theories yet, I was getting there. I would have to be able to master the language if I wanted to contribute something to it. And I did want to contribute. As I began to pack up my stuff and put it all away, I knew that fact deep inside of me. There were too many conversations going on that had wrong ideas about life, I thought. I needed to say something small, to tell everyone what I thought. Even if it would get crumpled up and in the bottom of a drawer somewhere when I was done, I needed to get it out. Like Jasmine and her oral essays, maybe if I eventually got my own ideas about life down on paper, it would suddenly reconfigure itself. Maybe it would make sense again, if only to myself.

That much made sense to me, and that much seemed worthy of perusal. Even when I stumbled upon the books on ontology, and I got them down from the shelf, I was still not discouraged. They were speaking about existence, like the existence of god, only it was a debate that I was still unsure I wanted to get my foot in. I had been drawn to them because they reminded me of Gerard. He had used the word before, I was sure of it, and I picked them down from the shelf to be close to him before I left the place. I had not wanted to learn when I touched them, though; I had only wanted to get the gist of it by proximity. But learning about the self and its existence, whether it was really there at all, that I was going to have to undertake by myself. It was confusing, no doubt. There were too many theorists that said there was no such thing as the self, and that was completely incomprehensible to me. All this time I had been more concerned about how I was supposed to live my life, but they were merely actions. Actions were easily changed and reconfigured, and then learned again. But ontology was pushing me, challenging me, and asking me if that I was really there. And if I was there, then how did I exist? It seemed to be the worst of the books I had taken off the shelf, but when I closed the spine and I saw the word again, I saw Gerard in my mind. He calmed and cooled me always, and I left the library on a good note.

I couldn't take the books out of the library since I was no longer a student, but I was glad about that. It would force me to come back here every day until that week was up. I kept The Professor's contact information close to me, and wrote it down several more times before I left the library. I held my pen above the paper and was tempted to write down some of the ideas that I had gotten today, but I held off. They were still too new; they were like the camel that was first born and needed to be protected before it could walk. Lydia had told me that, I recalled. Once her knowledge had been let go into the world, I saw how it diffused. I began to believe in more and more what The Professor had to say about the collective conversations happening all around me, and I envisioned the art behind them, and the many layers of people building up a legacy. I called Mikey to come and pick me up from inside the library, and then I waited outside for him. I looked around at all the plants, the trees, and the flowers, and wondered if they could talk and were talking, too.

When Mikey came and got me, he didn't say too much. He was still in his work clothing, but his shirt was un-tucked, which managed to make him look far more exhausted than he already was. I found out that Jonah had an ear infection and Mikey had been delegated to taking care of him for the night; he wasn't bitter about it when he told me, he just stated the facts in a tired voice. "Alexa has invited you to dinner, though most of us have already eaten, and I apologize, but I'm going to be upstairs with the kids, so I won't be joining you tonight," he explained.

"I don't have to stay for dinner," I told him. "I already appreciate you driving me."

He waved his hand in the air, brushing away the concern. "Alexa wants to talk to you. She's been doing some research as well, and when she heard you were visiting a professor, she got excited."

I nodded. I had told Mikey a bit of what I had been doing, but since I still didn't want to let my ideas go into the world just yet, my explanation sounded pathetic. I had only had a small conversation and then read for nearly three hours; my accomplishments were hard to convey in a tangible form. I was tired and exhausted, too, but I had not moved a muscle in such a long time. It almost didn't seem fair next to Mikey, who had probably been hearing children screech for the past three hours while I read about happiness, and still ended up dissatisfied. I wanted to say something more about what I was doing, but I still had nothing to share yet. Taking a risk, I asked Mikey instead. "Do you ever think about the meaning of life?"

He laughed for a second, and then told me I sounded like Alexa. "I think that's the exact thing she wants to talk to you about. But then again, that's all she talks about."

"And what do you say to her about it?" I wanted to also ask, and 'what do you think about it?' But I didn't dare. He was too tired, I thought, to be playing mind games with me.

"I say she should do what makes her happy and what gives her meaning. I don't interfere because it's not my life, and I love her as she is."

"But you do think about? Ever? Even at work during the dull times when no one is around and it seems pointless?"

He considered this. "Yes, of course, I think about it."

"And what do you think it is?" I asked, gaining strength. I needed to know what made him keep going. He was still a mystery to me, even if with the emails we had been exchanging. I could not comprehend how he was able to work as much as he did, and then take care of a sick baby; I wanted to know what he said to himself each day. I wanted to know that it was possible to keep going, even if he didn't know the answer yet.

"Something that Gerard said to me a long time ago, actually," he stated, getting a bit quiet. We were at a stop sign and he looked both ways and then made eye contact with me. "You know about my past, right?"

There was only a second, maybe not even that, where I had to think. There were so many pasts for me to know now, so many of them not my own. But this one never really left. It was there like Jasmine's was now - a dull ache in my stomach.

I nodded. Without saying a single more direct word about it or acting surprised that I knew, he went on. "Well. Stuff like that fucks with your mind. You begin to wonder if it happened, how it happened, and why on earth you're still alive. When you reach that brink of life or death, sometimes wondering why on earth you're alive can be reassuring. It means you have nothing to lose," he paused at another stop sign and took a breath. "Gerard said that having nothing was like having everything. It was extreme and elating. But I didn't want extremes anymore, especially after that. I had already had both sides of the coin. I just wanted to have something again. Something I could trust. Stability, you know?"

I nodded. I wanted something so strongly too. It was the foundation back into my life that I had formed around Gerard, the foundation that was slowly chipping. Mikey nodded, and then went on:

"Gerard told me that choosing something over nothing and everything was freeing. It was taking responsibility and making a choice, which were markers of freedom. The feelings of nothing and everything, they are the same at the end of the day. When I thought I had nothing to lose, I really had everything to lose. Feeling nothing and everything are our natural states; they are things that happen to you. What happened to me was not my choice, so it could never be mine, never be a part of me. But I had to pick something, anything else other than that, or I would forever be defined by that nothing/everything dynamic and what had happened to me, for the rest of my life. And so, I picked." He nodded as he concluded, reiterating the whole argument and story to himself and making his somewhat dreary mood from before perk up. "I'm probably butchering the meaning from what Gerard actually said, but this is what I tell myself, I guess. This is what I want to believe. I made the choice, and I'm happy with it. I can always choose again, but I know I don't want to. This is mine."

We had pulled into the driveway at this point and I could see the lights on in the kids' rooms from where we were. He smiled when he saw some shadows move and then Elizabeth peaked out from behind the drapes in the living room. She smiled and then ran away, most likely coming outside to greet her father. It was almost her bedtime, but she was too excitable anyway.

I was still stuck inside of Mikey's story. It had made so much sense to me, even though it made me squirm in my seat at the same time. I agreed that feeling nothing was something passive, inert, something that happened to you but not what you had done. I thought of that blankness before I had met The Professor, and how I had finally chosen something when I was with him, even if I still wasn't sure what that something was. But that dual dynamic that Gerard had also pointed out to me as well, the nothing and everything split -- that was what made me nervous. If I chose something, that didn't mean I had everything with Gerard. Did it? I still wasn't sure. I was forming questions, but I had no idea where to go yet.

And that was okay, I told myself. I still had a week to think.

I turned to Mikey again, and thanked him for the ride as well as what he had told me. "Even if you butchered the original source, it doesn't matter, because what you're telling yourself is yours now. And you've contributed to something," I said, and then told him about the collective conversations. Elizabeth had run out of the house at this point and Mikey opened his car door so she could climb inside and onto his lap.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14