The Foundation: 020
The Eternal City
I am coaching my son’s baseball team this spring. I don’t think I’m a good teacher of baseball skills, but I think they’re having fun and are developing an appreciation for the game.
I exercised at the track by Montrose today, coached after that, then spent the rest of the afternoon next to the lake, between Fullerton and Diversey, reading “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Had cold-brewed coffee I made at home. I finished the first book, “The Magician’s Nephew.”
I finished “Catch-22” earlier this month. There were times I almost read the book but I’d feel intimidated when I grabbed it off the shelf, and until this time always opted for something else. The book started out funny, in a dark way, and remained funny. But took a despairing and gradual turn, a slow downward spiral, I first noticed after the first third but exactly where I can’t pinpoint from memory. A very graceful shift.
“Where were you born?" …
"On a battlefield," he answered.
"No, no. In what state were you born?"
"In a state of innocence.”
Chapter 39, The Eternal City, might be one of my favorite pieces of writing. It was a magical immersion into bedlam and violence told with grace and poise and at the end I stopped reading because I was so bewildered and awe-struck. I didn’t realize it but I shortened my breath during this, and at the end felt tense. It was perfect.
I read “An American Summer,” a couple days after “Catch-22.” I always told myself, I’ll read it when I’m ready. Just not now, you know? I avoided journalism that felt too close to the type of work to which I hoped to return. I told myself I’d read it when I was working in local news again, covering violence in some way.
Over the last few years I found these unexpected moments of solace, of solitary community. Where I don’t feel any less alone, but I see other people also alone, also held in some way by some injury. And have seen this through fiction especially, and even if the causes of the feelings are different, people along the way have responses to violence that resonate with me because I’ve seen them in myself or others. This must be the attraction of reading fiction.
Some of those works, from memory:
Yossarian’s long walk in Chapter 39 of “Catch-22”, the development of Charles and Cathy in “East of Eden,” the four books I’ve read so far by Denis Johnson (“Jesus’ Son,” “Train Dreams,” “Angels,” “Largesse of the Sea Maiden,”) the every-December ritual of “A Christmas Carol,” “Bridge to Terabithia,” “The Road,” “Nickel Boys,” the short stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Junius Maltby.” And in some perhaps predictable places if I knew to look (“The Things They Carried,” and now, “An American Summer.”)
I figured out in Boston that this call to violence predates journalism. Landing on it here was just an interesting turn of fate. I think about violence a lot because I am stuck on memories and probably stuck on those because I think about them a lot. Parts of me I think are different forever, I’ve accepted most of that. But not broken. Not irrational. It’s not an irrational response.
Sometimes I write about things that may seem in the distant past because to me they’re not. If it’s ever published then it’s here, more often it’s notes in a journal or finding ways to bury in fiction things I haven’t been able to shed. In all cases this is the only way I have any hope of making sense, and maybe in that, letting some things feel less heavy.
Sometimes the act of writing is the point. I don’t always need to answer the question of, who cares. I care. Getting my own approval is difficult enough without trying to factor in everyone else. I care, and that’s enough for me. I need to make sense of things in my own way.
I know all this, on its own, is isolating and can keep people at arm’s length. It used to worry me more. It’s a new way to live, or at least a new understanding, or appreciation, for the circumstances. It’s different, but.
I get to coach my son’s baseball team, and sometimes I can sit in the sun and for as long as I can focus, pretend magic is real.
Reading:
Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon
Not now, but in the fall, a new book by Dmitry Samarov.
Peter, I have always enjoyed your writing, perspective, and empathy. Your raw sharing is a gift to all who get to read it. Thank you for sharing. And don’t worry about what others are thinking.