I almost cried last night while watching the Dakota Fanning remake of Charlotte’s Web. My eyes teared up multiple times, I shit you not.
What would you make of that? Clearly, the first – and possibly the correct -- response of the level mind is that of ridicule.
I mean, honestly, what the hell am I so emotional about anyway? Isn’t it a bit too much?
Perhaps.
But when life’s brimming with questions, I suppose it’s hard to react rationally. And strangely enough, I’m not so ashamed.
Becoming. Translation. Confusion. Nuance. Companionship.
These are the concepts that have been rolling over and over in my head week after week after week. Because I’ve stopped writing almost entirely, the process feels at times – all the rolling around and about – completely chaotic and unkempt. Inconsequential, meaningless.
I need to get some of it out, so here it is:
The concept that we, as humans, are forever in a state of becoming has popped into my conscience from every angle in the past months. In various books, in conversations with family members, and the strongest in a particularly incredible email from an old friend, it keeps coming to the foreground of that rolling tumult.
I guess I can’t shake it because it’s the word that seems to best suit my current condition. To give it a meaning … a place … a semblance of decency.
I’m reading a book now (just started, really), that is shaping up to be about the lives of two men in a perpetual state of becoming. It’s called Letting Go, and it’s the first novel written by Phillip Roth. It’s also, maybe fittingly, the first of Phillip Roth's novels I've read.
One man, Gabe Wallach, is from a wealthy Jewish family from New York. Gabe’s a graduate student. He’s just lost his mother. He’s just found out that his mother wielded a controlling and domineering influence over Gabe’s father throughout their marriage. His father’s now utterly at a loss for how to continue on in life.
The other man, Paul Herz, is from a not-so-wealthy Jewish family, also from New York. Paul’s a graduate student. Paul’s married to a woman named Libby who’s from a Catholic family and trying desperately to finish her undergrad.
Paul’s family denounced them because Libby’s a gentile. Libby’s parents denounced them because Paul’s a Jew.
Paul and Libby had to take a two year break from school to work menial jobs just so they could scrimp together enough savings to continue on with their degrees. Paul and Libby have gotten pregnant. They’ve had an abortion. They’ve argued nonstop from the beginning. Paul is totally idealistic. Paul believes in having principles … in dealing with hardship and pain in order to live rightly by those principles. Paul and Libby got married because they were in love, and now they’re trying to sort out how exactly love can be so unpleasant.
Anyway, you see the structure by now I’m guessing? One guy’s rich, the other’s poor – one’s single, the other’s in a marriage that’s far from the idyllic setup he imagined it to be. Gabe’s in love with Libby, Paul’s wife, and I’m pretty certain Libby’s in love with both Gabe and Paul at the same time, though I can't be altogether sure at this point.
I can’t begin to explain the layers of the various relationships that have been introduced in the novel so far … but they delve into how men make lives for themselves, how men make lives with the women they love, and how fathers and mothers and sons relate over the span of entire lifetimes.
The passage that I can’t get out of my head, however, is way back on page 22, near the beginning:
“Here was I (I had been reminded) with all that these Herzes were without. When my mother died, in fact, she had left to me all that her family had left to her, which, if not a fortune, was enough to spare me from calamity for the rest of my life; on top of this there was my father and his checks. Phone calls. Love. Money. It did not seem very manly of me to be suffering over my abundance, and I began to wonder, as I went to sleep that night, how I would perform if I were Paul Herz.”
I think I’ve been bombarded by all these reminders, lately, of how we’re all in this constant state of becoming because I’ve been, in a way, looking for them. Also, because I feel I've been complaining a bit too much ... when, like Gabe, I really have an unbelievable amount to be thankful for. Suffering over my abundance, to steal Roth's words.
I’ve been telling anyone who will listen about how confused I am about why life on my own is so damned confusing, why all that insulated “preparation” had to come to a close. Some have responded with genuine kindness and solidarity … and they’ve been the people who have given me, I think, the only answer that they’ve been able to cling to: becoming.
And, to add to the confusion, I’ve learned something else from a select few of those conversations: if we’re all continually in a state of becoming, a huge part of connecting with other humans going through the exact same process is being able to translate your own inner workings, your own true self, to the outside world, in whatever form it happens to be in.
It’s not enough for me to just shrug my shoulders when an old friend asks how I’m doing. It’s not enough to just consider the disquiet in my mind as a symptom of “real life” – nor will I resign myself to the blur of the days sliding past, one into another.
The confusion of this year, I’m beginning to see, has been a case of unhitching, a case of letting go. Letting go, but also holding on.
Letting go of that which restrained me. Letting go of insularity. Letting go of childhood and family and friends and the places and spaces and plots of ground that have made me the person I am, in this moment. Letting go of them because they can no longer prepare me for the lessons I must learn myself.
Yet also holding on. Holding on to my deepest convictions and love felt for a family that has shown me more solicitude than most people are ever apt to experience. Holding on to a background that has given me a love of nuance, of alternative views, of eccentric pairings and emotions. But also a love of duty, a love of responsibility. A love of the layers in truly incredible relationships.
Holding on to friends that have embraced my searching. Holding on to friends that have embraced me throughout my various failings and incongruities. Holding on to the people that allow me to peer in on their own process of becoming. Friends who struggle, alongside me, to take part in the same act of translation … maybe because they believe in our ability to help each other toward a shared ideal.
Holding on to those things because, I’m convinced, we only become all we truly can be with the assistance of others. There are going to be continued and maybe perpetual stumblings, I know: but no matter how far I get off the path that feels good and right, I guess I’d like to believe that the love and friendship of others will never cease to call me back, to hold me accountable.
Letting go and holding on. It is this process that has shaken me to my core in the months following my graduation from college. It is this process that has left me feeling drained, tired, and uncertain about anything a body can possibly become uncertain about.
It is also this process that has reawakened me to my own potential, to the love within me.
In short, my love of anything and everything that expresses nuance. Things that don’t encapsulate, don’t try to simplify or assign things into neat boxes. Things that step back and let you see how wide a problem is, or how deep a conflict. I think our culture doesn’t always encourage such love – but there it is anyway.
Each day I find new reasons to listen to myself, to listen for the small realizations gleaned from all of this searching.
I’m reading this book, and I’m watching Gabe and Paul struggle to become … to become what? To become some ideal of human wholeness and fulfillment? I don’t know. Maybe Maybe just to realize and embrace the act of becoming … and to devote themselves fully to it. Because I think it’s possible to ignore it, and I think that’s where we all can get into trouble. Maybe that’s what that overused phrase, “lost in translation” is really all about: when we settle for the black and white areas in our lives, and abandon the effervescent and colorful world of the grays.
If we are all truly in a perpetual state of becoming, perhaps it is possible to become that which you are not – and isn’t that a fucking scary concept?
Paul and Gabe are struggling to listen to an idealism inside themselves that sometimes runs in step with all the lessons they’ve been taught by their families – and sometimes runs decidedly against them. They’re struggling to be good men, and I suppose I feel a certain kinship with what they’re going through. Through uncertainty and doubt about the tracks of their lives, they’re realizing that life is not black and white, and it sure as hell is not easy.
They’re embracing the gray, no matter how confusing it gets … and I’m loving it because I’m right there along with them. But it’s hard hard hard sometimes – and those are the times, I suppose, when I’m happy that some of the nuance CAN be so neatly encapsulated.
When the story of a terrific, humble little runt of a pig can remind me how important it is to embrace the simple truths, even when the thunder of the big ones threatens to drown them out.
I’ll admit though, Dakota Fanning’s still a tad bit melodramatic – even for me.
Maybe I shoulda just read the book.
