The Other Side of Silence

            “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” 

                          George Elliot, Middlemarch.

            Early in our lives, most of us are taut with eagerness to vibrate in unison with every sensation available. A few unlucky souls are oblivious. Those most observant, most open to subtlety, most susceptible to resonances with emotion become artists. The second tier of sensitivity allows for appreciation of what the elect produce.

            As time passes, those less hardy understand better what George Elliot meant about “dying of the roar on the other side of silence.” In a world so full of fast communication and visual images, the test of survival (psychic and emotional) is often the ability to withstand the worst, though it doesn’t happen to you.

            As a teenager, I read whatever was recommended or what sounded appealing regardless of its horror, and managed only occasional nightmares. In a single summer I made my way through War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Anna Karenina, The Robe, and more. Those books were Book-of-the-Month Club selections on my aunt’s shelves. I read drama, horror (not in the thriller sense)--endless historical fiction.

            Later I watched the movie Gone with the Wind, and suddenly the gripping scenes of the wounded in Atlanta, for instance, were no longer confined to what my imagination could conjure. I read All Quiet on the Western Front, The Moon is Down, Journey’s End. After a childhood surrounded by the knights of the Round Table, the exploits of Greek heroes, biblical warriors, I began to have a dawning realization of the difference between literary and artistic war and the real thing. By 1939, I couldn’t have escaped it if I’d tried.

            I have several friends who have joined the general rave about the movie War Horse. Some wonder that I won’t watch it. As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered that my tolerance for a lot of reality has diminished in reverse order to the number of years I’ve lived. I no longer find it necessary to keep up with experiences I doubt I can withstand without paying an emotional price I find too high.

            There’s no doubt I’m a coward, both physical and emotional. The things we all manage because we have no choice are beginning to seem like all I can take. I don’t need to subject myself deliberately to things that will be far too easy to imagine far too accurately. So I won’t watch what horses went through (not to mention men and mules and farm animals and civilians) in World War I because I don’t have to.            
            The silence of the end of a disaster (of whatever kind)  hides a roar that only saints and philosophers have the stomach for. I wonder how many elderly have become like me.

Guts

Like many "seniors" I find myself rereading, or reading for the first time, old books. The artistry of what is mostly in the past can cause real emotional quakes in my now admittedly somewhat unsound foundations. I recently commented on what appears to be the fashion for showing readers the seamy, unattractive, amoral, callous sides of life. The more I see of this, and the more I turn to older fashions in fiction, the more I think the new (if not young) writers should have some intestinal fortitude--enough to dare to transport their readers. Or is something we were brought up to admire now considered unworthy? Are tenderness, a response to tragedy, an appreciation of poetic irony, a real sense of joy no longer admissible in
intellectual society?

Come on, all you writers! /show us Life; make  us weep and laugh out loud. Teach us empathy! HAVE SOME GUTS!

Independence Day

Almost every hour of almost every day I am reminded--and today is another example. My husband always put our flag up on patriotic occasions. We have a socket for the pole affixed to the side of the house. No flag has graced it for more than a year now because I can't reach the socket, and perhaps couldn't heft the flag on its pole up there anyway.

Personal remarks like these seem trivial when we look at the big picture, of course, so herewith apologies. I have put the word "writer" in the subtitle of this blog. As such, I'd better grasp opportunities to prove I'm entitled to that moniker by exploiting any material for this space. At a late stage of life, I find more material than I have time to commit to paper, even if I'm willing to put ruminations out there where someone else can judge them. Then I think of those offerings from others that have been instructive or supportive or encouraging to me, and so here I go again.

First, anyone interested in memoir should have a look at the recent posting on Cool Plums Weblog. I may just be ready to declare a sort of independence day myself.

A problem with memoir, as I see it is that unless there is an extraordinary and/or exotic background (like Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight) for the story, the autobiographer is in danger of sounding merely self-absorbed. Perhaps the author is. But I think in the best cases, as in a classroom, it's the obiter dicta--the throw-away remarks, the tone of voice (implied in the diction for a written piece, of course), the opinions that slip out that provide the fascination and usually, the instruction. The blog post mentioned above may give a good many people the courage to try the form once they get a feel for how to go about it while maintaining not only dignity, but credibility.

Enjoy your families, the grill, the fireworks, the pops concerts, and remember the occasion for the celebration today!