I'm at the University of York Library now, sitting across from Ali, a man who emigrated from Turkey to the UK in the 80's, and after a couple decades in London, is now at York earning his MA in Social Work. Ali talks with a wide smile, laughs often, and after a few minutes, we connected about our common love of the Russian novelists.
"Dostoevsky!" Ali shouts in a whisper, above the construction noise from three floors below us. We sit at opposing desks by a window that opens onto a panoramic view of the upper portion of campus.
"What was your favorite novel of his?" I ask.
"Crime and Punishment, definitely Crime and Punishment. I read it three times--and every time Raskolnikov's inner life is more and more rich, more complex than the time before!"
I remember reading the book a decade ago when I was in England for a year abroad. My professor gave me one week to read the thing, and--as a slow reader--I spent about nine hours a day reading. I was enthralled by Raskolnikov's mental premise that God does not exist, and that truth and love, therefore, are imagined notions whereby no absolute actually justifies or negates any of our actions. Instead, Raskolnikov posits, how we think about things is what makes them so.
So Raskolnikov commits an act of murder against someone towards whom he feels no hatred. If his premise is substantiated, then he will be able to continue on with his own life and feel no deep remorse, no inner turmoil.
He cannot.
Raskolnikov's every move becomes more and more laborious, his very heart is ripped inside of him, and it is only the love of Sonia--a woman who sees the very depths of his violent action and loves him nonetheless--that "saves" him from being forever lost to his own notion of nothingness.
In short, Sonia, thorugh action, shows Raskolnikov both the power of love and the power of grace--and that our words, our actions, our lives matter. Nothing is for nothing. God exists, and Dostoevsky writes his soul out to prove love in a way that no research, how-to, scientific, or analytical book can.
In short, literature proves love.
Ali asks me what I'm working on in the library, and I tell him about the novel in progress, Fortress, about a Palestinian boy and a Jewish girl--both of whom have emigrated to America due to violent attacks on each of their families near Gaza. They become friends through an unlikely encounter at the high school, and through a run-down movie theater in their town, a Grandma with Alzheimer's and her precise recollections of 12th century York, England, and a court case, their friendship creates something neither of them could have expected.
Ali nods, explains that he is from Turkey, and says that we need literature that aren't often popularized in the mainstream.
When I ask him what purpose literature serves, he looks away for a few moments, then looks back at me with a broad smiles and he laughs. "Novels show us voices and stories we might never have known."
As Ali continues working on his essay for his Social Work class, and I work on the novel, every once in a while we look up and talk over the small end-boards on our desks. I ask him what the essay is about, and he says it explores mental health care in the U.K. He asks me why I type so fast with my pointer fingers. I can only laugh for a reply.
Working across from Ali, the world feels small. In a good way. Not only is literature a bridge for compassion and understanding of other characters and situations, it is also a way to enter into the life of another--however brief that entrance might be.
And when a man from Turkey and a man from America can meet in a library in Britain and talk about their love for Russian literature, it the truth of Dostoevsky's claim feels pretty dang solid: literature proves love. And maybe that's why we get lost in a truly great novel: because as we read, something about us is found.
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Long View
It had been over a month since I'd been to the Fulford Bowls Club--a collection of men over 65 who play indoor lawn bowling. (And one 30-year old American.) Life has been pretty hectic lately, with Tyler fighting cold after cold, sleeping through the night a thing of legend and lore, and allergy attacks gathering around me like I'm a never-ending supply of sticky notes for a highly organized person.
So attending the Thursday night bowling just didn't make the list of Must Do in Order to Survive.
But this past Thursday, I attended again.
Ten years ago, I ran the London Marathon with my oldest brother, Christopher. By mile 20, the two of us were Jell-O men, stumbling forward under the weight of gravity and lunacy, in equal parts. Walking into Bowls last Thursday, my legs felt similarly. I wanted to keel over a few times--or at least just bowl from a chair.
But as I looked around, I felt heartened. So many older men welcomed me back. Told me they missed me. We shook hands. Talked about the weather. Talked about the wars they had fought in fifty, sixty years ago. Talked about bowls.
Always about bowls.
Ah, good wood there, mate!
Just ease up to the Jack. Bring it straight round there.
Oh, ay! That's a Yorkshireman's delight right there.
Every time down the green fake-lawn mat, these older men smiled with joy at the smallest attempt, the closest call, the possible point.
The thrill. Even of indoor lawn bowling.
And I was struck by something my soul was in desperate need of: the long view.
I talked with Ken, one of the men who landed on the beaches at Normandy when he was only 18 years old as a conscript of the British Army. He was paid twelve pence a day. By contrast, American soldiers during World War II were paid the equivalent of four pounds a week. Ken was making 84 pence a week. And he served at the invasion, then for two years in Palestine during terrible battles there. In both places, he was wounded.
Now, Ken smiles with ease. He jokes. He laughs.
Ken has survived. He has taken the long view of life, realizing that we pass through immeasurable difficulty and confusion and fear and sometimes horror, but somehow, we survive. And when we do, we keep on walking the path that falls before our feet.
I talked with Tony, who described how his four-year old daughter (now 39) would wake up screaming night after night after night. For six months. He and his wife had just had another baby, and between the four-year old screaming, the newborn with terrible colic, Tony and his wife had zero sleep. Literally. I watched Tony's face as he recalled the time.
"How did you make it through?" I ask, wanting to glean some kind of wisdom for our own sleep trouble with Tyler of late.
Tony shook his head, looked at me, and smiled. "The thing is, our daughters are beautiful human beings. You just have to love them through the hard stages and remember that you might always know what the hard stages are about, but they pass." Then, Tony smiled and patted me on the back.
The long view.
During the eight o' clock tea break, I talked with Henry, who lives and breathes bowls now, as a seventy-year old man. His face rose and fell like an ocean of glee as he described the five Bowling Clubs of which he is a part. The different match-ups, the visiting teams, what bowls means to him and how it gives him a place to belong.
And I couldn't help but think, here's a seventy-year old man, and he has passion and joy. He looks forward to waking up each day, playing bowls almost every night. He;s not mourning his past, regretting the past 69 years. He's living his 70th.
The long view.
Walking back from St. Oswald's Church Hall at nine o' clock with the wind whipping cold across my ears, hands, all I could think, over and over, was the long view.
I am often so accustomed to contemplating the short view. What is happening now? What if this or that circumstance doesn't work out? What if this hard stage lasts forever?
Such are questions that the vocabulary of the Long View doesn't know or acknowledge.
In bowls, you might have an incredible turn: your ball might land square next to the Jack, lean against it like there's nothing in the world that will take that point away from you. But then another player gets up and knocks your ball completely off the mat. Your point is gone. Lost.
Alternately, you may bowl a ball that is as far away from the Jack as ice from fire. But then another player takes a turn and inadvertently slices your ball, knocks it square next to the Jack. One point.
You never know. The game changes moment by moment. Like life. And you can't play by giving so much power to each turn that you lose the thread of the game.
You can't live by lending so much significance to every circumstance that you lose the narrative of your own arc.
It's what the men at Bowls are teaching me. It's what I am slowly learning to do--slowly learning how to see. The Long View doesn't throw away the moments, nor does it anxiously plan and prepare for the future. Instead, it simply approaches the present with open hands, receives it, but does not allow any present moment to crush or signify the worth of existence. The worth of a life is much more valuable than any one thing, much more authentic than any sound bit, no matter how treacherous or beautiful.
Because what is most miraculous about our lives of it all is this: the story. It's not the sentence that decides our fate, nor the chapter. These are but a part of the narrative. The story as a whole is what matters. The mistakes I have made before, the patterns of fear I may have allowed to beat in unison with my heart--these do not signify the substance of the novel of my life. Nor yours.
The Long View tells us to wait and see. Keep living. Keep going. Keep bowling. The next time down the lawn mat, we may just end up with an incredible bowl, one that we would have missed had we been caught lamenting our last turn.
So attending the Thursday night bowling just didn't make the list of Must Do in Order to Survive.
But this past Thursday, I attended again.
Ten years ago, I ran the London Marathon with my oldest brother, Christopher. By mile 20, the two of us were Jell-O men, stumbling forward under the weight of gravity and lunacy, in equal parts. Walking into Bowls last Thursday, my legs felt similarly. I wanted to keel over a few times--or at least just bowl from a chair.
But as I looked around, I felt heartened. So many older men welcomed me back. Told me they missed me. We shook hands. Talked about the weather. Talked about the wars they had fought in fifty, sixty years ago. Talked about bowls.
Always about bowls.
Ah, good wood there, mate!
Just ease up to the Jack. Bring it straight round there.
Oh, ay! That's a Yorkshireman's delight right there.
Every time down the green fake-lawn mat, these older men smiled with joy at the smallest attempt, the closest call, the possible point.
The thrill. Even of indoor lawn bowling.
And I was struck by something my soul was in desperate need of: the long view.
I talked with Ken, one of the men who landed on the beaches at Normandy when he was only 18 years old as a conscript of the British Army. He was paid twelve pence a day. By contrast, American soldiers during World War II were paid the equivalent of four pounds a week. Ken was making 84 pence a week. And he served at the invasion, then for two years in Palestine during terrible battles there. In both places, he was wounded.
Now, Ken smiles with ease. He jokes. He laughs.
Ken has survived. He has taken the long view of life, realizing that we pass through immeasurable difficulty and confusion and fear and sometimes horror, but somehow, we survive. And when we do, we keep on walking the path that falls before our feet.
I talked with Tony, who described how his four-year old daughter (now 39) would wake up screaming night after night after night. For six months. He and his wife had just had another baby, and between the four-year old screaming, the newborn with terrible colic, Tony and his wife had zero sleep. Literally. I watched Tony's face as he recalled the time.
"How did you make it through?" I ask, wanting to glean some kind of wisdom for our own sleep trouble with Tyler of late.
Tony shook his head, looked at me, and smiled. "The thing is, our daughters are beautiful human beings. You just have to love them through the hard stages and remember that you might always know what the hard stages are about, but they pass." Then, Tony smiled and patted me on the back.
The long view.
During the eight o' clock tea break, I talked with Henry, who lives and breathes bowls now, as a seventy-year old man. His face rose and fell like an ocean of glee as he described the five Bowling Clubs of which he is a part. The different match-ups, the visiting teams, what bowls means to him and how it gives him a place to belong.
And I couldn't help but think, here's a seventy-year old man, and he has passion and joy. He looks forward to waking up each day, playing bowls almost every night. He;s not mourning his past, regretting the past 69 years. He's living his 70th.
The long view.
Walking back from St. Oswald's Church Hall at nine o' clock with the wind whipping cold across my ears, hands, all I could think, over and over, was the long view.
I am often so accustomed to contemplating the short view. What is happening now? What if this or that circumstance doesn't work out? What if this hard stage lasts forever?
Such are questions that the vocabulary of the Long View doesn't know or acknowledge.
In bowls, you might have an incredible turn: your ball might land square next to the Jack, lean against it like there's nothing in the world that will take that point away from you. But then another player gets up and knocks your ball completely off the mat. Your point is gone. Lost.
Alternately, you may bowl a ball that is as far away from the Jack as ice from fire. But then another player takes a turn and inadvertently slices your ball, knocks it square next to the Jack. One point.
You never know. The game changes moment by moment. Like life. And you can't play by giving so much power to each turn that you lose the thread of the game.
You can't live by lending so much significance to every circumstance that you lose the narrative of your own arc.
It's what the men at Bowls are teaching me. It's what I am slowly learning to do--slowly learning how to see. The Long View doesn't throw away the moments, nor does it anxiously plan and prepare for the future. Instead, it simply approaches the present with open hands, receives it, but does not allow any present moment to crush or signify the worth of existence. The worth of a life is much more valuable than any one thing, much more authentic than any sound bit, no matter how treacherous or beautiful.
Because what is most miraculous about our lives of it all is this: the story. It's not the sentence that decides our fate, nor the chapter. These are but a part of the narrative. The story as a whole is what matters. The mistakes I have made before, the patterns of fear I may have allowed to beat in unison with my heart--these do not signify the substance of the novel of my life. Nor yours.
The Long View tells us to wait and see. Keep living. Keep going. Keep bowling. The next time down the lawn mat, we may just end up with an incredible bowl, one that we would have missed had we been caught lamenting our last turn.
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