No Worse Flaw

"There is no worse flaw in man's character than that of wanting to belong."

David Adams Richards, "Mercy Among the Children”

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Dear Kate,

I wonder if Trudeau was thinking about Richards' novels, a particular character, or even this specific line above, when he saw his own colored face on television.  I have a feeling he was.

After all he's the one who appointed the literary giant to Senate.

He must know Richards has been writing about him, prophesying his black and brown when he was still a baby coming from "a place of privilege."

Trudeau is a reader, you can tell.  There's a sensitivity, shades of nuance in how he speaks.  His might be a "manufactured clarity" of a "modern" man (again, Richards' words), but to see and acknowledge that in oneself is better than blindness or denial.

(What clarity isn't manufactured?)

Don't we all want to belong?  Isn't that a good thing?  Isn't this what family and friendship are for?

I think the trouble is in our wanting.

We are always meant to belong.  Our flaw and fall are in our wanting to belong at all costs.  It takes only one bite and the rest of us goes with it.

To say we pay for our wanting to belong with our life might be an overstatement, but to understate is to take no notice of how the corruption works itself out gradually and steadily, fatefully and unstoppably (a recurring theme of Richards' novels).  We are jealous little Greek gods ready to betray our night selves three times before the rooster crows again.

It's almost 8:30 in the morning now.  We are given a new chance to put on our old clothes and all over again play a part in the tragedy of our own unmaking.

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex,

I have not read David Adams Richards until your introduction of his quote above. Without contextual background, I “googled” and soon learned his novel had won the Giller Prize, the most esteemed in Canadian literature.

Then I read a free online version of his prologue and first chapter. Nothing Richards has created in text and texture - whether character or setting, mood or motive in his book - seems to pamper the reader in this tender Autumn eve: “rotted ice”, “life dreams unfulfilled”, “blast of misfortune”, “blow-by-blow encounter with life”.

Who would want to belong there?

Rihanna is different - by name and flame. Look at her music, listen to her dance, and you know she has magic. Her first two albums, “Music of the Sun” and “A Girl Like Me,” bend our light and being to belong. With 70+ million Instagram followers, she recently debuted her skin care and make-up brand signed with her personal vision:

“Fenty Beauty was created for everyone: for women of all shades, personalities, attitudes, cultures, and races. I wanted everyone to feel included. That’s the real reason I made this line.”

On any given eve, the daughters of Eve would likely feel more loved, more beautiful, more pumped to click more and more for online purchasing of inclusive promises. And real sons would take note of this rhythm and hip-hop into real men of steel loins to brand themselves for measurable success in the zillionaire's club. To re-tradition the quote by Richards, we should chant: There is no worse flaw in man’s character than that of failing to belong.

I wonder how Richards and Rihanna may intersect their planes of realism and relevance with the lives of most of us working in cubicles to simply sustain three square meals. Their hyper-reality does not seem to fit in any algorithm or cubby. They don’t quite belong to the norm yet they belong to the normalcy of longing and falling, singing and crying.

And if we were to tear down the cubes and compartments of our manufactured lives and see in transparency our identity and intent, raw and flawed as poised, then our naked core would seem to belong to the same lineage of needs: we all hope for meaning and cure, rage against death, resist losing and loneliness. We wither away, pretending we don’t know why. But if we slow down to count the sand on our feet we would go crazy. We are independent yet co-dependent, unique though similar in shared stories, alone in a village, lovers of hate and haters of hate, drained and sleepless. To belong we do and do not want.

This morning I met a hospice care giver of 30 years. I asked him how he did it. What emboldened him in caring for failing flesh in the last days of the last season of their belonging to this Earth?

He was silent long enough to rid me of my restlessness. The room was stuffy. He opened the window panes before speaking in slow motion as if to a child, his words now belonging to a part of me:

When they feel they no longer need to belong here and their loved ones can let go, then they go in peace. And love them... though they no longer belong here.

Yours, Kate