Love Wasn't There

"The church began to rock. And rocked me and Fonny, too, though they didn't know it, and in a very different way. Now, we knew that nobody loved us: or, now, we knew who did. Whoever loved us was not here." 

― James Baldwin, "If Beale Street Could Talk" (1974)

______

"The principal cause of [the] paradoxical despair [in this era] is that human beings are alone. This is not obvious, for it does not appear that many people are consciously “lonely,” and twentieth-century societies do not seem to encourage very much solitude. On the contrary, large, closely integrated organizations are prominent, and cheerful companionship seems one of the keynotes of average personal life. But there are reasons for thinking that much of present-day “togetherness” is not merely superficial but is, in fact, contributory to estrangement. Societies which appear on casual inspection to be united and harmonious can be seen, on closer examination, to be divided into countless fragments, like ancient vases uncovered in archaeological digging-apparently whole and intact, yet actually decomposed."

― Glenn Tinder, "The Crisis of Political Imagination" (1964)

______

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

― T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925)

***************

Dear Kate,

I've never been more pessimistic about humanity.

It's a strange thing to say, like I know how it was before.

Maybe I don't.  For certain I don't.  But don't be too sure.

A reader of history, a lover of novels, partakes the gift of God sharing a shard of His omniscience--and none of His omnipotence, and learns to be at peace with both.

The despair Tinder talks about is paradoxical also in how we are convinced of the falsifying of these two simple truths.  We live as if perfect knowledge is possible, and that we are able to act on it once attained.

We are convinced there will be "light at the end of the tunnel" for us.  But what the hell is this "tunnel" we are in anyway?  What sort of "light" are we hoping for, to do what for us? 

Let's just say, without questioning the empty metaphors, that we are in a tunnel, and that eventually we will come out the other side.  Knowing (that much about) ourselves, what do you think we will look like then?

The same person with the same illusions cemented and heightened.  (Maybe a bit heavier in body and sorrows.)

If we've been selfish, distrustful, fearful, hopeless, we will have all the more reasons to plunge into the surrealism of our hyperreality, now supported by numbers and rules of technocracies, buttressed by the experience and habits we were gathering while in darkness, going deeper and deeper and deeper....

We are not going through a tunnel; we are going down the rabbit holes of our own making.

The more we have to lie to ourselves that we are "in this together," the more we realize we are all utterly alone.  The rabbits holes we are making, you see, we've been taught, should only be big enough for our Selves.  Not even big enough for a family, your whole family, no no.  You are on your own girl.  No one has your back.

If you don't dig your own holes with your own hands and bury your head in the rewards of your good work, you are going nowhere.  Poor people have no rabbit holes of their own.  They need to take transit and be "together" with some other losers and contract the virus while you sit in your overheated living room and fully-loaded private vehicle, feeling the world crumbling around you as you escape into your wonder tunnels.  Earn your way--your rights!--to uproot yourself from anything, any place, undesirable, underserving of you and your life goals, and plunge yourself into better holes.  Lose your family, lose your friends, lose everything that was you, if that's what's needed to win in this race of one.  Go down, deep and quick, and make sure no one can catch you.  Make sure you will be totally alone to make a point to yourself.

Two weeks ago I was invited to speak at church, via Zoom.  I was speaking to human tiles, with only a handful of faces, like an one-way mirror porno show with me taking it all off, shedding my dignity, being humiliated as a way to convince God to uncover His face on me.  Whoever loved me was not there.

No, we are not in this together.  I would rather not be in this together if this means us lying to each other about our togetherness.  A hollow man is a stuffed man, full of ideas and slogans and, yeah, empty metaphors.

Yours, Alex