[Previous entry: ""I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD!" ... MY PICKUP TRUCK IS SOLD!"] [Next entry: "OVER THE HILL'S OK, IF THAT'S THE ROAD HOME"]
09/19/2004: "THUMBPRINTS ON ICEBERGS AND PEEING ON FIRE HYDRANTS"
There are times when an author will reveal an astounding insight into one's innermost feelings and not well understood feelings at that! Writer Margaret Atwood included the following passage in her novel, "The Blind Assassin". Her character, Iris, is struggling to compose a chronicle of a long and complex family history.
"I've written nothing for the past week. I lost the heart for it. Why set down such melancholy events. But I've begun again, I notice. I've taken up my black scrawl; it unwinds in a long dark thread of ink accross the page, tangled but legible. Do I have some notion of leaving a signature, after all? After all I've done to avoid it, "Iris, her mark", however truncated; initials chalked on the sidewalk, or a pirate's X on the map, revealing the beach where the treasure was buried.
Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on a fire hydrant. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on wash room walls. Its all the same impulse. What do we hope to get from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simple attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down."
When I first read it I was impressed by the clarity of Atwood's idea and how appropriate it was for my own nagging apprehension...I would vanish into nothingness and have no more meaning than if I had never lived at all. How well she seems to have understood how that need to assert an identity had been woven through my life like an off color thread. The striving for educational certificates, the signatures on engineering reports, hiding my childrens' names in the cross hatching of pen and ink illustrations and yes, even this very blog. Wasn't it all a protest against the sting of Shakespeare's indictment, "Life is but a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." I once heard that the introduction to a well known play described the work as, "an attempt to leave a thumbprint on an iceberg". Perhaps any drawing or painting or writing is just that; an appeal, however fragile, for a witness that we did exist once, and even though we are gone we have left this, our very own mark!
Like her character, Iris, we struggle to set down in line, color or words, a page from our life's diary showing our attitudes and feelings toward the subject of our choice. Even if that's not what our goal was, it very much remains as an aspect of the work and often the only one worth noting. And how do we mark the place where we no longer fear "our voice falling silent", when the urge to assert an identity is as faded as the passion for a long dead love? I think it needs the sign from Dante's "Inferno" which marked the entrance to the lowest and most horrible level of hell, "LOSE ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE". Truly, there is no calm so awful as that which comes with total despair. So, value your anger at life's futility and nourish your defiance of the prevailing order that celebrates stupidity, ugliness and banality. Redouble your efforts to make your mark however trivial or transient it may seem because it serves a deeper purpose not apparent on the surface...it helps keep that urge to assert your identity alive and thriving. Heed the advice of Dylan Thomas, "Go not gently into that dark night; rage! rage against the dying of the light!
Happy trails, Pilgrims
Thanks Natalie. I hadn't thought of those hand prints but they certainly were the equivalent of a written signature.
