{ I expand upon a comment I made to the brilliant post by Dorinda Fox today, "The Dead: Springsteen, James Joyce, Your Grandpa, Your Lover" }
Her post, a collage and paen to The Dead by Joyce, made me weep, even before the final passage, the quote, the final paragraphs of The Dead.
Yes, I said, Yes. This is what The Dead meant to me, too. I read it in college and liked it, I read it again 5 years ago and was torn asunder.
We think we are special, we believe there is great complexity, unique turns. We suffer from the illusion of central position, a remnant of infancy, when milk came at our call.
But in fact we each repeat, we tarry at the same well, we shift in the same chairs along the same walls, with the same people, who all do the same things. These Moments we own, the best times, our only real belongings, feel like gold in the pan to us.
They are glistening love, they are razored anguish, they rest becalmed in azure morning light, they are deep wet dark -- but they are merely human, hunkered human, pitiful human. We gaze in wonder as they swirl in the ordinary dirt of our days, but all are tossed. None buy us a ticket out.
We get only the mess of it, the bundled warmth of each other, the poor fit of even our best beloveds, the bile in the back of our throat when we hear ourselves do spiel and schtick, when we know others are politely turning away; we get only the repetition of days.
Joyce gilds it for us, he musters a few flakes, un-tarnishable, and it looks like us, just like us; it feels like an uncle, brushing against us in the hall, madeline aromas from bejeweled family dinners -- but he knew enough to make it hurt, too, and bad.
Because each of us someday will look back, and realize we are The Dead, and we will cry out for the lovely girl, the sweet boy, the brilliant run, that one day, that lost thing, the cringe and the mistake, and even as we cry out we melt into the heat of it, because OUR death has terrible beauty.
Remission is but more turns on the dance floor, more time spent in chairs, watching foolish young people, a chance for delight at the child. Some of us have no great previous thing, nothing but loss, no way to go back or make it up. It is all cringe and mistake, then hard, hard work, and still we want remission, we want another time to pass the plates and laugh at little things, to pull in air through cold teeth, to kiss once more someone who is a gift to us.
We are Dead but we lived once, so we shiver up comfort, for moments, and though Dead we say Yes I will Yes Yes.
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Seer
daisyjane
The Good Daughter
Chicken Mãâàn
the traveler
Ashley F. Miller
Salon.com
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