It’s Lent, So Just Two People Might Be Enough

It’s Lent again, that “Go Lean” time of year. There’s a paring down, a pulling in going on before the full flowering of Easter.

So far I’ve heard of a little girl who’s giving up broccoli, reasoning that since she can’t stand the stuff anyway, now’s a good time to banish it officially. One of my sons is giving up Facebook, no small feat for a teenager these days. His choice reminded me how accustomed many of us have become to being thrust into arenas with large groups of people, trying to absorb all kinds of experiences from every which way. Ping-pong ball balls of news fly all around us, and we’re not sure which ones to watch, which ones to play, which ones to take cover from.

There’s a lot to be gained from maintaining, at least to some degree, proximity to a whole lot of lives. On the other hand, it’s astounding how often ONE relationship between two individuals can offer the highest voltage, the most fascination of all. We experience this for ourselves, and literature so often confirms it. When you dare to zoom in and look closely, wow—the intensity can be almost blinding.

I guess I’m talking about a kind of “Go Lean” understanding of human contact. Each one of those kernels can really pack a punch.

Meanwhile, the forces in favor of spreading the news about more of our experiences to larger numbers of people, wherever they are, march on. Maybe you heard about the “Mobile World Congress” that happened in Barcelona recently? For those of us who are still using about 1/100^th of the feature of our phones, this event would have sent us into Overwhelm Mode. Mark Zuckerberg showed up, and he was bubbling over about how Facebook is getting into the “virtual reality” business. Read about it here.  He said, “But pretty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re right there in person.”

Oh great—even though we can barely get our minds around the dramas that are happening in our little worlds, in which we are often integrally involved, we’ll soon be asked to divert our attention to events unfolding for people we barely know and for whom we probably can’t make one bit of difference. OK, I know that sounds a bit skeptical; let me try again. Sure, maybe the “Oculus Rift” headset can provide us with magic carpet rides that will be not only thrilling but have the potential to bind us humans together in a new and exciting ways.

Feeling as if we’re “hanging out in the same room” with people around the globe might be cool. I just wonder whether this or any technology can achieve the same level of power that is generated when two excellently drawn fictional characters try to sort themselves out in relationship with one another.

I just finished an astonishing book, and it’s really ONLY about such a relationship. In one way, it’s very spare; but in another, it’s a complete feast of a thriller. Written by the Hungarian novelist Magda Szabo in 1987, it was first translated into English by Len Rix in 2005 and then just recently re-issued just by the New York Review of Books. Named as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, it has to be read to be believed A successful young writer, married, hires a cleaning lady named Emerence. Almost immediately, though, it’s not clear who is in charge of whom. Emerence is a woman of almost super-human fortitude with a mysterious past; and she never lets anyone beyond her door. She casts a kind of spell upon the writer, who struggles to determine, as her own public star is rising, just what her true responsibilities towards her “servant” are.

In her review of The Door in the New York Times Book Review (Feb. 6th, 2015) , Claire Messed wrote that the book is mostly about “humanity’s struggle to love fully and unconditionally.” In a kind of Lenten way, it’s lean but bountiful at the same time.

Just as I was tearing through the suspenseful final pages, I heard from my son – the one who’s recently eschewed Facebook – about the great discussion his English class had on the James Baldwin story, published originally in 1957, called “Sonny’s Blues.”

Knowing that I had the story in an old anthology from early teaching days, but it was one I never read with a class, I dug it out. And was I ever richly rewarded.

The story focuses on the life of the narrator’s younger brother—a jazz musician and heroin user. What makes it so rich is that it’s really about the relationship between the two brothers, and within that, mostly how our narrator became accustomed to feeling superior to Sonny, putting him in a certain box, without fully knowing him. Then he accompanies his little brother to a gig and sees the band leader, Creole step back to allow Sonny his own time at the piano, “filling the air with the immense suggestion that Sonny speak for himself.” It’s a thunderous moment.

So, bring on the Virtual Reality headsets if there’s no keeping them back. I’ll plunge myself into a panoply of different experiences all over the world—be surrounded by monkeys in the Amazonian jungle, giraffes on the Serengeti Plain, or thousands of people at a U2 concert. Just so long as I get to keep the special alchemy between two creatures that happens in books….or most anywhere.