On Individualism
My electricity failed yesterday at dusk. The chandelier lighting our dinner table flickered and went dark. So we finished the chicken and potatoes and Swiss chard and last of the season cucumbers and croutons of rye bread in twilight. There were inconveniences. We’re reliant on electricity to pump the water from the well. We couldn’t do the washing up. No bath time for the girls. Though I’d rather have a well than lose control of the source of my clean water. We were not prepared but as my wife gathered the few beeswax candles and lit them in the living room I rocked the baby who fell quickly to sleep in the darkness of the nursery. And it was nice to walk down the dark stairs and into the yellow glow and I lit the wood that had been sitting dry in the fireplace since we moved into our house two seasons ago. And my three-year-old sang her songs on Mama’s lap on the reclining chair beneath the blanket and told her stories without plot or direction just feeling them as they came to her and into the world because there was no evening television to stop her from her musings that I reveled in and still am. We need to buy marshmallows from the store, Papa. And she told us a lot of other things too and I sat there in the warmth of the first fire as the candlelight centered us. I wondered why we don’t do this… The cell phones don’t work without the connection to the World Wide Web out here in the country. I was present. My wife was present. My daughter was present. We were left to enjoy each other and the loveliest evening of any I can remember was had because of it. And I wondered why not. Why not have this? Why not light the evening in candlelight? Why not warm it with fire? Why not tuck ourselves into our own conversation? Why not retire to bed earlier while the air is seasoned with the scent of oak? Why not rest? Why not leave the world outside of us where it already is?
The electricity returned a bit after 9 and the house started up again like a gas engine. I walked across the grass to my shed and flipped on the light and sat to finish the writing that was due. But the thoughts were gone. Even before the electricity failed I’d been considering the people and things I allow to influence me. I had considered where the influences came from and why and if they were important. I had been finding the wrong words and didn’t believe in them and walked away from them. And I walked away from them again and into the darkness of the night that wasn’t as dark now with the neighbor’s electric light but the night was clear and starry. I watched it and breathed in and out the cool air. I went inside and turned off the lights and went to bed. Now I return to the thoughts again.
If I said no to the things I allow into my life would they cease to define me? Or is definition permanent? I am an American writer. I am undecided whether I am so by birth or choice or both. I was born here and I was raised here and I live here. How would I go about being another kind of writer? Do I go someplace else? Are there more or better things and places and ideas and high notions to write about elsewhere? Distant lands. If I went to these distant lands… I was still born here, raised here, lived here. Could I become someone else if I wanted to? If I appeared before a US consulate and signed an oath of renunciation and paid the fee of $2,350 would I no longer be American? Does such an oath of renunciation exist for relinquishing my whiteness? Or to renounce my maleness? Nothing can be done to remove who I was from who I am. Toni Morrison offered a wonderful and provocative and revealing thought: she knows when books are written for white readers. “The little white man that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do or say. You sort of knock him off and you’re free.” White American male gaze. I cannot remove it. But I am conscious of it. It is mine. It does not belong to others. I own it. It is my story to tell. I am it. I am an individual. I am not universal. Distant lands. These thoughts came to me as the news of Palestine and Israel became distorted by our gaze. That isn’t my story to tell. I’ve read writings by my Black American brothers and sisters. Writings of women. Writings that have come from foreign lands. The better of them are all foreign to me. Yet the better of them reveal a common thread of humanity. When I read Richard Wright’s Black Boy as a young white boy I was affected by it. I did not want my Black friends to be taken from me by the prescriptive ideas of a vain society. I didn’t accept that they would be and I’m angry that they have been. I don’t know who Richard Wright was writing for. I’d like to think he was writing for himself, the individual with thoughts soaring above the bondage of skin yet rooted by it to the ground. I’d very much like to think that of myself. My thoughts can also soar but in much the same way that the eagle flies yet must return to its perch. The truth is no matter where my thoughts are destined to go I cannot write for Black people. I cannot write for women. I cannot write for the Israelites or Palestinians. And I cannot write for Americans and I cannot write for white people and I cannot write for men. Because I am not them and I do not feel them and I do not think their thoughts nor do I strive to. I think my own thoughts. And when the words of others come meandering down my country road or I allow them to barge into the peace and quiet and tears and chaos of my family’s life by way of the World Wide Web I strive to listen to them without public agreement or rebuttal. For my gaze is best kept to my perch. And when I do allow the news to come from the outside world it is important for me to remain conscious of the running tides. The fish are biting. It’s time to soar.
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