So Steinbeck is incredible. I would say that I can't get enough of him but that's not entirely true because I have lists of unread books that I won't let him get in the way of. But honestly, it was an inspiring tale. The night I finished it I spent probably two to three hours online reading reading guides and character/plot/historical analyses. It felt like being 17. Delicious. Especially because I didn't have to write a ten pager afterward: I could be affected by the writing but free from the task of forming my own conclusions.
In my reading I marked some of my favorite passages. I had intended to type them up anyway, since the book I marked isn't actually mine. Then the other night I was going through some of my writings. I have a few word documents that are kind of the equivalent to moleskin notebooks (which I love but never use because they are so beautiful. too beautiful.) in that they are depositories of verbal sketches; I usually only resort to them when I have some itch to get stuff out before I forget. The stuff is pretty raw and it usually stays that way. And I forget often enough about half of what I wrote.
So, I stumbled into this. And it is interesting because even though I wasn't yet reading the text of Grapes of Wrath, while typing up the quotes, I noticed some serious parallels between what I wrote and was trying to express and what Steinbeck wrote and did express. And beautifully. No surprise really that I loved it so much.
Given the parallels, I thought I'd present my writing alongside what I thought were kind of complementary quotations. Any other quotes worthy of mention will serve as a finale.
Written sometime in December, maybe the end of November:
Today I went back to the room whose clutter had lain untouched during the years I went from a child to an adult. It was recently hallowed out, had gone back to its skeleton frame. And I walked in, picked up scraps of sheetrock and started to haul them away. My size hasn’t changed much in the past 10 or so years. I’d like to think I’ve gotten stronger but it was hard to say. I didn’t want to overdo things so I hauled in small loads, much like I probably did back when work was being done in my room, those long years ago. But my gait, my grip, even my step as I took to the stairs, had a different energy to it. Call it purpose if you will. It was clear to me in a hushed kind of way that this time around it wasn’t about my room, wasn’t about me at all. Though my house is still my home, it is not my universe.
Today, I was helping my parents with what was theirs: our house, yes, but their universe. Somewhere, in a hundred different moments, I had lost ownership in that purpose. I understood as I did not or perhaps could not then, that building a house was more than slabs of sheetrock, putty, paint, trim and the perfect shade of carpet and furnishings. It was about building something, about creating. We all live in houses. We clean them, maintain them. And there is something to be said for that. But me, I grew up with my house.
I was flooded with memories of shovels, blisters, and hot summer days. Of cement trucks, nails, and the smell of sawdust. Of grubby clothes, some of the workers and their cute sons that I never managed to talk to for several reasons; one being those same grubby clothes. And how the sound of hammering or sawing on a Saturday morning was often the alarm clock I slept through because they were just the sounds of home.
As I worked I realized that my hands still remembered how to swing a hammer, drive a screw and that I knew the order of finishing things. I don’t know what most girls grow up learning. I imagine some of them, most of them maybe, learn about cooking. Even though I didn’t realize it, I had my own kind of education. And today I came to find that it had kinda stuck with me.
"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.
They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memories. How'll it be to not know what land's outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know-and know the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can't. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there-that dreadful pain-that's you."- Ch. 8
I am reading Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” right now. To tell you the truth, I’m still stuck in the introduction. In it, the writer explains Steinbeck’s drive to write, saying that he lived for it and that it was, for him, a redemptive or transformative act. I couldn’t help today but think of that explanation. I wish I had the same drive for writing but I’m no Steinbeck and that’s okay with me. But I think that writing is just another way of creating something out of nothing. Or of putting together the right pieces. Building a house, or building anything else for that matter, feels the same way to me. There is something so fresh, albeit exhausting at times, in the working of it.
"The last clear definite function of man-muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need-this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man-when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it.
This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live-for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strike stops while the great owners live-for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know-fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."- Ch. 14
I know that there are more factors than the walls of my house, but today I became aware of that transformation in me; that what I was building was no longer mine even though it is a part of me just as I am a part of it. It made me kind of emotional, which seems weird, I know. But that feeling you get when you’re outside, in the mountains, in the country, on a boat or anywhere in nature where you feel embraced or where you feel like embracing it all or maybe it’s the same feeling altogether-that is the feeling I get from my house.
"No-the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything's holy-everything, even me." -Ch 23
Those walls have so many memories in them that weird as it is, sometimes, I just want to lean against them, hug them, even.
And so today, in a very poorly articulated way, I am especially grateful for what my parents have built and have created. If it makes it any more simple, I could just say that I am grateful for my house. For the work they put into it, the work they taught me and the pieces of their universe that they have given to me in the building of it.
*************************************
There is some serious food for thought here, (and can I just say I love how Steinbeck views women, he's so right on) but I won't get into it. I'll just whet your pallet with the following words:
"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, "Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe," I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the HOly Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a dussent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it." p.24
"An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kincin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all wornin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang-that's right, that's holy. An' then I got thinkin' I don't even know what I mean by holy." He pause, but the bowed heads stayed down, for they had been trained like dogs to rise at the "amen" signal. "I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad of the holiness of the breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all." p. 81
"Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?"
"No," she said quickly. "No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much-livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much. You got to live ahead 'cause you're so young, but-it's jus' the road goin' by for me. An' it's jus' how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones." Her face tightened. "That's all I can d. I can't do no more. All the rest'd get upset if I done any more'n that. They all depen' on me jus' thinkin' about that." p.124
The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside theirn men-to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained.
I'll be ever'where-wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'-I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build-why, I'll be there. See? -Chapter 28
"Woman can change bette'n a man. Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head. Don' you mind. Maybe-well, maybe nex' year we can get a place"
"We got nothin', now," Pa said. "Comin' a long time-no work, no crops. What we gonna do then? How we gonna git stuff to eat? An' I tell you Rosasharn ain't so far from due. Git so I hate to think. Go diggin' back to a ol' time to keep from thinkin'. Seems like our life's over an' done."
"No, it ain't," Ma smile. "It ain't, Pa. An' that's one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an' a man dies, an' that's a jerk-gets a farm an' loses his farm, an' that's a jer. Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right no. Woman looks at it like that. We ain't gonna die out. People is goin' on-changin' a little, maybe, but goin' right on." Chapter 28
The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they know it was all right-the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath. Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year. -Chapter 29
No comments:
Post a Comment