Do You Believe in Evil?

Francisco Goya, The Disasters of War

David Brooks wrote an editorial today deploring what he calls the “rush to therapy” in the case of Nidal Hasan—the fear, by commentators, of inciting anti-Muslim passions and so focusing on the personal aspects of Hasan’s story rather than the ideological ones.

Brooks begins his editorial by talking about the importance of choosing a story to explain life or one’s life, the ferocious need humans have to make sense of the world, and the great power these stories have.

I watched the earliest coverage of the shootings—on Chris Matthews—and this desire not to emphasize the “Muslim connection” was obvious. It did feel like denial, political correctness, etc. And yet, what to do? Brooks writes, “If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.”

I don’t know how unwashed they are, or where they reside, but the existence of a great many angry and bigoted people in our country is very real. Hasan’s rage and bitterness led him to take 13 lives. Most of those inflamed by the ideological/religious/ethnic basis of his action will settle for beating a teenager into a coma, or destroying the business of a hardworking older couple.

There’s nothing wrong with TV commentators, who wield so much power over the shaping of stories, being  cautious. What harm is done? Will Hasan be freed with a referral to a psychiatrist?  Will Obama immediately conclude the war in order not to upset potential Hasans?

Or—horrors—will we stop believing in evil? Welcome Satan into our living rooms and tell the kids murder is a lifestyle choice?

None of this is going to happen. Hasan will be in prison the rest of his life. It may be a very short life. The army will pay more attention to the psychic toll of the war, which as Bob Herbert wrote the other day, is affecting thousands of people who will never kill anyone, whose violence will be against themselves and their families, and probably never reach the status of “criminal violence,” though causing no less suffering for that.

The army will not pay enough attention. The loneliness and unhappiness of soldiers who may or may not become a serious danger to others will never be adequately addressed. And my—and others’—sorrow about this, honestly, is not because we think suicide bombers or suicide shooters are lost lambs. It’s not because we care more about not offending people than we do about protecting people.

It’s about what works. It’s about living in a country of people who were born, or whose parents were born, in every nation on earth, people whose religious beliefs cover the spectrum; and at the same time waging and funding wars which inevitably rouse national and religious passions.

It doesn’t matter whether you are for or against our current military policy. For now and the foreseeable future, America will be an aggressive armed presence in the world. Frankly, we have to watch our back, and our back is at home. It made up of people like Hasan and it’s made up of people like the ones who’d like to lynch him—or, if he’s not available, someone with a similar name.

The reason, David Brooks, that we don’t have to go on and on about how evil it is to gun down 13 people at an army base, is that, really, everybody already knows that.

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart a hungry gorge.

—William Blake

Glorious Bird

Last night I went to a reading at The Cathedral of St John the Divine celebrating Tennessee Williams’ induction into The Cathedral’s Poets Corner. I had a sick headache and my companion was in a foul mood. No matter. Tennessee’s words made our hearts shine.

In the 40’s, Gore Vidal dubbed Williams “The Glorious Bird.” Last night John Patrick Shanley, in a passionate homage, referred to him as a “A gorgeous beast.” He’s always seemed to me the most human of writers, drunk on words, sex, gossip, praise. There’s nothing unknowable about Tennessee except his genius, and the genius of genius is to make us think we know.

Vanessa Redgrave read from Not About Nightingales. Eli Wallach did a scene from Mister Paradise with his daughter, Katherine Wallach. Sherry Boone did a brilliant rendition of a poem called Gold Tooth Blues, a very funny work that I’d include except that you kind of had to be there. Williams’ comic poems, especially, beg to be read or sung by someone who knows how.

The performers were mostly wonderful (and there were lots of them, and none went on too long, which greatly impressed me), but being steered to read the poems was the greatest gift. I’ve read a few over the years but the plays were the thing. And they still are; they contain his most brilliant lines. But if the poems seem thin, it’s only by comparison to something as great as The Glass Menagerie. Put side by side with the work of other 20th century poets, Williams’ verse holds its own. Not the best, but not far off.

The poet William Jay Smith recalled his early friendship with Tennessee, back when he was still Tom and lived at home. One night when his parents were out, Tom had a few guys over, and one started cutting up, making obscene phone calls to strangers. (In the early 1930’s this must felt more transgressive than it did when I was growing up, when it had become the province of 9-year-olds.) In the midst of their shenanigans, Rose appeared on the stairs, in a frothy white dress, furious, threatening to tell the parents. And she did tell.

I like that: not-always-fragile Rose.

The person I missed last night was Gore Vidal, who has the best first-person accounts of Williams. This is from an essay of his in The New York Review of Books in 1985.

...The Bird had never heard of Kennedy that day in 1958 when we drove from Miami to Palm Beach for lunch with the golden couple, who had told me that they lusted to meet the Bird. He, in turn, was charmed by them. “Now tell me again,” he would ask Jack, repeatedly, “what you are. A governor or a senator?” Each time, Jack, dutifully, gave name, rank, and party. Then the Bird would sternly quiz him on America’s China policy; and Jack would look a bit glum. Finally, he proposed that we shoot at a target in the patio.

While Jackie flitted about, taking Polaroid shots of us, the Bird banged away at the target; and proved to be a better shot than our host. At one point, while Jack was shooting, the Bird muttered in my ear, “Get that ass!” I said, “Bird, you can’t cruise our next president.” The Bird chuckled ominously: “They’ll never elect those two. They are much too attractive for the American people.” Later, I told Jack that the Bird had commented favourably on his ass. He beamed. “Now, that’s very exciting,” he said.

The line The Cathedral has inscribed on Tennessee’s stone is, “Time is the longest distance between two places.” Time is also the most ravishing intoxicant in any literary cocktail. Last night, it was there in spades: the dead poet, the frail and white-haired actors, the memories—including mine of reading Tennessee when he was still alive, but, as John Patrick Shanley noted, impossible for a young admirer to imagine approaching. “Tennessee was like the ocean,” Shanley said.

I think of him more as a river. The ocean spends too much time in its own company.

The Eyes

for Oliver

The eyes are last to go out.
They remain long after the face has disappeared
into the tissue it is made of.
The tongue says good-by when the eyes have lingering
silence,
For they are the searchers last to abandon the search,
the ones that remain where the drowned have been washed
ashore
after the lanterns staying, not saying good-by…

The eyes have no faith in that too accessible language.
For them no occasion is simple enough for a word to justify it.
Existence in time, not only their own but ancestral,
encloses all moments in four walls of mirrors.

Closed they are waiting. Open, they are also waiting.
They are acquainted, but they have forgotten the name
of their acquaintance.

Youth is their uneasy bird, and shadows clearer than light
pass through them at times,
for waters are not more changeable under skies
nor stones under rapids.

The eyes may be steady with that Athenian look
that answers terror with stillness, or they may be quick
with a pure infatuate being. Almost always
the eyes hold onto an image
of someone recently departed or gone a long time ago
or only expected…

The eyes are not lucky.
They seem hopelessly inclined to linger.

They make additions that come to no final sum.
It is really hard to say if their dark is worse than their light,
Their discoveries better or worse than not knowing,

but they are the last to go out
and their going out is always when they are lifted.

The Dog Physician

My mother (middle, seated) at her house in N.H. many years ago. My sister stands behind her, demonstrating her mastery over her dogs. My cousin Roberta smiles charmingly.

In an article in today’s New York Times, “Good Dog, Smart Dog,” The reporter writes about scientists’ growing certainty that dogs are smarter than scientists thought they were. (The rest of us already knew this.) Dogs can learn hundreds of words, differentiate photographs with dogs in them from photographs without, and sniff out nascent lung cancers and oncoming epileptic seizures.

So far, so good. I’m waiting for the day when yearly checkups consist of lying naked on a soft carpet while a gentle (and gentlemanly) dog sniffs me all over, then presses a paw onto something like a giant cellphone where a couple of dozen diseases and conditions are indicated by various mysterious symbols. Then the doctor will rise from his stool in the corner and say, “According to Harry, you do not have heart disease, cancer, lupus, typhus, Lyme disease or diabetes. He thinks you need a dog.”

I’ll remind the doctor that I keep up with the research; I know he made up that last bit.

“You’re wrong,” the doctor says quietly. “Look at him. He’s in love with you.”

“No,” I’ll say. “It’s not me. I was cleaning the kitty litter right before I left and a turd fell down my blouse. I got it out of course but didn’t have time to shower.”

“Oh, that’s why he spent so much time at your breasts. I almost scheduled a biopsy.”

The Times writes,  “Clive D. L. Wynne, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida, who specializes in canine cognition and has himself said he met a border collie who knew 1,500 words, takes issue with efforts to compare human and canine brains.

He argues that it is dogs’ deep sensitivity to the humans around them, their obedience under rigorous training, and their desire to please that can explain most of these capabilities. They may be deft at reading human cues — and teachable — but that doesn’t mean they are thinking like people, he says. A dog’s entire world revolves around its primary owner, and it will respond to that person to get what it wants, usually food, treats or affection.”

You know, there are a lot of people like that. They’re kids. They’re married to someone who has all the money or can beat them with impunity. They’re low or mid level replaceables in the corporate world of 2009. They comprise a very large percentage of our population, because humans, like dogs, are wired to survive.

The point is dogs’ intelligence, not what they choose to use it for. Perhaps my mother’s poodle would do better learning to bake bread rather than perfecting his I’m-so-innocent act after stealing a baguette. I’m sure if he cooked for her, she’d give him tastier dinners. But, you know, there’s the thumb problem. The walking on four legs issue. It’s tough being alive, even when you’re smart. Getting the dazzling ones to take care of you in their warm and splendid houses, and not butcher you at young adulthood the way they do so many others…that’s smart.

“If only they’d understand that letting us eat cat turds would benefit everyone,” mourns Harry. (Harry is my Labradoodle Imaginary Friend. He’s young and handsome, with sensitive poetic eyes and loves walks, naps and scrabble.)

Homer’s Seeing Eye Dog

Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I’ll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked his bladder and stream
of dopey wake-up jokes. The one
about the wine-dark pee I hated instantly.
I stood at the ready, like a god
in an epic, but there was never much
to do. Oh now and then I’d make a sure
intervention, save a life, whatever.
But my exploits don’t interest you
and of his life all I can say is that
when he’d poured out his work
the best of it was gone and then he died.
He was a great man and I loved him.
Not a whimper about his sex life –
how I detest your prurience –
but here’s a farewell literary tip:
I myself am the model for Penelope.
Don’t snicker, you hairless moron,
I know so well what faithful means
there’s not even a word for it in Dog,
I just embody it. I think you bipeds
have a catchphrase for it: “To thine own self
be true, . . .” though like a blind man’s shadow,
the second half is only there for those who know
it’s missing. Merely a dog, I’ll tell you
what it is: “… as if you had a choice.”

–William Matthews