Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-05-13- 11:28 p.m.

Things Chinua Achebe Said, Sometimes To Me

I took a class when I was in college taught by a man named Chinua Achebe. It was a class I wasn't very interested in, about modern African fiction. But Chinua Achebe was in my mind a great man, a man who wrote a novel I read in my English class my junior year of high school. And I wanted to take his class, to study under a great man, a great writer. It was an idea Socratic in its inspiration; at the foot of a man of great ideas, I would help nuture my own to grow.
He was a shock to behold. An elderly man, displaced from his home of Nigeria, he had a shock of white hair framing a worn, dark face that was impossible to read. A parapalegic, he traveled in a motorized wheelchair. Upon first hearing of him, knowing of him and his trials under repressive Nigeria governance, I suspected that his paralysis was the result of some darkness in his past. This, like most suppositions that would make for easy stories, turned out to be false: his back was broken in an automobile accident after his exile from his native land. He taught the class by speaking in anecdotes; rarely did he ever mention any of the African fiction we were supposed to read. I wasn't bothered by that much; I barely ever cracked the cover of any of the assigned reading.
Despite my ambitions that with this man I would achieve a sort of Symposium of my own, in the end I bowed to my familiar patterns. I attended his class sporadically, and did assignments even more rarely. It wasn't personal, or a judgement on him. This was my pattern. This was my higher education. Had I acheived a degree, it would have been best given in drink and conversation and oversleeping. But in this case, I hated myself for it. What was I, what am I, that I could have such an opportunity, to learn from someone who had so much to teach me, and abandon it for a game of Risk with friends and a bottle of Maker's Mark?
While I didn't go as often as I should, I was there enough to hear Mr. Achebe say a great many things. What I remember most clearly was what he said to me last. In the end, for my poor attendance, he failed me. When I protested, citing his own syllabus and my good grade on both my final paper and my class participation when I did attend, he upped my grade to a C-minus. After he did it, he said to me, "It isn't worth the bother to argue this with you." He then grasped the small joystick of his wheelchair, backed away from me, and turned around and rolled away. A long and great life perhaps does not permit you to make a dramatic exit.
"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."
I don't like to mix my foods. At Thanksgiving dinner, my father will pile onto his plate all the things he likes. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries are all mixed together. I hate that. I partition my plate, trying to ensure that my turkey and sweet potatoes never make contact. I want my stuffing to taste like stuffing and my cranberry sauce to be as it is. I suppose it is one way in which we are not alike. Right now, there is trouble in the world and trouble in my life, and I find I'm unsure where one ends and the other begins.
Last night, the Likud party in Israel voted overwhelmingly to oppose the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. They did this over the objections of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, no peacenik by anyone rational's defenition. I'm filled with a despair at this I can hardly describe. I have no solutions for what is happening there anymore. I don't even have any half-measures left in mind, no first baby steps to suggest or endorse to lead out of this mess. Which matters little; I'm the very model of inaction. I consider myself a rather ardent Zionist, but I only saw Manhattan's recent Israel Day Parade when passing through on my way to run an errand. On Sunday, I passed by a march to expel the PLO from their New York office and didn't even think about it except how it was making it difficult for me to hail a cab.
I believe, and have always claimed to believe, that the real progress in making the world a better place is not in marches, rallies, or politics. The true spectre of racism, of sexism, of anti-Semitism isn't in unfair hiring practices or in media stereotyping but in the hearts and minds of each person who believes that homosexuality is the true culprit behind the molestations of Catholic priests and the discomfort some people feel in having a woman for a boss. It is the little hatreds that pile up, that fly under the radar of us all and prevent us from living in a better world. This is what I believe.
But today, the hatreds are getting bigger and bolder. I recently went to see Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", and afterwards, I said to someone that the play had not aged well. Nearly sixty years ago, we could be shocked by the bitter fruit of demagoguery and mass hysteria more easily. I argued that if we had learned anything from the last century, from Hitler and Stalin and McCarthy, it was this. But then I thought of the attacks on Jews in France. I thought of the sheer hubris and lack of history the people who waved placards in Times Square with a swastika painted over the Star of David. And then I thought of the play. I remembered something Judge Danforth says: "You are either with this court, or you are against it." And I realized, perhaps these battles have not been won. Perhaps in the end, we have learned little.
And yet, I do nothing. I just get up each day and endure, and go on. I once told a therapist that my greatest attribute was simply that I keep going, that no matter what calamity or disaster is unfolding, I will not falter in doing the little things. I wish I could say it is because I never minded about them, but it is because I don't know any better. I never learned how to stop, how to take a moment, or how to mourn. I'm sorry Sivan, but I don't think I know how to just be.
I'm not sure what I can do. The world appears to be tearing apart at the seams. I seem to be able to impress every person I work with lately except for the man whose assistant I am. Today was a day when my boss and my girlfriend both clearly didn't even want to speak to me. I sense all these things deteriorating around me, and I can't think of a way to rally the king's horses and men to fix them. So much of me is wrapped up in these things, and despite my best efforts, the center cannot seem to hold. I want to go to them, to all of them. I want to tell them that I'm smart and earnest and perhaps even decent and hard-working, and if they would just tell me how to fix it, I would. I wish I lived in a world where people would tell you how to fix it. I wish I could find a reason for all this, find the fault in my own actions that has brought all this on. It would be easier if I lived in a world where I could know it was all my fault.
I keep on doing the little things. I'm just not sure what the big things to do are, much less how to do them. Things fall apart. Ours is not always to reason why.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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