I’ve found a temporary nest in my father’s second home outside of Albuquerque. I’m not ungrateful for the space; it’s giving me room to think about what to do next. Still, my relationship with my dad being what it has been, multiplied by my strongly developed hermit-like tendencies, made being here during the 2 weeks my dad & his wife were still in residency a tight-rope walk.
Once they left for Florida, I gave myself permission to tear into Elena Ferrante’s 4 novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_Novels). Although my friend had recommended them 3 weeks ago and I had purchased them 2 weeks ago at a Santa Fe independent bookstore, I’d held off, perhaps sensing that once I started I wouldn’t be able to interact with members of the human race in any adequate way. Within 4 days, I had finished them. At first I thought, “Whoa! Slow down. Stop binging.” Then I realized this is who I am, someone who binges on great fiction. When I’m deep into another world, I can barely lift my head to consider the real one, forget to move for long periods of time, neglect caring for myself, grab junk food rather than cooking, dress carelessly, fail to leave the house. I’ve been doing this since I was a child.
Here’s one of my favorite passages from the 4th novel:
“And then he laughed … said obscurely that in his view love ended only when it was possible to return to oneself without fear or disgust, and left the room.”
I thought of the times in my life when love’s fever had cooled to the point that I could return to myself without fear or disgust. At this point in the quartet, Ferrante has guided her readers through love’s infernos and finally places this remark in the mouth of the protagonist’s former lover, a revolutionary crippled by Fascists. How had she arrived at this truth, I wondered? Did it unfold itself gradually as she wrote or was it one of the ideas she began with when she started to write? That she could place it so casually in the midst of the flood of words and ideas that filled these four novels filled me with admiration. But truth is like that, no matter where you find it. It glitters amid the dross; it stops time; it arranges chaos.
Reading these novels reminded me of why I want to write. Not for fame or recognition but because through fiction there’s an opportunity to give something important to someone. You can’t control what that gift will be or who will receive it. You write because there’s a chance that something you express will act as a rope to someone who’s sinking so she can drag herself onto solid ground.
If art is any good, it manages to express someone’s notion of truth. But it has to be forged with the highest intentions. And for me that entails being alone, going into the depths and facing myself: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly parts. This kind of scrutiny is not for everyone. Other people choose to fill their lives with obligations & other people. Resentful at the sacrifices I’ve felt forced into making, I once labeled these other set of choices as distractions from what was most important. I realize now that they are different paths on the search for truth.
I don’t know if I’ll succeed in writing fiction. It’s hard, and I’m one of the laziest people I know. But I am also vain (Ferrante has a great observation about vain people too), so I will keep trying, hoping, dreaming. I will also keep working at my ability to love unconditionally. Because that’s what art is too: giving yourself to the world, trusting that it will nourish someone somewhere just as you have been nourished, cared for, protected, and loved.
