"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
(from the Velveteen Rabbit, full text here)
i read about it in the paper two days ago,
a legal dispute over how to dispose of a woman's remains:
she wanted something non-traditional and the family disagrees.
apparently she specified a dissection.
her legs belong to her father, she said,
her arms to her mother who lives in schenectady,
but not her fingers; they were to go to the university
where she taught. the mathematics department, i think.
each of her children were to receive an ear;
her hair to be divided between fellow faculty members;
the trunk of her body to be buried in the back garden;
and her head, shorn and staring, to be thrown into the sea.
fifteen miles out.
but i must say,
it doesn't seem worth the publicity.
perhaps a slow news day downtown.
the family, after all, would never comply with this.
they have the responsibility to do something
respectable with her, the right to prove
they had her best intentions in mind, all along.
so ridiculous to divide oneself up into parcels,
attending to the wishes of others even after having died;
you'd think she was trying to make some beastly point.
she published some brilliant papers in her youth,
but clearly she had lost it, by the end.
i wonder they hadn't seen it coming.
what is it in us that wants to devour, that would swallow up empires? what drives that lust for satisfaction, and why does that so quickly prevent us from getting any good out of the things we ingest?
i need a good theology of consumption. not only because i eat a lot, but because i'm always wanting things. in other words, not only because i have the appetite of a horse, but because i have the appetite of a man. more appropriately, i can be said to have all the appetites of man. i don't know whether or not men of the west have strayed further into sins of gluttony than people in other cultures, but i'm beginning to identify some excuses my western worldview makes for personal excess.
in case you're worried, i'm not saying i'm about to start eating less meat or wearing natural fibers. (although who knows?) i just find some things shallow and wrong-headed about the way i've been living. one is the exclusive connection of consumption with pleasure. if something is pleasant, i want to consume it. if i am going to consume something, i want it to please me. maximizing pleasure begins to drive both the way i see the world and the way i make choices.
just seems kinda backwards.
i take the sky in my hand
like chopsticks and i reach
across the farther cliffs and the dark sea
to pluck your secret, hiding heart
from its lonely place.
i bring it to my house beneath the sunset.
it will drink tea and grow strong,
and soon you must come retrieve it.
you have stayed too long
in the house of the wind,
sojourning among the people of the wind.
every day i turn my face
to the east, where smoke rises
from the groaning furnaces of progress.
there is no healing in that warmth:
your heart grows cold to me,
and i must steal it away
with all my strength.
Well, when Carl come home he was real quiet, dint even come up to the house at first, just stood there by the rho'dendrons at the end of the drive til Mabel saw him out the window. Quick as a whip, she fetched him up to the kitchen, fussin and carryin on.
We was gettin ready for church but of course we dint go. Mabel weren't satisfied til she saw him eat three eggs some ham and grits too. She made up a pot of strong coffee and we sat there, watchin Carl eat, tellin him how glad we was to see him and catchin him up on everythin he'd missed. We dint ask Carl any questions about where he'd been. He had that same look that tramps have when they pass by lookin fer work, kinda ragged around the edges but still respectful. He ate real slow and dignified, like maybe he weren't used to eatin in front of other people.
After Carl ate his fill, we sat out back in the resin chairs, just the two of us. Everythin was bright and warm, and we was real quiet. We could hear Mabel singin inside as she cleared the table, and sheets from yesterday's washin was bouncin up and down on the line like they was little clouds. We settled into the sound of those sheets brushin against each other and the dishes rattlin in the kitchen, kinda settin ourselves down to wait. It was real peaceful.
I dint know what we was waitin on, egzackly, but when Carl started cryin I got real embarrassed and figure that must'a been it. I fiddled in my pocket for my pipe but being Sunday it weren't there. It dint seem right to say nothin, just then, so we both just stared out at the pasture and the highway beyond it. The cars drive off real fast and then go slower the farther they get away from you, gettin smaller and slower as they crawl around the black sweep of asphalt and up over the ridge.
When Mabel finally come out it was like a thunderbolt. She declared we must be the two most engagin conversationalists in the country, then stood lookin out over the land as if she was sizin it up, talkin all the time about how nice it was today, but the rain was sure to come just when we dint want it. Some new contentment had come into her voice, I thought. She told Carl him he ought to get himself a proper haircut, in that same pleased tone, real happy. As she she said it she was pullin up another chair and without drawin a breath she proceeded to talk us straight through til supper time, spurred on a bit by occasional grunts from us menfolk.
It was as if a government dam had burst somewheres upstream, and years of rainwater came rushin down the valley. She looked like one of them women in the picture shows with the sun shinin through the little hairs around her face and with her hands so happy, fluttering up from her lap now and then to make a point. But Mabel was really sendin us a signal, that by her estimation, everythin was ok, everythin that had been thrown up in the air was settlin' down now. She had ceased to worry and instead was pullin deep swigs from the jug of relief.
Later, we lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Mabel asked me what I thought had happened to Carl and her voice sounded small in the darkness. I thought about that afternoon, watchin him silently weeping in the sun, nothin movin on him but those tears slidin slowly down. I thought about the woman beside me and reached for her hand under the covers.
I told her about how fine Carl had behaved, growin up, and how strong he was. I told her how much better he seemed after a hot meal and some good conversation. I reckoned he would tell us his story when he was good and ready, and I reckoned she was just the right woman for the job of nursin our son back to health.
I dint say what I thought might break a man like Carl or what I thought were the odds of him stayin on with us and gettin back on his feet. They dint seem real good. But Mabel squeezed my hand and I know she understood.
Her understandin was always a mystery to me, always had been. When I looked for it, it went away, covered up by her chatter and her little ways. But when life produced a real quandry, Mabel's understandin rose up like fog from the creek bottoms, creepin along the fields by night. Hard times, I could always feel that soft mist on my face. She surrounded me, surrounded all of us – me, Carl, our house, the town, and even the great motorway with its alien circulation. That's where Carl had gone: away on the black highway, and she comprehended even that, bearin up under it like it was a stripe on her back.
The sky was gettin light at one end by the time I drifted off to sleep, dreamin about what it meant to be share a life with such a woman.