Everything is illuminated in the light of the past...
Last week, I reflected a bit over the postings to this weblog. I turned page after electronic page. A pattern became clear.
So many stories about the past. Old things. Things in shadows. Things seen through smoky glass and from a distance. Heavily edited by time, the greatest distance between two points. Perhaps selectively remembered. In some ways, dreams. Word photos taken as synapses fire.
I vowed I would write something about who I am right now. After all, no one is really watching. Why not tell the current truth unvarnished and under fluorescent lights, not remembered hazily and lit softly?
Maybe someday soon. But, not today.
This evening, my daughter, Ann, brought home the movie, Everything Is Illuminated. A plot summary from IMBd:
A young Jewish American man endeavors to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II in a Ukrainian village, that was ultimately razed by the Nazis, with the help of a local who speaks weirdly funny broken English.
The film (see the trailer) stars Elijah Wood, but, in my view, Eugene Hutz--a Ukrainian gypsy who leads the Balkan gypsy punk band, Gogol Bordello--steals the show.
The movie is beautifully photographed, wonderfully acted, hilariously funny, and very moving. The movie is adapted from Safran Foer's book of the same name as the movie. A blurb from Foer's web site:
In the summer after his junior year of college, Jonathan Safran Foer journeyed to Ukraine with a faded photograph, hoping to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He intended to write a non-fictional account of his experiences, but he returned home deeply disappointed, having found next to nothing. Fortunately, Jonathan turned his journey into a miraculous work of fiction.
In this “zestfully imagined novel of wonders” (in the words of Joyce Carol Oates), a young writer -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- searches for his family’s lost roots in rural, contemporary Ukraine. Guided by the unforgettable Alex, his young Ukrainian translator, who writes in a sublimely butchered English, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and an old man haunted by his memories of the war, Jonathan is led on a quixotic search across a devastated landscape and back into an unexpected past. Braided into this story is the novel Jonathan is writing, a magical fable of his grandfather’s village in Ukraine, a tapestry of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. In a counterpoint of voices blending high comedy and deep tragedy, the search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, and they meet in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching: for people and places that no longer exist, for the hidden truths that haunt every family, and for the delicate but necessary tales that link past and future.
The movie caused me to remember. As always, zap, pop. The ghosts and vapors step into the light. Here goes.
When Father Pocetto, the vice principal and prefect of discipline at the Catholic high school for boys that I attended, had you in his sights, you were cooked. Done for. He could threaten a Marine Corps drill sergeant with his stare, his inch-away-from-face yell, and his terrible scowl. Not even God could help you if he found you slacking in any way.
Two days after I finished the 10th grade I stood in my high school cafeteria surrounded by about 50 terrified boys who had to have their summer school attendance approved. They failed algebra, Latin, geometry, English, and all other forms of academics. I, on the other hand, was there to have my attendance in an elective summer school class in astronomy approved. So, it was like a lot like watching a live autopsy, but, gratefully, not being autopsied like the rest of those boys.
Each boy was required to walk up to Father Pocetto's desk and confess his crime. Failure! As failures, each and every those boys was a failure of discipline, integrity, and manliness. Each--yes, each--boy received a personalized, thundering, abusive chew-out. Surely, after that, no one would dare to fail any course again.
When it was my turn to face the inquisitor's rack, Father Pocetto considered me with sharp eyes as I strode forward. He yelled, "And, what are you here for?," in a voice with which I am sure he had experimented in the role of Jacob Marley in his high school production of Dickens', A Christmas Carol. I explained my mission. He seemed a bit deflated because I had no specific crime to which I could confess, although I am sure he could see the seeds of someone wild enough perhaps to chew gum during study hall or to allow his school tie to hang loosely around his neck. He signed my approval without a word, dismissed me with a furrow of his black eyebrows, and motioned for the next slug to step forward.
Astronomy? Pure pleasure. The course turned out to be a daily joy that opened up all sorts of ideas to me in chemistry, physics, geometry, and other subjects. I loved attending class meetings, which, at times, were held in a planetarium. Yum!
Typically, the course met at a local, public junior high school. The great secular maze, as far as our dear, solemn Fathers of the Oblates of St. Francis DeSales were concerned. The road to enrollment in non-Catholic colleges and, from there, straight to hell. Boys who reeked of beer from the drunken bacchanalia occurring on some previous night. Hoods, one and all. Girls (yes, girls!), a luscious feature banned from our boys' school except for weekly dances, roamed the halls at will. Some of them wore stockings and probably snuck kisses with boyfriends right during the school day. Why, one of these girls could have a locker next to yours. She could be a Protestant. Or, even a Jew. Or, perhaps, a Negro. It was with this glandular fascination that I entered the public school, even if for a brief period over the summer.
I suppose to avoid assault, rape, armed robbery, bloody knife fights in stairwells between rival gangs, or, maybe, felonious littering with intent to maim and embarrass (these possibilities were the product of my vivid imagination and deep rumination about schooling in non-Catholic culture), summer school students (remember, most of these were deep failures, I had learned to believe) arriving at school, but not yet in classrooms, were required to sit (yes, sit, and don't be wandering around, you!) in the school auditorium, which was musty, poorly lit, and, therefore, cool on summer mornings. To avoid the hoi polloi, I sat in the next to last row in a wooden, seat that could tip your ass out at the slightest shift of center of gravity. A stern look (or, maybe that madras shirt with button-down collars that I liked to wear) seemed to keep people away. I usually read my astronomy text until class began.
One day with about one week remaining in the summer session, a young man sat two seats from me. Not a word. He stared at a 9th grade algebra book. Never turned a page. Just stared at it. Never a look sideways. Just looked at the book. So far, so good. No one entered my space.
Did I mention that this young man was black? No. But, it was significant at that time. The whole world was changing in front of our eyes. There was, frankly, lots of racial tension in my home town. As an elementary school student I would walk approximately one mile to my little Catholic school, crisscrossing migration patterns of students coming from the section of town where all residents were black to a school where all pupils were black. Rarely did kids acknowledge one another.
The black kids on the streets seemed loud, loud, loud to us compared with the little parsnips who attended the Catholic grade school and hardly had any voice at all. Oh sure, once in a while there was a little scuffle as we crossed paths. A nasty word or two, the directionality of which depended on who had the largest number of kids in his group. Or, we would listen as small groups of black girls would stride passed us singing beautiful Gospel songs in harmony to and from school. For the most part, though, black and white kids lived in different worlds. Now, different worlds existed for Italian kids, Irish kids, Armenian kids, Lebanese kids, and Polish (that meant anyone Slavic) kids who made up my town. But, nothing sat between these white kids like the gulf that separated black and white kids. There was not so much as articulated hate existed between the two as there was mutual fear and ignorance and legacy of generations in which things had been just about the same.
Yet, here was this boy. A black boy. Shorter than I, but almost my negative. He and I entered the auditorium and sat in what seemed to be our assigned places. We carried out this ritual for several days.
I imagined him to be a poor, even slovenly,student. A boy with a record, too busy stealing bicycles or mugging old ladies to know anything about the algebra that he failed. Why else would he stare dumb at that page about the quadratic formula? Perhaps he was mentally retarded, I thought with a sense of superiority that boys who go through school in a suit and tie often acquire and hold throughout their lives. As long as he didn't bother me, I decided, I was all right. It was 1963.
After a few days of our settled, unspoken practice of mutual invisibility, I felt something strange. I looked peripherally and realized that he had turned his head toward me. He had a big grin on his face. What? Was I about to be stabbed? Would he ask me for money? No, he just looked.
After a period during which he probably had concluded that I was blind or at least partially sighted as a result of my lack of recognition of his stare, he spoke.
"I failed algebra," he said, "But, just failed it. Not by much."
I said, "Oh, yeh?," almost without looking his way, as though the pain of looking at him would be great.
He said, "What are you here for? Fail science? English?"
"No," answered almost indignantly, "I am here to take an astronomy course." "It is an elective," I informed him. He looked nonplussed, as though I had spoken something both insignificant and mysterious.
He talked more, mostly questioning. I answered in simple, clipped phrases so that I could scare him off or lead him into cul de sacs of boredom with my taciturn replies. I would not yield to his interest, yet he kept on.
The next day, he sat down again in the same spot and began talking as though we had never parted. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be, I protested silently. He was supposed to keep his distance, and I mine.
He asked, "Did you ever see the movie, Jason and the Argonauts?"
Well, no, I had not seen this movie. I said I wish I had. This epic story of the legendary Greek hero who leads a team of intrepid adventurers in a perilous quest for the legendary Golden Fleece was made into a movie in 1963. The plot is straightforward and pure fantasy. Jason's family is killed and his father's throne usurped by an evil conqueror, who also angers Hera by killing innocents in her temple. Twenty years after all this, Jason returns for revenge, and through a complicated series of events, sets out to find the legendary Golden fleece, which will restore his kingdom to its former glory. Along the way, of course, he encounters that most dangerous of obstacles: a towering bronze giant (picture an ancient Greek version of a cross between Godzilla and the Terminator), named Talos; winged harpies, who torment a blind prophet; a seven-headed hydra, who guards the fleece; and, best of all, seven armed skeletons. The skeleton scene is famous for its integration of amazingly life-like animation with actual footage. It was a scene that inspired the next generation of filmmakers. It wasn't Star Wars in quality, but, believe me, those skeletons were frightening. What magic! But, when this young man asked me if I had seen the movie, I still had not watched it. And, so, he spied interest jump in my eyes.
He said, "OK, because you haven't seen the movie, I will tell you about it. When I'm done, you can help me with my algebra. I think I am failing."
Without so much as an agreement from me, he launched into the story. Not the Cliff Notes version. No, the whole thing. Dialogue and everything. When there was a sword scene or a monster appeared, he stood and acted out the drama. Not too loud, because he was doing this story for me, as he had promised. In return for help in algebra.
He didn't miss a detail. It took him two days of meetings in the auditorium to get it out. And, I must say, he rivaled Homer. The pictures he painted of Jason's quest are those I remember to this day. When I eventually saw the film, I recognized the visual details as he had painted them. I was thoroughly entertained and I looked forward to his continuation of the story with great anticipation.
When he was done, there were just a few days of class left before final exams. "Let's talk algebra," he said.
I thought it would be so easy to help him navigate his book. I would, I smugly felt, open his mind to math. It would be simple.
No way. I couldn't.
He clung to interesting and strange, but consistent, notions of the ways that addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division worked. He had difficult and obscure mnemonics for chaining math memories together. He moved down long dead ends of thought and ciphering. He was lost, and so was I. To this day, this experience taught me that it is difficult, if not impossible, to teach anything to anyone. Learning is much more difficult. Oh dear Buddha, "When the student is ready, the master appears," eh? Well, it was not I, humbling as that was to realize. Well, like they say, people learn something every day, and a lot of times it's that what they learned the day before was wrong.
There was never any reciprocity there. He delighted me with the tales of Jason. I failed him in algebra. The self-satisfied boy learned a lesson. The boy who failed algebra taught the lesson. Not a fair, even exchange, but a consequential part of my development.
On the last day of classes, we said goodbye in the hallway. A strange scene. The two of us shaking hands, while wild boys and girls of all races charged passed us and glanced at us as though we were strange statues. I thought that I would see him again. I'd be his friend, and he'd be mine. God know I needed a friend. But, it didn't happen. I never saw him again.
The world descended into chaos. Riots in the cities. The war pounded out the hearts of a generation. Acid and grass swept over the youth landscape. Emptiness dwelt. Nixon reigned.
Sunday morning, in Pittsburgh, I had a Tall Cafe Americano in a Starbucks Cafe with my son, David. Yesterday and today, my morning coffee was hazelnut-flavored from Wegmans. A few minutes ago I took part in a taste test for the Penn State Creamery of a new Nescafe coffee ice cream (penetrating coffee taste, not very creamy, good beat, easy to dance to). Sing to me of Jason. 
The graphic, stolen from 
