I've been talking to my husband a lot lately about how life can be "both at once," both good and bad, yin and yang, shitty and wonderful, and realizing that it's a really hard concept to wrap your mind around. I guess I'm lucky because it's not so hard for me. I laugh as I write that because I wonder if I've had so much shitty that I've always been scrounging around for the good, like little Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, insisting against all of the odds that, goddamnit, I will find the golden wrapper, I will, I will, I will... Even when there's no reason to believe it's possible, I'm somehow sure that if I just hang in long there enough, Grandpa will get outta that bed and come with me to the rivers of milky-sugary-wonderfully-chocolaty-brown. What's so great about that story, of course, is that when Charlie does find the golden wrapper, he finds it because first he finds the money -- the money to buy the chocolate bar. And where does he find that money? In the gutter.
The beginning of the trip to the chocolate factory started in the gutter. That's from the book. Nerdy kids like me always got the real story out of the book. I think in the movie he might get the chocolate bar at his birthday party. His family had saved and scrounged to get it for him. But in the real story, in -- gasp! -- the book -- he gets the money in the gutter. And he goes in the store, and he buys the candy, and he opens the bar, and he sees the golden wrapper, and pandemonium breaks loose, and he has to flee for his life. Poor little pauper Charlie goes from gutter to glory just like that. Both at once.
And then in the end Willy Wonka gives him the factory. The whole damn thing.
What do we get? I get this endo on my liver that doesn't go away, even after that awful surgery that left me living on the line between what felt possible and impossible for months. I got some other stuff that I don't write about but that busts me down to my knees way worse than any ol' abnormal growths on my abdominal organs. I got insecurities that I can't even deal with. I got questions that don't got answers. I got this loneliness deep inside that wells up in my throat and makes me think that a person has never felt more vapid than me. I got mistakes, regrets, losses, painful losses. I got things I understand that I wish I never learned.
But I got this boy who keeps coming home everyday. He drives me crazy, you know. He does. When I tell him that it's both at once, that we're just like Charlie, he tells me that all I see are daisies. It's absurd. Nobody, and I mean nobody, but that guy thinks I'm an optimist. I do like those daisies, though. They're part of the both at once, and so is he. I'm running better and faster everyday. I'm learning not to let my heart beat so hard and so fast, and that makes everything better. I'm writing again. I'm reading more. The world is full of books and, holy shit, it's so much better than filling my eyes up with all of that TV. Music, glorious music. My few friends who showed up when I was in the hospital, showed up when I came home, showed up a month later when it still hurt, showed up last week when I felt discouraged again. October baseball.
Fall, sweet fall, when summer heat fades away.
Both at once.
In the academic life, especially in the social sciences, we talk about the Enlightenment, and those white dudes who wrote about Progress, and the forward march of society, and how gosh darnit things are getting better all the time. And after we learn about that, we learn about how to critique that, and it's fun. We ask the simple question: When we speak of this progress, about whom are we speaking? Who's reaping the benefit? In academic circles the answer usually is those same white, property-owning dudes who seem to see everything getting better all the time. But I suspect that at the end of the day even their hearts break. I know plenty of them who've gotten sad a time or two. (Plenty of non-sequiturs could get launched here, that would take me off track, that even I could launch at myself. Let's don't.) We don't live on number lines where we walk forward for a bit and then get thrown back because we've been cheated. This is not a game of input output. God knows we try so hard. I try so hard. I get so angry because it isn't enough.
It isn't enough, because we're just little people in a really big world, and the really big world is smarter and faster and slyer than us all. The world fucking cheats, too. Denying that just makes you annoying. It's doubly annoying if you're not a cheater. However.
We live both at once.
It's true that some people seem like they have a lot more glory than gutter. Lucky bastards. Hard not to hope they trip.
Hey, what can I say? I'm still struggling with both at once and feeling safe and realizing that I can't always do more than I'm doing.
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