I've never read Mr. Wallace, so I am not sad for him today. I'm sad for something different and trivial. I got the number of the landlord next door a week ago, but called him today. Today was three days too late. He had an exterminator poison the hive on Friday. I'm so frustrated. I wanted that hive, for one, and for two, killing it is about to start his problems. Without the bees to cool the hive, the wax and honey will melt and ruin his plaster. He never even talked to a bee guy. I so wish I'd called him last week.
I think you are right, that you would have been friends with Mr. Wallace. I think you can tell when you are reading someone like yourself and your tribe. I think you know when someone would have done better by being in your circles, coming over after work to chat while slicing vegetables. It is not silly to think of being friends, because people can be big authors and still need to walk in to a warm kitchen and be greeted. I bet if your paths had crossed, maybe neither of you would have taken the leap to friendship, but maybe you would both have left a brief encounter knowing that you'd met someone who would be a friend if you could only see each other a few more times. Maybe that feeling would have been even stronger, strong enough to arrange the next of those times.
But dear, we've talked before about being on the
other side of this knowledge and affection. Strange as it is, there
are people out in the world who read us and think of us this way. It
is odd, and ungrateful as it sounds, it is surprisingly empty. Nuala
O'Faolain wrote about it so well. She wrote an unforgiving and
explicit memoir, such a vivid picture of what growing up in Ireland in
the 60's and 70's was for her, poverty and alcohol in a very narrow world. It was such a true telling; people wrote
letters to her, responding to all her honesty and hurt and pouring out
their hearts:
“Everyone loves you”. Each letter would have words like that. It was as if I were at my own funeral, and extravagant praise had been licensed. … But I wasn’t fundamentally moved. For me, it was as if someone was saying obviously pleasant things, but in a foreign language.
…
But there were all the people who’d sent me their love, hundreds of them. Given it freely, and given it to someone they knew, if only by my own description. Is that what I must settle for, then? I thought. That I can have love –but the love of people I can’t see or touch."
Reading that was a jolt. I couldn't empathize
with much of her childhood, but that. I've felt that. The times I
wrote something personal and true, I got letters full of love and
stories. Strangers sent me kindness, told me that I had mattered to
them, were concerned for me. It is extraordinary to think I have this
strange bank of good will and affection out there. I'm glad, if I got
there by offering something that was a balm. But a dispersed haze of
love from imaginary people is not so useful on the many evenings when
my book and I go get Vietnamese food. Or I give up and stay home with
my book and cereal. It is better than not having it, but in the end, I want to be
with actual people.
That, I think, is the true potential of this business of putting words
out into the world. Because really meeting people, meeting their
babies and dogs, seeing their places in cities and mountains, is as
wonderful as the kind emails promise. I think collective imaginary
love wasn't enough to sustain Mr. Wallace, but how could he not feel
lighter if he had gotten to drink hot chocolate across a real table
from you? Of course a lot of that can't happen. People are far. But
the parts that can happen, should. The translation from intention and
affection into real talk and sight and sound is a scary step, but
that's where the reward is. The people on the other side, lonely
writers, friendly bloggers, need it just as much.