From Iraq to Oakland, this thanksgiving has been a particularly violent one. Instead of reading depressing newspaper stories, here are a few paragraphs from Wendell Berry’s A Place on Earth. As in his other novels, Berry offers a vision of how individuals can live in community and what I quote here articulates that vision from the perspective of Jayber Crow, both the barber and the grave digger in Port William, Berry’s imaginary village and the location of all his novels. Jayber Crow is perhaps Berry’s most memorable character and I will write about my own fascination with him some other time.
In the face of Uncle Stanley’s devouring garrulousness, as confirmed and free a bachelor as he is, Jayber always finds himself taking up the defense of marriage. Not so much the defense of any particular marriage - not, by a long shot, of Uncle Stanley’s - but of marriage itself, of what it has come to be, for him, a kind of last ditch holy of holies: the possibility that two people might care for each other and know each other better than enemies, and better than strangers happening to be alive at the same time in the same town; and that, with a man and a woman, this caring and knowing might be made by intention, and in the consciousness of all it is, and of all it might be, and all that threatens it. At these times it seems to Jayber that, of all the men in Port William, he’s the most married - not in marriage, but to this ideal of marriage. He is bound in this way, as he is bound, beyond his friendships and his friends, to an ideal of friendship.
These are the last remainders of Jayber’s ideals. He holds to them against the possibility that life will mean nothing and be worth nothing. He is despairing believer in these things, knowing that everything fails. The ideal rides ahead of the real, renewing beyond it, perishing in it-unreachable, surely, but made new over and over again just by hope and by the passage of time; what has not yet failed remains possible. And the ideal, remaining undiminished and perfect, out of reach, makes possible a judgment of failure, and a just grief and sympathy.
In Port William, or beyond or above it, Jayber imagines a kind of heavenly City, in which each house would be built in a marriage and around it, and all the houses would be bound together in friendships, and friendliness would move and join among them like an open street. His living in Port William has been a bearing of the descent of the town from that ideal - as though at the end of each night, out of his mind and his desire, he gives painful birth to the new real morning and the real town - as though he watches the descent of all things from Heaven, like a snowball, into the aimless gap of Uncle Stanley’s mouth. But he is also the adulterer of his marriage, the servant of opposite houses, faithful to both and unfaithful to both-slipping away from his Heavenly City, to which he has sworn his devotion, to become the lover of all the perishing lights and substances of Port William and of the weather over it and of the water under it. After so long, it seems to him that he is the native and occupant of both places, and passes freely between them, and in serving either serves both.
Last week, as I was reading these paragraphs at the Gaylord’s cafe on Piedmont avenue, I witnessed a moving yet strange meeting between an uncle and nephew. Eighteen year old Melvin was driving on Piedmont Avenue and away from Gaylord. I don’t know what made him turn around and look at the cafe, which was on the other side of the street. But notice he did his uncle whom he hadn’t seen in ten years. So he stopped the car in the middle of the street, came running into the cafe and excitedly introduced himself to his uncle Jim, who couldn’t recognize him. How would he? The Melvin he knew was an eight year old boy.
It was very strange to listen to them. Here is a middle aged blackman, sitting in a cafe with his Powerbook and it was obvious that he had kept his distance from all his relatives. Apparently, Jim had fought with his sister but it was clear both he and Melvin liked each other and wanted to be in touch. They had spent the last ten years living in Oakland, within a twenty block radius of each other. I bet they both knew that too but seemed to have reconciled to never meeting. How the hell does that happen? What kind of disfunctional communities do we live in and why do we make peace with that?
Sure, Berry’s Christian roots are very obvious in the last paragraph but what I find striking about Port William and its inhabitants is a simple sense of worthiness and a commitment to keep it. It’s hard to describe it but i surely don’t use worth here either as something quantifiable nor merely in a limited sense of self worth. In Berry though, worth is quite organic and is tied to land, community and work. It seems to me that we quite often compromise on our own quest to achieve worth. May be, it’s hard both in Baghdad and in Oakland. The real rears its ugly head all too frequently but should we lose our ‘despairing belief’ in the ideal?
I don’t want to belabor this point. I just thought these paragraphs from Berry are perhaps worth reading, especially this weekend.
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