I've been thinking all morning about Gary Percesepe's essay "In the Hamptons," which takes in, among other things, The Great Gatsby, social aspiration, The Hamptons, September 11th, and the plight of the Montauk nation. It appears in the current Mississippi Review. Below, an excerpt, and a link to the full piece.
from "In the Hamptons"
Gary Percesepe
One semester at Wittenberg University—in September 2001, in fact--I taught an 8:00 A.M. class. I mention this because it concerns hope in a dark time, a subject which is of some interest to me. And because it concerns my students. On the morning in question, the room was dark, and the windows open. It was chilly, and I shivered as I laid my umbrella on the lectern. Outside, rain was falling straight down, as heavy as I have ever seen it. One young woman sitting in the front row was drenched completely. She had no umbrella. Her long hair was dripping onto her desk, and the bottoms of her blue jeans were dark and soaked. Her bare arms were pale and smooth, glistening with water. She had two pieces of wheat bread in her hands. Her breakfast had been interrupted. She was, just before I looked away, reaching for her notebook, ready for class to start. She was on time. She looked ready.
To teach is to hope, just as to pray is to change. I teach and I pray for change. I teach and I discover that it is me who is changing. I believe—as much as I believe in anything—in the young. My teaching is itself a kind of prayer. To teach is to believe and to invest in the future, and the future is the undiscovered country, where hope lives, if it lives at all.
The Women of Lockerbie
Listening to the radio one day, I heard about a play written by Deborah Baley Brevoort, called The Women of Lockerbie. One day in December the sky exploded and the remains of Pan Am Flight 103 fell upon Lockerbie, Scotland. Among the many horrors one stood out for its seeming insignificance: what to do about the 11,000 articles of clothing belonging to the victims? The clothing, of course, was filthy and stained with jet fuel, clothing that carried the stench of death; the authorities called the clothes "contaminated" and decided that it must be incinerated. But the women of Lockerbie prevailed upon the U.S. government to release the clothing to them. Over one year’s time, 11,000 items of clothing were washed in streams before being packed and shipped back to the families.
When asked why they had done this, one Lockerbie woman explained that every act of evil must be turned into an act of love.
Until recently I didn’t know anything about this clothing or the women of Lockerbie who washed it, but right now I am wondering what their thoughts are this week, and, more importantly, what they are doing. It seems urgent to me to find out.
2 comments:
These two seemingly unrelated excerpts prompted me to read the whole piece.
It seems that there were many people who tried to turn the evil of September 11 into acts of love. However, to me, a bigger act of evil arose from September 11and that is the Iraq war. I know that there are many who have tried to counter that with acts of love as well.
Doing therapy very often is an act of hope that people can be helped to move beyond fear into love. As we therapists often say, particularly when working with a particularly challenging situation, often the best we can do is "plant the seed" for change. If I take a step too far, back, it seems like more like putting a drop of water in the ocean.
As a woman and mother--a literal giver of life--I can completely understand the impulse to honor the artifacts of the dead as a form of ritual to celebrate their lives, however ordinary or anonymous.
In terms of the layering of peoples on the land of Long Island, I'm curious that he does not mention the crash of American flight 587 on November 12, 2001, in Queens. I'm taken with this reference to flight 587, on which 90% of the passengers were of Dominican descent: "Belkis Lora, a relative of a passenger on the crashed flight, said 'Every Dominican in New York has either taken that flight or knows someone who has. It gets you there early. At home there are songs about it.' " A song about a regular commercial flight...what a thought.
Paul, I enjoy your blog and am grateful for the interesting things you draw my attention to, that would otherwise escape my awareness. I don't usually have much time to explore them the way I'd like, much less comment thoughtfully, but I appreciate that I can drop in when I do have time and find something new to think about.
Also, thanks to you, for the first time in many years I've actually read a National Book Award nominee (Lark & Termite)!
Gwynne, Thank you, thank you for this more than thoughtful comment, which I just reread with much delight.
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