I just finished reading Tuesday with Morrie the second time. I can separate my own experience from the book better this time. I can feel more about what I already know rationally. I liked it better this time for this reason.
I felt the author's writing skill was really great, he's a professional writer. The writing style was easy to follow, and yet, it told a complicated story. But the constant reflecting back and forth was kind cumbersome for me. But individual portion of past and present was fluid and thoughtful. And I wondered why that author put every speech of Morrie into quotation marks, but he never put his own words in quotation marks. Initially I was thinking he's distancing himself from scenes, kind of like a bystanders. But then again, I think maybe it's out of the respect of his professor. For it is Morrie's words the author wanted to convey and present here.
I find Morrie to be an interesting person. I think I would like him too. Even at this stage, his thoughts were clear and composed. He was still compassionate. It seemed all the caretakers liked him for what he was. But what fascinating was the fact, he admitted his own depression and crying in the morning. The strength he showed, which was not presented in anger, sadness. He was worried about people wiping his behind, and when he was decayed to that degree, he said he actually enjoyed it. That phrase sounded so familiar to me, I heard from grandpa, and I heard from my mom now. It always sounded like a thorns in my ears. My heart always sink and a taste of annoyance burnt my tongue. Morrie's "enjoy it" scared me. But is it not true, that people decay? What was I irritated by? This reminded me of a quote from Growing Up,
"This one is written out of a childish faith in the eternal strength of parents, a naïve believe that age and wear could be overcome by an effort of will... It is such a foolish, innocent idea, but one thinks of parents differently from other people. Other people can become frail and break, but not parents."(Growing Up, Chapter 1)
I still had hard time not comparing him to my grandpa. I was watching a program made after Morrie's death, the interviews was quite something. I said to my mom, who's watching it with me, "Morrie still like to have visitors, but grandpa was avoiding them." My mom said: "Grandpa was almost deaf." I can see that. Morrie was losing his limbs first, what if he lost his hearing? And when Morrie said:
"Mitch, why would I take like that? Taking just makes me feel like I'm dying. Giving makes feel like I'm living." (Tuesday with Morrie, Afterword, 20th anniversary edition)
The familiarity of the phrase was even stronger. This idea of giving is living, is a hallmark of my grandpa. I also heard from Aunt Grace that her grand mother like to buy stuff for her kids, grand kids. And Aunt Grace would put money into her grand mother's wallet, and let grand mother buy stuff for her kids and grand kids. Morrie gave more of his thoughts and words. And as independent as Morrie, when he said he's enjoying people wiping his behind. I was thinking of my grandpa as well. I helped to bath him a couple of times. And the feeling of embarrassment was visible in people involved, including grandpa. I felt Morrie's emotion was strong, but also self restrain and discipline.
People around my grandpa was emotional, though the way they expressed that emotion was different, every single one of them was emotional. Maybe too emotional, all wrapped in their own emotion.
Here's a few quotes and poems in the book:
September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden - 1907-1973
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
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my father moved through dooms of love
E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962
34
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm
newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots
and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.
Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin
joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice
keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream
his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.
Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain
septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is
proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark
his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.
My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)
then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold
giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am
though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath
and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
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I've picked a place to be buried....Very serene. A good place to think....Are you planning on thinking there? I'm planning on being dead there. He chuckles. I chuckles. Will you visit? ...You'll come to my grave? To tell me your problems? ...And you'll give me answers? I'll give you what I can. Don't I always? ...It won't be the same, I say, not being able to hear you talk. He closes his eyes and smiles. Tell you what. After I'm dead, you talk. And I'll listen.
(Quotes, The Twelfth Tuesday, Tuesdays with Morrie)
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Part of the problem, Mitch, is that everyone is in such a hurry.
(Quote, The Ninth Tuesday, Tuesdays with Morrie)
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Age is not just decay, you know. It's more than the negative that you are going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, "Oh, if I were young again." You never hear people say, "I wish I were sixty-five."
He smiled. "You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.
(Quotes, The Seventh Tuesday, Tuesday with Morrie)
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