Late night. Coughs echo from all corners of the sleeping house, keeping counterpoint rhythm with the stifled hacks issuing from my own chest. Five humans, five viruses. Or maybe one virus gone forth & multiplied five times.Reading Camus. The Plague. It's an odd thing, to be reading about a city in which extreme precautions must be taken to keep the pestilence at bay, when one's living in a house in which small precautions are supposedly being taken for a similar reason. The medical workers and the journalist debate whether it's better to choose happiness (escape from Oran) v duty (staying to fight a seemingly futile war against the plague). Interestingly--and this reminds me again of why I enjoy the lack of moral certitude in these writers--nobody castigates the journalist for wanting to leave. Rather, they applaud his choice for happiness. It's the greater choice, they say. And they can't really say why they continue their fight. Yet they do. Like Sisyphus.
It's done nothing but snow and rain out here. I've hardly been out of the house. Yesterday someone saw a rat disappear beneath the foundation wall.
Yes - dear Abbot - what a powerful thing to have in literature and life - that lack of certitude. Some might think it's simply immoral to choose to be happy when others suffer and yet one could argue that it does humanity a great service to have people pursuing happiness. Isn't that really what life needs to be about? Sure, it's good to be good but given how short and often mean and painful (plagues) life is, it is a very great thing to choose to be happy. I wonder dear Abbot if you have at all been fantasizing about taking off from your own personal Oran. I wonder under what circumstances you could leave your family behind. Yesterday I was listening to CBC Radio 2 as I drove back and forth on the highways of Toronto to help my ailing mother and there was a kind of tribute going on about The Commodore Ballroom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Ballroom) and a picture emerged in my mind, a diptych: on one panel, you in bed reading, on the other panel, you with your guitar on the Commodore stage. I could see you leaving behind the other four ailing family members (and the rat!) for a night to play that ledendary venue. The beautiful thing about that image for me is that your woman would probably approve of and support that moment for you - and remain behind with the ailing.
ReplyDeleteThat's my favourite photo of Camus. He was a beauty.
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