writer who takes literature to a new level or that genius of a
writer who brings humanity forward or that genius of a writer
who tel s a simple, gorgeous story or that genius of a writer
who holds hands with Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or that genius
of a writer who lets the mute speak, especially the last, letting
the mute speak. Can one make a sound that the deaf can hear?
Can one write a narrative visually accessible to the blind? Can
one write for the dispossessed, the marginalized, the tortured?
Is there a kind of genius that can make a story as real as a tree
or an idea as inevitable as taking the next breath? Is there a
genius who can create morning out of words and can one be
that genius? The questions are hubristic, but they go to the
core of the writing project: how to be a god who can create a
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Discipline
world in which people actually live - some of the people being
characters, some of the people being readers.
79
The Freighter
I learned how to listen from my father and from being on the
freighter. My father could listen to anyone: sit quietly, follow
what they had to say even if he abhorred it - for instance, the
racism in some of my family members - and later use it for
teaching, for pedagogy. Through watching him - his calm, his
stillness, the sometimes deep disapproval buried under the
weight of his cheeks, his mouth in a slight but barely perceptible frown - I saw the posture of one strong enough to hear without being overcome with anger or desperation or fear.
I saw a vital man with a conscience pick his fights, and they
were always policy fights, in his school as a teacher, as a guidance counselor, in the post of ice where he worked unloading trucks. For instance, in the post of ice where he was relatively
powerless, he’d work on Christian holidays so that his fellow
laborers could have those days with their families. I saw
someone with principles who had no need to cal at ention to
himself.
The ocean isn’t real y very different, though it can be more
flamboyant. It simply is; it doesn’t require one’s at ention;
there is no arrogance however fierce it can become. I took a
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The Freighter
freighter from Heraklion to Savannah to New York City. In
the two and a half weeks on the ocean, I mainly listened: to
the narrative of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I read some of
every day; to the earth buried miles under the ocean; to the
astonishing stil ness of the water, potentially so wild and deadly,
on most nights blanketed by an impenetrable darkness; to the
things living under and around me; to the crew and captain of
the ship; to the one family also making the trek, the sullenness
of the teen, the creativity of a younger child, the brightness of
the adults’ optimism.
It seems a false analogy - my father and the ocean - because
my father was a humble man and the ocean is overwhelming
until one sees that it simply is what it is. From my father and
from the ocean, I learned to listen with concentration and poise
to the women who would talk to me years later: the women
who had been raped and prostituted; the women who had
been bat ered; the women who had been incested as children.
I think that sometimes they spoke to me because they had an
intuition that the difficulty in saying the words would not be
in vain; and in this sense my father and the ocean gave me the
one great tool of my life - an ability to listen so closely that
I could find meaning in the sounds of suf ering and pain,
anger and hate, sorrow and grief. I could listen to a barely
executed whisper and I could listen to the shrill rant. I knew
never to shut down inside; I learned to defer my own reactions
and to consider listening an honor and a holy act. I learned
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Heartbreak
patience, too, from my father and from that ocean that never
ends but goes round again circling the earth with no meaning,
nothing outside itself. One need not go to the moon to see the
cascading roundness of our globe because the ocean shows
it and says it; there are a million little sounds, tiny noises,
the same as in a human heart. Had I never been on the
freighter I think I would never have learned anything except
the tangled ways of humans fighting - ego or war. The words
on Kazantzakis’s grave say, “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free. ” On the freighter and from my father I learned the final lesson of Crete, and it would stand me in good stead
years later in fighting for the rights of women, especially
sexual y abused women: I hope for nothing; I fear nothing; I
am free.
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Strategy
After I lived on Crete, I went back to Bennington for two
long, highly psychedelic years. There I fought for on-campus
contraception - a no-no when colleges and universities functioned in loco parentis - and legal abortion. I fought against the Vietnam War. I tried to open up an antiwar counseling
center to keep the rural-poor men in the towns around the
college from signing up to be soldiers. Most of these were white
men, and Vietnam was the equivalent of welfare for them. But
the burning issue was boys in rooms. Bennington, an all-girls'
school with a few male students in dance and drama, had
parietal hours: from 2 a. m. to 6 a. m. the houses in which the
students lived were girls only. One could have sex with another
girl, and many of us did, myself certainly included. But the
male lovers had to disappear: be driven out like beasts into the
cold mountain night, hide behind trees during the hour of the
wolf, and reemerge after dawn. The elimination of parietal
hours was a huge issue, in some ways as big as the war. In
colleges across the country girls were required to be in their
gender-segregated dormitories by 10. Girls who went to Bennington in the main valued personal freedom; at least this girl
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Heartbreak
did. As one watched male faculty sneak in and out of student
bedrooms, one could think about lies, lies, lies. As one saw the
pregnancies that led to il egal abortions from these liaisons,
one could think about the secret but not subtle cruelty of ful y
adult men to young women. Everyone knew the Bennington
guard who was deaf, and one prayed he would be on the 2-
to-6 shift so one could have sex with a man one’s own age
without facing suspension or expulsion. When a student would
go with a boy to a motel, she could expect a cal at the motel
from a particular administrator, a lesbian in hiding who tried
to defend law and order. It was law and order versus personal freedom, and I was on the side of personal freedom.