THE RENT COLLECTOR

 

DYING ELEPHANT
Toward the end of Camron Wright's masterful novel The Rent Collector, we are immersed in a story within a story where a weary old woman encounters a weary dying elephant. The old woman has experienced the horrors of barely surviving under the Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia where in the 1970s, the regime killed over a million of its people, about a quarter of Cambodia's population. The killings were first targeted toward the regime's perceived political opponents, which snowballed into a mass genocide of its educated class—with the belief that the thinking and studying and empathetic elite was at the root of what needed to be expunged for its society to become pure and loyal to its totalitarian and unchecked power.

When I learned of Cambodian history years ago, it seemed like a distant and incomprehensible story. Today, as I recall this history through Wright's historical novel, I am startled to feel the echoes of the unfathomable repeating itself in modern society where power is becoming absolute and hatred toward the educated is growing exponentially. Where free speech absolutists silence dissent with fear that money and influence can buy.

MICRO MOMENTS
As the elephant is dying a slow and sorrowful death without another elephant nearby, the old woman says to the elephant: "I am sorry you are alone today." It is a tender moment because she is saying what most of us believe, which is that no creature should die alone.

Right as she speaks those words, Wright goes on to write:

No sooner had her words been spoken than she realized that the elephant wasn't alone at all. For she, the old woman, was there by her side, helping the dying creature when comfort and friendship were most needed (page 247).

When I've been in proximity to people hurting, I've been quick to think "I wish that person could talk to someone." Only to realize that that person was talking to someone. Me. Her. Him. You. Us. Maybe not long and extensive conversations that outline a path for macro solutions to macro problems but smaller conversations. Micro moments of genuine connection.

THE PEN
It is in a micro moment where we learn of the pivotal moment when a servant girl gives up her life so that an educated teacher can survive one of the killing sprees of the Khmer regime. Wright doesn't spell out the reasons why she does this but the mystery invites theories. My theory is that in that moment, the servant girl imagined a different way of being ... a way to live without fear and a way to fight ignorance with the pen. The pen that she would end up underwriting with her life, to help unshackle her surviving family members out of the unfathomable.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

 

So Speak with Nuance

NIKE & LAMAR
Did you see that Nike commercial during the Super Bowl? I loved it. The message gave me new inspiration to consider that the best part of being a free human is the ability to think and speak freely. The psychology of human development posits that in order to express our authentic selves, we first need to feel secure. Financially, emotionally, physically and all the other adverbs. In other words, we need to know that it's safe before we take risks with our words and actions. 

The one thing I loved more than the Nike commercial was the last moment of Kendrick Lamar's performance where he was daring us to turn him off before he pulled the plug and turned us off. Such poetic nuance.

Whether I am working with college, high school, or middle school students, it seems that no one is immune from the pressures cast by our attention-driven economy to forego heart-to-heart conversations about difficult topics and instead go straight to social media to broadcast the next best insult that can potentially go viral and slash the jugular of our perceived enemy. Fuck nuance. We've got a brand to not authentically but performatively build.

TERF & WOKE

One such difficult conversation in this modern day is about gender identity. It seems almost impossible to agree with the likes of Martina Navratilova who has spoken about the need to prevent transgender women from competing in women's sports without being characterized as being a hateful TERF. It also seems impossible to say that transgender women deserve to live their best lives free from bullying, without being characterized as a WOKE Libtard. Because fuck nuance.

JANUARY 6th

Another difficult conversation is about the events of January 6th. It seems impossible to on the one hand say we need to support the police whose job it is to preserve law and order without being characterized as a right wing racist. It is also risky to say that Daniel Rodriguez, Thomas Sibick and countless others who attacked Michael Fanone and other DC police on January 6th should not have received a presidential pardon without being characterized as part of the deep state. Because fuck nuance.

REDEFINING ACTIVISM

It's tempting to define activism as loud, insulting and lacking nuance. It's tempting to chase the exhilarating viral shouts and forego the smaller connections and deep conversations laced with disagreements. In many ways, our world is saying you can't unplug, and you can't speak with nuance. 

And I say,

So speak with nuance.

The Covenant of Water

 

CHARACTER CHART
I made this chart to help me keep the main characters straight in my head and heart while reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. The chart doesn't include all the characters. For example, it doesn't include a minor character named Lenin, who is the lover of Mariamma. Not Mariamma AKA Big Ammachi but Mariamma AKA the daughter of Elsie and her lover Digby. 

CASTE
Baby Mariamma grows up in India to become a brilliant doctor. During her lifetime, she sees leprocy sweeping segments of the population where a person who is normal one day becomes infected and more tragically outcast the next day, as people afraid of becoming infected designate colonies where the infected live. She also sees life through the system of caste practiced by Hindus, where individuals are born into a specific financial and social rung. There will always be rungs higher than mine and rungs lower than mine, unless my rung happens to be the bottom most. Caste is not a system where aspiration is welcomed. In other words, I can be brilliant and/or work harder than most but I can never climb up the ladder of rungs. Caste is a system where only when I accept the rung I am born into can I have a chance at a higher rung in my next life.

TWO PATHS
Lenin is a radicalized revolutionary. He is willing to commit violence if such extremism can combat the oppressive system of caste. That Mariamma who has toiled to work within a conventional and traditional path of medicine falls in love with an unconventional Lenin is both tragic and poetic as excerpted from one of the most gripping scenes of the book on page 561, as follows:

"Mariamma. Marry me! Come away with me ... She feels very naked. "Listen to you!" she hisses. "Do you hear yourself? Your arrogance? You want me to give up my life? Follow you to a cave? Do you know why I shivered to hear your story? Shivered when the constables passed under the tree? I was terrified that the next thing you would say was that you killed Sivaraman because you felt it was justified. If you had had your gun, you would have, wouldn't you?"

"I've given everything to study the body. To heal, not to harm. Lenin, you understand? But my God, if you really thought I'd go down this path of bloodshed with you, this ... this stupid path you took, not a straight path at all. If you think that, then you don't know me at all."

"And let me tell you, there's nothing heroic about what you're doing. You want to help the downtrodden? Be a social worker! Or go into politics. Join your bloody Party and run for office. No, you're still standing on rooftops waiting for a lighting bolt, playing Manrake the Magician. Grow up!"

TO LIVE THE QUESTION
This scene shook me hard because though I've never condoned the Lenins of the world, I have also understood them. Just like I don't condone the actions taken by the modern day assassin Luigi Mangione, I understand how that sort of path emerges within the context of a dysfunctional health care system, and how individuals decide to get on that radicalized path. Same goes for the radicalized red and the radicalized blue. I don't like them and I understand them.

Prior to that dramatic scene, when Mariamma and Lenin exchange letters as pen pals, Lenin foreshadows the devastating paradox of the human condition, where the cruelty of a social system is answered simultaneously by the resolve of a Mariamma to work within it, and by the resolve of a Lenin or Luigi to destroy it. Writes Lenin on page 532: "He didn't disagree that God may have other plans for me, but he said sometimes we have to 'live the question,' not push for the answer."

PATTERNS
On page 5 of the book, we are invited to consider the divine significance of patterns: The chaos and hurt in God's world are unfathomable mysteries, yet the Bible shows her that there is order beneath. As her father would say, "Faith is to know the pattern is there, even though none is visible."

Patterns sometimes emerge long after our patience and hope to see them dissipate. Long after the hope of understanding why her mother may have left her to be raised by her grandmother, Mariamma finds it back at a leprosarium where her mother Elsie has been living. A choice made to protect her daughter from contracting the disease, to give her a fighting chance at a brilliant life.

That brilliance can be found by many who view her long and impressively studied medical career. But really, the only brilliance of import is found by Mariamma and her mother at the leprosarium as they are able to move the immovable hurt aside and feel even through the glass that keeps them separate, their oneness, their love divine.