Belief
Swarms of ideas like flocks of bees chased me, pursued me, as I flew down the street to catch the bus.
Relief, there, on board the gliding oasis, the bumping, smelling, screeching, shifting, roaring beast that is always quiet, somehow, quiet as the moment you duck your head under the surface of the lake. Nothing under there but murky indigo-chocolate-emerald depths, slow motion, silence. On the bus, there is nothing but the gentle security of frosted windows, total anonymity, peace.
Sometimes the bus ride home is desperately necessary, so that my mind can find itself again, pull itself under the surface and be anonymous, at rest, closed inside a Bigger-Than-I. On the bus there is no need to pretend to know. Nobody knows anything on the bus.
He said to me, "I'd rather be blind than deaf; if I were deaf I couldn't hear music."
"But what about reading? What about Shakespeare?"
"Music is solace. And Shakespeare is meant to be read aloud."
When I spend time with some fellow students I become aware of my Lack-Ofs. I know just enough to know when ideas are worth listening to and I must be still. Answerless, I am, to those penetrating questions; and silent, though never silenced: silent.
I must stay silent or I will be found out. I am a pretender, an imposter. My face says, "Tell me; I understand." But I only perceive; understanding is harder. Every year I spend at the University makes the difference between what I know and what I do not know more pronounced. I am a shallow basin at best, a sieve at worst. How much do I know? Nothing, and less every year.
So I learn how to listen. And I know these others have learned the same trick. Nobody knows as much as they seem to know; we all have clever masks.
"I'd rather be deaf than blind," I said. "Reading--how could you go without reading? Books on tape?--What is that?"
"Music, though. Someone could read to me; and music would comfort me."
The University is bleak, oblique. Here there is constant noise; ideas flow so quickly past your eyes and ears and understanding [flying fish] that if you are lucky you can grasp a few in bloody palms as they flap by, but most disappear into the distance before your very eyes. Wait! One more time!--Wait! Come back!
Class after class of these flashing, flying fish, and I am stretched until I cannot bear it any longer, day after day [then long, anonymous bus rides home]. Is there nothing that cannot be challenged? --But this is a good thing, I remind myself. It is good. How will you know what you believe if you do not find out exactly why?
In between classes there are diamond-bright conversations over gritty dark coffee, and papers flutter like leaves swept up in Autumn wind. Impressions morph and change; opinions are chameleons leaping from orange tree to apple tree to fir. Sometimes, after these hurricanes, we are disoriented; and we are not sure where, exactly, we are any longer.
"I'd rather be blind than deaf," he said.
"If only it weren't for music, I'd rather be deaf."
If you are blind, masks do not matter.
[God save us from noise, from argument never resolved, from unceasing challenging of belief, from the angry sorrow of those that do not believe, from fierceness of intellect. God save us from deafness and blindness. We learn from music and from reading].
On the bus there is solace after storms of language that try to sweep you off your feet with their magnificence, their logic, their artful lack of logic. Everyone is trying to indoctrinate you, somehow, except on the bus. Nobody knows anything on the bus.
"We all wear masks," he said.
"I know. None of us are really who we show ourselves to be."
"Exactly! So how can we believe in each other?"
In the University we are struggling to make sense of floods of information and fires of opinion that overwhelm us as a matter of course. We have never been more alive; we have never been in more danger. On the bus ride home we sink below the waves and let our aching heads rest from the assault.
When we arrive, we flick on the lights and look at ourselves in mirrors and try to find out what we've learned--if we are the same as we were yesterday--if we recognize the faces staring back at us. Masks, why do we wear masks at all? None of us know anything, really. How can we believe in each other--how can we believe in anything--if we cloak it, mask it, drive it away with swarms of ideas, argument, like flocks of bees, or flying fish?
"I believe in you," I said.
[But he didn't believe me].
