When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be: Blogging Invisible Man, Part 2

At the beginning of chapter four, the invisible man remarks that he “possessed the only identity I had ever known, and I was losing it. In this brief moment of passage I became aware of the connection between these lawns and buildings and my hopes and dreams” (99). At this point, the invisible man still regards Trueblood and the vets at the Golden Day with bitterness and suspicious and desperately clings to the Founder’s vision. When Dr. Bledsoe reprimands the narrator for taking a trustee to the slave quarters, the invisible man is profoundly disillusioned, feeling as though “black was white” (102). The narrator relates, “Dr. Bledsoe’s attitude toward Mr. Norton was the most confusing of all” (105). Bledsoe tells the invisible man, “You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist—can’t you see that? The white folk tell everybody what to think—except men like me. I tell them; that’s my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about…I’ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am” (143). Through the narrator’s conversation with Bledsoe, a more manipulative, selfish side of reality is revealed. When the narrator first arrives in the north after being suspended from school, he experiences further disillusionment: “For the first time, as I swung along the streets, I thought consciously of how I had conducted myself at home. I hadn’t worried to much about whites as people…I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me…It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable…”(168). Through his experiences, the narrator questions the viability of traveling the straight and narrow path. He felt as if he did everything in his power to make the right decisions and yet was being punished for his earnest efforts. He wonders if his grandfather had been right in his thinking. “Somehow, I convinced myself, I had violated the code and thus would have to submit to punishment” (147).

Can You See Me?: Blogging Invisible Man

Ellison uses a unique, distinct style in order to highlight the disparity between what is conceived to be there and what actually is. Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man brilliantly depicts how things are not always what they seem. Regarding the painting, Magritte once said, “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.” This theme of disparity between imagination and reality is most thoroughly conveyed through the character of the veteran who was formerly a physician. The fact that the physician is unnamed further develops the themes of invisibility and lack of individuality. The vet explains to the narrator and Mr. Norton that “neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the scorecard of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less—a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force—“(95). Neither the invisible man nor Mr. Norton see the other for who he actually is. Both are blinded in their relationships by a sense of duty, obligation, and self-preservation and a sense of fulfillment, dignity, and even self-righteousness, respectively.
In his prologue, Ellison seems to allude to how light can help reveal the truth of a man’s true station in life, a station that ought to be independent of relations with others. The narrator observes, “The truth is the light and light is the truth” (7). Ellison consciously introduces an oxymoron, a paradox, as the narrator admits, “Perhaps you’ll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form” (6). The narrator goes on to explain that without life, he is not only invisible but also formless. He relates being unaware of one’s form to living a death. At this point, it seems that the narrator desires two opposites, showing complexity in his character. Invisibility/light imagery may play a significant role in the upcoming chapters of the novel, as the narrator begins to realize and come to terms with his lightness of being.
The narrator also points out that invisibility “gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around” (8). The narrator uses this analogy of time to explain the music of Louis Armstrong in highly surrealistic terms. He explains the need to feel its vibration, a sentiment that is later echoed in the relation of one vet that Mr. Norton’s pulse is not beating, but vibrating. In a dream-like trance, the narrator says that he has become “acquainted with ambivalence,” much like J. Alfred Prufrock. William James once said, “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” At the end of the prologue, the narrator presumes that the reader assumes that he is a “horrible, irresponsible bastard,” evocative of the words of the protagonist of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Ellison uses surreal, abstract, non-concrete language to convey feelings such as apathy and disillusionment as well as responses to topics such as equality, indignation, philosophy, and existentialism. The dream-like atmosphere he creates is evocative of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, in which the narrator sees “the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.”

Two Mirrors, One Muse

Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" and Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." What do they have in common? A theme. A theme revolving around the transient, fickle nature of life's wonders, pleasures, and curiosities. Both poets accomplish one goal using very different tools and devices. While Frost's poem seems to possess an almost incantatory quality due to its steady, iambic-trimeter beat, Heaney's poem has a very conversational tone, forced by the highly irregular meter.

Sketches of a Dream: A Free-Write from the Past

Cinderella and Prince Charming. The slaveholders exploit every opportunity available to spread the institution, proliferate its victims, prolong its perniciousness, protract its duration. Laughing, dancing in the limelight. Yet no one sees them. They promenade alone. They are invisible. An illusion. Unreal. Tis all a dream. Pathos fills the open air, emptiness pervades, lingering hope evaporates. Tis not meant to be, dreams are for others. Life is meaningless: Ecclesiastes spoke the truth. Reality sets in, another day of hard labor ahead, the fantasy a mere placebo, temporary and fleeting, ephemeral, evanescent. Not for the feeble, the weary, the weak, the downtrodden, the brokenhearted is escape, rest, joy, happiness, peace...of mind, of comfort, of love. Dreams are meant for sleeping. The cynicism, the nihilism, the doubt, the unbelief that inevitably accompanies crushed hopes, broken dreams, lost causes, defeated will, dead souls manifests itself through inanition, grief, angst, agony, estrangement, confusion, inquisition eventually breeding anger, indignation, a desire for confrontation, vengeance, repudiation, restitution, reparation, equality, egalitarianism, finally succumbing to disconsolation, forlornness, solitude. Contemplation provides no solace, clockwork silence no closure. Absence of realization, epiphany, redemption, solidarity, consolation, absolution. Chivalry, morality nowhere to be found, dead, leaving the town lifeless, without vitality, diversity, energy...potential or kinetic. "The three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast...the day the music died." All ignorance toboggans into know and back to ignorance again. Social, economic, political acceptance, civil rights, equality, liberty and justice for all. False pledges, blank promissory notes and checks, hollow promises, meaningless, unfruitful branches on trees cast into the fire like a spider held over the pit, trembling in the presence of His raging wrath. It goes on and on and on, unrelenting, neverending, indefatigable. A seemingly, no indefinitely, impregnable pass, a dead end. Why not a torpedo of doom or a literal fork in the road? A last chance, perhaps? One final, desperate, life dependent attempt to make life what you want and not merely what is parceled out randomly, without regard for effort, endurance, perseverance, silent suffering, humble patience, devout servitude, unconditional gratitude, heart. Just when the oppression intolerable, the hypocrisy unbearable, the adversity unsurvivable, the tears streaming hopelessly, uncontrollably, flooding every river and stream, ebbing with a desperate plea of divine passion, knowledge, wisdom concerning humanity...and then, sudden silence. One begins thinking, "This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whisper." Waiting, wishing, though for what one is uncertain...after an interminable hush, one recognizes the vital signs still operating, the heart still beating, the limbs and communication facilities still functioning, the outside environment still very much intact. The heart saved, the burden relieved, the struggle overcome as forecasted with odd prescience that it would be someday long time ago.

The Art of...

The art of dancing in the rain, the art of war, the art of eating an Oreo cookie, the art of losing myself, the art of problem solving, the art of mending, the art of non-conformity, the art of innovation, the art of imagination, the art of possibility, the art of the photogravure, the art of farming, the art of chess, the art of strategy, the art of the prank, the art of modern mythmaking, the art of caricaturing, the art of driving, the art of storytelling, the art of botanical illustration, the art of computer programming, the art of medicine, the art of tea, the art of shredding, the art of Arabic calligraphy, the art of Asia, the art of Ancient Egypt, the art of the start, the art of questioning, the art of debate, the art of fugue, the art of rock n' roll, the art of motorcycle maintenance, the art of blogging, the art of writing, the art of slow reading, the art of conversation, the art of information, the art of failure, the art of discontent, the art of learning, the art of henna, the art of the Renaissance, the art of courtly love, the art of strength, the art of presenting, the art of memory, the art of translation, the art of illusion, the art of noises, the art of rhetoric, the art of sound, the art of sense, the art of travel, the art of worldly wisdom, the art of peace, the art of leadership, the art of making a difference, the art of changing the world, the art of choosing, the art of living, the art of action.

Doctor, Write Thyself

I recently read an article by J. Rentilly that began with the opening lines: "IT IS SAID THAT THE PEN is mightier than the sword. The larger question, raised by a long, illustrious line of physician-authors, including Anton Checkov, W. Somerset Maugham, and Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone, may be, is the pen also mightier than the stethoscope?" Verghese expounds, "I think the foremost connection between being a doctor and being a writer is the great privilege of having an intimate view of one's fellow humans, the privilege of being there and helping other people at their most vulnerable moments." His words could not more aptly express my own views regarding the benefits of the synthesis of different fields. I've often come to the conclusion that I was born in the wrong era, that I should have been a Renaissance man like Da Vinci, for I shudder at the thought of having to choose one field, one area of study to pursue. Rather, I liken my mind to a sponge, absorbing all the wonderful knowledge that is to be gained, all the while trying to evade the tragic fate of Faust or Victor Frankenstein. My passion has always been to read, to write, to analyze, to explore, to learn, to grow, to make a difference through my efforts. I desire to join Doctors Without Borders and administer medical aid in third-world countries. One student once wrote, "I should be a writer, but I will be a doctor, and out of the philosophical tension I will create a self." Complexity makes people interesting, just as struggles make people interesting, for adversity gives rise to what Sharon Creech calls "bloomability." I feel that the practice of medicine allows one to grow closer to his fellow brethren, allows him to fulfill the prophetic words of Countee Cullen: "Your grief and mine/Must intertwine/Like sea and river/Be fused and mingle/Diverse yet single/Forever and forever." Leadership fails to recognize this universality, this collective unconscious, this sum of experiences that unites humanity. The mediums, the materials, the roads are infinite, stretching on interminably until they disappear into the horizon. "Do not rush," advises the orchestra conductor. "A ritardando is like a yellow traffic light. When people see one, they try to rush right through it..." Take one step at a time; there is no need to rush. Savor the moment for all it is worth. Slow down..."Rushing and racing and running in circles, moving so fast, I'm forgetting my purpose, blur of the traffic is sending me spinning, getting nowhere..my head and my heart are colliding, chaotic, pace of the world, I just wish I could stop it..sometimes I fear that I might disappear in the blur of fast forward..." "SIMPLIFY! SIMPLIFY!" cries Thoreau. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it." A voice in the night whispers, “Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.” Legacy n. something that remains from a previous generation or time. "The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse." Classic n. something created or made, especially a work of art, music, or literature, that is generally considered to be of the highest value and of enduring value; a piece or work that stands the test of time. In the quest for originality, creativity, innovation, inspiration, imagination obstacles consistently creep up. Solomon relates his nihilistic revelation that there is nothing new under the sun. Attempting to capture all experience, all existence, all consciousness, all being, all life and fuse them into one coherent theory of everything proves to be a gedankenexperiment. Trite, hackneyed, overdone, cliché...not to mention completely and utterly ludicrous, chimerical, impossible. Interminable internal struggle...“How I wish I were not a muggle!”

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Poet

Stressed…the task at hand insurmountable. O Fortuna …would aptly describe my plight. Blasting fortune and fate and destiny for their cruelty, their indifference, their icy hostility. Everyone weep with me!! William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" had a more galvanizing message: "It matters not how strait the gate/How charged with punishments the scroll/I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Orff seems downright disconsolate while Henley wants to take control. Orff is reactive while Henley comes across as proactive (bonus points for Seven Habits of Highly Effective People terminology?) I should have been a philosopher…free-spirited conscious spirit..an ether surrounds the world...washing over us all the time...and all sorts of messages are transmitted through it...like the collective unconscious...the very meaningless of life forces a man to create his own meaning...