Gardening in Clay: Reflections on AIDS 9781501739057

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Gardening

in

Clay

Gardening in Qay Reflections on AIDS Ronald O- Valdiserri

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON

—

This book was written by Ronald O. Valdiserri

in his private capacity.

No official support or endorsement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Copyright

is

intended or should be inferred.

© 1994 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or

parts thereof,

must not be reproduced

in

any form without permission

in writing

from the publisher. For information, address Cornell Univer-

sity Press,

Sage House,

First published 1994

512

East State Street, Ithaca,

by Cornell University

New York

14850.

Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Valdiserri,

Ronald

Gardening

reflections

:

on AIDS / Ronald O.

Valdiserri.

cm.

p.

ISBN

O., 1951

in clay

0-8014-2981-1

AIDS (Disease) — Social aspects. AIDS (Disease) — Psychological aspects. 1.

2.

RA644.A25V34 362.i'969792

I.

Title.

1994

— dc2o

93-41378

Printed in the United States of America

©

The paper

in this

book meets

American National Standard

the

minimum

requirements of the

for Information Sciences

— Permanence

of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1984.

for

Ray

Contents

Preface

ix

Weeds

i

Garden Memories

About

5

My Brother

9

Organic Chemistry of the Spirit

The Epidemiology of Anger Changing

Studying Disease Social

27 32

Mythology

Suffering

36

40

Horror Movies

43

Science Fiction

46

Patience

51

Icebergs

54

Seeing Things

Down

as

There

Memento Mori Afterlife

17

22

for the Better

Pieces of the Puzzle

13

72

They Are 62 68

58

&

Contents

Potsherds and Dinner Plates

Touch and Comfort Second Chances

80

84

Remembrance

88

Family Values

92

My Fathers Bakery

96

The Language of Flowers Gardening

Vlll

in

76

Clay

104

101

Preface

I BEGAN THIS BOOK BECAUSE

many of us continue pens only to others, In the past

I've

to see

as a disease

written about

ous challenge to our

WAS CONCERNED

AIDS from and

its secret.

"us."

a technical per-

specialists in the field

AIDS represents more than a rigor-

scientific skills, a

puzzle waiting for the right person to

open

that tOO

something that hap-

as

of "them" rather than

spective, primarily for researchers

of HIV prevention. But

I

AIDS

complex virologic

come along and

crack

This disease also presents a profound chal-

lenge to our ability to understand the thoughts

of people whose

heritage, rearing,

and

and

feelings

experiences

life

may

be strikingly different from ours. Exploring the social

cumstances of the epidemic seemed to

to be a

means

my AIDS is much more than just a medical or

of contributing to strong belief that

me

cir-

understanding, a way to express

this

public health problem. I

didn't limit

from our

arise

my

Because

my writing to social issues that influence or

many of these

sional,

HIV

society's responses to the

knowledge of this disease

is

epidemic.

more than

essays are deeply personal.

profes-

My twin

brother, Edwin, died

of HIV-related disease on Novem-

ber

finished this book.

1992, before

10,

I

His

illness

and

death and the loss of other friends and colleagues have

changed ment.

I

my

feelings

find that

I

about

life

and

my

more. Being a private person, expressing public

manner

notions of

fulfill-

cannot see things in the same way any-

hasn't

been

easy.

But

my grief in

such a

do

would

I felt

to

less

IX

a

Preface

have been to dishonor those whose

lives

have been taken by

the epidemic.

In

some ways

Gardening

these essays express

in

my own

Clay resembles a memoir, for

thoughts and feelings about

AIDS. Yet they range widely, from teenage sexuality to life after death to Edwin and his illness. In some of them I talk about the social

effects

of a particular aspect of the

epidemic; in others, the personal

effects.

They

AIDS

are arranged

here without regard to the order in which they were written,

however, and in that sense they do not form a chronicle of

my life in

or Edwin's

hope that readers

illness. I

them my firm conviction

uniformly negative event. potential to

I

make

gratefully

that the

will recognize

AIDS epidemic is not a

What we

learn

from

it

has the

us better people and enrich our society.

acknowledge the support and encourage-

ment of Kathleen Kearns

at

Cornell University Press.

my parents, Edwina and Ronald Valdiserri, for their faith in me and in this project. I am especially indebted to Raymond Bedner, Jr., for his Enduring thanks go to

patience and understanding, and for his willingness to serve as a critical reader

And whose

on the

finally, special

love

earliest versions

thanks go to

and enthusiasm have never

of these

essays.

my

brother, Edwin,

left

me.

Ronald O. Valdiserri Atlanta, Georgia

Gardening

in

Clay

Weed; The even mead, Thefreckled Wanting

cowslip, burnet,

and green

clover,

the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

Conceives by

But

that erst brought sweetly forth

idleness,

and nothing teems

hateful docks, rough

Losing both beauty and

thistles, kecksies,

burs,

utility.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Henry

Sometimes knees

among

delion,

I

think

in

V

the spring, when I'm on my hands and

the azaleas, pulling our purslane

and dan-

how wonderful gardening would be if only it Most of the time I dislike weeding,

weren't for the weeds.

when I see it as a battle. Given the enemy, I become pessimistic, thinking

especially

the

will always

them.

I

be one step ahead of me, that

can create huge

I

natural guile of that the weeds

can never defeat

mounds of compost from

eysuckle vine, chickweed, and pokeberry that

my woodland garden

beds and

survivors will have escaped tration

still

I

the hon-

remove from

hundreds of malignant

my surveillance. When my frusmy war escalates to chemical

grows past endurance,

weapons.

I

don't spray herbicides very often, though, for

I'm not proud of resorting to excessive force. Weeds,

it

seems, are truly like troubles: prodigious, vexing, and capable

of bringing out the worst

in people.

they can also coax out the best.

But

like troubles,

fa Gardening

Clay

in

Sometimes, when I'm weeding, the simple action of plunging the fork into the earth, uprooting the plant, and shaking loose the soil that clings to ing.

Plunge, pull, shake

On these

mantra.

Maybe

cal.

from an

my thoughts

occasions,

careworn time.

earlier, less

templative sensibility

when

is

this

my

that the weeds are

acting malevolently.

weeds, and

a

very sooth-

is

like a

turn philosophi-

Or maybe

con-

this

by-product of repetitious action.

mood

takes over,

I

lose the notion

enemy, that their leaves and roots are

The

nor bad; they simply

weeds,

I realize,

are neither

good

Gardens do not grow without

exist.

And

does not unfold without misfortune.

life

my

think about the way

I

roots

the strong smell of the earth loosens memories

In either case,

then

its

— repeated over and over, just

life

has been touched by

AIDS. I

can

remember

still

the

journal

of

my

I

came

across a

disorder in a medical

— long before the disease even had a name. Because training in pathology,

new

mysterious

disease.

interest in an illness that

irreparable damage.

pathogenesis, felt,

time

first

immune

description of an unusual

Even

was curious about

much

this

feeling a ghoulish

could cause such tremendous, then, before any

of us knew

destructive potential was clear,

its

perhaps,

I

remember

I

the same as the physicists

and

who

its I

first

glimpsed the horrendous possibilities of the atomic bomb.

My

scientific

detachment didn't

became more than take people

round

me

all

a

my

ing dried up.

I

places.

fertile

AIDS

life.

who

I

It

soon

began to

had hoped would

sur-

Sources of comfort and understand-

started feeling like an uprooted, disen-

franchised farmer of

green and

long;

medical curiosity for me.

knew, friends

I

live

Dust Bowl

days, driven

from once

land and forced to migrate to

unknown

&

Weeds

Over

that

aged to dissolve

AIDS manof permanence and distort my

horrible decade of

first

my

sense

perception of time. Before AIDS, misfortune.

I

know much about

thought about the future primarily

achievements. After also has the

debut,

didn't

I

of its potential to bring me more

me

its

AIDS,

I

understood that the future

Now

seems that nothing

it

quick enough for me; everything takes too long. internal clock has been

moment

terms

power to disappoint. That knowledge has made

supremely impatient.

my

in

and greater

gratification

wound

I feel

is

as if

so tightly that at any

the hands might go spinning clean off the face, so

rapidly are they going around

AIDS

changed

my

and around.

professional

life as well. I

had been

content to study disease from a distance, behind a microscope.

As

thought about

a pathologist I

a disruption in

normal physiology, and

the contributions

I

illness primarily as I

was

satisfied

with

could make to patient care by diag-

nosing unusual tumors and peculiar lesions. But after the

my

epidemic took hold,

waned.

interest in

abnormal physiology

The accurate diagnosis of diseases,

though

it is

an essential step in patient

including

care,

AIDS,

had become

too passive for me, seemed to imply acceptance of the inevitability

disease, I

I

of illness.

No

longer satisfied with identifying

wanted to learn how to prevent

it

from occurring.

who were already trying to epidemic. And so, after I finished my

was determined to join those

stop the spread of the public health degree,

pathologist to

work

I

left

my

full-time

job as a university-based

on AIDS prevention

at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It

would be easy to assume

often associated with

those all

it

loss,

that the

AIDS

generates nothing but sorrow in

touches, that the personal adjustments

negative.

I

find,

on the

epidemic, so

contrary, that

we make

AIDS

are

has helped

3

fa Gardening

me to

in

Clay

clarify just

what does and does not matter during our

brief time in this world.

away from me, but

it

The epidemic me

has not taken hope the inadequacy of

has taught

looking toward the future as a means of rescue from the

AIDS has shown me that hope is strongest in us when we seek our fulfillment in the circumstances of the present, when we refuse to defer our dreams or to accept present.

defeat.

Sometimes when I'm working

in

my

garden,

how

about the invasiveness of weeds and disease, pear in the garden, in the

human

I

think

they ap-

population, uninvited,

unwelcome, capable of causing tremendous destruction left

unattended. Yes,

tacular act existence.

it

would be wonderful

of God or nature would banish

Gardeners dream that

they'll

if

some

if

spec-

AIDS from

our

awake some morn-

ing to find that the crabgrass has magically departed from the perennial beds. Weeds, though, whether real or metaphorical, will not be banished. Pain

our existence

in a

weeds from engulfing the garden justice

and

temporal world. is

loss are intrinsic to

The

best

not to

way

rail at

to keep

the in-

of fate but to get down on our hands and knees and

begin clearing them away.

Garden Memories Though nothing can bring back

Of splendour in We

the grass,

the

hour

of glory in the flower;

will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind.

WORDSWORTH

WILLIAM

"Intimations of Immortality'

1 can't remember a time when plants

and gardens. Even when

I

was

I

wasn't interested in

first

learning to walk,

remember being awed by the neat rows of ruffled

my

grandfather Vincenzo s terraced vegetable garden

pecially the color.

Not many

I

lettuce in

— es-

shades of green can compete

with the hue of well-tended leaf lettuce; the closest

rivals

might be the color of emerging spring grass or summer creek moss. Even as an adult, green,

my mind

returns to

when

I

hear or read the word

my grandfather's lettuce patch. my standard of greenness.

Forever, those plants will be

My mother's parents lived in a shingled house in a small steel-mill

town

in

western Pennsylvania. In the back

my

grandfather grew his vegetables, and in front, in the few feet

between the porch and the sidewalk,

grew her

flowers. I

was

far

my grandmother Anna

too young to

know

the

names of

the brightly colored blooms, but zinnias and four o'clocks

grown from seed were popular among the immigrant families

in

who lived along the street. One plant in particular stays

my memory.

In retrospect

I

think

it

must have been

5

a

— fa Gardening

dahlia

in

Clay

— not the dwarf, chrysanthemum-flowered kind but

the spectacularly

enormous "dinner

Imagine their

sive.

on

effect

with a vividly colored flower looking

at that dahlia

me. After

all,

conversations

and

Even to

plate" dahlia.

mass of these showy flowers

adults, the sheer

impres-

is

brought face-to-face

a child

as big as his head. I

actually expecting

it

remember

to speak to

the flowers in the cartoons often conducted

among

themselves and with visitors to the

garden.

Those rambles love

of fragrance

who

lived in

the time

I

my

in

owe

I

grandparents' garden gave

of the color and form of

earliest appreciation

to

Mike and

me my

plants.

My

Beryl, an older couple

our neighborhood when

was young. About

I

turned eight, Beryl died and Mike sold the house

and moved away. But while they

lived there, the

grounds

surrounding their house were always well maintained, for they were both avid gardeners. shrubs, a grape

hood

trellis

I

— reputed among the older neighbor-

kids to be a favorite meeting place for copperheads

what made the greatest impres-

and

several flower beds, but

sion

on me was the densely grown

Never before had I

I

bed of lily of the

and sharp

realize that

as in marigolds.

up next

fragrance of those

many

maple.

flowers have a

whether sweet and pleasant

ence, whatever scent a flower

to get right

silver

smelled anything so wonderful. By that

was old enough to

distinctive aroma,

acrid

circular

which surrounded the trunk of an old

valley

time

banks of flowering

recall

to the

lilies

But

in

my

had was so

bloom

of the

as in roses or

previous experi-

faint that

you had it.

The

the

air. I

in order to smell

valley,

though,

filled

was fascinated that blooms so small could produce so powerful and rich.

Who

would have guessed

nary flowers were capable of such

feats?

a scent

that ordi-

fa

Garden Memories

There were other gardens taught

in

my childhood, and each one

me something new. I learned how to identify plants leaves, how to prune roses, and how to make plants

by their

bushier by pinching back. tation,

moving

trillium

woods behind our house yard.

The

I

experimented with transplan-

and jack-in-the-pulpit from the

who grew

neighbors

of the back-

to a shady corner

vegetables taught

me

that

zucchini must be picked as small as possible, for age makes

them

fibrous

My

and bland. Gardeners never stop learning.

By the time Edwin

brother, too, was a gardener.

started his last garden he was visibly

ill.

Early on, the

infected person can appear so utterly robust that cult to imagine the seriousness

HIV-

it is diffi-

of the underlying

disease.

Edwin had passed beyond that stage; now anyone could look at him and tell that he was sick. No longer able to work, he had moved to a smaller house. His arms and legs were as thin in his

own

as sapling

branches in early spring, and his

words, had become "fiery bags of water."

seldom complained, though

I

know he

felt

the time. Yet for an hour or so each day he his backyard, lurching

cultivated garden.

poorly most of

in his

in

newly

chores were far too stren-

uous for him. Friends had to haul the all

He

would putter

from one bed to the next

Most garden

feet,

soil

supplements, and

the trees and shrubs were installed by the local nursery.

But for short periods of time he could

still

weed, plant, and

water.

He worked

relentlessly to

complete that garden, ani-

mated not so much by enthusiasm plotted his progress season. Ivy

as

by determination.

month by month during

and pachysandra beds followed the

I

the growing installation

of the blue spruce and the dogwood. Next came the clematis trellis

and

a tight circle

of mountain

laurel

around

a bird

fa Gardening

in

Clay

bath, then a rudbeckia patch.

On it went until most of the

small plot of land surrounding his house was given over to garden.

People garden for

and

many reasons, some

practical

and oth-

My grandfather grew vegetables, first in Italy Pennsylvania, to eat them. My grandmother

ers aesthetic.

later in

raised flowers

and Beryl and Mike planted

because they gave pleasure to the senses.

lily

My

of the

valley

brother had

other reasons to garden. Although we never talked about

it,

know that his last garden was a link to life at a time when so much of his attention was focused on dying. In his garI

den he could forget about medicines and doctor's

visits.

He

could temporarily ignore the litany of loss being orchestrated by the virus that was slowly destroying him: less free-

dom

to move, difficulty in

remembering what hed had

lunch the day before, embarrassment recall the

words for simple everyday

at

for

not being able to

objects. In his garden

Edwin could think about growing and blooming.

It

was a

place where disease could be controlled and blight prevented, where daisies and

morning

glories

dancing

wind could give him a sense of accomplishment, that those

in the

a sweetness

of us around him, consumed by our worry and

anger, simply could not provide.

Of course the

both of us always referred to

most ordinary terms, but we knew

nary, that

it

was his

last.

From my

that

it

his garden in

was not ordi-

brother's last garden

I

learned about strength and courage, about the dignity that

comes from refusing approaches.

to turn away

from

living even as

death

About

My Brother

How

we

often are

In every friend we

to die before

lose

we go

quite off this stage?

a part of ourselves,

and

the best part.

ALEXANDER POPE letter to

.Disease does it

also chips

and

later, as

away

Jonathan Swift, December

at identity, at first carving off tiny slivers

the illness progresses, larger and larger chunks.

body weight, skin tone and

AIDS, changes

texture, even the ability to

document the progression of viral The image in the mirror is no longer familiar. normally,

bare.

1732

more than rob the body of function:

In a serious progressive illness such as

body

5,

low; in

Parts of the

taut

some

instances

Strong, purposeful

tremulous.

taneous

now

and supple skin has turned flabby and it is

And

sal-

covered with bulbous patches

of swollen purple, attached with the tenacity of

eyes.

walk

destruction.

that were once covered by lovely soft hair are

The

in

movement has become

the face, lacking

its

leeches.

tentative

and

padding of subcu-

suddenly dominated by lost and plaintive

fat, is

This physical transfiguration signals equally pro-

found, though

less readily

sick person has

come

apparent, changes in the

to think about

disease advances, the person

who

way the

him /herself. As

is ill

the

moves from inde-

pendence to dependence, from feeling carefree to being careworn.

&

Gardening

But

not

it's

Clay

in

metamorphosis of serious

chic

who

person

just the sick

experiences the psy-

Those of us who

illness.

emotional proximity change

are in close

Like sub-

as well.

atomic particles being acted upon by some unseen energy field,

sicker

we

process it.

shift

and

and reconfigure

The

sicker.

I

know,

its

into the

at the

end of

happened to me with

my

illness.

Humans

not solitary creatures.

are

social interaction.

mean

person we love gets

we held going

not the same one that we leave with

is

Disease changes you.

brothers

as the

identity that

very

little

Our

We

were built for

emotions, our hopes, and our fears

outside the context of our personal rela-

tionships, whether sublime or damnable. Identity

is diffi-

cult to define without reference to the perceptions

and

pectations of those

and

friends. If

about

us,

we

we

love,

our

someone we

families, spouses, partners,

care about thinks

good things

love have great influence

profoundly changed

The

on our

expectations of those

we

So when they

are

actions.

— whether through serious — we can't help but

illness,

manent absence, or death changes in our I

and

own

how

I

per-

experience

identities.

myself have always been a twin. That's that's

and

are likely to internalize those perceptions

think of ourselves as good.

ex-

was

raised.

When my

how

I

was born

brother and

I

were

tandem so

that

we could be

close to each other throughout the night

and

in the early

infants our cribs were placed

in

morning before our mother came

Our

in to feed

early lives were spent in each other's

truthfully,

I

and change

us.

company, and

have only a handful of childhood memories

that don't involve Edwin.

Our

family tended to react to us

as a pair, often calling us "Twin," instead

of using our given

names. As was the practice then, we were dressed

in

match-

ing clothing, and because the resemblance between us was

10

About

we were often mistaken

so strong,

occasion, by our parents. ily lore

has

only our

it

sister,

two years

for each other

^

— even, on

Whether true or apocryphal, fam-

that during the

degree of certainty.

My Brother

first

older,

When

three years

could

we were

tell

of our

lives

us apart with any

children, whatever

we

did was done together: building dams along the creek be-

hind our house, getting lost together in the woods, or joining forces to devise

some new form of torment

for our

When one of us was punished, the other

beleaguered

sister.

would sulk

as well.

During adolescence, when each of us began to to those qualities that

made him

lay claim

unique, the physical and

psychic closeness of our childhood relationship added an

burden to the chore of becoming adult. There was a

extra

period of time personal

when each of us viewed our twinship

liability,

individualities.

as a

an impediment to attaining our separate

Because of this conflict,

my own

emotional

adolescence lasted well beyond the physical transition of

developing facial hair and a deeper voice. But with time and the experience of relationships

main,

I

gained perspective on

beyond the twinship do-

who

I

was,

on what made me

accepted the inevitable differences between

distinct. I

brother and me, but

I

never stopped loving him, and

my

I al-

ways took special comfort in the knowledge that he understood

me

better than anyone else.

Because of his eventuality

illness, I

have begun to think about the

of no longer being

someone who knows me so

a twin,

well that

no longer having

we can speak

to each

other using acronyms, abbreviations, and a kind of verbal

shorthand

— a practice dating back to our childhood. I'm

angry,

no doubt

who

love so

I

selfishly, at

much

the thought of having a person

taken away from me, and I'm fright-

ened. After a lifetime of defining myself in terms of this

ii

Gardening

ft*

in

Clay

bond between

special

think about

of myself as

who

I

the two of us,

will

a twin? I

be after he

know

is

I

find

it

gone. Will

that those

who

difficult to I still

think

have lost their

spouses or their children through death must go through similar agonies. It isn't

Our roles

in great part create

after years

of being exactly

one's identity

must be

they have lost an the limb

is

that.

arm or

leg

Lately,

The

identities.

pain of losing part of

pain that people

like the

gone, they continue to feel a

my

feel after

through amputation. Although

where the arm or leg used to

my

our

easy to stop feeling like a husband, a wife, or a parent

phantom pain from

be.

thoughts have turned to reminiscing about

childhood.

The

familiarity

of the past

is

a soothing

antidote to the turmoil of the present and the uncertainty

of the

future.

One of my

favorite

photographs, taken on a

Christmas Eve nearly four decades ago, shows

me hugging

and

respective cribs.

my

brother

each other, leaning across the ends of our I

know

that

it

was Christmas Eve because

of our mother's compulsion to date and

label each

and

every one of the hundreds of photographs she took of our family.

eyes

the

Even

knobby bars of that

12

I can close my my brother across

today, nearly forty years later,

and remember what

it

felt like

crib. I

to

swear

hug I

can.

Organic Chemistry of the Spirit AsJar

we

as

existence

can discern,

is to

the sole

purpose of human

kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

CARL GUSTAV JUNG Memories, Dreams, Refections

I don't think there's anything worse than having to watch

The

someone you

love die.

me that what the existential human existence is true: anguish is a

experience has taught

philosophers say about

common emotion.

But "taught"

is

such a puny word for the

kind of realization I'm talking about. Think of a lake it

and makes your bones ache even

after you've

the shore. Everyone

you the water

do you

really

Watching emotions

in

distraction

think about ize that

I

is

frigid,

is

of

away

run out onto

has been in before you has told

but only when you yourself plunge in

understand

my

how

cruelly cold

it is.

brother sicken has raised

many

different

me. Sometimes when I'm alone, without the

my work or other people to occupy me, I Edwin and cry. Other times I'm elated to real-

of

have been spared, at least for the present, from

having to confront relief

who

full

takes your breath

icy water, the kind that's so cold

my own

inevitable death.

often followed by guilt

This joyful

— wondering why

it

wasn't

me — or

worse, sudden flashes of profound anxiety during

which

see life as a relentless landscape

I

of disease and mis-

*3

fc Gardening

ery.

in

Clay

The anger is there all the time, though. It isn't red-faced, That

hand-flailing, raging-at-the-fates anger.

beginning and an end. This anger fined or so cathartic.

low

glass tints

light

coming honestly

I

and distorts everything

I

at least has a

nearly so well de-

a grotesque lens,

It's

whose wavy

see

and do,

me and all of it passing out. don't know what will happen to me

all

yel-

the

in to

drama of illness progresses the

isn't

to

its

as this

inevitable conclusion.

On

bad days I marvel that so many can ignore the depth and

magnitude of the misery surrounding

us,

and

will never

be able to regain any lightness of

good days

I

like to

think that

because of this ordeal.

change

me

The

I

will

adversities, Carl

that the essence

make

On

that

is

the

person it

will

found

his followers

parallels

of the precious was trapped within the

and they labored to

seized

as they experience

of alchemy. The alchemists believed find the precise process that

would transmute base elements into

why Jung

a better

only certainty

Jung and

to the fabled practice

ordinary,

fear that I

permanently.

In the adjustments individuals life's

become

I

spirit.

on

gold.

this analogy: his life

easy to see

It's

was devoted to

helping people turn their painful and brutal experiences into opportunities for strengthening and purifying the spirit.

The

alchemists never

managed

but they did pioneer the

new

to change lead into gold,

science of chemistry.

They

perfected such techniques as distillation and recrystallization,

which were necessary for more

inquiries. Several centuries later,

I

scientifically

used some of these same

techniques in the organic chemistry course students were required to take.

day morning during sense of dread as

H

I

sound

How I hated

my sophomore

visualized the walk

year, I

from

premedical

all it.

Every week-

woke with

my

a

dormitory

Organic Chemistry of the Spirit

fa

to the building where the lectures were held. It wasn't just that the class was difficult,

me me

though surely

was.

it

What made

so anxious was the gnawing doubt that remained with that entire year, the uncertainty that

stood what was going on

in the class.

I

ever really under-

to write

and how the

the formulas describing halogenation ture

I

knew how

of an aldehyde differed from that of a ketone.

struc-

I

could

even do a passable job of describing covalent bonds. But

was unable to blend these separate

bits

of information

gether in any meaningful, systematic way. the laboratory course staying

up

I

I

to-

suffered through

work and passed each of the tests, I even managed

night beforehand if need be.

all

end of the

to get a "B" at the

year,

but

my understanding of memori-

organic chemistry never progressed beyond mere

zation of facts.

I

failed to achieve

alchemy in

this

academic

endeavor, unable to transmute the information presented into precious knowledge. I

remember looking around

the lecture hall, trying to

discern if the other students were as confused as

Most of us, being

I

was.

highly competitive premeds, weren't in

the habit of sharing our doubts or expressing our insecurities publicly.

And so

I

was

left

picion that everyone else but

only one

so

who

couldn't put

with the uncomfortable sus-

me understood

it all

But this time things have to be different. The stakes are much higher. I have to be able to understand what all this

means

— not

just

with

my

head but also with

could pass organic chemistry without it,

was the

I

it;

together.

and then

I

this ugly

love

soul. I

understanding

could go on to become a doctor and to pursue

a career in public health, but

Alchemy

really

my

101. I

am

I

know

the same

isn't

absolutely certain that unless

I

true for

can turn

and sad experience into an opportunity to grow in

and understanding,

I

will perish emotionally.

i5

^

Gardening

With I

all

in

Clay

my heart,

I

wish that things were

different, that

didn't find myself writing essays about death

Since

I can't

my

next best option

is

search for the gold in this dross. If the one

the process of learning what

it

means.

loss.

in this

to continue to I

love so

can bear the pain and infirmity of disease, then

16

me

change the circumstances that put

position, however,

and

I

much

can suffer

The Epidemiology of Anger Me

miserable!

Which way

Infinite wrath,

and

Which way Ifiy

And

is

Hell; myself

in the lowest deep a

Still threatening to

To which

the

shall IJly

infinite despair?

am

Hell;

lower deep

devour

me

opens wide,

Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.

JOHN MILTON Paradise Lost

Once, when lecture

I

on the history

was doing library research for a of epidemics, I came across an item

about the bubonic plague in medieval

was describing

of

pects

its

sudden and profound

society, including art.

little-known portrait of the

was

in

extremis,

Italy.

The

historian

on

effects

As an example, he

Madonna

already partially

in

all as-

cited a

which the subject

consumed by toads and

snakes.

Though

the

book contained no reproductions of

painting, the image that level

of despair led the

it

evoked has never

artist to depict the

left

victim, a body, like so

to be tossed into the

The

the

What

mother of Christ

not with her usual serene transcendence but

and decomposing

me.

as a diseased

many

others,

soon

gruesome anonymity of the plague pit?

Black Death had become so pervasive that even a re-

vered

symbol of Christianity could not escape

Six centuries later,

I

can

its

grasp.

feel the artists rage. I

wonder

17

&

Gardening

Clay

in

how many of his lence. I

town as

and family were taken by the

imagine the helplessness he

felt as

Did

the artist

succumb

pesti-

he watched his

would never again be

wither, realizing that his world

was.

it

friends

was he one of

as well, or

the survivors left to cope with the pain and loss? Since 1985,

when

I first

came upon the description of that

has reminded

me of

the anger of people

personally touched by the Its

AIDS

Much

of

who

who

have

a swift, painless demise; the course

of

HIV dis-

AIDS

Nor is

is

bethis

slow and

punctuated by such miserable landmarks

blindness, paralysis,

and dementia.

several years ago after a long disease.

have been

do with

their anger has to

ing forced to face death decades prematurely.

debilitating,

Sometime

I

a friend

who

and painful struggle with

companion came

my

side in a shaking, spidery script

"Sometimes the rage keeps me up This kind of anger reasons for hope.

had

after his funeral, while sorting

his possessions, his

is

We

it

epidemic.

not surprising that many people

ease are angry.

painting,

all

as

died

HIV

through

across his diary. In-

friend

had

written:

night."

understandable. Certainly, there are

enter the second decade of the epi-

demic with treatments, whereas ten years ago there were none, and every day brings us closer to a cure. But people

who too

have this disease today realize that the cure

late for

and stamina by stroying

may be

them. They're being cheated out of time, calm, a virus that

them from

is

slowly and completely de-

the inside out.

They

are

angry

at hav-

ing to admit to themselves that twentieth-century medicine, so often seen as

them.

They

omnipotent,

is

powerless to rescue

hurt from the infection and from the insinua-

and

this, too,

have seen media images of

ACT-UP,

tions that their circumstances are deserved,

makes them angry.

Most Americans

18

fa

The Epidemiology of Anger

the

AIDS

Coalition to Unleash Power, which was begun

within the gay

community by

the playwright Larry Kramer.

These men and women have adopted an angry, confrontational public persona. siastical,

the group

cities It's

and

to prevent

who

and

certainly,

men.

have stormed economic, eccle-

medical, and legislative bastions

more be done

can

They

HIV

have

of them

all

AIDS

treat

HIV

demanding

disease.

that

Those

in

disease are angry for themselves,

are

angry because in

many Ameri-

has killed unbelievable numbers of gay

not a matter of having lost one or two friends to

this epidemic:

many gay men have lost ten, twenty- five,

even

more. Entire communities have perished. Grief

not quantifiable, and the pain that comes from

is

losing one person

we

love

may be no less profound than the

pain that comes from losing many.

happens when a group bers.

The members

just in

Still,

something unique

suffers the destruction

as a

group

staggering losses,

it

ACT-UP's angry denunciation of

survival.

cion that society

drug

it

is

are

AIDS

approves the carnage

epidemic

or,

among homosex-

and other "undesirables." not the only ones

as a threat to

group

who

survival.

of transmission have been firmly persists

society for

voices a collective suspi-

recklessly indifferent to the

tacitly

users,

Gay men demic

the

begins to react in ways that will ensure

not doing enough to stop

worse, that

threat. It

all this is

almost secondary. Because the group has had

virus: that's

uals,

mem-

begin to perceive the misfortune not

terms of individual loss but also

doesn't matter that the ultimate culprit in

its

of its

see the

Long

AIDS

epi-

after its routes

established, the suspicion

among some African Americans

that

HIV was cre-

ated in the laboratory by white scientists purposely to destroy people

of

color.

Although the majority of African

Americans don't believe

this story, the

numbers who do

19

fa Gardening

in

Clay

not inconsequential. To scoff

are

at these suspicions or to

view them as resulting solely from inadequate information misses the point by a mile. Consider

how men, women, and HIV toll. Then

children of color are overrepresented in the

take a look at other health indices for racial minorities in this country.

And

don't forget the Tuskegee experiment, in

which government researchers studied black men, without their

informed consent, to learn more about the conse-

quences of untreated

keep

syphilis. Finally,

in

mind

that in

our own century, and not too many years ago, the world was witness to publicly funded, nationally orchestrated genocide under Hitler's

Third Reich. Although reason balks

the notion that the

HIV

epidemic

a racist plot,

is

at

some

African Americans might well have a different perspective.

When

we consider how the epidemic has

communities and take into account the ence of African Americans, persistent suspicions

Of course HIV

is

it

becomes

affected their

historical experi-

easier to

understand

of genocide. not premeditated genocide, either of

African Americans or of gay men, but though we must reject these allegations,

and the ease

is

we ought not

historical perspectives

more than

to ignore the feelings

from which they

When groups — whether — are unequally affected by an

a social experience.

or behavioral

the disease

is

life-threatening,

may come

to

survival.

in addition, these

ally

If,

it is

also

racial, ethnic,

illness,

begin to interpret the experience from a group

And when

derive. Dis-

a personal physiological process;

they will

perspective.

group

survival

seem even more important than individual groups are minorities, gener-

recognized as having characteristics that

from the remainder of society,

feelings

set

them apart

of persecution

will

AIDS

epi-

intensify their rage.

Among zo

all

the social issues involved in the

1$

The Epidemiology of Anger

demic, recognizing and accepting the anger of minority

groups

might seem inconsequential.

as legitimate

from working with community groups that confrontation viders

is

no

one's idea

and planners of AIDS-related health

willing to listen to

perspective

what

a

are telling

isn't

of

The message

bly foster cooperation,

who

of officialdom,

them

is

its

not

own

in effect

"Your

That kind of message

survival

can't possi-

and without cooperation, preven-

tion programs can't work.

tives

pro-

services are

their concerns don't

the group will hear

interest to us."

groups, the ones

and

Angry

if the

group has to say about

on the epidemic, we

that their feelings aren't important

matter.

not.

it is

of enjoyment, but

know

I

are

We

must understand

that these

profoundly suspicious of the mo-

are the very

same ones who

are being

asked to work with governmental health agencies to stop the further spread of

HIV in their communities.

The anger engendered by AIDS is complex. Like all human emotions, it contains both beneficial and destructive elements. In our rush to halt the spread of the virus,

must never minimize the anger of those whose

lives

we

have

been affected by the epidemic, or mistakenly assume that is

solely the

spread,

consequence of individual

loss.

it

Anger, too, can

from person to person and from one generation to

the next. If we don't understand

its

genesis or

its

ability to

foster mistrust, the consequences will be fatal.

21

Changing for the Better Change

is

not

made without

inconvenience, even from worse

to better.

RICHARD HOOKER English Dictionary

(Johnson)

JVlOST EVERYONE WANTS TO BE HEALTHY. If asked point-blank, few of us would indicate a preference for ness or agree to a forfeiture of health. Yet

healthy things.

We eat too

ill-

we often do un-

much, we use alcohol and other

drugs to help us cope with our sorrows and our

stresses,

and we have sex without taking precautions to prevent pregnancy or

Why

disease.

do we behave

this

way

if

we

really

want to be healthy? This

is

who

not a new question to those

provide health services, but

AIDS

Why

it

study health or

has gotten increased attention

when we know something is harmful or potentially harmful to us, we may do it anyway? To begin to unravel this paradox, keep in mind that in the

HIV

is

era.

is it

that even

spread through certain specific behaviors.

AIDS-prevention

specialists are really trying to influence

behavior, not knowledge. Ultimately,

is

AIDS

if

he be-

AIDS couldn't possibly happen to him and so he

needn't bother to use a

tion

condom.

I

don't

mean

that educa-

worthless, only that changing behavior requires

than just supplying the reasons

22

is

doesn't matter if a

it

teenager scores a hundred on a quiz about lieves that

What

why

it's

wise to do so.

more

Changing for

Its

the Better

fa

important not to have unrealistic expectations of

what education, by

AIDS. Early

itself,

can do to prevent the spread of

people were fond of saying

in the epidemic,

that "education

we have

the only vaccine

is

but the analogy always struck

me

receive an influenza vaccination,

as peculiar.

we

AIDS,"

against

When

we

don't consciously will

our immune systems to produce neutralizing antibodies: it

just

happens.

Nor do we

have to remember to use our

antibodies against the influenza virus; they are activated

We

automatically.

become

fully protected against the flu

without any conscious effort beyond getting the shot. Education, though,

a different

is

kind of health intervention.

We can teach people that HIV is transmitted sexually, that people are usually infected for a long time before they develop any outward signs or symptoms, and that having sex

without a

and

still

condom

is

risky,

but

its possible to

know

all this

have sex without taking appropriate precautions.

Why? The

simple truth

is

that the factors that influence our

behavior are extremely complicated. Accurate information is

important, but not necessarily decisive.

think, but

we

take chances.

The

people

We

is

course

can change our behavior, but not

who make

have learned that even

change

Of

also fear, hope, trust, doubt, love, lust,

a living studying

when

extremely desirable

of contracting

the expected

—

say,

human

we and

easily.

behavior

outcome of the

decreasing one's chances

HIV infection by the consistent and correct

use of condoms

— there are likely to be substantial impedi-

ments to adopting nificantly affected

it.

The

behavior of an individual

by the behavior of the group with

that person identifies, for example,

is

sig-

whom

and by that person's

confidence in his or her ability to change. Behavioral scientists

advise us to think about the process of changing an

23

fa Gardening

in

Clay

unhealthy behavior for a healthy one

as a staircase to

rather than a chalk line to step across.

And when

plain these things, they use such words as peer group,

and behavioral

self-efficacy,

Many skeptical tion,

I

climb

they ex-

norm,

stage.

other people, however, even learned people, are

my work

of such notions. In

with

AIDS

preven-

have encountered researchers in basic science

who

consider the social sciences lightweight, chagrined legislators

who

expect permanent and complete behavior change

after a single prevention counseling session,

philes

who

and techno-

have no use for low-tech behavioral interven-

tions that are based

on the

ability

of the health care pro-

vider to listen, empathize, and negotiate.

been trained

in disciplines

Those who have

where phenomena

are highly

predictable and well explained by existing theories perhaps

tend to see behavior in the same way that they would view a chemical reaction or a mathematical equation: "If we add quantity

X

quantity

Y of healthy

differences

moral

of education of person

A, the

outcome

will

be

may attribute the between what people know and how they act to

failings.

behavior." Others

Instead of seeing education alone as inade-

quate to change behavior, the moralists regard unhealthy behavior as a lack of willpower

or,

worse, a conscious choice

of "bad" behavior over "good." According to ple

who

have been warned about

AIDS

this view,

peo-

but yet "choose to

break the rules" by practicing unsafe behaviors have done

something wrong, and

aren't

people

who

break the rules

supposed to be punished?

Changing

for the better

is

there are further intricacies yet.

and

differing perspectives

to achieve health. iest

a

complicated process, but

There can be disagreement

on the

specific actions necessary

From the scientist s viewpoint, the health-

behaviors are those that carry no

24

risk.

But

realistically,

Changing for

?£

the Better

may be easier to adopt than riskThink about a married couple where the

risk-minimizing options eliminating ones.

man

is

HIV and

infected with

would agree becoming

that

infected.

the

woman

not. Everyone

is

important to prevent the

it is

The

surest

woman from

means of avoiding

sexual

transmission would be abstinence. But this option might

not be acceptable to the couple. Instead they to use

condoms. Because they

rather than eliminating

We

unhealthy?

decide

minimizing their

are

risk

does this make their behavior

it,

agree that

may

HIV

infection

is

catastrophic,

but our consensus certainly doesn't extend to means of prevention.

Should we make condoms

available to adolescents

or do we stress the importance of delaying sex?

at school,

Should gay men be advised to avoid anal intercourse

al-

together or encouraged to think about condom-protected anal intercourse as sexually

make

clean needles

way to prevent

more people

and sensually

and syringes

HIV

itself a scientifically

we can

do with how strong our hearts being,

it

and

also

it is

values. Stated will

drug users

we

as a

we only encourage

to inject drugs?

Nor is health

but

available to

transmission, will

discrete chemical substance

teries,

fulfilling? If

measurable quantity, a test for.

Health has to

and how clean our

are

ar-

embraces our sense of fulfillment and well-

enmeshed with both individual and group

most

simplv,

what may seem healthy to some

be considered unhealthy by others.

When

we

talk

havior to avoid that the clients

about getting healthy or changing be-

HIV

infection,

who come

it is

essential to

into our clinics or

remember whom we

encounter on street corners or in neighborhood gathering places

must participate

in decisions

about their

own health.

Public health professionals, whether Ph.D. researchers or recovering drug users doing street outreach, should never be

*5

fa Gardening

in

Clay

in the position to dictate behavior or tell

people what

is

best for them. Instead, they should help clients clarify their

own needs and develop risk

of

HIV

who run is

infection. If

the risk of

they need to

26

the behavioral skills to reduce their

we

listen carefully to the

people

HIV infection, they will tell us what it

live safer lives.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Not

only

there

is

is

there but one

only one

way

way

of doing things

rightly,

of seeing them, and that

is,

hut

seeing the

whole of them.

JOHN RUSKIN The

During the middle

some French

ages,

blamed the bubonic plague on

Two

Paths

scholars

stupendous astrological

a

mishap; nineteenth-century physicians believed that certain

Hun-

personality types were prone to develop tuberculosis.

dreds of years of study have invalidated these erroneous

We

about health and disease.

beliefs

planets for epidemics,

no longer blame the

and we've known for more than a

century that tuberculosis

is

caused by a bacterium, not by a

mental attitude. Yet one myth, which

fatalistic

may be

the

most deeply rooted of all, remains

— that the loss of health,

especially to a preventable disease,

is

essentially the result

of

individual malfeasance.

When many of the leading causes try result

tribute all,

ill

who

from preventable

it is

in this

coun-

tempting to

at-

know that eating too much fat will clog the

arteries, that cigarette

smoking

that unprotected sex in the time

consequences? arette

of death

health to lapses in individual responsibility. After

doesn't

coronary

diseases,

It is

is

dangerous, and

of AIDS can have deadly

tempting to believe that overweight

cig-

smokers who die of heart disease and promiscuous

27

&

Gardening

in

Clay

who become

persons

infected with

HIV are solely to blame

for their circumstances. Certainly,

wrong

individual behavior

to place

important, but

is

it's

the responsibility for achieving and

all

maintaining health on the individual, while ignoring the social determinants. It

no

is

less

misguided than the belief

from ominous planetary conjunctions.

that disease results

Society exerts significant influences over us which ultimately affect our health.

how we Laws

What we

earn our living are to

some

eat,

where we

and

live,

extent socially dictated.

regulate other aspects of our behavior, especially sex-

ual practices

and drug

use.

Through mass communications

media, we are urged toward certain consumer behaviors that affect health.

And

societal decisions

about where and

how

to spend resources, especially with regard to medical care

and prevention

services, have

personal health. In these and

profound ramifications for

many

subtler ways, social in-

fluences are manifest in individual health.

A

New York City neighborhoods with a high incidence of HIV are group of medical geographers has shown that

also seriously deficient in such municipal services as gar-

bage collection and

fire

protection.

that urban decay causes

AIDS?

Does

mean

Certainly not. That's like

saying that rotten meat causes bacteria fore

this finding

— a popular idea be-

we understood much about microorganisms. But

it

does suggest that the conditions that lead to urban decay

may

also help the transmission

indirectly. as

The economic

of HIV, either

decline of these neighborhoods,

evidenced by a tax base so weakened that

cover the basic municipal services that granted, tures,

may mirror

a

directly or

more

it

can no longer

most of us take

for

serious decline in social struc-

mores, and expectations about the future. In such an

environment, individual preventive action, by

28

itself,

may

Puzzle

Pieces of the

be inadequate to stop the

AIDS

epidemic because the so-

circumstances supporting continued transmission are

cial

much more

We

powerful.

an intricately interwoven social ecosystem,

live in

where changes in one part create disruptions in others cluding health.

A

downturn

First

is

in a

multitude of ways.

and most obvious, economic stagnation lessens the

ability

of the

HIV

who

HIV

— in-

economy, for example,

in the

can increase transmission of

as

fa

state to offer

HIV-prevention services such

counseling and testing to

live in

communities where the

its

and those

citizens,

risk

of

HIV

infection

greatest often cannot afford to obtain these services

A

through private sources.

poor economy

is

less

obvious consequence of a

increased stress

work. During times of

stress,

on people who

some

are

out of

will turn to alcohol,

and people who have sex while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs are

less likely to practice safer sex.

sides, the theoretical risk

of contracting

greatly diminished in light

ated with unemployment:

HIV may

of the immediate

Be-

appear

fears associ-

Why worry about AIDS, people

may think, when I can't pay the rent? Some men and women may even be forced to supplement their incomes by bartering or selling sex. Or people who are out of work may no longer be able to afford condoms. These are just a few of the

many ways

that the

economy can

influence

HIV trans-

mission.

The

individual simply cannot control

stances required to achieve

good

health.

all

the circum-

For example, how

can we blame injecting drug users for spreading

we

HIV when

don't have adequate treatment facilities for people

who

And what does responsible sexual behavior mean to a woman who sells sex to support and feed her children? Are efforts to prevent HIV in minority commuwant to quit?

29

fa Gardening

in

Clay

nities well directed if

we

fail

nities? Culturally,

commu-

toward explaining

a strong bias

an individual shortcoming, and disease

failure as

ception.

we have

Many of us

unem-

to address the racism,

ployment, and drug use that plague these same

is

no

ex-

have been raised with the belief that

success, including success in health,

our individual actions.

We

is

totally

dependent on

tend to see disease as a form of

personal failure. Such notions support the cruel, yet persistent attitude that there are

two categories of people with

HIV disease: the innocent and the guilty. Why are we so willing to absolve society of any responsibility for maintaining our health? Why do we so eagerly take

up the burden

losing control if

individual choice legislative,

and

is

Maybe we have much of what we

individually?

we admit

that

of

consider

by our economic,

substantially affected

social circumstances.

a fear

Or maybe we

don't yet

have the right kind or amount of science to explain the

complicated interactions between individuals and society

which define health. cial

ecology

as

We may know just

as

those medieval astrologers

much about knew about

soin-

fectious diseases.

Ecology

isn't

only about the effect of pesticides on bird

populations or logging on tropical rain applies to our social environment just as

our natural one.

Ecology

forests.

much

The complex web of the food

as

it

does to

chain

is

unlike the intricate connections between society and

members.

When

basic social structures

and systems

not its

are

functioning poorly, health will deteriorate too. Illness

is

phenomena,

the result of

many

different elements

— natural — acting

social influences, individual behavior

together synergistically.

HIV

is

often the end result of a

long chain of events, some of which, when taken out of context,

3o

may appear trivial or even

unrelated to the eventual

Pieces of the Puzzle

outcome.

Do

&

you know the nursery rhyme describing how

circumstances can cascade into catastrophe?

For want of a

nail, the shoe

was

lost,

for want of a

shoe, the horse

was

lost,

for want of a

horse, the rider

was

lost,

for want of a

rider, the battle

was

lost,

for want of a

battle, the

And

I've

allfor

want of a

kingdom was

lost,

horseshoe nail.

reciting it on more than one when I think about the causes of AIDS.

found myself mentally

occasion, especially

3i

Studying Disease

Experience

immense

is

never limited, and

sensibility, a

silken threads

it is

never complete;

kind of huge spider-web of

suspended in

the

it is

an

the finest

chamber of consciousness, and

catching every air-borne particle in

its tissue.

HENRY JAMES The Art of Fiction

1 school,

OWARD THE END OF MY THIRD YEAR of medical when most of my classmates had already decided

what specialty training they would pursue ceived their medical degrees,

my

mind.

and pathology

on in

it

it

all

appealed to

would be

still

after they re-

trying to

make up

me

in certain ways.

One day I

psychiatry, the next pathology,

My brother,

went.

another

was

was not easy to choose. Pediatrics, psychiatry,

It

was certain

I

who was

and

attending medical school

state, listened patiently to

my vacillations during

our weekly telephone conversations. Even then, before he

had decided to become of listening

a psychiatrist,

therapeutically.

source of comfort to

yond the budgeted

me

Our

he had the knack

conversations were such a

that they often extended well be-

time, eating into

my grocery money and

making the next week's shopping an

exercise in thrift

and

imagination.

Eventually

I

chose pathology, in large part because

afraid that if

I

worked

difficulty separating

in clinical medicine, I

my life from my work.

I

I

was

would have

suspected that

Studying Disease

I

would be unable or unwilling

needs of

my

patients

would atrophy

if I

demands of

ing

would ensure

When

I

left

to put

and that other

my

&

needs above the

interests

and pursuits

were faced with the constant, more press-

the sick and dying. Being a pathologist

between

a safe distance

the hospital,

me and

the patient.

would not be preoccupied with

I

worry about what was happening on the wards. Pathology was

a

way

for

me

to preserve

my

options.

I

could have the intellectual gratification of studying and diagnosing disease while retaining sufficient free time to pursue other interests elsewhere.

I

don't

— one

foot in medicine and the other

mean to imply that pathology is

rate specialty or that pathologists are less caring clinical colleagues. I

a second-

than their

was simply hungry for diversity

after

demands and regimentation of four years of medical and a clinical internship would have monopolized

the

school,

every

moment of my

time,

making

it all

but impossible to

follow other paths.

Shortly after

persuaded clinic

way

started

my

I

pathology training,

a friend

me to volunteer at a local, community-based free

which had sprung up

to

Soon

I

make

health care

in the

more

foment of the

sixties as a

and

accessible.

affordable

was supervising the training of volunteer counselors

who diagnosed and treated clients with sexually transmitted diseases. Eventually, I became a member of the board of directors,

working with other volunteer physicians to help

ensure the high quality of the free services 7

The two

worlds of health care

strikingly different. In the hospital,

I

we provided.

inhabited then were

among the students and

teachers of pathology, disease was an intellectual challenge,

something that

I

had to learn to recognize through the

microscopic changes

no

larger than a

it

produced

in

human tissues.

Biopsies

button were scrutinized for changes in the

33

fa Gardening

in

Clay

color and shape of nuclei, the arrangement of cells, even the

presence and type of inflammatory reaction

would help body.

with

— anything that

what was happening

to explain

in the patients

It

was

a separate

its

own

arcane practices and language. Pathologists

world of specialized technology

used peculiar words to communicate with one another: hematoxylin, eosin, and immunoperoxidase.

And when we

discussed with our colleagues, as we often did, the causes of

our patients' in the

ill

health,

we spoke about things we had seen

microscopic realm.

In the other world in which

We

never used the term

known

as clients.

We

patient;

worked, in the basement

I

of an old church, there was an

entirely different culture.

our consumers were always

did away with the physician hierar-

chy of the hospital, and trained paraprofessionals worked alongside volunteer physicians,

other casual clothes

prominently

— not a

in the waiting

wood on which was

all

of us dressed

room was and

At the

free clinic, disease

diagnostic challenge,

it

was

and

Bill

of

ply-

of Rights: the

sensitive care, the right to

participate in therapeutic decisions,

treatment.

a large piece

painted the Clients'

right to receive affordable

in jeans

white coat in sight. Hanging

a failure

and the

right to refuse

was not an

intellectual

of the medical system,

the result of inadequate preventive and primary care.

For nearlv a decade

I

moved between

stimulated by the dichotomy. pathology, obtained

I

Then, because

I

two worlds,

my

my specialty certification,

one of the teachers of pathology trained.

these

completed

studies in

and became

at the university

was interested

where

I'd

in disease as a social

phenomenon, I studied for a degree in public health. Meanwhile, I remained on the board of the free clinic.

The AIDS epidemic forced a change. in the first

34

Pittsburgh was not

wave of mortality; yet before long our hospital

Studying Disease

fa

surgeons began sending lung biopsies from the operating

room requesting special tissue sis

of Pneumocystis

carinii

stains to

confirm the diagno-

pneumonia, an opportunistic

tion that frequently signals the presence

we began

thereafter,

men who AIDS.

who

a

program

at the free clinic to

frequented gay bathhouses what we

Eventually,

I

teach the

knew about

joined a group of university researchers

were part of a national study to discover the cause of

AIDS and Slowly

more about its transmission. and then more rapidly, Pittsburgh began

to learn at first,

to contribute to the national weren't

mere

statistics

unfolded in our

city, I

about AIDS. But

my

AIDS

but people

found that

toll,

and some of these

I

knew. As the epidemic

I

couldn't stop thinking

interest in the syndrome's protean

microscopic manifestations and the complicated logic findings

distance

I

immuno-

from our research group began to wane. The

had imposed between me and disease that had

once been desirable, I

infec-

of AIDS. Shortly

now only added to my growing anxiety.

found myself compelled to work toward prevention, to-

ward trying to deny the virus

a toehold in

our community.

The intellectual gratification I had derived from diagnosing disease in

its

myriad guises was gone, replaced by an urgent

personal need to prevent

its

spread.

35

Social

Science

must

Mythology begin with myths,

and with

the criticism

of

myths.

KARL POPPER British Philosophy in the

Analogy

has always seemed to

me

Mid-Century

a

good way

to

think about complicated issues; such comparisons often

new ideas. But some of the analogies that come mind when I think about the tangle of medical, public

generate to

health,

and

social circumstances associated with the

AIDS

epidemic have been pretty strange. It strikes

AIDS

me, for instance, that the virus responsible for

shares several features with the serial

killer.

Most

obvious, the two cause similar outcomes. Like the serial

murderer, the retrovirus moves with consummate stealth

from person to person, with disastrous gained high neither

is

visibility in the late

new. Scientists

now

results.

Both have

twentieth century, though

believe that

HIV

has been

around for decades or longer but was never before recognized because serial liar

it

failed to reach

epidemic proportions.

murder, despite the newness of the term,

is

And

not pecu-

to our century. Ages past have witnessed this violent

aberration.

We know

that

AIDS

is

caused by a virus that, after a

long incubation period, selectively destroys essential the

human immune

?6

cells in

system, but without the social condi-

Social

tions that

fa

Mythology

promote unhealthy behavior, the epidemic

propagate. Likewise, criminologists believe that there

can't

an

is

organic basis to the mental disorder that leads to serial

murder, but negative social circumstances, including severe, unrelenting childhood abuse, are essential prerequisites

development of

for the

thrive in the

this condition.

shadow of the

And both

ordinary. Psychologists explain

that serial killers often escape detection because ability to live

seemingly routine

lives,

from

ability to

its

remain hidden in

of

their

to pass unnoticed

under the cover of normalcy. The villainous its

diseases

its

HIV also profhuman

host for

long periods of time without generating symptoms; not realizing they're infected, people can spread the virus to

others.

The these as

shared characteristic that most concerns

two

diseases, however,

modern myths about

is

HIV

is

their ability to function

spread, through sex

reinforce such interpretations.

of

serial

izens,

about

of

retribution, the destruction

persons as a punishment for wrongdoing.

which

me

The manner

and drug

in

use, tends to

And the fact that the victims

murderers are often socially disenfranchised

cit-

such as prostitutes, nudges the perception that this

calamity comes as a consequence of doing something that

is

wrong.

Today we have the that disease

put

it,

is

scientific

wherewithal to understand

not divine punishment,

that, as

one writer

bad things can and do happen to good people. So

why bother

to seek out the mythic connotations

diseases? Aren't the scientific

they pose enough to ponder?

of these

and public health challenges Isn't it irrational

to blame the

persons affected by these diseases for the misfortune that has befallen them? Yet,

we make

a mistake if

we ignore

the

myth, for our reactions to the complex social issues of dis-

37

&

Gardening

in

Clay

ease are not entirely rational.

Some of our

perceptions de-

from that shadowy and subterranean region beyond the realm of logic. rive

A myth is a story about societies, not individuals. Stories assume mythic proportions not because they

imaginary

are

or fantastic but because they act as nesting places for widely

held values, hopes, or

demic,

like

fears. Stories

AIDS

about the

epi-

those about serial murderers, are able to func-

tion as retribution myths because they activate subcon-

many of us

scious fears that

harbor, deep-seated, irrational

suspicions that something must be fundamentally

with people this

who

suffer such grisly fates, that

could happen to good people

gnaw

only through the news media, they

Would

living the "right

way"?

families

and our

How much

these things

What

at us

happen

if

with unset-

people were

could be so wrong with our

ideals that such terrible things are possible?

worse

is it

going to get before

it

stops?

Unlike other ancient beliefs that have been proven

myths that view

illness as retribution for

air

and that scrofula

can't

caused by

isn't

be cured by the touch of

kings, but these discoveries occurred in the realm objective,

where incremental

displaced magical beliefs.

of the

scientific findings eventually

The

retribution myth, though,

occupies the murkier domain of the subjective, where ings are the lingua franca. Feelings tive,

false,

wrongdoing have

not disappeared. We've learned that malaria putrid

like

Whether or know of them

like ourselves.

we've been touched directly by the events

tling questions.

wrong

nothing

may be

feel-

positive or nega-

admirable or contemptible, rational or irrational, but

never right or wrong.

One

frequent manifestation of the mythic view that dis-

eases like

AIDS

are deserved rather

How many years ,8

was

it

than acquired

before families began to

is

list

shame.

AIDS

Social Mythology

as a cause

to use

of death

in the obituaries?

euphemisms such

as

ft*

Even now, some prefer

"pneumonia" or "a long

illness."

Of course, these disguises are partly motivated by the desire to preserve privacy at a time

when emotions

are so dis-

jointed, but at a deeper level they are often a manifestation

of shame. Profound worry that in print,

if the

word "AIDS" appears

everyone reading the obituary will wonder

deceased was gay or a drug addict, someone

who

if the

sickened

and died because of "misconduct." If were honest with ourselves,

we

few of us are immune to these

realize that

Many whose

lives

personally or professionally, distasteful, a denial

feelings.

have been touched by AIDS, either

may find this

entire discussion

of the individual tragedy that

results

each and every time someone becomes infected with

But feelings don't cease to

exist

HIV

merely because they are

when enough people share the same irrational feeling, it may take on a patina of truth. If we want to understand our reactions to AIDS, both individually and as a society, we must acknowledge human subjectivity, includirrational. In fact,

ing mythic reactions to illness, as a potent force.

edging

how we

feel

won't

make

us turn our backs

or turn us into self-righteous judges of those fected by

Acknowlon science

who

are af-

AIDS. What a deep, honest look inward can do

help us keep from confusing feeling with

fact.

39

is

Suffering

Knowledge by

And Life

is

suffering entereth;

perfected by Death.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

"A Vision of Poets"

1 read in

the newspaper about

son had died of AIDS. ister

a

man whose wife and

He used to make his living as a min-

but gave up his calling after his family became

ill.

It

seems that his congregation couldn't handle "the situation"

and was meager

in its

support and understanding. Angry

and feeling unwanted, he decided to

A woman

in

Chicago told

her church died from tell

me

leave his church.

that

when

the organist in

HIV disease, his mother was afraid to

anyone the actual cause of death, although many already

suspected bers

it.

She was

knew what had

fearful that if her fellow church killed the boy, they

would

mem-

refuse to

bury him. Instead, she told them that her son died from

pneumonia.

Some and

religious leaders, people their followers listen to

respect, continue to describe

ishment for sinful

AIDS as

acts. Fortunately,

not

a righteous

pun-

all spiritual leaders

who do astound me. They remind me of doctors who want to pick and choose follow this line of reasoning, but those

the patients they will care for, not according to their medical training

40

and professional

responsibility,

mind

you, but

&

Suffering

A psychia-

according to personal preference and prejudice. trist

I

met during my medical

training, for example, told

that he wouldn't counsel clients

they still

who were obese

made him feel uncomfortable. Even some doctors and dentists who refuse

with

me

because

today, there are to treat persons

HIV disease because of fear and prejudice.

know that I am naive in my astonishment. After all, people who minister — whether they distribute medicine or the word of God are not free of human foibles and shortcomings. Still, it shocks me when I hear about persons who I

—

are in the business

of providing medical or

turning away from those if they aren't

pushing

who

Undoubtedly, the way enced by

my own

I

wonder

God away, for I believe that those who

God's heart than the

surfer are closer to

spiritual care

from AIDS.

suffer

I

rest

of us.

understand suffering

is

conception of the Divinity. If

influI

be-

primary characteristic was omnipotence, then I

lieved God's

might be more inclined to view suffering

as a

punishment.

But to me, images of thunderbolts and wrathful counte-

They

have always

human temper — raised

to the nth

nances have never seemed awe-inspiring.

seemed

like plain

degree. For me,

old

what makes

God God

is

his infinite under-

standing, and not just of arcane and complex facts, as if the

Divinity were

some kind of immense, cosmic computer.

God has the ability to comprehend human feelings

fully,

to

achieve total empathy, without the self-imposed barriers of fear, anger,

man

and mistrust that often

interfere

attempts to understand one another.

Because

I

see

shares our pain,

God as I

an all-knowing entity

don't believe that

human

because of divine vengeance or spite.

God

with our hu-

enjoys our suffering.

It exists

ther infallible nor indestructible:

who

feels

and

suffering exists

Nor do

I

believe that

because humans are nei-

we

are mortal. I believe

4i

&

Gardening

in

Clay

that people with serious illnesses, like

by

AIDS,

are best loved

God when they are forced to confront the painful reality

that flesh was not

pain

come

meant to

last forever.

Those who

to understand the pain of others.

are in

They may not

accept this knowledge with equanimity. Sometimes they are

with bitterness even as they

filled

stand, is

die.

But they do under-

and to understand with one s heart the pain of others

an attribute of the Divine.

42

Horror Movies Nothing ever becomes proverb

is

no proverb

real

till it is

you

to

till

experienced

your

life

—

even a

has illustrated

it.

JOHN KEATS letter to

George and Georgiana Keats, March

In a particular genre of horror movie, tagonist, an average

man,

slips

He

terrifying circumstances.

random

event.

He may

the pro-

out of ordinary events into

it is

a chance occurrence,

have stopped at the wrong house

to ask for directions or witnessed something that eyes were never

extraordinary,

meant to

1819

doesn't seek out this frighten-

ing encounter; his participation in a

19,

see.

human

He survives his brush with the

and afterward the world looks the same

did before his encounter. Cars

still

as

it

stop for red lights, news-

papers carry the usual quota of stories about murderers and

do-gooders, and librarians continue to insist on silence. But the ordinary world with which he was once so familiar

that the everyday events of his

life

He

has

shroud covering over the horror he has inadvertently covered.

He

are

dis-

has seen the pods as they effortlessly assumed

the shape of their

same

no

come to realize can never be more than a

longer seems quite so real to him.

human

genre, he has been

prey, or in another variant

of the

pursued by malicious shadows that

unseen to everyone but him.

The

protagonist s encounter with the extraordinary re-

43

fa Gardening

two

suits in

in

Clay

levels

of horror: one comes from experienc-

ing the monstrous event, and the other comes from the disbelief

of the people he

him, because the

evil

warn.

tries to

he describes

No

one believes

so unlike their everyday

is

world and because believing him would be too

They

their feet, blind to the evil that puddles

much ping

terrifying.

prefer to remain oblivious to the horror that laps at

rain water.

in

it,

The

all

around,

like

too

protagonist can see that they're step-

maybe even

sleeping under the spot where

it is

dripping through the ceiling, but try as he may, he can't convince others that the horror he has experienced

The

basic elements

used to describe ter

is real.

of most horror movie plots could be

society's negative reactions to

AIDS. Af-

the fear of contagion and death, phobias that have

all,

persisted throughout the epidemic, are standard themes in

many horror movies. Even sight rely,

the usual

human

revulsion at the

of blood, on which horror movie directors tend to

has received an added boost in the era of AIDS, with

the widespread knowledge that contact with HIV-infected

blood can have deadly consequences. All these things

are

me at least, the most horrifying aspect my fear that our society will continue to underthe danger of the epidemic. I am afraid that not

frightening, but for

of AIDS estimate

is

enough of us

will recognize the seriousness

of the threat

poses to our world, that we will not put the

our societal resources into beating

Oh,

yes,

isn't like

much

and

men and drug

denial,

when some

horror of the

movie

beyond too

users. Still,

believers in a horror

44

it.

the early years of the epidemic

inertia

when

It

there was so

folks were arguing that a small

many

epidemic.

number of gay

people, like the dis-

script, don't

AIDS

it

weight of

nowadays most everyone knows about AIDS.

the disease wouldn't spread

tential

full

understand the po-

It isn't real

to them.

&

Horror Movies

They

don't want to hear about the millions

fected with rates

of families

in-

HIV in the developing world or about the high

of spread among the

own nation.

It is less

socially disenfranchised in

our

frightening to believe that we're already

doing everything we can to stop the spread of the

virus.

Like the protagonist in a horror movie script, the

AIDS

activists are

not believed when they

alarm because their messages are so

raise their voices in chilling.

Who

wants

to admit that such potential desolation surrounds us? For talking about the horror of AIDS, for trying to real to us as

it is

AIDS

to them, the

tagonist in the horror movie, are derided

Sometimes,

as the plot

men and women

make

activists, like

it

as

the pro-

and scorned.

of the horror movie develops, the

living in the ordinary

world eventually

come to recognize the unseen menace around them. Finally, they come to believe the protagonist and join together to take action against the beast. After a difficult battle, they

eventually vanquish the foe. In other scripts, the protagonist

is

unable to convince his neighbors and colleagues, and

the monster eventually destroys him, silences the witness

who

has tried to warn people about what

them

just

waiting for

within the borders of the fog or alongside a de-

serted country road I

is

on

wonder which way

a dark, it

will

humid

end for

night. us.

45

—

Science Fiction

Imagination andfiction make up more than three quarters of

our

real

life.

SIMONE WEIL Gravity and Grace

W on

hen we were

my brother and I

kids,

behind our house. The rocks

a rock pile in the vacant lot

in the pile

were ordinary

flat

used to play

brown sandstone, probably left

over from facing one of the neighborhood houses. adults,

it

was

just

To

the

another place where we children might be

found when we weren't on time for dinner, but to the

chil-

dren of the neighborhood, that ordinary pile of sandstone

was a marvelous make-believe spaceship. Large and capable

of

interstellar travel,

one for the

library,

it

had

one for the observatory, and of course,

one for the laboratory. As powered, and

we watched

What

it

had

or forty levels

at least thirty

a big

recall,

I

window

the ship was nuclear

in the

bow out of which

the stars and planets whiz by.

journeys we had on that ship.

alien planets, usually

landed on

populated by bloodthirsty monsters,

played, with varying degrees

smaller children.

We

of

realism,

by several of the

We had more than a few close calls. More

often than not, the bay door would shut just in time, and we

would take off seconds before

a slimy tentacle

could wrap

around a crew member or a giant chela could crush one of us.

46

&

Science Fiction

That ship and the imaginary journeys of

early manifestations

As

tion.

a child

my

took on

I

it

were

lifelong interest in science fic-

never tired of reading stories or see-

I

ing movies about the fantastic adventures that could result

from improbable

scientific discoveries

When

understood phenomena. The Time Machine,

were

I

I

I

imagined the journeys

the time traveler.

I

or strange, poorly

saw the movie version of I

would have taken

would go back to ancient Egypt to

confer with the pharaohs and to observe the pyramids un-

Or

der construction.

I

would

travel into the future

and

would cure

fatal

return to the present with medicines that diseases with astonishing ease.

My new

interest never

waned. Each time

book or movie,

science fiction

other fantasy adventure.

I

I

encountered a

was caught up

in an-

saw myself as Otto Lindenbrocks

I

nephew, descending into the crater of Sneffells Yokul on

my way

to the center

hension

if

of the

many

like so

I,

earth. I

others,

wondered with appre-

would have been blinded

by watching the beautiful green meteors and so become prey for the carnivorous Triffids. After reading the age of twelve, certain that

I

Robot at

I,

decided to become a robopsychologist,

by the time

I

reached adulthood the amazing

machines described in that book would be everyday commodities.

As

I

grew

older, reading science fiction

became

less

an

occasion for fantasy and more an opportunity to think

about sociology and psychology, two subjects that have always interested me. tific

board for exploring still

The

authors' use of improbable scien-

discoveries or peculiar natural

phenomena

human emotions and

holds great appeal for me.

I

am

in

as a spring-

social

problems

awe of Ursula

LeGuin s psychologically

fertile

dreaming consciousness

in The Lathe of Heaven.

comparison of waking and

And Marge 47

fa Gardening

in

Clay

Piercy's investigation

society kept after

of power and powerlessness

me thinking about Woman on

had finished reading

I

my

Given

interest in

its

the

our

in

Edge of Time long

it.

fondness for science fiction as a genre and treatment of social issues,

I

on occasion, thinking about the AIDS epidemic a science fiction story.

The

my

have found myself, as if it

were

plot involves a technically ad-

vanced, well-meaning, though paternalistic alien

who

is

re-

sponsible for creating the virus. It

who

when

begins

a brilliant

studying the

is

and driven research

genome of

the

scientist

human immunodefi-

ciency virus discovers a gene segment that has a peculiar crystallography pattern. At

first

she suspects an equipment

malfunction, but after isolating the segment, she finds that it

contains an element that hasn't previously been described.

nowhere to be found

Its

ough

on

investigation, she

is

earth. Fearing ridicule

ambition

is

in the periodic table.

convinced that

it is

After thor-

like

no other

should she be proven wrong (her

fueled by a strong core of insecurity), she keeps

her research hidden from her colleagues. Then, shortly before she plans to share her final results with her fellow scientists,

late

a mysterious laboratory fire destroys the original iso-

and

all

her experimental records.

Several difficult tries,

months

during which the scientist

pass,

without success, to duplicate her original findings.

She becomes even more uncertain of her original and her insecurity torments

man, who

identifies

her.

himself

About

as

an insurance investigator,

comes to ask her questions about the meeting, though, the scientist tigator

is

far

more

is

48

fire.

After their

initial

convinced that the inves-

interested in her lost research than he

in the catastrophe that destroyed

The

results,

this time, a peculiar

scientist senses

is

it.

an intellectual depth

in the insur-

?$-

Science Fiction

ance investigator which she finds intriguing, and contrives to

when

meet with him

again.

At

their

7

the investigator talks at length about

fire,

the moral dilemma of using harmful means greater good.

cost-benefit

His description of human

and

tormented by

to achieve

terms of

lives in

cost-utility unsettles her. Yet, she feels a

strong sympathy for

him because she

perceives that he, too,

insecurity.

That night she has an unusual dream. She small

she

the scientist raises the possibility of arson as a cause

of the laboratory

is

so,

second meeting,

room with burnished

is

inside a

green walls. Overhead shines a

pale orange light. She can't see clearly because of a gritty

mist

filling

can't see

the room, but she

him

investigator

knows she's not alone. She knows that the insurance

very well, but she

is

there with her.

When

he talks to

her, his

voice has a high-pitched, irregular cadence that reminds her

of the stndulation of insects. tist,

what she would

studies are

on

call

He tells her that he

a scien-

is

an economist, only his economic

a planetary scale.

plagued by doubts about his

He

reveals that he, too,

scientific abilities, that

he

is

is

in

the midst of a crisis about the ethics of his current research.

The

investigator reveals that the manufacture

duction of

HIV

into the

human population

is

and

intro-

his doing.

After years of careful study, following precise and exhaustive calculations,

he had determined that the underprivi-

leged and socially disenfranchised of this planet

would con-

would experience progressively worse

tinue to increase, and

outcomes. His work predicted that the people of Earth

would become resources

increasingly polarized

would be concentrated

and smaller minority while the 7

would

and

in the

splintered, global

hands of a smaller

vast majority

of humans

suffer miserable poverty, preventable disease, social

abandonment, and stigmatization. The investigator hy-

49

fc Gardening

in

Clay

pothesized that a global catastrophe such as derail the awful

outcome predicted by

would be forced

leaders

made manifest by

AIDS would Human

his data.

to confront the social injustices

would unite to ensure

the epidemic and

equitable distribution of the planet s resources. But now, the investigator confesses, he

not sure

is

if he

has done the right

thing.

The

next morning

members

when she awakens,

she can't stop thinking about

The

story ends

when

the

only to learn that the person she has asked for died

several I

it.

agency to speak to the investiga-

scientist calls the insurance tor,

the scientist re-

every detail of the dream. It disturbs her greatly;

months ago

in

an automobile accident.

suppose that others might have told the story

different way.

crippling

The

alien

might have been

humankind so

that he

could overrun our planet. fident, less troubled

He

I

on

cohort

might have been more con-

like his

tion of good intentions run

5o

his fiendish

by the ethical implications of his global

experiment. Personally,

thing.

and

in a

hostile, intent

amok.

ambivalence and the noIt

reminds

me of the real

Patience

money, and time bring

Patience,

Patience

is

all things to pass.

a plasterfor all sores.

Everything comes

to

him who

waits.

PROVERBS

Patience, virtue. If

we

at least

according to the proverbialists,

believe the old saws, those

who

dure adversity will eventually triumph. Nothing ble or out

of reach

if

Patience, though,

he or she

seem an 5

from ours. To

is

is

impossi-

not inborn; we must learn

anticipating pleasant things. different

a

one can only wait long enough. is

dren are notoriously impatient, especially

is

is

patiently en-

Of course,

a child

it.

when they

their sense

all,

are

of time

of five, three months, when

waiting for a birthday or a grandparents

eternity, for after

Chil-

visit,

ninety days represent nearly

percent of a five-year-old s total span of conscious exis-

tence.

Three months seems

a lot longer to the child than

it

does to his or her parents. Children, then, perceive time differently from adults,

but they also have other cognitive differences that make

them

impatient.

Those who have studied childhood de-

velopment, most notably Jean Piaget, describe the supreme

egocentrism of infants and, to a lesser degree, preschool children.

Young

children, far

more than

adults, interpret

fa Gardening

Clay

in

from the perspective of

external events their

own

egos. Lacking the objective

of adults, young children have

rience

ing events

it is

bound

understand-

own. They

their

to happen. Its not just naivete; its

way they conceptualize

Although

selves,

want or wish for something with enough

believe that if they

the

difficulty

from perspectives other than

conviction,

own

their

knowledge and expe-

in adults this

events.

brand of egocentrism would be

labeled unrealistic, foolish, or perhaps even delusional, in children

it is

both natural and endearing. Children's unwill-

ingness to patiently accept outcomes that adults consider to be immutable

is

given

up on

and put on

theme

in

popular all

fiction.

the adults had

problem, the teenagers would join together

a a

a recurrent

MGM musicals? After

Remember the old

show

money needed

to raise the

to save the

school or to prevent the ranch from closing. Because of

and

their conviction, their energy,

and accept the

Of course, sical,

inevitable,

life is

their refusal to sit

back

misfortune was averted.

quite different

but there are times when

I

MGM mu-

from an old

think we would be better

we acted more like children and less like adults when it comes to being patient. What's so virtuous about enduring without complaint? Why should we tolerate the served if

intolerable?

When

want anyone to be ror of

HIV

it

comes

patient, to

infection that

to preventing

become so inured

AIDS becomes

of the many twentieth-century with.

I

AIDS,

ills

that

just

don't

to the hor-

another one

we have

don't want to count the bodies while

I

to contend

we continue

to

argue about whether or not adolescents should have access to

condoms, about who

is

going to be offended

if

preven-

tion campaigns talk frankly about same-sex relationships,

about whether drug users should be able to get clean needles. I

want people to be impatient and pushy

52

until this

fa

Patience

epidemic

is

ment, that

over.

AIDS

mo-

don't want us to forget, even for a

I is

a preventable disease.

Maybe it's time for us to take a lesson from our children. Maybe we should stop thinking about the obstacles we face, about how difficult it is to solve the myriad problems asso-

AIDS

ciated with the

how we

will

.

.

.

must

said the

same about

cated as

AIDS.

epidemic, and start thinking about .

.

.

have to lick

issues just as

it.

Other people have

important and compli-

If we can't visualize world peace or the

end

of global hunger, how can we ever hope to achieve them?

The same can't

is

true for

If being adult

means

that

we

bring about the end of this epidemic because were too

busy enumerating let's

AIDS.

all

the barriers to stopping

it,

then

start acting like children.

53

I

say

Iceb ergs

And

as the smart ship grew in stature, grace,

shadowy

silent distance,

grew

and

hue, in

the Iceberg too.

THOMAS HARDY

"The Convergence of the Twain'

1 he sinking of the

Titanic is

one of the most endur-

ing stories of the twentieth century.

Books have been

writ-

ten about that sad April night in 1912, and several movies

dramatize the events. has produced scores

wreckage

Most recently, an undersea expedition of murky video images of the actual

site.

We remain fascinated with this disaster partly because of its

magnitude: over

night.

hundred

fifteen

of many of the passengers. The

names

lives

were lost in a single

We are intrigued, too, by the wealth and social status straight out

of the

name

heim, and Rothschild, to alone doesn't explain

why

of the dead contains

a few.

— Astor, Guggen-

But morbid interest

this event continues to capture

the imagination eight decades

Some

list

social register

later.

have suggested that the story holds our attention

because we have interpreted

remember,

in addition to

urious ocean liner of

its

it

as

an allegory.

The

Titanic,

being the biggest and most luxday,

was also supposed to be an

engineering marvel, touted as unsinkable. Because the ship

was constructed with

54

discrete, watertight

compartments,

Icebergs

people said that sinking on

God

very

its

himself couldn't sink

first

it.

Thus,

?£

its

voyage has been seen as a divine

reprimand for overconfidence

in

technology and for over-

weening human pride. Excessive faith in technology the belief that gers

of

ment;

ice

— may

— in the case of the

construction shielded in fact

it

Titanic,

from the dan-

have tempered the crews judg-

another vessel they might have slowed their speed

in

or paid

its

more

serious heed to the ice warnings they'd re-

ceived throughout the day prior to the collision. Instead,

they trusted the technology, and in the end,

match for the

The AIDS in the

ceptives,

proved no

iceberg.

disaster

Scientific advances,

and

it

might be seen

both

in the

development of

loosened

safe

many of the

as a similar allegory.

production of antibiotics

and

effective oral contra-

strictures

on sexual behavior

our parents and grandparents faced. Sex wasn't necessarily

more popular

for our generation, but

technology to remove, or

at least

we came

on

minimize, the adverse con-

sequences of sexual intercourse. Because

mon

to rely

many of the com-

sexually transmitted infections could be cured, post

them waned. Why fuss with condoms when a pill or a shot would work as well? Then along came HIV, every bit as silent and deadly as that North Atlantic iceberg. Because of the long interval between infection and disease, the virus managed to spread for years before we had even an inkling of its existence. And when the crash occurred, when we realized that we were dealing with a global epidemic of deadly proportions, we also realized that we had no drugs to cure it.

hoc, attention to preventing

There

are other interesting

sinking of the Titanic and the

comparisons between the

AIDS

disaster.

Consider

how

the ship's builders opted to allocate resources in fitting out

55

fa Gardening

in

their vessel.

No

Clay

expense was spared in making the ship

luxurious. Its dining salons, lounges,

and passenger rooms

were smartly furnished using expensive materials, and the ship was equipped with every imaginable luxury, including a

squash court, a gymnasium,

and the

a turkish bath,

first

oceangoing swimming pool. Yet, the inquiries that followed the sinking found that the

though

vessel,

for the

it

met

number of passengers and

boats had been completely a

complement of lifeboats on

the

existing regulations, was inadequate

filled

crew.

Even

if all the life-

— and they were not — over

thousand people would have been denied escape. The

Titanic

was well equipped for every contingency but

Consider, too,

our

how

the

AIDS

disaster.

epidemic has highlighted

society's preferences for distributing its health care re-

sources. In cities where the epidemic

is

most

many

fierce,

public hospitals have been pushed to the brink of financial disaster

gent

AIDS

by having to care for

patients. Because

large

numbers of

indi-

of this burden, resources that

were once earmarked for preventing the infection are being channeled into programs to treat the doesn't

sick.

There

just

seem to be enough money for both prevention and

treatment. Yet, phisticated

we

live in a

nation that routinely funds so-

and expensive biomedical

research;

where many

hospitals, even those in small communities, can boast latest in

est

now

of the

medical equipment, capable of detecting the small-

tumor or diagnosing the most arcane complaint; where

health economists have identified large numbers of elective surgical procedures that are

both costly and unnecessary.

In this same nation tens of millions of citizens are unable to obtain high-quality health care; vaccine-preventable diseases

still

waiting care

thrive;

lists;

when they

56

drug users who seek treatment

pregnant

women

are

put on

receive their first "prenatal"

enter emergency

rooms

in labor;

and the

Icebergs

mentallv plastic.

ill

live

on the

ft*

of cardboard and

streets in huts

We are well equipped to provide health care services

who are educated, motivated, and insured, but for who do not meet these criteria — and manvj who are at

to people

those

HIV

risk for

system

We,

or already have

it

do not

ponderous, complex, and

is

— the

health care

times impregnable.

at

too, are lacking in lifeboats.

When the pride, a

human

Titanic sank,

some saw

it

as a

rebuke to

reminder of God's omnipotence and the constructions.

Those who had bragged

human

frailty

that

of

God

himself couldn't sink this ship were proven spectacularly

wrong. Technology was not the science are not fails it

is

evil

culprit,

though; advances in

but welcome events.

When

technology

us or brings about an unexpected, untoward outcome, usually because

judgment alistic

in

applying

expectations;

of our own lack of experience and it.

Often,

it is

because we have unre-

we overestimate the

ability

of technol-

ogy to solve our problems.

The

sinking of the great Titanic reminds

nological advances are a

ogy

isn't

me

that tech-

means and not an end. If technol-

being used to improve our

lot,

then

it isn't

being

used properly. Technological advances by themselves wont solve our health problems, particularly if these relate to inequities in access to care.

pointed lesson of the

problems

But perhaps the most

Titanic is that icebergs are easier to

avoid than they are to vanquish.

57

Seeing Things as

Between

and

the idea

the reality

Between

and

They Are

the

motion

the act

Falls the

Shadow. T. S.

ELIOT

"The Hollow Men"

1 he

some

word

used to describe everything from

ideal is

people's marriages to an artists performance

work. Ideals don't exist in eternal perfec-

ticularly difficult

tion, however.

of a par-

They

reflect social values,

and

social values

change over time. Thus, an ideal of years past might seem ridiculous by today's standards.

During the Victorian

era, for

example, the ideal

was nurturing, innately moral, and passive to was to remain

at

woman

a fault.

She

home, rearing the children and ensuring

The demanding and someimmoral world of commerce in which men worked

the tranquility of the hearth.

times

for wages was considered wholly inappropriate for

who the

demands of

aggressive competition.

nine ideal sounds like nonsense.

shown

us that

gardless ers,

human

of their

and even the

roles

women,

were deemed physically and emotionally unsuited to

sex.

Today

Time and

this femi-

experience have

beings have multiple potentials, releaders, policy

mak-

community, distinguishing

social

But to Victorian

scientific

on the basis of sex seemed not only proper but natural.

58

Are

fa

reflect values so timeless that

we

Seeing Things as They

Other can

we hope,

ideals,

endorse them.

all

No one would challenge ideals such as

"everyone should be able to earn an honest living" and "no

one should have to grow up hungry"

outmoded. us consider

it

ideals,

some of

unrealistic to expect to achieve them. Jesus

Christ himself told his disciples,

poor with you." ideal,

old-fashioned or

as

though we endorse these

Yet,

"You

will always have the

And this uncovers yet another definition of

something that

is

so perfect that

it

can exist only in the

imagination.

The

we

distance between a real situation and the ideal

envision can sometimes be daunting. Sex provides a case in point. Ideally,

it is

a voluntary

and completely honest

terchange between two responsible people, both of benefit emotionally love. It

is

and

a means of expressing the

spouses, a

When

love

it

as a

act

of

between partners or

form of communion so extraordinary

have described

whom

from the physical

spiritually

in-

that poets

glimpse of the divine.

sex approaches this ideal,

derful and sacred as the poets

it is

every bit as

and songwriters make

wonit

out

to be, but sex has other, less transcendental incarnations.

Our

first

attempts at sex can be puzzling, even frightening.

Sometimes, people use sex merely

boredom or

acts

sent of their partners, using sex as a

and

ings to the level

synonyms

when they have

relieving tensions, especially

by themselves. Others perform sexual

humiliate,

means of escaping

as a

it

without the con-

weapon

to punish,

terrorize. Advertisers reduce sexual feel-

of copy, employing sexual images

for success

and

acceptability.

as social

For some, sex

is

a

simple economic interchange in which physical favors are traded for monetary gain. ual feelings change as ally, it

When we

we develop

consider that our sex-

physically

and emotion-

becomes apparent that real sex may often

fall

short of

the ideal.

59

&

Gardening

The at its

in

Clay

distance between the real and the ideal

most

glaring

when we consider

No

nature of adolescents.

people having

sex,

teenage pregnancy

but

one

young adults from

AIDS, but

No

probably

think about young

one

likes to

hear that

a significant national health

problem,

Everyone would

it is.

likes to

but they do. is

is

the emerging sexual

like to protect adolescents

and

sexually transmitted diseases, especially

not possible unless were willing to talk

that's

about both ideal and

real sex.

To be beneficial, discussion of adolescent sex must accommodate the values of the people involved, both parents and children. We need to acknowledge the many problems of preadult sexual expression, instead of talking only about

we want

the rules

to enforce. Otherwise we'll never get past

the kind of standoff where

some people

are saying,

"This

shouldn't be happening," and others are quoting statistics to demonstrate that Let's

it is.

begin by accepting the fact that we

may not

agree

and then, for the sake of our children, both those who have sex and those

who

compromise.

a healthy

don't,

We

work past

hold onto our ideals without ignoring

want

who

all

a

unique

we want them

set

of

handle

it

consent,

some

young people

their age,

expression;

them

School health programs skills

they need to resist

into having sex before they

responsibly. But

to recognize that at

we must

also be willing

point, with or without parental

will explore the sexual feelings

awak-

ened by the physiological upheaval of adolescence. Sex part of

60

we

to understand that sex entails

responsibilities.

pressures that might push

of

form of human

should help students develop the

are able to

reality. Ideally,

are sexually active, regardless

to revere sex as an exquisite realistically,

conflict to reach

need to recognize that we can

human development. When young

adults

is

do be-

Seeing Things as They

Are

?£

come sexually active, lets not bicker about whether or not made the right decision. Instead, lets make sure that we help them to understand their new responsibilities to themselves and their partners, that we provide them with they

information and access to health services that will mini-

mize

their risks

of unplanned pregnancy, AIDS, and other

sexually transmitted diseases.

Those who oppose making condoms

available to sex-

ually active school students are well-motivated

people, but

it

isn't

enough

to

uphold the

should be delayed until people are

full adults.

adolescents are having sex, and while

them

we

and caring

ideal that sex

In

argue,

reality,

many of

suffer the consequences. Sexually transmitted viruses

and bacteria don't trouble themselves over human bickering,

and righteous indignation does not prevent

disease.

61

Down There But Love

has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement; For nothing can he

sole

That has not heen

rent.

or whole

W.

B.

YEATS

"Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop"

I ONCE ASKED

MY GRANDMOTHER,

OUt of Curiosity,

whether her mother had ever taken her aside and explained anything about sex to her. She thought for a while and then replied:

"When

I

lor

girl, Nona" (as we called my me and my sisters into the par-

was a young

great-grandmother) "took

and asked us to pretend that there was

hidden under the carpet. 'Now, about that hole and you malafortuna but

it

fall

fault.' "

fell

My grandmother

added,

"Nona

parsley,

we

let

it,'

also told us,

know anything

she told us,

wouldn't be your

about the hole and then you

own

if you don't

into

But

fault.

into

it,

it

paused for

a

a large hole

'it

if

I

would be told you

would be your

moment, then

'With the excuse of picking

ourselves into the garden.' " According to

grandmother, these vague allusions were

all

my

she ever heard

from her mother on the subject of sex.

Times have changed notably a girl.

since

readily available. In fact, bookstores tles

my grandmother

Information about sex and sexuality

on human

62

sexuality that

and

is

was

much more

libraries carry ti-

would have been unutterable

in

Down

¥r

There

my grandmother s day. Movies and television are more willing to recognize and portray the sexual aspects of

thought and

human

Whereas married couples once had

action.

to

keep to separate beds on screen to conform to the Holly-

wood standard of decency, now they may be shown, awakening with gentle caresses

television,

to

sell

as part

shower

coffee or stepping into the

even on

of a pitch

an ad for de-

in

odorant soap.

Comparing today s world

to the one in which

my grand-

mother was young, we could conclude that society has matured in uality.

ago;

its

The

we

are

understanding and acceptance of subject

more

less

hidden than

it

was

human

sex-

sixty-five years

willing to acknowledge sexual feelings

situations publicly. cretions,"

is

Words such

and "anal intercourse" which

would have provoked nervous

and

"condom," "vaginal

as

se-

in decades past

giggles or worse, are

now part

of the standard AIDS-prevention lexicon. But

how much

progress have

matters sexual? Sometimes

understanding

childhood into

sex, its

I

made concerning when it comes to has moved only from its

we

really

think that

our society

adolescence; we've yet to take the final

step into adulthood.

Children spend a great deal of their time seeking infor-

mation about the events and circumstances of their Lacking the knowledge and the

life

lives.

experience required to

develop a comprehensive world view, they are prone to overstatement, fantasy, or misperception. increasing knowledge lescents

comes

must pass through

With adolescence and

a better perspective, but ado-

a developmental transition be-

fore acquiring the characteristics, qualities,

that will define

them

as adults. If

and experiences

childhood

the acquisition of knowledge, adolescence

is

is

typified

by

intoxicated by

experience. It s a kind of dress rehearsal, during which, un-

63

?$ Gardening

in

Clay

der the best of circumstances, teenagers practice the

skills

necessary for adult survival. During this time of metamorphosis, while adult identities are being forged, adolescents are notoriously insecure

about themselves, especially

in re-

lation to their peers.

The

society in which

my

parents and grandparents were

raised could be described as infantile in

tudes toward

human

its

social atti-

From all accounts, informacome by, and there were strong

sexuality.

tion about sex was hard to

taboos against discussing the subject openly. Lacking both

information and experience, people these circumstances

edge about their

as if sexual feelings

or

maybe

had precious

own

who grew up under

little

objective knowl-

sexual health and identities.

It

were not meant to exist until

shortly before, the marriage ceremony

was

after,

— arriving

full-blown during the honeymoon. Physical relations be-

tween two people of the same sex were scarcely admitted to exist.

Homosexuality was

which usually described

ogy

for

it

a topic for medical textbooks, as a disorder

of unknown

etiol-

which everything from castration to lobotomy was

proposed

absence of either information

as a cure. In the

about sex or social permission to discuss sexual

myth and misperception

feelings,

flourished, as they so often

do

in

childhood.

Now, for the

like the adolescent

first

who

is

to explore the sexual underpinnings

freedom

tasting adult

time, our society seems intoxicated by

its

ability

of human behavior.

We

have ready access to the information about sex denied our parents and grandparents, and few sexual topics are taboo.

Although they

still exist,

myth and misperception

prevalent than in generations past. Sex can controversy, but

Mae West 64

it

has lost

much of its shock

still

are less

provoke

value. Today,

wouldn't have the same trouble getting news-

Down

There

fa

papers to advertise her play Sex as she did earlier in the century.

What

was once considered beyond the realm of

polite conversation can lions

who view

now

be heard regularly by the mil-

television talk shows.

Increased public awareness of

and knowledge about sex

human

sexual behavior

are partly related to the greater

sexual freedom afforded by technological advances in birth control.

AIDS,

made

too, has

sexual behavior.

It's

it

necessary to learn about

hard to ignore the diversity of human

sexuality in the midst

of a global epidemic of a deadly

sex-

ually transmitted disease.

If we have learned to talk more openly about sex and if we know more about the diversity of human sexual behavior, however, we have yet to achieve an adult level of under-

standing and acceptance. Social attitudes toward

example, demonstrate

sexuality, for

how

far

homo-

we have

yet to

go-

Truly,

we

are

more aware of gay men and

than our parents or grandparents were.

grandmother a

if she ever

women asked my

lesbian

When

I

knew any gay people when

she was

young woman, she told me no. Apparently, her only en-

counter with homosexuality was clerks

made

a pass at her.

At

when one of her store Nonnie had her hair

the time

cut very short and slicked back to the sides of her head. It

was an

one that can

attractive style,

nearly fifty years later, but

plained that this

woman,

it

I've

was rather

"My,

that's

"What

be seen today,

severe.

Nonnie excame up

forgotten her name,

to her one evening after the bakery

her on the

still

had closed and

said,

an awfully attractive haircut," and then kissed

lips.

did you do?"

I

asked.

slapped her in the face," Nonnie said. "And then what happened?" I inquired. "I

65

Gardening

ft*

in

Clay

"She slapped

me

back,"

Nonnie

told me.

And

that was

the end of the story.

According to

my grandmother,

it

was only in retrospect

that she recognized the sexual nature of this encounter.

Such naivete would be unusual today.

We

do know more

about gay people. In large part because of the demic,

many Americans can now

AIDS

homosexual intercourse. Castration and lobotomy longer

recommended

as cures for

are

from

noses. But still

its

official list

homo-

of psychopathologic diag-

Many

knowledge has not brought acceptance.

homosexuality

see

no

same-sex attraction, and

the American Psychiatric Association has removed sexuality

epi-

explain the mechanics of

as a psychological illness or even

an infection capable of being transmitted from "diseased" adults to "susceptible" youngsters. In define

homosexual behavior

continue to identify

damnation. For havior,

we

still

as

as criminal,

heinous

sin,

states laws still

and some

religions

worthy of eternal

our awareness about homosexual be-

all

find

as a legitimate part

it

some

it

very difficult to see homosexuality

of the broad array of human emotional

expression.

The way our society reacts to the subject of homosexreminds me of the difficulties adolescents experience

uality

in the process

of acquiring adult

identities.

Because of the

tremendous insecurity of adolescence, anyone who ferent

is

suspect.

and pressure to to

do

cruel

things. In fact,

psychological signs of adulthood less restricted

be strong in one's

own

66

is

one of the major

the ability to act auton-

by the dictates of the group, to

sense of individuality and

In a society that was adult in sexuality, gays

dif-

act like one's peers often drive adolescents

and thoughtless

omously, to be

is

Conformity to the norms of the group

its

self.

attitudes about

homo-

wouldn't be seen as bad, merely recognized as

Down different.

People wouldn't

realization that ically

feel

There

fr

personally threatened by the

some of their neighbors

find

it

more phys-

and emotionally gratifying to form partnerships with

people of the same sexual sons

sex.

Families wouldn't think of

and lesbian daughters

homo-

as second-rate or

even

cause for shame. Courts wouldn't assume, ipso facto, that

gay people make rotten parents. There would be no debate

about whether gay the military. fine

And

men and

lesbians should serve openly in

legislators wouldn't pass laws that de-

same-sex relations as

illegal.

An

adult society wouldn't

need to enforce conformity, would permit people to

would ensure to

grow

that

all its

into productive

differ,

members had an equal opportunity and

self-fulfilled adults.

67

Memento Mori Elsewhere blackest

the

and

numerous

dawn had come

thickest

of

and

torches

the shore, to see

from

of an attempt;

it

the

down on

night, the

though counteracted by

of every kind. They went back

would allow

adverse. There

a cloth spread outfor him

and drank

to

my

and

Presently the flames

it.

sulphureous odor heralding their approach put

everyone

young

was

tumultuous and

still

twice calledfor cold water

and

it

nearer at hand if the sea

was

uncle laid himself

nights,

lights

hut here

to flight, forcing

slaves, he rose

my

uncle to get up. Leaning on two

and immediately fell down

dead.

PLINY THE YOUNGER's LETTER TO TACITUS describing the eruption of Vesuvius, a.d. 79

In the 1860s the relli

Italian archaeologist

Giuseppe Fio-

developed a process for making plaster casts of the

corpses he encountered during his excavation of Pompeii. Actually, they weren't corpses at

corpses.

The

all

but the spaces

volcanic ash and lava hardened to

that remained intact centuries after the

posed. By injecting plaster into these able to

make

a cast

body

form

inside

left

decom-

cavities, Fiorelli

of the absent corpse

as

it

by

a shell

was

had appeared

moment of death. Modern techniques employ polymer resin instead of plaster, but the effect is much the same. By using this proat the

cess, archaeologists

68

have been able to uncover important

Memento Mori

information about the age, suvius's victims. Jewelry

sex,

and

of Ve-

social status

and other personal

?$

artifacts lying

near the dead provide investigators with additional clues.

Some of their

stories

seem obvious

— the housekeeper who woman whose

died clutching her masters keys or the rified

daughters clung to her skirts as they tried to

darkened

Other

city.

stories

remain a mystery.

ter-

flee

the

Why,

for

example, were the bejewelled remains of what was clearly a lady of position and wealth found, incongruously, in the gladiators' barracks

These poignant

behind Pompeii's great theater?

which

casts,

tell

us so

much about how

Pompeii's unfortunate citizens died, are incapable of revealing what these people experienced in those final

when they realized

that

life

moments

was leaving them. For death and

dying are two separate things.

As

a medical student

saw death often. autopsies.

in a university hospital, I I

routinely did

During the performance of a complete autopsy,

every organ

and

working

Later, as a pathologist,

is

removed from the body, weighed, measured, of

carefully studied for evidence

disease. Afterward,

small pieces of tissue are cut away from the organs for examination under a microscope. This procedure reveals a great deal of useful medical information, not the least of which the immediate cause of death.

got used to seeing death.

I

Working

had to

m

is

as a pathologist I

order to function

m

an environment where some sick people could be cured of their ailments

and others could

not.

My job was to under-

stand the varied causes of death, to describe

its

antecedents

to other doctors.

One might

think that being so close to death, actually

studying the organs of the deceased, would familiarize a

person with dying. During an autopsy, though, when you

hold a heart

in

your hands and examine

it,

you

are

looking

69

Gardening

ft*

in

Clay

for scar tissue or narrowed arteries, not for the love or pas-

sion that previously resided therein.

And when you

gently

palpate the gelatinous folds of the brains outer surface, you are searching for evidence

A

of infarction or cerebral atrophy.

pathologist can't measure the disappointment or loss or

even the relief present in that person s days of

The

life.

Pompeii,

mind during

the last

cadaver on the table, like the casts from

the lifeless remains of what used to be living.

is

Although these remains can

reveal a great deal

about the

cause of death or the chronology of disease, they don't say

much about

dying.

didn't realize

I

brother became

toms of

would often.

how

Before

ill.

his disease,

knew about dying until my Edwin developed major symp-

little I

he talked a lot about what the future

bring. Later, as he got sicker, he thought ahead less

remember one conversation

I

in particular.

Both of

us had traveled back to western Pennsylvania for a family reunion. Slipping away from the rest of the clan,

our old neighborhood and parked across the house we grew up

in.

window of the bedroom we shared for someone sitting in an auditorium It

the

wind

free

of the

began died.

was one of those beautiful

is

just

telling I

warm enough

stuffiness that

me how

had heard

at the I felt

waiting for the play

May afternoons when

later in the

and the

air

is

summer. Edwin

he wanted his assets divided after he

his thoughtful

several times before, but

memento

up

eighteen years,

to be soothing

comes

to

from the

street

Sitting in the car, looking

like

to start.

we drove

it

and comprehensive plan

got no easier to listen to this

mori, this reminder of his impending death. As

each item was described,

my

anxiety grew, until

I

was

cer-

would have to scream or push open the car door and Just then, Edwin let out a small laugh and told me that

tain I

run.

he didn't want to be the cause of another family story the one about Santa Cecilia.

70

like

Memento Mori

When my and her

had

framed print of Santa

was

Cecilia.

I

would glance knowingly

at

My

accompanied the story with grand operatic the artwork

it,

and the acrimony more

bitter.

So

it

each other and

to enjoy this high Italian psychodrama.

each time she told

Even-

but the story entered family

settled,

Whenever my grandmother would bring

lore.

who should

about

a protracted quarrel

inherit an inexpensive tually the dispute

and

my grandmother

great-grandparents died,

siblings

?$

up,

Edwin

settle

back

grandmother gestures,

became more

this relatively

and

priceless

minor event,

recounted so often, took on histrionic dimensions. Edwin, in

reminding

my fear

defuse I

me of it, understood

realize

and

now

that our laughter

would

anxiety.

that

Edwin repeated

property would be divided

as a ritual,

this litany

of how

his

one of several ways he

me for his death, to get me used to the idea a little at a time. He knew that later in the course of his illness his energies would be taken up with his own more

tried to prepare

immediate needs and

fears.

But before that time came, he

thought about the others around him.

Edwin was always

the adventurous one, always the

us to try something new.

virginity before I did.

Even

in death

understand.

people

Up

who knew

from

his innova-

he learned from his

new experi-

Often

tions, sharing in the lessons

me

me

profited

I

he was ahead of me, until then

I

still

willing to help

had always imagined that

they were dying would be too angry and

self-absorbed to do anything losses

of

my parents' authority when I refused to, even lost his

lenged

ences.

first

He smoked the first cigarette, chal-

and agonize over

more than

fret

their circumstances.

about their

Edwin showed

otherwise.

7i

Afterlife

Saith Thotb the righteous judge of the cycle of the gods great

who

are in the presence of Osiris:

very truth

is

weighed

the heart

of Osiris,

as a witness for him; his sentence great.

Not

Hear ye

is

is

decision

upon

right

this.

In

his soul standing the scales

hath been found wickedness in him any; not hath

he wastedfood offerings in the temples; not hath he done

harm

in deed; not hath he

whilst he

was upon

Thoth dwelling

the scribe

done

of

the

is it

of us. Let not be allowed

in the presence

things

gods great

that

to

which is

Osiris,

hath he sinned, not hath he

over him. Let there be given

Sekhet-hetepu

mouth of evil

mouth. True and righteous

Ani triumphant. Not

coming forth

his

earth. Saith the cycle

my

evil in respect

Amemet

go with

Hermopolis: Decreed

in

cometh forth from

let

to

him

to

prevail

cakes,

and a

of Osiris, and afield abiding in

like the followers

of Horus.

Egyptian book of the dead (The Papyrus of Ani)

Our species' preoccupation with the possibility of an

afterlife

may be

the major difference between us and the

other primates, a direct consequence of our level of consciousness, our capacity to experience time longitudinally,

and our ability to anticipate our own mortality. are

not the only animals on

sciousness, but the level

We humans

this planet possessing

con-

of our awareness permits us to see

ourselves not just in relation to our external environment

72

Afterlife

?f

but also in the broader context of past and future. Other animals have a sense of time too, but usually in the con-

of well-defined cycles mediated by weather, hormones,

text

or both. These temporal cycles are also important in our

mammalian

physiology, but

of seeing time

own

we have the added perception

as a longitudinal process.

We are aware of our

aging and ultimate mortality, and therefore, we are

intensely interested in

Our beliefs about

what

life

will

happen to us

after death

after

we

span a wide range.

die.

The

ancient Egyptians believed that the dead were conducted to the Hall of Judgment, where Maat, the goddess of truth,

presided over the weighing of the heart, the seat of

emo-

While the deceased looked on, his or her heart was placed on the pan of a large scale, counterbalanced by a feather, the symbol of truth. The jackaltion and intellect.

headed Anubis tended the scribe,

scales,

while Thoth, the divine

stood poised to record the results of the weighing

ceremony.

The

elect,

those whose hearts weighed no

more

than a feather, were to enjoy the rewards of Sekhet-Hetep, the Field of Peace.

Those whose

hearts were heavier were

judged to be guilty of evil and were devoured by Amemet, a

monster that was part

lion, part crocodile,

and part hippo-

potamus.

The

description of the judgment ceremony

from the Egyptian Book

on the customs, death and the

prescriptions,

afterlife.

these texts were

of the Dead, a collection

and

comes to us of writings

rituals associated

with

In their earliest form, portions of

found written on the walls of tombs dating

from nearly twenty-five hundred

years before the birth

of

Christ. Later, they were transcribed onto papyrus scrolls. Clearly,

die

is

our fascination with what happens to us after we

at least as

Many

old as recorded

human

thought.

ideas about the afterlife are inextricably linked to

73

fa Gardening

Clay

in

supreme being;

belief in a

see the afterlife as the

like the

Egyptians,

kingdom of the

some people

who

Divinity,

grants

blessed immortality as a reward to the faithful and pure of

Others believe

heart.

in

religion per se, a vague

an

afterlife that

postmortem

independent of

is

spiritual existence

ceived as part of the natural progression of

of their individual

beings, regardless

no

others foresee

existence at

all

con-

corporeal

all

religious beliefs. Still

after death.

My own ideas about an afterlife have changed over time. When

was a youngster,

I

I

thought about the

marily as a reward for good behavior. if

I

of the

didn't break any

important ones.

It

had studied for

all

results

was

rules

like getting

week

long;

were predictable.

Once

would be

able to

fly

I

Annie Oakley, and events that that things

me

denied

I'd

would go to heaven

an "A" on a in the

test that

— except

sin,

travel

back

in

as

you

time and the

got to heaven,

I

imagined

of course.

I

invisible,

George Washington or

time to witness historical

only read about in books.

my

not any of the

around the world or become

famous dead people such

talk to

I

at least

you put

would be possible

that anything

—

afterlife pri-

I

expected to find

parents or unfair earthly circumstance had

were commonplace in heaven. Heaven would be

a real physical place, too,

somewhere

in the sky. It

would

have streets and houses and fields and vistas that would put

So ordinary would

the wonders of this earth to shame. sights like the

even pay I

much

Grand Canyon seem attention to them.

that angels wouldn't

And Niagara Falls, which

had seen on vacation, would be puny by heavenly

dards.

My

child's

mind conceived of

kingdom of excess, time, distance,

a place

stan-

the afterworld as a

of unlimited experiences, where

and physical

reality

would no longer bind

me.

As

I

74

grew

older,

I

began to understand that the world

Afterlife

and

its

more complicated than anyone can

stories are a lot

really explain.

phvsical beings.

As

I

my

game show

middle

have brought death nearer,

The

conviction that there

an

years, age

made

as a

lived as

kind of

contestants, though.

it

and circumstance

more comprehensible.

adolescent conviction of invincibility and the bravado

of early adulthood have been put away like that

is

or that the terms of that exis-

no longer think of heaven

skillful

approach

I

life

some way by how we have

tence are influenced in

grand prize for

my

haven't lost

I

beyond physical

existence

#•

is

too tight around the middle.

feels like to

a suit

of clothing

Now I know

what

it

stand at an open grave and say goodbye, to

throw a handful of dirt onto

box that contains the wasted

a

I loved. I now know the common human sorrow of outliving those I love. They can't be touched;

remains of someone

continue to

yet

I

yet

I still

feel

them.

No more can they speak to me;

hear them. Even after they are gone,

I

continue to

love them.

Now,

in place

of my childish dreams of sailing through

the clouds or gazing

bound,

I feel a

down on

the actions of the earth-

fervent longing to be reunited with those

have loved, those

who

loving or too few.

I

have

have

left

come

mv

to think

of the

opportunity to love better and longer than 7

to

do on

this earth.

celestial choirs

Whether

I

many

life after

I

years

afterlife as

I

of an

have been able

have wings or can hear

of harmonizing angels doesn't matter to me.

Being able to love and be loved into eternity

7

wondrous thing

I

is

the

can imagine.

75

most

Potsherds and Dinner Plates

One

does not discover nevo lands without consenting to lose

sight

of

the shore for

a very long time.

ANDRE GIDE The Countefeiters

In the popular mind, archaeology amazing discoveries

Mayan

in

glamorous settings

temples, an Egyptian

golden treasures.

The

reality

is

tomb

of

consists

— vine-shrouded

filled

considerably

with delicate

more

prosaic.

Instead of finding lost cities or uncovering storerooms of ancient riches, which are understandably rare events, archaeologists are quite content to study

more modest

including the rubble of past civilizations.

tifacts,

most ar-

From

items as seemingly inconsequential as fragments of broken

and discarded pottery, these

scientists can tell us

amazing

things. Potsherds can speak to archaeologists about

where

and when the pottery was manufactured, about advances

in

ancient technology, even about changes in theological be-

By studying the

liefs.

style

and geographical location of

ancient pottery, scientists can trace the commercial net-

works of long-vanished skill it is to

from

bits

It s

own,

I

civilizations.

What

a

phenomenal

be able to piece together the history of a people

of jagged

clay.

possible to conduct a personal archaeology of our think.

Our

possessions also have their histories. In

our cupboards are mugs and glasses and dinner plates that speak of our endings and our transitions, even changes

76

in

Potsherds

our

and Dinner

fa

Plates

True, these pieces are not widely valued like

beliefs.

Mycenaean ware or

Attic red pottery. Probably

no one

else

would recognize the personal epochs they mark. But they can

on

tell

my

stories

of great individual

shelves are

significance.

There, over in the corner, hardly used now,

mac dinner

plate, the sole piece that survives

nerware of

my

of

my

this

earliest recollections

objects

a blue

from the dinis

dull,

eaten long ago.

One

of how the blue

is

Mel-

plates in

multicolored collection would magically turn to green

when my mother

served applesauce

minds me of a time answers,

by

is

early childhood. Its thick plastic

worn out by dinners

knife-scarred,

The

no exception.

my

when

in

my

on them. This

when questions

life

plate re-

always had

troubles were transitory, quickly dispatched

parents. It

an artifact from the era of

is

my

ear-

my brother was a part of everything my early childhood, even as an adult, I find it difficult to separate my brothers presence and memories from my own. Was it only I who secretly hid

liest recall, a

that

I

the bread

time when

Looking back to

did.

didn't

I

want to

kitchen table, or was

Nearby

is

a relic

eat

underneath the struts of the

Edwin my from

my

conspirator?

youth: an inexpensive china

gravy boat of uncertain age. This artifact marks a period of

burgeoning awareness of adult interactions and expectations.

As

a

young

child, I

could conceive of only two points

of view: the one held by kids and the one held by grownups. It was at holiday meals, the only time the gravy boat

was used, that solidarity.

I first

began to question the dogma of adult

Aunts and uncles and cousins would

dinner and discussion.

I

didn't

sit

down

to

understand the political or

economic topics that the adults discussed following dinner, but

on

it

all

In

was plain that they differed to the point of argument sorts

my

of things.

personal archaeology, the gravy boat also marks a

77

fa Gardening

in

Clay

time of transition in

my feelings about being a twin, a grow-

ing sense of how unusual the circumstances of my twinship were.

My cousins didn't seem to feel the same responsibility

toward their brothers and

And

I

sisters that

brothers feelings as

be in agreement with him before

Deep

in the

mand — now plants

insignia

is

a set

from marking the

of the Strategic Air

furniture.

dinnerware that made up

my

Given to

them

wasn't yet completely adult, but

I

me.

make

mistake, to

For years gave

I

on

my

free

move

— until

I

sit

but

I

can't

most of my

to another job or

got

my

life just

the

Edwin

bring myself to get rid of

out of the way, on top of an old cookie

Middle Kingdom, the

I

of having

haven't used the demitasse cups that

era

tional prosperity following the time

nerware.

par-

it.

a high shelf above the kitchen sink. early

my

wanted, to correct any

I

things better, to

me one Christmas,

them. So they

awe of the

of

seemed there would always be

It

even to another relationship

wanted

in

of emotional deregulation,

lingering adolescent bravado buffered

anxiety about the future.

I

was

— free

of unhappy adolescent memories,

time enough to accomplish what

way

I

felt free

I

to act like a twin. It was an era

when

of

set

When

had passed through physical adoles-

possibilities that awaited ents, free

Com-

a favor-

household.

first

cence;

to me,

me by

of the mismatched

very

she gave I

of four dinner

used only occasionally to prevent potted

aunt, these plates were part

ite

did toward Edwin.

took any action.

I

pantry cupboard

stamped with the

plates

I

my own habit of considering my equal to my own, of forever needing to

began to resent

tin

Their provenance

is

of material and emo-

of the mismatched din-

was more self-possessed by then, and

my

re-

sentment of the emotional demands of twinship, which

had been

a

conspicuous landmark of my adolescence, had

78

.

Potsherds

eroded, leaving in

its

was nothing about

No

derstand.

too

Plates

?

place a rich intimacy. Back then, there

me

that

question

trivial. Earlier, I

and Dinner

I

my

brother didn't

know

or un-

had was too arcane; no concern

had perceived

his instinctual

me as a threat; now I saw it became my dearest and truest friend. edge of

knowl-

as a wellspring.

He

Eight

Finally, there are the glasses, a recent acquisition.

monochromes that found them in a cardboard

polished-metal patio glasses in the bold always attracted

box mixed

in

my

brother.

I

with the personal papers, correspondence,

and photographs that Edwin

left for

open the cupboard door and

wonder how long

it

their meaning. Part

Since

I've

resource that

is

it

will take

of

too,

their significance

once seemed;

now

it

is

I

by

I

side, I

to completely decipher

already clear.

is

no longer the

has

become

the easiest part of the text, the section

which

They possess

limitless

precious. But I

can translate

a deeper significance

ponder, trying to understand the era they rep-

Sometimes

I

think that

search within myself for in the

me

acquired them, time

without a Rosetta stone.

resent.

me. Now, every time

see the glasses side

company of my

what

I

my

life's

work

once had so

will be to

easily

and

twin.

79

fully

Touch and Comfort Animals are such they pass

no

agreeable friends

—

no questions,

they ask

criticisms.

GEORGE ELIOT Mr.

1 HAVE LIVED WITH BOTH DOGS

throughout

my

life.

the fourth grade, soon

she died in 1969, the year

relied

my

on her

brother and

of us, including

On

off and

their lives

the boxer

when Edwin and I were

became everyone's

mired her intelligence and

all

AND CATS

who share friends. Tammy,

to live with our family

high school,

Love Story

People, like me,

with animals think of them as

who came

Gilfil's

my

favorite.

loyalty, I

We

in

ad-

and when

graduated from

parents,

mourned her

passing.

Now dog.

I

The

live

with two animals, a tabby cat and a pug

tabby,

Miss Puddy,

is

self-possessed

and soigne,

extremely affectionate, though somewhat demanding and

prone to boredom. Having had several years of undivided attention before the

dog

arrived, she

became accustomed

to incessant compliments and frequent chin rubbings and

now are

tends toward petulance if her demands for attention

not met immediately. Drusilla, the pug, was named after

Caligula's sister. Despite the imperial provenance

of her

name, she could not be more down to earth, undoubtedly the

most cheerful inhabitant of the house.

80

Touch and Comfort

There as

sounds,

it

I

I

my human

than

ter

Puddy or Drusilla. Peculiar sometimes wonder if they know me bet-

nothing

is

can't tell

friends.

Not

course, but in an emotional one.

ing partners

we sometimes

in

an intellectual way, of

Even with spouses or

No

such constraints

when

apply with our animals. Friends are not always around

we need them, but our animals

may

They

are.

of us

see aspects

not.

Animals have an

move

lov-

hesitate to share strong feelings

or to express passing quirky moods.

that others

&

ability to bring us

out of ourselves, to

us beyond our immediate problems and worries, and

they react to our feelings with barometric precision, probably because

humans

of the way we communicate with them.

use language

— either written or spoken — to convey

our thoughts to one another. Animals, too, understand

— tain words man

"sit," "heel,"

or "walk," for example

cer-

— but hu-

them very much.

When we seek the

and sympathy of our dogs and

cats after a bitter

speech doesn't

solace

We

tell

disappointment or when we tell

feel happy and contented, we them more by the way we touch them than by what we

say to them.

Usually we reserve intimate touch for family members

and dear

friends.

walk up to

Under normal circumstances we wouldn't

human

them, telling them

we want

strangers

and begin to stroke and

how handsome

to befriend them, but such behavior

caress

how much

they are and

is

a typical

human-animal interchange. The limited use of language brings a special sincerity to animal-human relationships.

Animals, unlike humans, do not have the burden of having to react to what

we

say

— merely to how we say

much of our communications with

it.

Because so

animals involve touch,

our relationships with them are intimate.

Si

&

Gardening

Clay

in

Not coincidentally,

"pet therapy" has been advocated for

geriatric patients, autistic children,

All these people benefit

and people with AIDS.

from human- animal

interaction,

and some studies indicate that elderly people who live alone may live longer and stay healthier when they share their lives with animals.

My

I

can testify that they help with

AIDS

to

first loss

close friend,

function at

and make small

college. Shortly after I re-

had to attend an important wasn't in the

I

talk with lots

and not

well professionally stay at

I

my university.

I

an award

me

at all personally. I

awkward

and

to explain, since

wanted to

ence of death.

my

I

was expected to receive

absence would have been

none of my academic colleagues

I

as

an adult had

I

been through the experi-

was confused and angry, but

and had since returned home. that the

same

to commiserate with

to,

awaited him.

me when

must have been

have turned

fate

my

I

somehow I

anyone

82

couldn't ask

fur, feeling

I

could

sense of privacy kept

As

I sat

me

drinking vodka

would miss Martin

in the

her purr beneath

my

hands

diluted the awful images that shot through

told her things that else.

him

frightening the

There were others

my I

I

with

turned to Puddy for comfort. Holding her

and stroking her mind.

want to

didn't

in Florida

knew how

sorrow.

and thinking about how much years ahead,

I

for him.

but pride and

from acknowledging

I

me He had enough to cope with,

Edwin, who had flown to the funeral

funeral

letters

recent loss.

Never before

knowing

very

had received from Martin over the

at the event,

knew of my

social

to socialize

of people who knew

twenty years of our friendship. But

call

mood

home, nursing my sorrow, reading through the

and postcards that

my

was Martin, who had been

and Edwins, since

turned from his funeral,

grief.

How

I

my

wasn't ready to admit to

seeing Martins sister

mourn

the loss of

fa

Touch and Comfort

when

her beloved brother generated a nauseating dread

thought about Edwins answer

me — but she

illness.

Of course, Puddy

didn't have to. Instead, she gave

opportunity to express able to leave the house

my

I

couldn't

me

secret fears. Afterward,

I

the

was

and do what was expected of me.

83

Second Chances You've been given a great gift, George. the

world would he

like

A

chance

to see

what

without you.

it's

a

wonderful

life

Starting about thanksgiving and throughout holiday season until

no trouble finding opportunities

to view Frank Capra's sen-

timental 1946 film Its a Wonderful story a small-town family

hope through the nessing what

born.

Some

consider Carol,

it

a

life

mans

In the well-known

Life.

despair

is

transformed into

divinely orchestrated experience

would have been

critics

the

New Year s Day, television viewers have

like

of wit-

had he never been

dismiss the movie as maudlin; others

Christmas

classic

on

a

par with

A

Christmas

Charles Dickens's tale of personal transformation

and redemption. However uneven the though,

its difficult to

critical

response,

ignore the movie s continued popu-

larity nearly fifty years after its premier.

Nostalgia accounts for some of the movies staying power. Americans are particularly sentimental about idyllic depictions of small-town

life.

But the film also touches on

deeper emotions, and two themes, in particular, are responsible for its consistent appeal: first, the idea that

accomplishments of lasting significance

are

human

not always the

spectacular deeds of the powerful few but often the every-

day actions of ordinary people and, second, the film s conclusion that defeat

84

is

not the inevitable outcome of despair.

Second Chances

?£

Because he never achieved the goals he had set for himself as a

young man, George Bailey thinks that his

Only when he has an opportunity would be

made

bankruptcy and prison

He

make

able to face the threat

of

knowledge that

his life worthless.

The themes

said, imitates life.

a Wonderful Life fice;

is

gladly, secure in the

even such calamities cannot it is

Falls

By the time the film ends,

a difference.

George has regained hope.

Art,

what Bedford

without him does he recognize that his ac-

like

tions have

to see

life is a failure.

that

make

Its

so widely popular are not screenwriters' arti-

they are feelings that have their roots in the real world.

can't

help but bring

them

to

mind when

epidemic of human immunodeficiency sualize the

end of the

to beat ability at the

it.

from

As

We

a society

we have

we

in a

way

hands of

enough about the

lives.

scientific experts.

have the means to end this epidemic

conducting

virus

But we can also look

that doesn't put

all

the respon-

Truck

drivers

and working mothers, schoolchildren and bartenders lecular genetics or

vi-

a sturdy confidence in the

of science to improve our

sibility into the

When

expect scientific experts to

this plague, to learn

end of AIDS

virus.

AIDS epidemic, we tend to think of a

vaccine or a medical cure. deliver us

I

I

think about the

also

— not by studying mo-

clinical trials

but through a

shared resolve to become personally involved as individuals, families,

and communities

in preventing the spread

of

HIV Like Mr. Capra's

rather than science lic

some readers may consider this They may think it reflects sentiment

critics,

notion too simplistic.

and promotes populism

health policy. Truly,

There

are so

many

it

will

of pub-

not be easy to stop AIDS.

barriers to preventing

both personal and social

in place

HIV

infection,

— discrimination, ignorance, inad-

equate resources, profound differences of perspective, to

85

fa Gardening

name

in

Clay

a few. Still, effective tools

and

strategies are available

to us if we are willing to use them: honest

promoting the use of condoms

media campaigns

for sexually active people;

human

school-based programs that teach children about

and provide them with the information and

sexuality

skills

make wise and healthy choices about sex; readily available treatment programs for people whose use of drugs puts them at continual risk for HIV infection; and sustained community programs in which ordinary people help their to

friends

and neighbors, folks

their risk it.

like themselves, to

understand

of HIV infection and protect themselves against

In order for these tools to be effective, however,

be willing to accept as equivalent to our

and

feelings

periences

of people whose

may be profoundly

respond to the

officials

people

The

different

epidemic

cannot create

George Bailey

like

from

and

ours.

as a threat to

we must

the thoughts

heritage, rearing,

problem of selected groups.

just as a

ment

AIDS

own

life

ex-

We must

humanity, not

Scientists

and govern-

but ordinary

this response,

can.

other element of Capra's film which viewers find so

attractive

is

the conviction that people can overcome de-

spair, that life provides

second chances. In the film the me-

diator of this reprieve

is

gel.

Who's

how

often

world?

I

bumbling guardian an-

do they trouble themselves with the

have given

me second

just as surely as

had no need for

who

have

made

chances by helping

Georges

Because of the people

I

my 86

of this

my

a difference,

me

life,

who

to appreciate

angel, Clarence, helped him.

loved

who

died of AIDS,

a divinely staged version

Never Been Here," no need to turn back the tract

cares

don't know. But there have been people in

flesh-and-blood people,

life,

a kindly,

to say if such amiable spirits exist? If they do,

I

have

of "Had You clock, to sub-

presence from the events taking place around me.

Second Chances

my

version of Potters-

cut short, seeing

them stumbling on

Their suffering and death has been ville.

Seeing their

lives

fa

canes or confined to wheelchairs years before nature would

have required such accommodations, has been version of It 's a Wonderful

my personal

Life.

87

Remembrance /

shall

And

remember whik

in the night time

I

the light lives yet

shall notforget. A.

C

SWINBURNE

"Erotion"

Salvador

dali's painting The Persistence of Memory de-

picts a desolate landscape

of desert and

sea in

which

are

arranged strange images of soft-boiled timepieces and in-

complete forms only partially recognizable not sure that

I

understand everything the

as

human. I'm

artist

was trying

memory in that work, but I do agree with two of his points: that memory is plastic and that it is peculiar. One of the reasons memories change is that we change. I to say about

don't just

mean

tainly a factor.

meant to

physiologically,

Our

life

span

last forever. Still,

pass through that

life.

is

cer-

the equipment

isn't

changes in our physical capacity

to process, store, and resurrect

found than the changes

though physiology

is finite;

memories may be

in perspective

less

we experience

pro-

we

as

Part of what Dali says in his painting

memories of past events

are

not fixed but

fluid.

is

They

can be influenced by our experiences of the present.

Because of this uniquely past, to reinterpret

membrance

is

it

a powerful force in our lives.

not musty parchment

88

human ability to reconfigure the of new experiences, re-

in the light

scrolls

Memories

are

kept within an obscure cabinet

lemenwrance brance

on some

inaccessible shelf.

They

fc

documents,

are living

works that can be pulled down, reexamined, and edited in light

of recent

The way

events.

remember my

I

changed over time. Shortly

memory of his mothers

past the

— how he looked lying

gers

friend Martins death has

after his funeral, I

tears

and

open

in the

could not get

waxen

his

coffin.

fin-

Then, the

new experience for me. Now, I am more likely to remember the last time I saw him alive. Two weeks before his death, I happened to be in town on business, and wed arranged to have dinner together. He didn't tell me he was sick; in fact, he never told anyone. Only afterward did his friends and family learn he had AIDS. Several months had passed since I'd seen him last, and I reality

could

my

of death was

tell

a

though he brushed aside

that he wasn't well, even

questions about

how

he was

feeling.

He'd

weight that his eyes seemed too large for his I

lost so

much

face.

remember that he was very serious during our last meet-

ing together

things that

— not

morose, just intent on talking about

would have been described

two of us were

abandoning the

buy an old

responsibilities

and

trailer

— selling french

musings struck

me

as

when

the

about leaving his profession and

"Think about how

ing job.

carnival

life,

"heavy"

He talked about making

in college together.

drastic changes in his

as

of

great

travel fries

it

a regimented,

would

be,"

he

demandsaid, "to

around the country with a

and hot dogs." At the time

his

odd, even somewhat irresponsible.

My profession has always been a source of self-esteem, and my work

an important part of my

life. I

couldn't "get into"

(another expression from our youth) the notion of tossing it

aside.

But

I

sat

and

listened.

Martin go on. He'd manifested

Mostly

I

nodded and

let

a strong hedonistic streak

89

fa Gardening

in

Clay

since our early college days.

was

his willingness to

way but

a cruel or careless

One of his

intriguing qualities

look for personal satisfaction, not in an honest and unashamed

as

statement of his individual priorities.

Two weeks five

after that evening,

morning and

o'clock in the

was dead, trying to

I

when

his

phone rang

the

remembered our dinner conversation.

me

tell

he was dying,

I

He

thought.

He

tell

doning

his job.

Lately the

me. That was why,

meaning of

my

last

believe that

I

evening was

dinner together,

I

I

was wrong about

conversation with Martin.

More

what he was talking about that

not dying. Now, when

living,

know

reasoned, he spoke of aban-

been thinking that maybe

I've

and more

I

was

realized that

everything was coming to an end, but he just didn't

how to

at

mother told me Martin

I

remember our

think that he was trying to share a dis-

covery with me, to pass along something important he'd learned from

life.

demands and

If we are not careful, he was telling me, the

obligations of our lives can crowd out our

need for fulfillment. if

We

should not think

less

of ourselves

our dreams and plans are different from what others ex-

pect

them

I still

to be.

miss Martin; there

is

no one

else like

him.

He

was

blessed with the capacity to find happiness in events and

circumstances that to others would have seemed quite ordinary. If he

had

a

sunny day and

was ready to take on the world.

who was It's

a full I've

pack of Newports, he

never

known anyone

else

so easily satisfied.

funny, but

I

can no longer visualize his face as

appeared in the casket.

I

that day: the large floppy

it

remember so many things about

bow on his

sister's

black dress, the

yellow roses on the octagonal table in the foyer of the funeral

home, and the

90

stories

and remembrances we shared

as