i have just finished reading east of eden. i spent the entire day reading. i woke up at ten and started reading. i read in a cafe in rome, eating the greasiest piece of cold pizza that stained the few pages i consumed along with my food. i read on the train to civitavecchia, while a baby screamed frantically in the background and my tiny legs struggled for room in the crammed cabin. i read in the heat of the small, lovely city-- the sunlight and the thin white pages blinding my eyes to anything other than the words in front of me. i read in the port, as the sun gave way to heavy clouds and hysterical, sideways rain. i read as i ate pasta in the cafeteria of the ferry, sharing my table with a crepe-skinned old man in an orange shirt. i read in the lounge, surrounded by circles of men throwing cards to the middle of sandpapery tables, while a comical man played the keyboard and warbled strange italian words into a microphone. i read and then there was nothing more to read and my eyes exploded with tears.
i ran out to the deck, feeling ridiculous and stood in the corner, sobbing. somewhere in my reading, it became dark and i gasped when i finally looked around me and saw nothing but black. no stars. no moon. no horizon. just black. i peered over the edge of the boat, which is nearly as tall as i am, and saw only the frothy water curling out from the sides of the ferry. it looked to me like clouds in fast forward-- twisting and changing rapidly and then disappearing. i felt terrified and lonely. i missed the characters of the book and wanted them back. i wanted to have not been so greedy, to have not read so fast.
i wanted to know what i would sound like, if someone were to write about me. if i would be beautiful. if i would be loved. what my failings and what my ugliness would be, and would i recognize them printed before me. and would a girl on a summer journey miss me if she consumed me too quickly. would she cry. would she write about me.
i feel strange and incapable of touching what it is i've just experienced. reading these words. which i needed. which were perfect. which came at just the right time, as everything seems to do lately.
i am still weeping a little. but quietly now. and now instead of looking at me with wanting eyes, the groups of grey-haired italian men look at me with fear, because i am vulnerable and strange and not so afraid to show it. their eyes return to their cards and their heads do not turn to follow me. their heads which did not really follow me but my boobs which are always exposed. and thomas says he cannot understand why no one asks me on a date, but maybe it is that i seem confident and maybe my chest is saying it too overtly.
and i say that i don't feel confident. or i never have really, until now. but maybe i'm not and maybe i never will be. but maybe i am.
i just want to be good. i want to be good and i want to love and i want to be loved. it is simple and stupid and i hope that it is true. i want to love and i want the people around me to feel loved. maybe it is silly to say, but i'm emotional and feel strong in my weakness. many weeks ago, at the jewish museum in berlin. during my first weekend alone in berlin. i came to the paper pomegranate tree. there was a note saying that pomegranates hold special meaning for jews. maybe if i remembered why, i would not be still so young and silly. maybe then i would actually know something, but i don't. i just remember that they had little paper pomegranates and you could write a wish and hang it from the tree. and i walked around that tree, reading people's wishes. wishes for personal things and for world peace and for love and for things i couldn't read in chinese characters and in spanish and italian. and things i couldn't read in bad handwriting and things i could almost read in german. and i took mine to a little table and with my favorite black pen, which i've somehow managed not to lose this entire trip, i wrote that those i love might love themselves. because it was all i could think of and what i really meant. and i walked up the spiraling stairs within the tree to the middle and hung my pomegranate wish and left it there.
i know you are not supposed to tell wishes, but i don't think it's in wishing that things happen. it's in the doing. i try to do that. i try to do that for myself as well. that is what this has been about. and i couldn't love myself until i let me love myself. i try to live that way. for everyone. to show them they are beautiful. you can't make a person do or believe anything they don't want to. maybe it is foolish. it feels foolish now that i've said it.
we just waste so much time. telling ourselves we are not good enough or don't have enough or should do more. i hear it from many people i love. and while i'm not blind, while i can admit fault most readily in myself and also in others, i am loved by the most beautiful people in the world. i believe this to be so. while i have gotten to know myself quite well on this trip, i've also gotten to know the people i love. i have seen what sticks, what is not based on convenience, what is true, what is real. i feel incredibly loved and incredibly capable of love in return.
i am rambling and frantic. i am just too full. i am filled up with words and with love and with hope.
here is my favorite passage:
"don't you see?" he cried. "the american standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. the king james translation makes a promise in 'thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. but the hebrew word, the word timshel-- 'thou mayest'-- that gives a choice. it might be the most important word in the world. that says the way is open. that throws it right back on man. for if 'thou mayest'-- it is also true that 'thou mayest not.' don't you see?... why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he still has the great choice. he can choose his course and fight it through and win... i have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. it is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. it is always attacked and never destroyed-- because 'thou mayest.'"
a choice! a choice, for good, for love, for triumph.
how strange that this is all my own life, my choice, my creation. i know it and yet every time i say it to myself it is foreign and amazing.
i feel dizzy and wild.
i want to be good. i choose good. i want to love and be loved. that is all. i don't know what else to say. i have read so many words, written so many words, and now they are all drained out of me and i'm just quiet and still weeping.
on the way to sicily. in the middle of a black sky and a black ocean.
my name is beth.
