One Great Thing: Epigraphs #03

It's the poem at the beginning of a book. This one changed my life.

Last week I finished reading Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese, a magnificent work of fiction so beautifully detailed that I don't buy it isn't biographical. I sighed in delirium during its 657 pages and yearned for many more when they eventually ran out. However, it’s the epigraph that changed my life. Here it goes, for your consideration.

And because I love this life

I know I shall love death as well.

The child cries out when

From the right breast the mother

Takes it away, in the very next moment

To find in the left one

Its consolation.

- Rabindranath Tagore, from Gitanjali

I am feeling the weight of responsibility. Towards my family, my life, and also my dreams. This terrible economy and some weird health issues have put a kind of daunting pressure on me that I realized I hadn't experienced yet. For the first time in my life, I am scared of losing what I have accomplished so far.

I finally understand why adults are conservative.

Just a few years ago, I would move continents as often as I would change phones. Now, I have a home base, a place to stay with actual furniture, decor, and memories that locked out my adventurous soul. I just want things to stay how they are.

I recently saw these sculptures by William Kentridge at the Broad Museum in LA. They are bronze, but painted to resemble other materials, like fabric, paper, and wood in a surprisingly realistic way. This installation left a strong impression on me because I was so intrigued by the counterintuitive beauty of choosing to make something in the hardest way possible.

But now I get it. Kentridge, like me, was striving for the impossible: durability of the ephemeral. Making sure his cardboard sculptures held the exact same wrinkles, form, and function through the test of time required trompe-l'œil. If I had it at my disposal, I would have done the same and made bronze casts of myself and all my belongings.

I wonder, though, why I have to hold on so strongly that my fingertips turn white. Why do I have to insist on the unreal ideal of durability, status quo, 2 bedrooms, and an Equinox gym membership? How did I believe that I could win over nature's basic truth that nothing is meant to last forever and that everything changes with time? Even bronze patinas from rich copper tones to Tiffany blue.

And to that, we have Rabindranath Tagore's poetry. The left breast, my consolation.