you forget so easy
My girl Iris Murdoch talks a lot about attention, attentiveness. What does this mean?
As I’m writing this, there is a very small but not negligible possibility that we will see global thermonuclear war, which may (if my high-school debate cards were correct) lead to human extinction.
G. W. F. Hegel, our favorite German idealist, saw time as a march towards consciousness coming to know itself. An inevitable march, actually, thanks to the cunning of Reason. (To be fair, he was writing at the very beginning of the 19th century, and he couldn’t possibly have known the 20th century would happen.)
Fiction writers, who are generally the better philosophers, have generally seen things differently.
“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Maybe you haven’t read “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” But maybe you have seen O Brother, Where Art Thou? Ulysses Everett, scoundrel (just like his namesake), offers up a beautiful prayer to God to save him and his pals. But when He sends a flood to save them:
Well, any human being will cast about in a moment of stress. No, the fact is, they're flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn state. Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstition and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to the grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason - like they had in France. And not a moment too soon...
But I’ve been beating around the bush. What I really want to share with you is this chapter from The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (tr. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Pattinson):
The mule I was riding on stepped dead in his tracks and refused to move, then he bucked twice, then another three times, then once again, and that last time he threw me out of the saddle, but my left foot remained caught in the stirrup; I tried to cling onto the mule’s belly, but, startled, the beast set off at a gallop down the road. No, that’s not quite true: the mule tried to run away and even made a couple of leaps forward, but the muleteer, who happened to be standing beside me, managed to grab the reins, and, with considerable effort and no little danger to himself, brought the animal to a halt. Once the mule was under control again, I extricated my foot from the stirrup and stood up.
“A lucky escape,” said the muleteer.
And it was true; if the mule had galloped off, I would have got a real battering, and that accident might well have ended in my death, my head cracked open, congestion of the brain or some other internal injury, and that would have been the end of my career. The muleteer had perhaps saved my life, that much was clear; I could feel it in the blood pounding in my heart. O worthy muleteer! While I was recovering, he was carefully, skillfully, untangling the mule’s harness. I decided to give him three of the gold coins I had with me, not because that was how much my life was worth -- for my life was of inestimable value -- but because it seemed a reward worthy of the devotion he had shown in saving me. Right, I thought, I’ll give him the three gold coins.
“There you are,” he said, handing me the reins.
“Just a moment,” I answered, “I haven’t quite got over the shock...”
“Really?”
“Well, I did nearly die, didn’t I?”
“If the mule had galloped off, yes, possibly, but as you see, with God’s help, nothing happened.”
I went over to the saddlebags and took out an old vest, in whose pocket I had placed the five gold coins, and while I was doing this, I wondered whether perhaps that wasn’t too large a tip and whether two coins would be perfectly adequate. Or even one. One coin would be enough to send a tremor of joy through him. I studied his clothes; he was a poor wretch who had probably never even seen a gold coin. So, yes, one gold coin would suffice. I took it out, saw it sparkle in the sunlight; the muleteer didn’t see it, though, because I had turned my back on him; but maybe he had his suspicions, because he started talking to the mule in a low, meaningful voice, giving him advice, telling him to be more sensible in the future, saying that the gentleman might punish him; in short, a brief fatherly monologue. Bless me if I didn’t hear the sound of a kiss: it was the muleteer kissing the mule on its head.
“Steady on!” I exclaimed.
“Sorry, sir, but the creature keeps looking at us in such an odd way...”
I laughed, I hesitated, I placed in his hand a silver coin, got back on the mule, and trotted off, feeling slightly vexed, or, rather, slightly uncertain as to the effect that silver coin would have. A few yards on, I looked back, and there was the muleteer still bowing and clearly pleased as punch. I realized that he must be very happy indeed; I had paid him well, I had perhaps paid him too well. I thrust my fingers into the pocket of the vest I was wearing and felt a few copper coins -- the small change I should have given to the muleteer, instead of the silver coin. After all, when I thought about it, he hadn’t acted in the hope of gaining any reward or out of virtue, he had simply responded to an impulse natural to his temperament and to his trade; add to this the fact that he had been neither in front of me nor behind, but precisely at the spot where the accident occurrred, and this seemed to make him a mere instrument of Providence; so, one way or another, there had been no merit in his actions at all. I was greatly distressed at this thought; I told myself I had been profligate, and charged that one silver coin to the account of my many former extravagances; I was filled (yes, why not say it?), I was filled with remorse.
Well, I like Hegel, but I think Machado de Assis proves him wrong on this point. Time makes assholes of us all.
So if, in a moment of fear, if you’ve felt anything -- a desire to call your parents, or your chosen family, or your friends, and tell them that you love them -- or a desire to do something for someone -- consider that maybe this moment came from a good part of yourself. Maybe the best part. Consider attending to it. Consider not letting go of it.













