From “Longing,” Prabuddha Dasgupta. From the Spring 2012 Challenge of The Overview.
I just like the ashes on Ash Wednesday. I’m at finest a lapsed Catholic although it could be extra correct to say that I by no means actually started, simply that I used to be raised towards the backdrop of already-faded-Catholicism and its related traumas, now transmuted and handed on of their mysterious methods to me. I inherited additionally the pining and the predilection that many Individuals have for sure issues to do with Eire. In San Francisco, I used to drink afternoons after I received off work at an Irish bar in Noe Valley, the Valley Tavern, or a distinct Irish bar downtown, the Chieftain, or generally come to think about it an Irish bar on Guerrero with massive home windows the place my buddy Graham and I used to love to look at the rain. San Francisco is a extra Catholic metropolis than most individuals assume, and extra Irish too. Extra Irish American, which is admittedly what I’m speaking about: women in pink faculty uniforms and tennis sneakers exterior the Convent of the Sacred Coronary heart, wanting ahead to soccer video games Friday nights at St. Ignatius, the highschool by the church the place my toes have been washed as a child on Holy Thursday. The gold beads strewn on the road after St. Patrick’s Day parades, orange-and-green bumper stickers for a united Eire overlaid with 49ers insignia. There are issues like that in all places, I do know. However then there may be the best way the fog rolls in within the afternoon, bone-chillingly damp, and the washed-up gentle on the pink facades within the Richmond, the looming lonesome palm timber lining the meridians. And the illuminated indicators for old-school strip golf equipment as you drive into North Seashore and the Tenderloin—or the one I all the time preferred that learn JOEY’S ICE CREAM ESPRESSO SAUSAGE WASH AND DRY. Now I’ve misplaced the thread of faith. Actually I’m simply watching the film of my childhood once more. I’ve a reminiscence of mud motes floating round in a shaft of sunshine and attempting to catch them in my arms, one lengthy afternoon, or perhaps many afternoons, or by no means. It’s simply a picture.
The ashes are a picture too—ashes to ashes, mud to mud. Photos like those who seem in Cheever’s journals, that are basically liturgical, all the time marking the approaching and going of Lent and Easter, as a result of that’s what offers a 12 months order. He makes lists: “The calendar of flowers, gin bottles, steak bones.” I meant to say one thing about sacrifice and self-denial, however I’m additionally simply making lists of issues I’ve seen. One other 12 months has passed by and it has not been a straightforward one. Many occasions I consider these Irish bars in San Francisco, their promise of inside and quiet and calm, and the attract of darkness within the afternoon. Cheever writes about the best way the impulse towards self-destruction might be, initially, as small as a grain of sand. “Don’t drink. Don’t et cetera, et cetera.” So there’s something about self-denial in spite of everything. Final February, this time, I used to be driving south from Mendocino, previous surf motels with emptiness indicators. California feels washed out this time of 12 months, eucalyptus bark stripped off all of the timber, the feeling of abrasion current. But there may be effulgence too, even on this season, when it rains or is meant to. One 12 months within the hills north of town: exceptional yellow blooms coating the hills like a carpet and all the things brown for as soon as astounding inexperienced. In “Ash Wednesday,” T. S. Eliot’s writes of these “who walked between the violet and the violet / Who walked between / The assorted ranks of various inexperienced.” I stroll by means of the valley of the shadow of demise—a phrase that involves thoughts, surprisingly, on a regular basis, although I have to remind myself of its coda: I’ll concern no evil, for thou artwork with me. (Are you, in spite of everything?) I image a valley between two steep jagged cliffs, perhaps I noticed one in an illustrated youngsters’s Bible, and between the cliffs in shadow, an extended stretch of grass on an extended street with no clear finish, however it’s in spite of everything a vibrant countless inexperienced.
Sophie Haigney is the net editor at The Overview.
