The Forgiveness Machine

This an extract from an article today in the Guardian. A poignant reflection of life and forgiveness.

 

 

 

The first piece of art that Karen Green made after her husband, David Foster Wallace, took his own life on 12 September 2008, was a forgiveness machine. She is standing in the neat, white studio at her house at Petaluma, north of San Francisco, explaining to me how the machine worked and how it didn’t.

“Before David died,” she says, “I had been working on some machines, with a five-year old – the son of a friend who had a gallery down the road from mine.” There had been a recreating-a-pig-from-bacon machine, and a prototype for a machine that cleverly pitted dates. The day that her husband hanged himself she had been working on a political machine that involved a bright-coloured circus tent, elephants and donkeys. For a long while after that, she says, she couldn’t make any art at all, wondered if she ever would again, but eventually, tentatively, she developed the idea for her conciliatory Heath-Robinson. “The forgiveness machine was seven-feet long,” she says, “with lots of weird plastic bits and pieces. Heavy as hell.” The idea was that you wrote down the thing that you wanted to forgive, or to be forgiven for, and a vacuum sucked your piece of paper in one end. At the other it was shredded, and hey presto.

Green put the machine on display at a gallery in Pasadena near the Los Angeles suburb, Claremont, where she and Wallace had lived in the four years they had been married. She was fascinated by the effect that it had on people who used it. “It was strange,” she suggests, “it all looked like fun, but then when the moment came for people to put their message actually in it, they became anxious. It was like: what if it works and I really have to forgive my terrible parent or whoever.”

In the end, Green didn’t use the machine herself, except to put a few tester messages through. “I couldn’t give it my full attention,” she explains. “I was worried it wouldn’t even work for the full four hours of the show’s opening. I was also kind of a mess about surviving the opening itself. Seeing people, chatting. Not ‘kind of a mess’ – a mess. I couldn’t imagine doing it.” She thought she would come back to visit the machine after the opening but instead she drove to her new home, not far from where she grew up, and stayed there. The machine was overwhelmed, too; it couldn’t process all the requests and was eventually dismantled. “Forgiving is never as easy as we would like,” she says. “Apparently quite a lot of people cried.”

In her studio, now, Green smiles at that idea, with all the weariness of someone who has lately done far too much crying for one lifetime. She is full of spirited life, continually doing her utmost to laugh, even to attempt bad jokes when she talks about the last two and a half years, in an effort to deflect herself from the alternative. Her eyes tell different stories. “I don’t know if David’s parents have anger at him,” she says. “Maybe because they were dealing with his illness, his depression, for such a very long time. But I have heard from other people who have lost spouses in this way, and fathers and mothers, and anger is perfectly appropriate. You can choose to be angry at the illness rather than the person, of course, but fury is completely appropriate: thus the forgiveness machine.”

I can see for miles

I found this in the Guardian this weekend, it speaks for itself. It’s the story of Shander Herian, blind from the age of 14, who first saw his wife 10 years after they married.

 

When you are blind, you imagine how people look. Not by touching their face or gauging their height, but by their voice, and the kind of person they are. That’s what helps you form a picture. I realise now I can see that those pictures aren’t always accurate. But when I first saw my wife, Gurjeet, 10 years after we’d met, she was exactly as I’d imagined.

I lost my sight at school, Christmas 1972 – I was 10 and larking about when I fell in some nettles and came up in a terrible rash. The doctor gave mum some tablets to clear it up but I had an awful reaction to them – what’s called Stevens Johnson syndrome – and for a few weeks it was touch and go if I’d survive.

One of the effects of the SJS was my tear ducts stopped working; without tears, your corneas can’t work. They tried all sorts to fix the problem. Every two weeks when we went to hospital I’d buy comics – the Beano, Dandy, the Beezer -  thinking I’d be able to read them on the way home, but I never could. My sight just kept getting worse, and by the time I was 14 it had gone.

I went to a special school in Birmingham, where you had to board Monday to Friday. I knew my mum and dad found it hard to leave me there, but they knew it was the best thing for me. The turning point was going to college in Hereford to study IT – The Royal National College for the Blind, where I am now a governor. I didn’t learn only academic and vocational stuff, but how to be independent: cooking, cleaning, doing sports, going out and about.

I used to ring my parents every day and tell them how I was doing. They were proud and, if I’m honest, surprised, too. A lot of people are surprised. They imagine that when you’re blind you “manage” rather than “achieve”, and that I must feel those years of being blind were wasted somehow. That’s simply not true. It was an amazing period of my life.

The best thing was meeting Gurjeet. It was an arranged marriage. I didn’t think anyone would want to marry me, but she said she did. She said it felt right. I sensed she was lovely and couldn’t believe my luck. Even on my wedding day my brother-in-law and I wondered if she’d turn up. But there she was, waiting for me. We have been shoulder to shoulder since.

After I married I started a business building computers. I could do all the programming myself through a Braille terminal but I remember the first one I built. Gurjeet and I worked through the night – she was my eyes while I was building it, orientating me around the circuit board. Then she’d drive me around the country so I could deliver the computers to clients, with our two daughters in the back. I bought a shop and it went from strength to strength. At our height we were one of the largest suppliers in the UK and turning over millions.

Being blind was just part of our married life. We didn’t talk about it, we just lived with it. I never thought it would be any different. Then one day – when we’d been married about 10 years – an optician I knew came rushing into our office saying he’d read about a new technique he was sure could help me. Two weeks later I was at an eye hospital in Brighton and booked in for this new experimental operation. When they took off the bandages and cleaned up my eyes, it was like having Windolene cleaned off a window. I saw the doctor’s tie, then his huge smile, and then everything was crystal clear. When Gurjeet and the girls walked into the room, they were just as I had pictured in my mind. So familiar. I will never forget that moment. “I can see you,” I said to them. “I can see for miles.”

The world seemed so bright – that’s what struck me most. The colours of the 70s – the dark red curtains, brown lino, drab shopfronts and black Morris Minors and Austin 1100s that I had remembered from my childhood – were replaced by this array of bright shades. We all walked down to the seafront in Brighton. It was a beautiful day, and I was walking in front, holding the girls’ hands, showing off a bit. I couldn’t stop staring at everything. There was so much to take in. It was wonderful. I still have to pinch myself when I think about it today.

s-o-c-k-s

A few years ago I purchased fifteen pairs of brown socks. A brainwave idea to streamline the post-tumble-drier matching-up process which seemed to eat up an extraordinary amount of time. This radical move didn’t exactly change my life, but it freed up an extra six or seven minutes (which adds up over the course of a lifetime). Though doing the laundry is now a breeze, the downside is that all my socks are the same shade of brown, turdy brown. Until yesterday. Yesterday Erin’s mom sent us a package from the States. And in amongst an amazing assortment of goodies (including zip-locked bags of home-made cookies) were a couple of pairs of socks addressed to me. And they were not just any old socks, but grey ones with green and yellow variegated stripes. Which is phenom on two accounts: 1) They’re properly snazzy. 2) They’re easy to spot against a sea of chocolate brown. Looking good doesn’t have to chew up your minutes, friends.

PS: I’ve just spring-cleaned the blog. Take a look around.

Weathered

We’ve been in Sarajevo for three weeks. When we first got here the bullet-holes riddling the buildings and the mortar craters in the pavements knocked the air out of me; now I breeze past them as if they are acne. But one thing that still stops me in my tracks are the faces of the old men and women on the street. I have never seen such weathered faces, so many deepset lines. Each wrinkle is like a pen stroke in a beautiful story. Though we cannot talk, you can see their story in the tracks around their eyes. And I think of the botoxed world that I come from, and I can’t help seeing how we airbrush our characters, filling grout into the lines of our past, and masking our true beauty.

“Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his,
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.“

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Savouring Breakfast

When I was in my early twenties, I figured out what song I wanted to play at funeral – Morning Theft by Jeff Buckley. I talked about how if it was my last day on earth I would wake up early in the morning, buy a can of Fanta, call up a friend and go camping.

This morning I started my day with a glass of Coke. Coca-Cola, before abracadabra, is the first magic word a child learns. I don’t care that a 330ml can contains fourteen teaspoons of sugar, 29% of my recommended daily allowance, I have never drunk a can of Coke because I wanted something healthy. I drink it because I like the way the bubbles of that first swig burn the back of my throat. And because it’s magic.

I used to work for Pepsi. I created advertising campaigns for Pepsi Max and 7Up. And I was happy because our ads featured footballers and pop musicians. I met Theirry Henry in the Landmark hotel and drank Pineapple Juice with him. I was of an age when I was easily impressed, especially when budgets hit the $2million mark, when adverts were shot in Roman Amphitheatres, and when you got to drink fruit juice with World Cup winners. I belonged to a cult, it was all out war, and I was on the blue team. I was indoctrinated in all things Pepsico. Our cola drink was superior, decades of taste tests proved it. Michael Jackson sung about it. The logo, the red, blue and white globe, was a mark of modernity, an ‘active choice of a new generation’, a challenge to ‘dare for more’. The colour blue was a symbol of defiance. That’s what I was told and what I ardently believed. And I didn’t drink Coke for three years. After I switched accounts and started selling scratchcards for the National Lottery, it took me six months before I could even look at another drink. I remember the day I walked up to the bar asked for the C-word, looking over my shoulders as I whispered it, as I was asking for something unspeakable. It’s like leaving a cult, I imagine. I still have friends on the Pepsi side.

I was reading a book in bed this morning and in it there was the story of a Buddhist man with lung cancer who had a radiant outlook. He savoured every moment, every mouthful of life, and became so acutely aware of love and small pleasures that he told the author that he no longer felt that he had a life-threatening disease, now he’s leading a disease-threatening life. He said in an interview ‘I’ll live as well, as deeply, and as madly as I can until I die.’ The author, struck by this, decided to try to play that same chord, too, as she puts it, on her heart’s twangy old banjo.  She stopped and bought the new People Magazine, and a can of real Coca-Cola. She writes – On my last day I won’t be drinking Diet Coke. If I am, shoot me. And I was transported back to when I was 23. I thought about drinking Fanta and going camping, but we’re in Sarajevo, and the only thing in the fridge was a two-day old bottle of flat Coca-Cola. I poured myself a glass. And though there were no bubbles to burn the back of my throat, I felt satisfied. I went back to bed and lay next to the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s carrying my baby. And we’re on an adventure.

A novel cut out of another – Tree of Codes

This is an image of an genius project from Jonathan Safran Foer called Tree of Codes. He took his favourite book – Bruno Schulz’s Cinnamon Shops (retitled The Street of Crocodiles) and cut it to ribbons to create a new story. Snip seven letters from Street of Crocodiles and you get Tree of Codes. There are 134 intricately die-cut pages, and it looks beautiful. At only 3000 words it’s a quick read. “This book is mine’ Foer says, arguing that every book has been cut out of another, the dictionary. I’ve just ordered my copy.

Don’t Just Watch, Join in.

This year I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – What I learned while editing my life. Part-memoir, complete-genius, it’s up there in the top three books I read all year, if not up on that lonely perch at the top. Somewhere towards the end there’s a story about a family in San Diego and their New Years Day Parade. More than a decade ago, when the kids were young, they sat around bored on New Years Day. The father, deciding boredom wasn’t fitting for any day of the year, asked his kids for suggestions, and hoped they didn’t come up with ‘can you buy me a pony’. After a short conference they decided to have a family parade down their small street. When they notified their neighbors, the family instituted an unbreakable rule – NOBODY was allowed to watch their parade, you could only participate. Twelve years on the parade is huge. It’s an annual, street tradition, complete with a Grand Marshal and Queen. And nobody is allowed to watch. Nobody can sit on the curb. Everybody marches in the parade.

In ‘Travelling Mercies‘ Anne Lamott quotes something she saw at a Jewish Theological Seminary. It said “A human life is like a single letter of the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning.” Happy 2011.