A letter from Home

I continue reading Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction.

Did you catch the pun on his name?

Seymour. See More. Seymour the mystic. Seymour the prophet.

I read this book last when I was probably Lilly's age. I parcel out Salinger's stories because he hasn't written that many, and I want them to last me my whole life. This is an idea I got from my ex, Charles. Another poet/saint. We lived together my first year at Dartmouth in a little two-hundred year-old house that had been rebuilt and rebuilt, near the velvet rocks. It was painted state park restroom chalk blue, was freezing cold, and had an unhappy and hostile, if ineffective ghost in the attic. When I realize that I was Lilly's age when I was doing this, throwing away my life, I freeze with fear. Oh, well.

The reasons you make the choices you make.

J.D. Salinger is/was my favorite author. Then came Dostoyevsky. And then Murakami. But from 12-16, when I was making all the important life decisions, it was JD. I was a crackerjack 16 year-old. I have to say, in terms of the world, I really peaked at that age. I mean, I've done other things since, good secret things, things that I'm happy with. I like myself better now. But you and I both know I haven't exactly burned a trail to greatness. But at 16, I was a baton twirling, singing, tap-dancing, poetry spouting, national merit finalist. I got into both Duke and Dartmouth. Which should I choose? J.D. Salinger lived near Hanover. I decided that I was going to Dartmouth.

So I'm reading this again at 40-something. And I love him so much more. And dislike him, too. Which I didn't the first time around. But I know more about him, of course. There's so much in it that you miss. That's kind of a wonderful thing, isn't it, about getting older? Finding what you missed? I didn't have a lot of real compassion when I was 16. Compassion has been a long time coming. The lotus is a good image for that. So is the rose. Rose of sharon, abide with me. It unfolds, just like that, when you finally get silent. Many petaled, infinite, fragrant.

Ok. So I went to Dartmouth to seek out JD Salinger. And I wanted to sit down with him and talk to him. But then I read Seymour--the part in which he talks about the students who beat their way to his door. And I realized (surprise!) that I was not the first person who had had this idea. I put my little idea away, ashamed. And, although I did indeed meet J.D. Salinger, twice, it was purely by magical accident. And I didn't talk to him about anything. I said "good morning" the first time, and the next time I showed him where a book on the New Yorker was in the bookstore. And the only things he said to me were, "Good morning" back, early on a sunny October day, and "Wallace Shawn was the ONLY editor the New Yorker has ever had. The magazine doesn't even exist any more."

Back to Seymour. Buddy outlines the types that visit him. But he misses one. He misses the reader, who, reading feels the writer is writing a letter specifically to her, putting into words all the things she suspected but could never really articulate, and that no one around her ever expressed. He misses the one who (crazily?) feels that at last she has always been an orphan, and has now heard from her family. Now that I'm writing and thinking about it, it was my mother who first read me For Esme with Love and Squalor. I think she was giving it to me so I would know her heart.

Call no man Raca. We don't get to know anyone here, do we?

That's my 1/2 hour.