I'm giving a presentation tomorrow for a literature class, and our topic is the Sandra Cisneros book, The House on Mango Street. The coming-of-age novel is a treasure box of subtlety, written by an adult from a child's perspective. One thing we are emphasizing (and overemphasizing) in our presentation is personal reflection on the book, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to blog!
I read and re-read this book about four times before today (it's about 100 short pages long), and each time, I stopped on this line:
"When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza [that's the protagonist's name]. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are."
It's not literary genius, but it's powerful enough to stop my reading groove four times in a row. I'm trying to apply it to myself. I come from a small Washington town to a "big Texas city" - I know, it's just Waco, but give me a break, I knew everyone in my graduating class. And I'll be honest, even if I don't want to, I'll always be Naselle (the town in which I grew up). I can't forget who I am.
But this quote also reminded me of one of Heraclitus' fragments: "Beginning and end are common in the circumference of the circle." On first reading, I thought it was about as insightful as one of those Yogi Berra quotes like, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." But now I read it as expressing that everything's beginning is also its end; that these marks are just ways of expressing life, which is really just a cycle we don't recognize as a cycle.
Doesn't it seem cathartic to think of life as just a circle? That there is no such thing as a tangent; that all things travel on the same path, and always ends up where they start? That path you wanted to take that didn't work - oh, well, that's just another step on your circle. The circle of life, and all that. (Stay tuned for upcoming philosophy blog entry on The Lion King.)
Well, that's why I can't help thinking it's all just a nice little mental invention of man, an attempt to retain sanity. I think I believe too firmly in the truth of mistakes, that there's just times when we have to fail. Perhaps life is a circle; but if it is, then there's a hundred other circles intertwined in mine, and that's why I sometimes wander far off from my path. I've often gotten stuck on another circle; and I've often felt that fearful feeling of failure, like when you exit the freeway and realize you took the wrong exit. "God damn it, I'm going to spend the next ten minutes on entrance ramps, what a waste." Except in life, it's more like ten years.
Oh, well. The one who wanders is not lost.
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Where, oh where is the Lion King post?
ReplyDeleteSo, life as a circle is cathartic? I like how you mention that there's a hundred other circles intertwined with yours. But I'm thinking that even though there are no tangents but there are several paths--maybe Heraclitus just didn't know the word "sphere" yet.
Life as a circle is comforting to me. When it comes to Heraclitus, it seems that the "circle" is change itself. Kinda like Dr. Bowery described Aristotle's perception of "contemplative life" as the thought process and the act of the thought processes themselves--rather than the individual thoughts. So I end up picturing a snowglobe with little thoughts falling within it.
Maybe you're not getting stuck on other circles, but just a flake in the snowglobe? Not the most brilliant metaphor--but it makes sense to me. Feel free to tell me otherwise!
Britt