Thoughts on Muriel and Impossibility
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Mon, 08 Dec 1997 16:37:27 -0500
Muriel (the name of a lovely Tom Waits song, by the way, that turns out to
be about the enchanting woman whose face is on the cigar band)...
Anyway, the question has floated around this list, coming and going like
the tide, for some time now -- Seymour and Muriel? How is that possible?
I know my history with the women I have loved. I know the history of
friends with the women and the men they have loved. Believe me, it's more
than possible. In fact, it's more than likely.
How does this happen?
How do we lose ourselves in the face and the life of someone everyone else
sees and knows and tries to tell us is not just unlikely but impossible for
us?
How do we travel to that place in our own minds where we see, at first and
sometimes for a very long time, a person more or less of our own creation?
And when finally we arrive back at that place where we see what's actually
there, what everyone else has seen for so long, sometimes forced back there
with a violent jerk or two, sometimes just dropped back there one morning
without warning, sometimes having gradually slid back there over days and
weeks and months, the reality is often too cold to face and we spend still
more precious time in denial.
Don't misunderstand this. I would not in each case hold one side up and
one side down. The chances are, in more than a few cases, the other may be
having the same rude awakenings as we are. It's not a question of right
and wrong (though in Seymour's case I think the text does adopt an attitude
about Muriel and her place in (and out of) the Glass world that is less
than flattering to say the least. I think it does laugh a bit at her. But
that is a critical comment, an interpretation, and what I'm talking about
here is the history of personal impossibilities). I'm not suggesting that
we wake up to find monsters that we've been sleeping next to for so long;
only that we wake up staggered by our blindness to so much and to such
unlikelihoods.
It's happened to me more times that I would wish on anyone. That is my
fault I am sure (if blame can even be discussed in these things). I'm sure
it's happened often to those who have found themselves, with a sudden
shock, with me next to them, with me somehow having invaded their lives and
they've wondered how they could have possibly....
Something happens to our selves, to who we are, when we first fall, and
questions of possiblity and likelihood and good sense seem to us like
trifles to be tossed out in the name of what, we think, must surely be a
greater good, a higher purpose, fate, love, passion, or even just comfort
and reliability.
I don't know how this happens. I don't know why it happens so often in the
most impossible of ways between the unlikeliest of people. But it does.
It might have even happened to you once or twice.
Has it?
-- John