an essay in parts: part III

How many times have I listened to Bob Dylan sing "everybody must get stoned" today? And still, after hours of him I Want You still pulls me in. And you can't help but admire the humor and lungs of Dylan as he drones out Freight Train Blues.

Anyway, the point I'm supposed to be reaching is the question that keeps being asked, do I really believe God is silent?

Well, you tell me, what is silence?  Is silence proof there is no God, there is no one there to answer? Do the heavens seem silent because we don't know how to listen? Does God withhold answers because he is disinterested? Or is silence not the answer but part of the equation, on this side of the equal sign, the circumstance that needs to take place for the chemical reaction to happen?


The other day as I was making pesto for my dinner my world was silent. (Except for the part where I was too lazy to chop walnuts and pounded them with a hammer instead.) I quietly watched as the knife shredded the parsley, their juices making them turn darker and darker green. I didn't turn on any music or podcast, there was no one else in the kitchen to yap with. The world was so silent and sometimes it seems such a deafening thing.


But I think it's important.


The Pale King, an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace is about to be published posthumously, has a wide collection of characters most of which are IRS examiners, or wigglers, working at their office in Peoria, Illinois. On one hand this book could be about boredom, there is a section that records the page turns of each office worker. "Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page... Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound." One of them proposes a play: an IRS employee sits on a stage reading forms, making notes. "He sits there longer and longer, until the audience gets more and more bored and restless, and finally they start leaving, first just a few and then the whole audience, whispering to each other how boring and terrible the play is. Then, once the audience have all left, the real action oft he play can start." In his Time Magazine review of the book Lev Grossman proposes this interpretation of the proposed play: "The audience misunderstood what they were watching. They waited for the action to start without realizing that it was already happening, all around them, if they only knew how to see it."1

"If they only knew how to see it." If I could appreciate the silences that are ever present–ritualistically, daily present in my life–the quiet routine of living, with all the silence that they bring, would have meaning. I don't have to overflow with pep and happiness about it every waking moment–then I'd be a gross cavitous sweet-tooth of a human being. But an idea that keeps coming back to me is I should appreciate sadness and ho-hum hum-drum.

How did I end up sermonizing? Dang.

Maybe this all serves as good background, I've had these theories for a while that work quite well with quotidian life. But being part of a fatal accident isn't everyday, not for me, and maybe because it was a silence of dramatic proportions that's why I spent the next few hours in shock. I study cinema, I don't want my life to be cinema, in fact, I don't even want to make cinema that's so grandiose and loudly heart-rending.

In the RadioLab podcast "Silence"2 Robert Krulwich delves into the story where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. Abraham has already followed every command of God and according to the Bible, at this time there were some pretty evil, mean and nasty people, and so it might be plausible to say that at this point on the earth there was no other man on earth who loved God as much as Abraham. And God has promised Abraham that through Isaac many nations shall arise, innumerable posterity. In other words, hope. God has promised but he now asks that Abraham sacrifice his beloved son. Abraham asks no questions, he says nothing, he goes and does.

This is a grand cinematic fatal story. And it has a lot of silence.


So Krulwich wonders about this silence, particularly the silence of Isaac coming down from that mountain by himself. "What was Isaac thinking when he went down alone from Mt. Moriah? When he walked into what was left of his long, long life. He must have asked himself, Why was I tested? Why was I spared? What is the point? Am I an accident? Am I alive because my father passed a test? Would I be dead if he didn’t pass the test? Do I matter? Am I precious? I don’t know. I don’t know! So what do I do? I go on, I grow older, I marry Rebecca, I have children of my own, I make mistakes, I laugh, I savor my love for Jacob and for Esau and for sunsets. I hope that I’m here for a reason and that one day it will make sense. Sometimes I believe it does make sense, sometimes not."

And Krulwich says this:


part of being human, of being a good human–beyond our capacity to love and to care–is a desire for answers, for explanation. It’s a desire to know why.


I do not understand everything, I do not have answers for everything, I cannot see the eternity that I believe in. But in line with LDS doctrine, I believe that I am striving to be like God. Part of that striving is asking questions and facing the silence, not drowning it out, so that I might understand, so that someday I may be a God.3 Now I am mortal and I'm still digging at the silence, then I will be immortal and then shall I know even as I am known.4


Until then, I just hope and I question.


ps. There are many more things I have to say on this subject but I've reached the point where I think you've stopped reading and I'm feeling self-conscious that I'm being preachy rather than participating in a discussion that I've been having with many of you face to face. I've loved all your thoughts on this subject and I'd like to hear more particularly if you are not LDS or don't believe in God because I find all sorts of ideas engaging and enriching.



1. Grossman, Lev. "Unfinished Business, Resurrecting David Foster Wallace's Last Novel." Time magazine. 11 April 2011. p 60-64.

2. RadioLab "In Silence" (I've fixed the link now)

3. My personal interpretation is not that I will be a Goddess, that God is only whole when it is the woman and the man.

4. 1 Corinthians 13:12

david foster wallace or being aware

I sporadically have trysts with McSweeney's Internet Tendency which is a kind of multi-faceted literary thing. For a physical representation: Imagine there's a store (there is) in San Fransisco (826 Valencia) that's full of witty pirate memorabilia, mop heads that will fall on your head (I got mopped), and tutors for children. Now imagine a website like that. 

In 2008 when David Foster Wallace committed suicide McSweeney's began posting rememberances from people who had been affected by him. He was an author and a professor and I had never heard of him before. But these letters written by people who had taken classes from him or who knew him moved me. 

It is ever miraculous to me that it does not take a face to face, consistent, traditional relationship with a person to be changed.

In the ensuing years I have read some of his works (not nearly as much as I'd like, say, a book-or-two-full) and read more of him and I am ever more grateful for his life. I've really been wanting to start a series of profiles on MY friends, people I know in REAL LIFE and the great things they're doing, but here's a last testimony to a stranger. A Collection of..., that one blog, posted about this talk given by Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. I highly recommend it. For a taste, the already highlighted, large-print quote from this speech is:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

I would enjoy your thoughts and discussions on this whether they be in in person or by technological means.