Worlds Colliding

Inventory of my life realms (in no particular order): partner and lover, father, friend, extended family member, professional IT developer, musician, tennis player, cook, reader, consumer of popular culture, etc.

Each one of the above has its own concerns, contacts, and ambitions.  The Venn diagram that would include them all would show significant but limited overlaps. I don’t think it’s uncommon to have so many spheres, but I’m not sure what the implications are.  Enrichment from any source is a good thing, so there may be a gain from each. But I can only function optimally in one realm at a given moment.  And the inevitable intersections and collisions can be awkward; yet unanticipated connections are also so rewarding. To the extent that life is divided into separate spheres we risk losing ourselves in a maze of multitasking.  And the keeping any secrets, anything that is known in one realm and kept from another is a recipe for psycho-disaster.

 

Charles D’Ambrosio shows us in his essay collection, Loitering, that language is a strain that runs through all of our worlds.  How I address my partner, my daughter, my friends, my colleagues, my friends on the tennis court, how I read … language runs through it all.  And looking carefully at language can teach us quite a bit about ourselves.

D’Ambrosio is a complicated man with a messed up family history and lots of personal issues, but he’s managing to sort it all out through writing, through language, through careful thinking about words.  This rewarding but uneven collection covers lots of territory.  My favorites include “Casting Stones”, about a famous trial and all of the personal, legal, and cultural implications of the outcome, and “Hell House”, a telling essay on the contrast between true horror and political propaganda.

D’Ambrosio is a serious thinker and an even more careful writer.  He slices very thin, very thin indeed.  His observations are keen, thought provoking, sometimes controversial, and even at times infuriating.  But his careful prose is alive, breathing, and needs to be taken seriously.

Is there some Utopia in which each of us can live a truly united life, where it all fits together seamlessly and we don’t have to keep explaining parts of ourselves to those outside that particular circle, or just keep sucking up the tension created by the collision and staying quiet?  Maybe there once was a way to do it, but probably there is no longer.  But applying the same kind of rigor to our use of language in all spheres will help us understand the commonality.  It’s literally a kind of verbal psychoanalysis.  It is both paralyzing and liberating. A double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.