Curiosity

A couple months ago, Ari had an obsession with Curious George. We had a new copy of the original book, and in Max's parents' attic we found an old copy. In the old copy, the book opens by stating that George was a good little monkey with only one fault "he was too curious". In the new edition, George is not "too curious': he is a "good little monkey and always very curious."

In both editions, George ends up in the States because the Man With The Yellow Hat kidnaps him. In the movie version, it appears, George follows the man back to the States, (presumably out of curiousity?)

The societal changes hinted at by these alterations in the story line would be an interesting topic for a paper or article on Children's Literature, but actually, all that's totally tangential to this post, which is to talk about curiosity in my own life.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty curious person. Too curious, no doubt. Of course, I don't know anyone these days who thinks of themselves as 'not very curious' -- as George makes clear, curiosity is no longer considered a fault. (Though the other George, the incurious one, is trying very hard to make it one again.)

But however curious we are, in general, there are always aspects of life that we are so utterly incurious about that we don't even realize how little we know, how little we've wondered, how little we've seen that thing at all.

It is a great gift to discover curiosity about something in your life you'd never noticed before. It's like one of those dreams in which you find, suddenly, a hidden room in your house. It was always there, but somehow, you didn't know it. You have more space, suddenly, than before, and the space is filled with interesting things -- your things, but you've never seen them before. Your life is larger, and yet larger in a familiar way.

This happened to me the other day. I discovered the moon.

It is not that I have been unaware of the moon -- who could be? But recently, I've actually learned a couple of things about the moon that made me realize how shockingly incurious I've been about the largest and loveliest gaze-able object in the sky. (The sun may be large and lovely, but it's only gaze-able, if you've a clear shot of the horizon, which I don't, for a few minutes every day).

It's impossible, of course, not to be aware that the moon waxes and wanes, that it is sometimes full and sometimes a crescent, sometimes something in between, that this happens on a 28-29 day cycle. Most people will also admit, if they think about it for a moment, that sometimes they see the moon during the day, but not at night. It's obvious that the moon does not always rise and set at the same times. So it must follow a cycle.

I have been alive for 30.5 years, and I have spent countless hours looking at the moon during that time. But I never thought about, and never knew, that the moon rises around sunset and sets around dawn when it is full, and it rises at dawn and sets at sunset when it is new, and when it is waxing, it rises later and later every day, and earlier and earlier when it is waning. I never knew that you could tell whether you were looking at a waxing crescent or a waning crescent by the direction of the crescent and by the time and place in the sky that you saw it. These things seem obvious to me now. How could it be otherwise?

I know I did not know these things before. And now that I know them, I want to understand more about the moon. Not just facts, like that the moon rises about 51 minutes later each day, and so the tides also are about 51 minutes later each day, too. I mean that I want to be familiar with the moon, not just to know about it. Because I have found, suddenly, that I have not been familiar with the moon. That it's been a stranger on the street, that I have passed by it every day and never noticed that today it wore a pink hat, or that every Tuesday it carried three books home from the library.

The new room I've found in my house is filled with beautiful things. Unfortunately, not everything about which we are habitually incurious will turn out to be a beautiful room with beautiful things. In the past couple of years, for example, I've found more rooms than I care to think about that were full of bloated, dead bodies and torture devices. When one finds such a room, one's curiosity does not seem like such a gift. Who wants to see such things, to know they exist in your very own house? In Bluebeard's castle, isn't it better to not to open some doors?

Of course, you know what I think the answer to that question is. And it's not because I believe in narcissistic naval gazing and 'letting it all hang out'.

It's just this: If we cannot see the truth, how can we hope to change it? Here's me, in December 2004

Why do I talk about my depression so much here? Because I think it has everything to do with politics today. The facts are frightening; the facts are horrifying; the facts are bad for your health.

The Bushists won because the facts, for many people, are too difficult to bear. And it is not just Bush supporters who are ignoring the facts now. Since November, I have seen an increasing number of Democrats retreat into the safety of illusions. They believe that the right to an abortion is not really in danger. They are sure that a backlash against Bush is coming, and that the moderates in the Republican party will revolt and save us from further destruction. They are hopeful that Bush is leaning toward a more inclusive foreign policy, that the next four years will be better than the last. Before the election, they believed that if Bush won, things would get very bad indeed. Now that he has, they have retreated. Things will be okay, they say. It's just another four years. They wouldn't really do that. The people won't let them. They don't have the mandate. Things will only get really bad if we have a financial crisis, or another major attack. And that probably won't happen. It's not so bad now.

This is unwarranted optimism, my friends. Today, right now, our nation tortures as a matter of policy. Today, people making the minimum wage cannot afford to live. Today the gap between rich and poor is growing, and the environmental regulations are weakening, and our soldiers are dying. Some 48% of those who voted did so for Kerry, but most of them also live in a world where most of the facts do not matter. Most of these people are not mobilized to fight creeping fascism; they have turned their eyes away from it.

If we are to overcome the Bushites, we must make reality more bearable for these people. If they cannot see it, they will not mobilize to change it. I don't know how to do this, since I can sometimes hardly bear reality myself. But I feel there are answers here somewhere -- some hopeful alternative to blind optimism, some spoonful of sugar that can make the medicine of reality go down, so that we may change it, and not, to steal Mr. Bush's words, "drift toward tragedy."

And me, six months later, in June 2005:

For a year now I've been torture girl, screaming and nagging and begging people I know and love, not just 'those other people out there, in the Red States', to look at the torture. And yet so many people will not. And I've wondered in desperation how to get people to see, why won't people see, why won't they pay attention? And the more I shouted and jumped up and down, the more people did not pay attention, and the more alone I've felt, and I've been filled with the frustration of seeing what others won't see. And I've been so angry. I've bee so angry at all of you, and you know who you are -- for covering your eyes.

But my anger and my agitation and my arm-waving hasn't gotten me anywhere. So, you who cover your eyes -- have you read this far, even? will you read this far? -- this is what I would like to say to you:

You ask me what good it will do to turn our eyes to the torture. Tell me what to do, you say, and I will do it, but don't ask me to look at something and feel helpless in its face. And I say, if you will not look at a thing, how can you begin to know what you can do to fix it? You stand in a different place than I do -- what good will it do for me to tell you what I must do about torture? What you must do, what you would see you must do, if you looked, if you saw it as it is, not out of the corner of your eye, but straight on, will surely be different.

Tell me it can be fixed before I look at it, you say to me, and I say to you that no such promise can be made. But if we cannot fix it, if we cannot make our government stop, then we must learn to live with it, and how can we do that unless we see it for what it is? Do you not have the sense, some part of each day, that there's something enormous that you're avoiding? Like that pile of bills on your desk, some of which are no doubt overdue. But you don't pay the bills, and you don't even open them, and you don't even look at them, and instead you think about easier things. And yet the bills are there, a hole of discomfort, a gravitational force that pulls at your mind. As long as those bills sit unopened, parts of you are sloughing off and drifting toward them.

Such is the power of unpaid bills, so imagine the great black hole that is torture. My friends who will not look, do not imagine that you thereby protect yourselves from the terrible force of this fact. Your fear grows and grows. You are afraid, and you feel guilty and ashamed that you are afraid, and all of these feelings are awful, and you hope, by not looking, that you will not have to feel them so much.

Feel your fear, friends -- it's a fearsome thing. Feel guilt and shame too. I certainly do. But do not let those feelings keep you from turning toward torture. Only by turning toward it can we hope to stop it. And if we cannot stop it, then, if we see it together, we can comfort one another. We can share the burden of seeing together. Surely that is better than staying locked, each in our own private horror. If we cannot stop the torture, then let us cry for it together. Let us beat our breasts and tear our hair together, in our guilt and shame and helplessness and fear and our despair. Let us witness, and witness honestly, and not convince ourselves that if we do not look that it does not affect our humanity.

In this moment, while torture again is in the news, we have the opportunity to pay attention, and to ask one another to pay attention to it.

I beg you to see, in this moment, and the next, and the next, and the next after that.. If we cannot help one another to do this, then there will be no end to our shame.

Well, friends. We have not stopped the torture. We have not stopped terrorism, or the war in Iraq, or this President's lies or his packing of the Supreme Court or his illegal activities. Things have only gotten worse, not better.

Still, I argue, be curious. It's our only hope, and if it does not set us free, at least it may enlarge our prison.