The Disturbing Immediacy

Our compound will hold Halloween tonight.  The little one is off with friends to take in all the candy she can.  The Mrs. is off at an event and so the older one and I will hold down the fort. We have done nothing.  There are no decorations up.  I’ll need to get some candy.  Last night I returned from a week on the road to discover the Jack O’ Lantern we’d carved last weekend, had been shown the garbage bin, because it had begun to rot.

Another pumpkin then?  Some ridiculously overpriced candy from the market.  We could always just shut the lights and pretend we weren’t home.  I don’t think anyone would egg us like you might back home.  I’ll rise.  There are worse holidays.  Once the first kid rings the bell, we’ll swing into gear.  Last year I put the bass amp behind the door and as my little one dolled out candy I bellowed a sinister laugh into the microphone that consistently made kids jump.  We’ll do that again.

It’s cool in Beijing.  Not cold.  Clear sky.  I decided to finish off James Agee’s “A Death in the Family” last night.  His depiction of death through the eyes of a young boy is startlingly approachable.  The simple questions he asks, which unnerve the adults, the torment he endures at school by children at school who don’t know any better.  The mystery of the funeral ceremony where he confronts his father again, motionless, spiritless, hands touching one another awkwardly, there on the motionless chest.

I learned later that this was an autobiographical novel, which explains some of the disturbing immediacy.  The early chapter in Rufus on italicized voice seems to capture perfectly his earnest, opaque love for his father.  How the father was proud of him for his reading.  But the little boy surmised his father’s appreciation for his reading was another way of saying the boy was not brave.  His father didn’t brag about his bravery.  Throughout the story we are pulled back to the opening, italicized scene with Rufus and his father enjoying an innocent day at the Charlie Chaplin film, when things were still innocent.