Neutral Tidings
Note: I sent this to a friend with whom I have briefly lived but do not know very well. I have edited spelling and for clarity, though not content. Ellipses denote omissions.
Everyone insists on sending good tidings, as if contact and good will were sufficient to produce harmony. Luckily, you and I are not that naive; we well know that contact can produce discord as well as harmony. Thus, I send you neutral tidings on the hope that they can become good tidings. However, if we are not that lucky then at least we can smile through the catastrophe, so to speak.
On our last exchange of letters, we were both caught up in the holiday moment, if not its spirit. The holidays, being perfect proof that contact is not sufficient for harmony, found you reflecting on how you had changed and on how that change was, or was not, being accommodated by your familial surroundings. Many years ago, as a Dartmouth sophomore, I realized that going home for more than 48 hours was not really an option for me. This is sad because many political theorists write about the home as the place where people can hide from public view and regenerate, only to emerge again with new stories. I've never found home to be that protective; rather, home was always like a cruel episode of Survivor written by a twisted director.
However, this email is not to dwell on the problems of home--we know that much to well--but to think about the drive that the neutral tidings of being at home produces in us as we long to get away. Indeed, we might think of home, not as a hiding place, but as a cannon into which one is stuffed until the pressure builds and ejects you out in the world of publicness. But is this world of publicity more desirable, or, at least less injurious, than the world of home? The light of the public is the sterile, hissing light of a fluorescent lamp. It is not warm, institutionally sterile, and anonymous. Indifferent in some ways, isolating in others. Dartmouth is such a public as has a very different feel from the embrace of home--even if that embrace is an unrelenting choke hold, or, the slightly more comfortable half-Nelson.
It is not clear that our coed fraternity is either a public or a home. The webs of significance are much too strong to simply be an indifferent public; but the ever-changing house, subject the pressures of the academic quarters and the positions of its members along a four-year continuum, is not stable enough to be a home per se. The actors involved change much to quickly and the intercourse involved, while deep, is far from permanent.
All of this abstract thinking sets the way for my ultimate question to you, and the purpose of this email. Having returned for your last winter in your final year, have you found warm embrace in the lives of those about whom you care, especially in the house, or, do you find yourself in an empty publicity without the complications of home, but without the warmth of others in a robust way?
Though the tone of the email might not suggest it, I am currently very happy and very content with my life with no legitimate cause to complain.
...
I hope this email finds you well.
John Stevenson
Note: I sent this to a friend with whom I have briefly lived but do not know very well. I have edited spelling and for clarity, though not content. Ellipses denote omissions.
Everyone insists on sending good tidings, as if contact and good will were sufficient to produce harmony. Luckily, you and I are not that naive; we well know that contact can produce discord as well as harmony. Thus, I send you neutral tidings on the hope that they can become good tidings. However, if we are not that lucky then at least we can smile through the catastrophe, so to speak.
On our last exchange of letters, we were both caught up in the holiday moment, if not its spirit. The holidays, being perfect proof that contact is not sufficient for harmony, found you reflecting on how you had changed and on how that change was, or was not, being accommodated by your familial surroundings. Many years ago, as a Dartmouth sophomore, I realized that going home for more than 48 hours was not really an option for me. This is sad because many political theorists write about the home as the place where people can hide from public view and regenerate, only to emerge again with new stories. I've never found home to be that protective; rather, home was always like a cruel episode of Survivor written by a twisted director.
However, this email is not to dwell on the problems of home--we know that much to well--but to think about the drive that the neutral tidings of being at home produces in us as we long to get away. Indeed, we might think of home, not as a hiding place, but as a cannon into which one is stuffed until the pressure builds and ejects you out in the world of publicness. But is this world of publicity more desirable, or, at least less injurious, than the world of home? The light of the public is the sterile, hissing light of a fluorescent lamp. It is not warm, institutionally sterile, and anonymous. Indifferent in some ways, isolating in others. Dartmouth is such a public as has a very different feel from the embrace of home--even if that embrace is an unrelenting choke hold, or, the slightly more comfortable half-Nelson.
It is not clear that our coed fraternity is either a public or a home. The webs of significance are much too strong to simply be an indifferent public; but the ever-changing house, subject the pressures of the academic quarters and the positions of its members along a four-year continuum, is not stable enough to be a home per se. The actors involved change much to quickly and the intercourse involved, while deep, is far from permanent.
All of this abstract thinking sets the way for my ultimate question to you, and the purpose of this email. Having returned for your last winter in your final year, have you found warm embrace in the lives of those about whom you care, especially in the house, or, do you find yourself in an empty publicity without the complications of home, but without the warmth of others in a robust way?
Though the tone of the email might not suggest it, I am currently very happy and very content with my life with no legitimate cause to complain.
...
I hope this email finds you well.
John Stevenson
