Someone larger than life such as the very real and well-documented Frida Kahlo, can inspire us to find ways to express what we need to, to accomplish what needs to be done, and to celebrate progress when we make it. But sometimes inspiration can come from a complete unknown; a fictional character that will never see the light of day for longer than it takes their few pages to be turned.
For me, one of these helpful characters is Rita the Clutter Counselor from
Anne Tyler's twelfth novel, St. Maybe.
Anne Tyler's twelfth novel, St. Maybe.
Anne Tyler is one of those authors who have their books made into movies that I really don't care for. The portrayal of what the characters do with their hands and feet as they move through their lives is never as interesting as what is going on inside their heads. She writes great lines of dialog, but when actors speak them, they seem to lose some of their original sense. But her novels are on solid ground, with numerous favorable reviews from the New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize.
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| Photo image: Anne Tyler has lived in Raleigh, NC since childhood and attended Duke University |
The main character of St. Maybe is Ian Bledsoe, and we learn of his family's tragedy through him. Ian has become spiritually paralyzed by guilt, stemming from from one small action, and then makes his life choices in a state of non-decision, as a result. He isn't trying to decide among variables; he is simply staying inside his protective shell, trying to atone for what he fears was his fault.
Ian Beldsoe isn't a Walter Mitty, with frustrated ideals, or a sacrificial hero who knows exactly what he's choosing to do and why. He is more like a person stuck in neutralized shame, with a broken chooser. Because he can't figure out how to fix everyone around him, while thinking he should be able to, he idles his way through situations. Events go on around him, people make decisions that involve him and affect him, yet somehow he doesn't seem to be the one actually living his life.
So far, this sounds like a good cure for insomnia. Who wants to read about someone who is described by his impetuous adopted niece as "King Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways. Saint Maybe"? This isn't exactly the makings of a heroic tale. But Anne Tyler always has a way of allowing her characters to live out their private dreams and torments in whatever peculiar forms they take, shaped by a specific time and place not always under their control.
But enter Rita the Clutter Counselor, straight out of an ad in the Yellow Pages. The Bledsoe family hires Rita to help them sort through the possessions of late loved ones, and Rita quickly sees that this family is all at sea and are more like ships that haphazardly bump into each other all day and night. What she brings to them, and to me, is a sense of active urgency about life and its small importances. She is like a force of nature, even when her own gale leaves her stuck on the Bledsoe couch with a broken leg. Christmas is coming, and rather than allowing the others to just drift around the house aimlessly, she puts them to work. With a large board on her lap, she rolls out cookie dough, strings popcorn, and addresses Christmas cards, while directing the others with instructions for the oven or to fetch her supplies. While this sounds like a Hallmark movie, and it very well might be, Rita's must-do attitude reaches far beyond the simple domestic scene of a preserved celebration of Christmas.
What Rita's character taught me is that it is less important to do your work in a prescribed right style-- one that has a conventional setting, uniform and equipment-- than it is to get the finished work done right. Rita's career is to help people find a proper place for everything in their homes, but when a greater need than orderliness comes along, she is the first one to transcend those rules. It doesn't matter if baking is happening in the living room; what matters is that the baking is happening. I can't recall if her cookies came out to anyone's satisfaction, but in witnessing Rita's commitment to their own traditions-- even though she's an outsider-- the others are able to sort through the clutter and detritus of their own values. They need to decide for themselves what is important and worth putting energy into, and what is simply meeting the never-ending demand for comfort and consumption without a clear purpose.
Like Anne Tyler's work, Carly Simon's song Anticipation has been commercialized, but is a perfect song for Ian. He needs anticipation of the future, even if he isn't an all-knowing prophet.
Over time, Ian Bledsoe learns that there is no proper place for false guilt. He needs to stop working in self-denial to atone for what was not his fault, and to stop taking responsibility for everyone's elusive happiness. This unattainable charter he has set for himself has a deadening effect on his soul and his hopes for his own development as a person. He better understands how to play a role than how to live a life. The role he has chosen is one of a martyr, yet he hasn't taken up his cross so much as he has taken one along with him in his carpenter's tool belt.
Rita's approach to life challenges Ian's commitment to a form and function that holds no room for fulfillment. Her artistry is not the sort that hangs on walls in galleries, but is in the investigation and consideration of treasure among wreckage, so that each member of the family can be released from the whirlpool of disappointment and blame and get themselves back onto a high tide.
"It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things." -- Georgia O'Keeffe
Image: Oil painting "Black Cross with Stars and Blue", 1929
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
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