The Reader Travels

I went looking, but I couldn’t find the paper I wrote in college called, “Migrant Farm Workers and Wandering Jews,” comparing the lives represented in Tomas Rivera’s The Searchers with the Jewish people scattered across the globe. Like the dispersed Jews, the migrant farm workers share a faith and a history, a mindset that connects them beyond the miles.

I found a nice succinct definition of the collective unconscious on answers.com.

“In Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humankind, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality.”

Kurt Vonnegut also had a bit to say about collective mindsets and both the reality and the illusion of being connected. In Cat’s Cradle, he first introduces the “granfalloon” to his readers, this illusion that just because we have this one thing in common, doesn’t mean I should like you – “My God, are you a Hoosier?… I’m a Hoosier, too.” But in Breakfast of Champions, he pays a little more honor to things that connect people on a deeper level. (I’m not sure how well Bruce Willis captured it, so read the book if you haven’t already, but not before Cat’s Cradle because that would just be the wrong order.)

Having been raised Catholic, I noticed at some point in my life that being a Catholic is a bit of a granfalloon, especially if you’re on the fence about the whole thing. Earlier in life, when I would run across other Catholics, they’d act like we were a little more deeply connected than I would have liked. “Oh, you’re a Catholic? Come sit next to me.” (It’s even worse when someone thinks that just because we’re both white, we should be buds.)

Then again, when I meet other former Catholics, I do feel an instant connection. Go figure.

I was all ready to talk about comparisons between migrant farm workers and the Jewish diaspora, but I just need a break, a nice clean rest stop along this extended highway. Life’s little dramas always come in waves, and we’ve been splashed.

OK, enough with the mixing of the metaphors. Yesterday, we said bon voyage to a friend who is returning home to care for her sick father. We don’t know how long he has left, and meanwhile, there are travel plans, child care and housing issues to juggle, work efforts to coordinate in her absence. Another friend left work to be with his ailing father, who died before the plane ever landed. Don’t ever leave things unsaid, he said. I keep thinking of Gene and songs sung at bedside.

Two miscarriages in one week, a mother with breast cancer, a grandmother with a heart attack, a girlfriend with a broken foot, another girlfriend in ICU clinging to life, an uncle who crushed his baby kitten under the leg of his rocking chair, a grandfather left home alone with no running water or air conditioner in the Texas heat, eyes wet and swollen with incessent allergies but hardly a tear cried for the rest.

Luckily there are happy things too. Two dear friends were married, another has a baby on the way and an exciting new job opportunity. A cousin has reached the second trimester successfully after three miscarriages before.  And here I am traveling, and I finally have a cell phone if anyone needs to reach me. Not that I’ll give you the phone number.

Gypsies, rock stars, RV-dwelling retirees and migrant farm workers — they live life on a perpetual road trip. Where Kerouac was taking a long vacation, his farm worker friends didn’t have that luxury. On the other hand, Tomas Rivera wrote about that life because he and his family lived it.

I realize poetry is a very personal thing, and it’s hard to recommend poetry to others. But Rivera’s The Searchers really moved me. They searched for work and meaning. They sought each other and God. “Searching at Leal Middle School” connects his people to a homestead, these children on the edge of moving out on the road to work with their parents.

I think about a life in motion, remembering back to my early childhood, and being paralyzed by a fear that my house would burn down or be invaded by robbers. A child on the road would have much different fears. Tomas Rivera’s first written work was done at the age of twelve following a car accident. How jarring that experience must have been, and evidently, inspiring.

And now, I’m living my life safe, in a brick house with more room than I need, with a steady job, a savings account and plenty of insurance. Meanwhile, folks like Wade over at Vagabond Journey are constantly moving. Even as he starts a family, he continues to travel, albeit a little bit slower.

I’ve written a few times about Jack Kerouc’s On the Road, but I have to admit, I didn’t love it. I thought he had a big huge case of the smug. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautifully written, and I did enjoy the adventure. I also appreciated his love for jazz and seeing the different people and places along the road. I might have enjoyed it better through someone else’s eyes, though.

At some point in his journey, he finds himself picking cotton among the poor migrant farm workers in California. He brushed alongside their plight for long enough to decide that he’d rather write home for money than live like they did.

A friend of mine was talking this weekend about a study she heard about, which indicated that people with more choices generally had more regrets. Comparing Kerouac with his migrant farm worker friends, he had the choice to write home for bus fare and get himself out of that situation. His friends didn’t have such a luxury, didn’t have a choice. What was there to regret, then? He could regret not staying with that fine woman he shacked up with. He could regret not taking her with him. I suppose each choice leaves a possibility for regret. But really there’s no point in it.

Pondering the alternate paths ones life might have taken is great for writing fiction, but worrying over them is a poor way to live life. Kerouac didn’t seem to have any regrets, but he did somehow romanticize these lives less fortunate, less cursed with choices.  He was under the delusion that poverty equates to goodness and wealth to wickedness.

As he roams through Mexico, he sees it as the land of Jesus and sweet young Mary’s by the roadside. “Wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell.”

So I’m feeling a little detached this weekend and watching a lot of comedies to keep the mood light. When I found this, it said everything about my mood. Enjoy!