January 1: The Beginning, David Copperfield Kind of Crap, The Secret Goldfish

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.  In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.  They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father.  They’re nice and all—I’m not saying that—but they’re also touchy as hell.  Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.  I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.  I mean that’s all I told D. B. about, and he’s my brother and all.  He’s in Hollywood.  That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end.  He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe.  He just got a Jaguar.  One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour.  It cost him damn near four thousand bucks.  He’s got a lot of dough, now.  He didn’t use to.  He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home.  He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him.  The best one in it was “The Secret Goldfish.”  It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish, because he’d bought it with his own money.  It killed me.  Now he’s out in Hollywood, D. B. Being a prostitute.  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies.  Don’t even mention them to me.

This is the opening paragraph of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.  The speaker is Holden Caulfield, a teenaged boy who has just suffered a nervous breakdown (although we don’t find this out until the end of the novel).  Holden is struggling.  He struggles through the entire book.  He’s talented and funny and friendless.  Holden is an outsider, a boy on the fringe.  Holden has many secret goldfish in his life, things he doesn’t want to share with anybody.  Like his parents, Holden is a fairly private person.  His secrets are deep and painful.

The other thing you might notice in this beginning paragraph is that, once again, I have chosen a Christmas book.  While not many people remember this fact, The Catcher in the Rye takes place at the yuletide season, just before Holden returns home for the holidays.  The story is not quite as warm and fuzzy as A Christmas Carol, but it is a story about redemption and healing.  That’s what I want to focus on today, this first day of January in the year 2013.  Healing.

Like Holden, we all carry around private pain, things we simply don’t speak about.  At times, that private pain can be crippling, even make you not want to get out of bed.  Most of the time, that private pain is just a scab or scar, a wound that is at once almost healed and almost ready to burst open again.  That is the nature of being a human.  We lie to ourselves.  We meet a friend in Wal-Mart, and the friend asks, “How are you doing?”  Invariably, our answer is, “I’m fine,” even if we’re just hanging on by the white moons of our fingernails.

In this blog, I always tell the truth, even if I tell it “slant,” as Emily Dickinson said.  I have a feeling that Holden Caulfield is going to force me to be even more truthful.  He’s going to call me out when I’m being a phony.  He’s going to bring about healing.

That’s the best hope anybody can have at the beginning of a new year.

That’s the best hope Saint Marty can have for 2013.

 

We all have secret goldfish we don't talk about