November 13: Reluctantly Becoming Interested, To Be Heard, Great Gift

Later on, as a middle-aged optometrist, he would weep quietly and privately sometimes, but never make loud boohooing noises.

Which is why the epigraph of this book is the quatrain from the famous Christmas carol.  Billy cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about, and in that respect, at least, he resembled the Christ of the carol:

          The cattle are lowing,
          The Baby awakes.
          But the little Lord Jesus
          No crying he makes...

Billy traveled in time back to the hospital in Vermont.  Breakfast had been eaten and cleared away, and Professor Rumfoord was reluctantly becoming interested in Billy as a human being.  Rumfoord questioned Billy gruffly, satisfied himself that Billy really had been in Dresden.  He asked Billy what it had been like, and Billy told him about the horses and the couple picnicking on the moon.

The story ended this way:  Billy and the doctors unharnessed the horses, but the horses wouldn't go anywhere.  Their feet hurt too much.  And then Russians came on motorcycles, and they arrested everybody but the horses.

Two days after that, Billy was turned over to the Americans, who shipped him home on a very slow freighter called the Lucretia A. Mott.  Lucretia A. Mott was a famous American suffragette.  She was dead.  So it goes.

Billy finally gets to tell his Dresden story to Rumfoord, who listens reluctantly because Billy's truth doesn't gibe with his truth.  Yet, Rumfoord allows Billy to talk about the bleeding horses on the surface of the moon.  He listens to Billy Pilgrim.

I think that's what every human being really wants in life:  to be heard.  There's nothing more frustrating than to voice some story and have nobody listen.  I write these blog posts, send them out into the ether of the Internet, and hope that they find some willing listener.  I don't care if the listener agrees with what I'm saying.  Don't care if the listener voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.  Don't care about the listener's skin color or sexual orientation or religious affiliation. What I care about--I want someone to listen, acknowledge, understand.

That's why I write.  That's why any writer writes, I think.  I'm trying to make people understand who I am, why I am.  In fifty years, when I'm worm food, I want my kids and grandkids to be able to read these words and really know me as a person.  They might not like everything they find out, but, in the long run, they will hopefully appreciate my hopes and dreams and struggles.

So, to all the Rumfoords listening to me right now, I want to say thanks.  I'm not the most interesting person in the world.  Not the most talented writer or poet.  My life usually verges on boring.  Yet, you're taking time out of your day to read these words, hear my voice.  That is a great gift.

Saint Marty is full of gratitude on this gray, cold evening.