Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

It was the year the sow eradicated her piglets. It was a swift and menacing time.

In this process, I would become reduced, diminished, ultimately I would become clarified, even cease to exist. I would be good. I would be all that had ever been asked of me.

I recalled my own aborted attempts at intimacy, with men, with women, and all that I had ever come away with was a sense of my essential interchangeability.

Beside it all ran the creek, never the same, holding no memory.

Beauty is something to be eaten: it is a food.

The far-reaching and long-lasting influence of mid-century American road culture might be cited here, though it hardly needs explaining at this point in history, cultural imperialism, military imperialism, the long march of the American diner, its rise and fall, its rise again in the present age of nostalgia, when one finds oneself yearning for a landline, for a rotary dial, for the hard edges of a VHS cassette, for the smell of the video store on a Friday night, for the commercial life of another era when one knew slightly less, for one’s personal golden age, yes, yes. From the outside, the shop, and especially the diner appeared like a haven from the age of anxiety, not to say terror, in which one lived.

I had stood in these groupings myself, listened as my most cherished, my most dearly held, most intimate thoughts were articulated by a distant relative or one-time acquaintance, usually to a total stranger, and we all laughed together. How we laughed. It was part of my training, I understood that now, my uncommon pride and self-love which needed to bend, needed to be subdued, and it was of some comfort to me to see that there were others who faltered similarly, who needed the guiding hand of semi-public shame. I understood this even then as part of the process of community formation, of the operations of power and the delegation of roles, who and what lay beyond describing the outlines of whatever lay within. It was the late twentieth century. What did we have left? A prayer book, some scraps of song, a history lesson beginning with devastation.

Every single one of us on this ruined earth exhibited a perfect obedience to our local forces of gravity, daily choosing the path of least resistance, which while entirely and understandably human was at the same time the most barbaric, the most abominable course of action. So, listen. I am not blameless. I played my part.