The One About Moral Ambiguity

I suspect this is going to be a long one. I might as well warn you now, early on in this journal, that my writing tends towards the novella.

Working at the library is a curse, but it’s the sort of affliction that you welcome, an addiction that heals instead of wounds.

My job consists of a lot of grunt work; primarily shelving and procuring books. It’s much more physical than I ever would have imagined. As I told a friend recently, it’s like doing 400 repetitions of a 5-pound lift. I swear, I’m going to have Popeye forearms if this keeps up. That’s not the curse, though admittedly the Curse of Popeye has an amusing ring to it.

The curse is that while shelving, I find a lot of books that pique my interest. I’ve gotten to the point where I carry a list in my wallet where I hurriedly scribe the author and title for later research, which almost inevitably winds up with them being placed on The List Of Books To Buy.

That’s wonderful! That’s awesome!

Like a hundred billion hot dogs, sir.

Well, yes and no. Yes because it’s introduced me to so many wonderful novels that I wouldn’t have heard of, seen, or imagined. In fact, I think I’ll post my favorites soon. What sucks, however, is that the list is tremendously backed up, and I’m quickly coming to the realization that the scores of books I have stacked on the floor in the "To Read" piles won’t be diminishing anytime soon. Filled with even more suckage is the realization that there are countless excellent books that I simply will never, ever, ever have time to read.

Perhaps when I’m 60, if I’m not shooting heroin in someone’s backyard.

The library makes me appreciate just how many authors there are. I’m pretty sure that a number of popular fiction writers are high quality, but I’ll never get around to them even though I read for at least two hours a day. I’m knee deep in authors I like and authors I’m trying. I will probably never give Janet Evanovich a shot, for example, and she’s one of the most popular mystery writers around. Nor do I have time for Nora Roberts, or Tony Hillerman, or Robert Parker, or Mary Pope Osborne, or Sandra Brown, or Jonathan Kellerman, or Lilian Jackson Braun, or James Patterson, or other members of the We Circulate More Books Than You Could Possibly Imagine Club.

This saddens me more than it probably should. I sigh resignedly when I consider that I can’t read every book, and that I have to pick and choose. I thrive on entertainment, you see, and I’m a bit of a slut tastewise. Every season, I watch multiple tv shows and am loyal to many serials. Movies? I’ll try anything. My musical tastes are diverse. I adore plays and art exhibits of all kinds. My book tastes are likewise manifold. I don’t mind throwing darts. Sometimes, you hit a 1, sometimes you hit a triple-19, but I find a lot more high than I do low.

A lot of people perceive my life as rather sedentary, because I prefer to spend my time indoors, or passing time with friends, reveling not in what nature has to offer me, but in what humanity has to offer me.

I thrive on culture, on our creations, on our art, on what we generate while we’re alive. I want to submerge myself in a sundry river of ideas and let them carry me from one destination to the next.

I drown in blessed creation.

Those books I cannot read are destinations lost. They are dreams passed by, they are journeys untaken, they are mysteries growing dusty with neglect. I sense that when I’m older, I shall mourn them, and I can only hope that my children, if I am so fortunate, can inherit my library and my love, and the myriad vistas both contain.

[this is where we segue to the left]

Claire visited last night and today, lovely ghost that she is.

I’m currently reading The Lovely Bones, by Alice Seibold. It’s simply extraordinary. I had to drowsily smile on page 129 when shortly before setting my book aside and turning out the light, Claire made her brief appearance. This smile continued this afternoon when one of the books on our pull list was Emilie, call number CLAIRE 2000. Mysteriously, as I approached the front desk with my cart full of 53 books, one lone book spontaneously leapt off the cart onto the floor at my feet.

Of course, it was the book by Claire.

[this is where we segue to the right]

Books, and spirits. Spirits, and dead people. Books, and dead people. My mental samba isn’t too hard to follow after all.

One of the authors I stumbled across was Jeff Lindsay, the writer of Darkly Dreaming Dexter,  which initially drew my attention by the premise of a sociopath protagonist.  (Every now and then I fancy I would have made an excellent serial killer if not for a lack of ambition.  I’ll leave it to you to decide how serious I am.)

I hadn’t found the time to read the book yet, but was amazed to discover it had been turned into a drama on Showtime.  I’d penciled it on my "watch this show" list but somehow forgotten about it in the maelstrom of the last couple of months, until it returned to my attention a few days ago.  I promptly procured the first few (eleven) episodes. Aside from the strange alliterative pattern of that last sentence, it’s noteworthy because the show is simply brilliant.  Not only is it written extremely well (and I do not know how much Lindsay collaborates with them, at all, but I hear it’s very similar to the book in some regards and deviates in others–I don’t know, I refuse to read it for fear of spoilage) but the actor, Michael C. Hall has in collaboration with them created the most unlikely of heroes–a serial killer whom you not only like, but root for.  The secondary characters were a bit over the top at first, but are settling in nicely.

Despite that, I admit, it’s disturbing to a degree to see this show become so popular, because no matter how you color it, we’re all still cheering on a murderer of men, who plays at being normal and mimics human interactions for the sake of fitting in and drawing suspicion away from himself rather than towards, who has a ceiling of emotion rather than an open, boundless sky.

He is remarkably free from turmoil; the clarity of his desire and purpose are astonishing, and a welcome reprieve in the age of angst-ridden antiheroes, particularly in police procedurals, where the characters sweat drama from their pores and often come across as neurotic messes that uncomfortably reflect the society that watches them.

I value human life tremendously. Indeed, Death and I are not on speaking terms. I don’t want to chat with him, I don’t want to come to any understanding, and despite all inevitability, I’m hoping that by the time we’re in the second half of the 21st century, they’ll have invented some immortality drug or be able to freeze me so I won’t ever Not Be.

However, as a result, I also tremendously devalue people who take others’ lives, or ruin them tindiscriminately.  Bloodthirsty as it may seem, therefore, I can’t help but cheer Dexter on, for I’d rather pay the moral price of losing the bad guy than that of losing all of his victims.
 
There’s a book about sociopaths, you know. It caused something of a stir. It’s by Martha Stout, called The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless versus the Rest of Us. I won’t link the book, because you’d be better served by doing what I did, which is just googling "one in twenty-five people is a sociopath".  You can read its opening pages here.

Being sociopathic certainly has some perks. It’s downright enticing in some regards.

After all, we all have secrets in our lives; we all put on masks for those around us. We bend the truth, we tell pretty lies. Sometimes we’re the outsider, sometimes we make someone else feel like one.  We feign laughter and falsify sympathy. Many times we engage in actions without considering the consequences. Many of us have deliberately chosen paths that negatively affect others and hardened ourselves to it, a willful disregard of responsibility or consequence. 

What’s worse? The person who hurts people because they are incapable of feeling remorse, shame, or guilt?

Or the person who can not only feel those, but can fully appreciate the pains of others, and yet chooses to hurt people anyway?

I’ve known a hell of a lot more of the latter than I have the former, and I have to tell you, at least the sociopaths have an excuse.

We don’t.