'What is the possibility of redemption,' Hana asked herself. She sat in her seat for the thousandth time and wanted to write—or at least had a feeling in her heart that she did. She followed the feeling. 'I’m not too pretty,' she thought. 'I’m a little fat today,' went the familiar thought. But then she thought of Joshua’s essay on gender roles and concepts of fat. An anthropologist argued that conceptions of fat and fat people in the United States were contrived and artificial; several African societies placed high cultural values on a larger figure for daughters to be married. It was all shit, she thought. She was proud and prouder still of being a feminist. She wished to alleviate the sufferings of women not only in America, but around the world. So she cried out every day. Hana cried out for justice, believing the Yiddish proverb, 'a child’s tears rend Heaven.' Though she was not a child anymore, she knew she could cry out as the littler girls did when they were denied food and health care and were forced into sex traffic, often by their own families.
She wrote:
'I want to mention redemption because I think it is possible. Possible for us. You've made mistakes. Move on. Make your intentions lighthearted. It is possible. Don't take yourself too seriously and go with the flow at times. Forgive yourself, and above all, forgive others as a way of forgiving yourself. I am an emotional person and at the time of this writing, I have a mind to be sad, but I am actually very happy and fulfilled. I am fulfilled because you have understood me. Go. Be happy. You are already.'
She wanted to wipe Austin off a theoretical ledger of moral obligation; he did not—he should not matter to her—but she thought about him as often as she thought about Joshua. Joshua was Joshua, obstinate as always and unwilling to accept any sort of criticism about his own work. Fueled by the void created by his own loneliness, she presumed, he wrote through nights trying to fill an imaginary hole with writing and language. Which is why, she thought, they were both English majors.
She wanted to wipe Austin off a theoretical ledger of moral obligation; he did not—he should not matter to her—but she thought about him as often as she thought about Joshua. Joshua was Joshua, obstinate as always and unwilling to accept any sort of criticism about his own work. Fueled by the void created by his own loneliness, she presumed, he wrote through nights trying to fill an imaginary hole with writing and language. Which is why, she thought, they were both English majors.
...
Dostoevsky was on his mind and in his backpack. He was listening to Primadonna Girl. All I wanted was the world. David Foster Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King, as well, occupied his thoughts.
Type type type. His bent elbows faced the computer screen; they were parallel to the plane of his eyes. A woman sang into a recording and here he was listening to the recording—a Christian song or, rather hymn—by the song of poetry he composed the story in his mind onto the screen in front of hs face.
Three days ago, Austin had driven to the University of Stoners again. He wanted to hang out with Faye and get drunk with Daphne again. Now Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’ was playing though his iPhone. 'I had to find you, tell you I need you,' he sang silently. But there was no possible way he could return to the start. It was difficult. By the time he arrived at Davis, he realized he had nowhere to stay. He guessed at numbers and figures and questioned science.
For what was science? A human endeavor. Humans being flawed and their final destinations being one of eternal trying. Trials and error did not constitute a moral existence, he was sure.
He heard the existentialists: Sartre, Camus, and Nietzche. Nothing was nihilism and nihilism was nothing. But enough of nothing, he thought.
The front bumper of the car gradually backed away from the curb: a 1987 Subaru hatchback. He remembered the family trips embarked upon in the car. Air conditioning gradually seeped out of the smell horizontal blinds. The weather man in the box told him a high of 76.
