In the beginning

In the beginning there were no conventions. How did we write when there was nothing else to write about? I’m tempted to ask my literature students to buck the traditional English Literature model of constantly seeking connections to other works of literature, words of other thinkers, allusions to other works. I want them to write their own creation stories. Beginnings are important, and how we start our own “In the beginning” tells our readers a lot about our state of mind. 

The Giver, the summer reading for my tenth grade English class, starts like this:

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice.”

Not even four lines in, and frightened has been used three times. Sickening, terrible, unidentified, all set a tone decidedly different from the reassuring “And God saw that it was good” of Genesis 1:10. 

Here’s my creation story, of my world as it was born on Tuesday.

The sensation was gratitude to be following someone. As a baby, in transition, in the womb, I had been on my own, not necessarily prepared with the language skills (read or speak Arabic), or physical strength (heave 58 pound suitcase) to do what I had to do. But like a baby who somehow makes it to the delivery room, I passed through the arrivals doors into Ben Gurion. I hemmed and hawed, wandered aimlessly, contemplated the ATM, and finally approached someone to ask to use a cell phone to call my nowhere-to-be-seen driver Bassam. Later, when I Bassam took my suitcase, I felt my first instinct- relief to be led. 

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Reading literature, listening to the news, going to the theater, one is struck by how much our cultural dialogue stands upon repetition and recurrence. 

“What canst thou say?” said George Fox. We know what the priests and preachers are saying. What canst thou say, that’s new?

Mark Twain took the Bible stories into his own hands, tossed out convention, assumed the voice of Adam, and said “Monday: This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this. I’m not used to company, I wish it would stay with the other animals.” 

I like this because Adam wrote about what he felt, not in relation to how others felt, or how society told him he should feel (there was no society). This week I’ll ask my students to do the same.