Of Reality and Other Illusions by Nancy Naomi Carlson

At daybreak, looking out my study’s rain-splattered, second-story window facing the backyard, I saw boughs and leaves unsettled against a backdrop of gray. Strewn on the grass were tulip poplar blooms loosened by wind, their petals still untouched by sheltering birds. On the other side of the house, from my bedroom window facing the street, I could see dry asphalt, red and yellow roses, and a slowly emerging patch of bright sky. Which version of the day to trust?

As a former school counselor, I am used to reconciling conflicting realities—both human-made and God-made—especially when snow has been predicted the night before. I learned the hard way that looking out the study window at dawn and seeing a panorama of crystalline whiteness was not necessarily an indication that the streets would be impassable, and the schools closed.

Aristotle reportedly made the classic assertion that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” Only two weeks ago, I hadn’t realized tulip poplar trees could produce magnificent flowers brimming with a nectar that rivals the sweetness of honey, and that such a tree had been growing in the woods just beyond my chain link fence. Over the course of a few days of rounding up the strange blossoms that mysteriously appeared on my lawn, I finally looked up and saw scores of tulip-shaped flowers splotched with bright orange, bobbing in the breeze. Was I now a first-time witness to a drama retold each spring, like the Passover story, or had the tree finally reached the appropriate age of maturity to produce the drama? Thanks to the internet, I quickly determined that foliage and flowers were not toxic to my new puppy. Curious, I licked a petal. My taste buds were not disappointed.

Michel de Montaigne, the renowned French philosopher and essayist whose writings I studied in graduate school, argued that humans lack the capacity to fully understand reality, despite their best efforts. “Of Constancy” is one of my favorite essays and has stuck with me for decades. Quoting Heraclitus, who believed that “never any man entered twice into the same river,” as well as Epicharmus, who held that  “he who borrowed money but an hour ago does not owe it now,” Montaigne maintained that “the person who was invited overnight to come the next day to dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no longer the same person, but are become others.” If we can’t depend on ourselves to process reality—seeing things as they are, instead of what we imagine or hope them to be—how can we reconcile what we think we know with what others think they know? Do absolute truths exist? Montaigne, a Catholic, believed that humans could only access this knowledge through divine revelation. Hence, his skepticism at human attempts to make sense of the world.

Around noon, from my study window, I can now see the azure peeking through a mosaic of leaves.  Children’s laughter emanates from the next-door neighbors’ yard. From my bedroom window, I see shadows cast by the maple tree in my front yard, as well as by the cars parked in my driveway, and across the street. It’s Saturday in Kemp Mill—the Orthodox Jewish enclave where I live—and to observe the Sabbath, my Orthodox neighbors don’t drive cars, turn on lights, work, or create. Normally they’d still be attending religious services right about now, but the synagogues are closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has now killed over 160,000 people living in the United States.  We’ve been sheltering in place for over four months, even though the DC-Metropolitan area is no longer considered a virus hotspot. Women wearing wigs or headscarves push strollers past my roses. Most are not wearing masks. Older teens stroll by in small clumps, though maintaining a few feet between them. Mask-clad older couples side-step the people they pass. Before the pandemic, most Saturdays I’d put on a long-sleeved, knee-length dress to walk the dog, exchange “Shabbat Shaloms” to passersby, and almost fit in. These days, if I manage to motivate myself to take the dog for a walk, I don’t bother with dressing up. I don a mask and avoid eye contact with any approaching body I rush past—in part to shield myself from any hint of disapproval that might cross their face—holding my breath for as long as I can. Today I decide to retreat to my study to work on this essay behind closed doors.

As a child, each Yom Kippur—the holiest day of the Jewish calendar—I followed my mother’s commandment to stay “behind closed doors” so as not to offend our more observant neighbors. Although my father taught me the difference between “religious” and “observant,” and sent me to Sunday School at the Society for Ethical Culture in Brooklyn, he would still attend shul for holiday prayer, a blue velvet bag containing prayer shawl and yarmulke stowed under one arm. My mother would sit at her sewing machine, surrounded by thimbles, bobbins, and piles of fabric she’d magically transform into glamorous additions to her wardrobe. I’d attempt to fast for the day to repent for my sins but ended up sneaking bites of forbidden food before the first star appeared in the night sky.

Although I eventually attended Hebrew School, I never became a bat mitzvah, and never seemed to date within the tribe. My first husband (my children’s father), an Episcopalian-turned-agnostic, agreed to be wed under a chuppah and to raise the children in a Jewish household where we lit Chanukah candles, ate matzoh during Passover, and attended Yom Kippur services.

At one point, between my second and third marriages, when my girlfriend suggested fixing me up with an Orthodox man, I considered becoming frum. I was already living among religiously observant women and thought I could adjust to two sets of dishes and silverware—one for dairy, and one for meat—and two more sets for the week of Passover. No more food without a Kosher label. No more shellfish or pork. A regime of daily prayer, Torah study, and acts of loving kindness. The idea of putting aside secular thoughts and focusing on the spiritual realm for one day each week seemed a small price to pay for faith and a ghostly presence watching my back. How wonderful it would be to free myself from the existential dread that had haunted me since my graduate school days, replacing it with gratitude to a higher power, as in the Hebrew song chanted at the Passover Seder, “Dayenu,” meaning “it would have been enough.” This song lists all the miracles God created for the Jewish people, including freeing them from bondage in Egypt, splitting the sea, providing manna in the desert, and building the Holy Temple, any one of which would have been enough. A rousing chorus of dayenus follows each of the fourteen stanzas, and in some parts of the world, including Afghanistan, at each repetition of the word dayenu, the wine-infused singers enjoy bopping one another over the head with scallions.

Despite the great appeal of faith, I balked at the idea of separate sections for men and women at shul, as well as the fact that women could not be considered part of the mandatory minyan for prayer. Orthodoxy has its blind spots. Recently I heard from a non-Jewish friend that while looking to buy a home in an Orthodox section of Pittsburgh, some Orthodox teens had thrown rocks at him. Thankfully they lacked the conviction of a Sandy Koufax arm, and missed.

In the end, I never met the Orthodox man, and married another goy.

Back in my study, I checked emails, hoping to postpone doing any actual work. One was from an editor from a literary journal, accepting five of my translations of Mauritian writer Khal Torabully. She described the weather in Northampton, Massachusetts, hundreds of miles away, as “gorgeous.” For a zeptosecond my egocentric worldview registered surprise that she wasn’t experiencing my weather. Fortunately, we’re able to easily accept the vagaries of weather, as we’ve all heard stories of buildings and people laid flat by tornados touching down mere miles from where others were untouched. We have a much harder time understanding and accepting differences in the way we process the world—in our own neighborhoods, and beyond.

On a recent video conference call hosted by the PEN Translation Committee and attended by over twenty participants from across the country, I was struck by the differences in the way each of us was experiencing the pandemic—a function not only of our geographical location, but a mix of other variables, including age, whether we’d experienced the loss of someone close, and faith.  The “pandemic experience,” as we counselors reframe it, rather than using more graphic terms that might heighten our sense of apocalyptic panic, is not the same for everyone. According to today’s “Coronavirus Dashboard,” the current death tolls in the United States range from a low of 25 deaths (4125 confirmed cases) in Alaska to a high of 32,817 deaths (448,168 confirmed cases) in my place of birth, New York. My home state of Maryland reports 3,551 deaths (93,005 confirmed cases). If I found it hard to reconcile two alternate realities from different windows of my own home, what hope was there for me or anyone else to reconcile realities crossing state lines? Or other countries’ borders, for that matter. We might all do well to apply Montaigne’s healthy skepticism regarding how we conceptualize truth: “It is only a fool who never suspects he could be foolishly mistaken.”

I am keenly aware that my reality of the pandemic, born of so many beliefs and assumptions, differs from that of most anyone else in the world, just as my individual risk of catching the virus or, kinehora, dying from the virus, is also different. If we can’t see eye to eye, but can learn to be tolerant of one another’s choices, it will be enough. If we can’t learn to be tolerant of one another’s choices but the sun rises tomorrow morning, it will be enough.

Nancy Naomi Carlson, twice an NEA grant recipient, has appeared in APR, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry. An Infusion of Violets (Seagull) was called “new & noteworthy” by the New York Times. She is a counseling professor at Walden University and an editor for Tupelo Quarterly. More at: www.nancynaomicarlson.com