ADVICE TO A SON : ON SERENDIPITY

Etsushi-san,

A great coincidence just happened while I was making my once-a-week excursion from this monastery cell, across from the Roman coliseum, to see a few, not too many, real people. I was reading, with my usual espresso, armangnac and cigar, in a cafe corner when happening upon one of the most happily enchanted pieces of French prose I've seen (not saying much given the little I read), in a book by Milan Kundera. But this prose is so simple, so true, so soothing to lyrical appetites with epic tastes (epic means objective and universal; lyrical means ideal and personal), that it reminded me of the young Harlem man in my novel.

That is the coincidence : in its simplicity and truth the French young man's sweetly compassionate tale struck me as beautiful as the violent maturing of my Harlem character did yesterday (what we spoke about earlier tonight), ...beauty emanating from two characters as culturally converse as imaginable. But the French prose did not similarly provoke tears, for its spoiled beauty is too abstract in time and place, to me; whereas, my deprived antagonist's monologue shows a man alive with suffering, past and present, desperately trying to understand himself as he draws those two periods together while searching a way through the tangled patch into which I have thrown him - he has urgent needs on a path full of ironies, leading towards a denouement anywhere between purified and tragic. Neither he nor I yet know his exact route, but he will speak again and I shall write what he tells me. I hope he gets me angry or sad or perplexed, or makes me cry once more. The more emotion he feels, the more sincere his effort, the more his trying produces unexpected results..., the more human he becomes.

Although the Frenchman is also wounded by life, he has found himself merely within a lyrical fancy and one might imagine his hoping to amuse away his nurtured naivete through charming, cosmopolite female attention, at maximum risk the wounding of Eros' heart. His words have the ring of the dilettante common to his period, in contrast to my Black man who is centered in epic struggle between the flagrant identity post-World War II Harlem nurturing bestowed and the image his soul imagines possible.

Nevertheless, I found this sophisticated French character in Vivant Denon's 18th century novel, `Point de lendemain', saying things as simply and truthfully as my relatively crude 20th century New York character. That is the essence of their artistic contributions, their small universes glowing with something of the same beauty. Their coincidental simplicity and truth are the two most necessary ingredients in all art : whether painting, sculpture, the comedy you aspire to, or simply giving to something or someone our very best. As in creating beauty in our individual life while balancing the varied forces around us. To make intelligent use of these ingredients we must first be able to recognize them, to perceive with discretion.

Baudelaire said of perceptions, `Genius is childhood recaptured at will'. Or, simply, true and simple interpreting. I believe that's how, finally, our most joyful happiness is found : correctly distinguishing the selfless from the selfish in life, choosing the former while avoiding the latter. So, read M. Denon's words, Alexandre, ...and FEEL how his character matured through perception, feeling romantic love affronted by a glint of true love, changing sadness to joyful interlude.

"J'aimais eperdument la Comtesse de ____;

J'avais vingt ans, et j'etais ingenu;

elle me trompa, je me fachai, elle me quitta.

J'etais ingenu, je la regrettai;

j'avais vingt ans, elle me pardonna :

et comme j'avais vingt ans, que j'etais ingenu,

toujours trompe, mais plus quitte,

je me croyais l'amant le mieux aime,

partant le plus heureux des hommes..."

Wonderful French prose, yes? Not as satiric and nuanced as the Corneille and Moliere you've read, nor as introspective and interpretive as the Proust and Gide you will be reading. Nevertheless, truth just as real as those gifted, honest artists labored after. Yet somehow even better, to me, for being straight forward and without fear. Whereas the former, the reasoning two, wrote with epic fear surveying muse-protected hearths (and heads), and the latter, the modern two, wrote with lyrical fear surveying muse-designed innovations, Denon wrote the above in the bright, translucent sunlight of serendipity.

Understand, S E R E N D I P I T Y , E-chan, the aesthetic love child of truth and simplicity. It is the truest Song of Life, rarely played in modern times, possessing a rhythm of action no philosopher can theorize into rules; and a value structure unknown to today's serious men of numbers and statistics who place position and power above people. Necessarily irrational, previously a formidable feminine quality in the West, it is the golden link whose absence causes vast confusions on personal insecurity, of salvation, speculative gods, gross materialism, etc.

Once you believe in it - neither hope nor fatuous `faith', but true belief - you will sense its presence as a field of electricity..., and then Eros stops looking internally to discover friendly Buddhas outside oneself, on life's only worthy path. Taruki-san from Kyushu is one of those, and your sister Linda another, both Buddhas who suffered towards truth with a heart open towards people and serendipity. Found where the electricity of all Buddhas sparks us to smile and laugh together.

Anything here you don't understand - only after you've tried, really tried, with a dictionary, memory and feeling - ask Yamamoto-san for her opinion, ...for your mother feels well these expressions from recent good readings, and can assist you. Please DO NOT give-up until mastering this short essay - what might be called, ` A Perception on Life' - for I am interested in your considered opinion. I shall telephone this week.

As well, we can speak of it during our mid-February last weeks in Paris before leaving for Japan. Why don't you ask your French teacher what he thinks of Denon? ...after you have read it several times, moving the words from head to guts and back again.

English :

"I was madly in love with the Countess of ___;

I was twenty years old, and I was naive;

she cuckolded me, I was angered, she deserted me.

I was naive, I longed for her;

I was twenty years old, she forgave me :

and because I was twenty years old, that I was naive,

was still cuckolded, but no longer deserted,

I thought myself the most beloved of her lovers,

and thus the happiest man alive."

See you soon,

Dad

© r. manning

Arles, 1/1992