|
"My first-grade teacher, Miss Ethelyn Taylor, often urged on her seven charges (well, eighteen to twenty, if you included the second and third grades who were in the same schoolroom with us) with that time-tested exhortation 'Carpe diem,' and mindful that we were none of us Latin whizzes quite yet, she completed the phrase with the English translation, so I always thought it was 'Carpe diem seize the day,' the whole thing. I thought it was a very high-sounding proposition and called upon it many a time to rally my little sister and big brother and whatever playmates were available for some game of flinging statues or kick the can. By the time Miss Audrey Mitchell got hold of me in high school Latin class and explained that I was saying the same thing twice, I was embarassed and just had to stop using it at all, because it was too late to change. But I never gave up saying it in my mind, so when it was suggested that I write this book, I considered the invitation for one-half a minute and said to myself, Carpe diem seize the day! Thank you, Miss Ethelyn.
"I love to read and feel indebted to the writers, great and less great, who have given me literally years of pleasure, and sometimes knowledge, and sometimes even understanding. I am grateful for the hours and hours I was read to as a child. I am grateful for the long rainy Sunday afternoons that we all spent reading in the living room, Daddy in his chair by the fire, and the weeks between Christmas and New Year's when we were allowed to do no chores, read all week long, and eat as much candy as we wanted. I am grateful for the friendly comfort offered by a book when I have needed to quit thinking about what was going on in my 'real' life. (Many a dope fiend might have been saved by getting hooked on books before resorting to other forms of relaxation.) I am grateful for the books that have taken me, with no plane ticket, into that remarkable world where anything can happen, where dreams are real, and where the people we get to know are with us always. I am in deep respect of the writers of books. Hence it is not without trepidation that I presume to put pen to paper.
"I am going to do it, however, in my roundabout, tangential way, because first of all I am pleased to be asked, but mostly because it has come home to me in speaking with the numbers of men, women, and youngsters who feel friendly toward the television character Julia Sugarbaker, with whom I perforce share many particularities, that she represented something people liked and admired and wanted in their lives and that, further, the conclusions I've drawn from my own experience might be interesting, even useful, to somebody else.
"Just between us, living in Hollywood doesn't make it exactly easy to hold to my purpose. For example, the memories I hold dear, from which come the values I hold dear, often seem out of sync with most of what I read and hear around me. Much that gets ballyhooed fits Shakespeare's phrase, 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' Often I don't get the reason for the hype.
"All the same, I don't imagine that I'm a singular specimen; I believe that I must be one of many pilgrims who aspire to an existence of merit and who are willing to make an effort toward that end. I am writing this book for those of my kindred spirits who would like a little comradely encouragement in their own personal mission. And although it seems crazy to say it, that mission doesn't necessarily have to do with money. It has to do with how we use the life God has given us and the body He's put us in.
"I was charging through the flower shop not long ago, late getting flowers for my dinner company, when in answering a question I don't now remember I said, 'I'm just trying to get to Heaven.' The young man responded pertly, 'Yes, well, I'm sure we all are.' I left the shop privately ashamed of myself that I had provoked that glib response with an expression that does in fact mean a great deal to me. Too easily said, I guess.
"A few days ago I told our friend Oddvar Abrahamsen that I was writing a book I was going to call Trying to Get to Heaven, and he smiled at me and said in his gentle way, 'But Dixie, you know we don't get there by trying. We get there by faith.'
"'I don't mean it to be taken that literally,' I protested, realizing that I didn't want to get caught putting my intention into words. Oddvar didn't press his point, but he left me hoping that the content would explain the title.
"Even though this book intends to discuss what we're doing in the here and now, I do believe that there is a Heaven, and I very much want to go there when I die. I want to see my mother again and all the people I miss who are gone, and I want to hear the music of Heaven, which I know will be heavenly. And notwithstanding Oddvar's reminder that working at it isn't what gets you there, still I don't see how it could hurt my chances toward that end to be doing the best I know how here on earth.
"There is a story about the three questions put to Buddha at the end of his life. To the first, 'O great Buddha, are you God?' he answered no. To the second, 'O great Buddha, are you a prophet?' he answered no. The third question then came, 'O great Buddha, won't you tell me what you are?' and Buddha answered, 'I am awake.' Well, I may not be completely awake yet, but I'm opening my eyes.
"In the pages that follow I am hoping to elicit a response of 'Yes, Dixie, that's just the way I feel' and as the case may be, 'Do you really think I could do that too?' As I write I am picturing some very dear and familiar faces, faces that are beautiful far beyond their possessor's own ideas of themselves, and at the same time I am speaking to every kind person who is willing to spend a few hours with me, to you, Dear Reader, whom I am meeting for the first time. My mother used to say that we should 'get to the heart of the matter,' and the heart is indeed what I hope to get to; I hope that somewhere in the following chapters we may become friends. If I am able to communicate to you some of the joy and beauty life holds for me, and why I think it does, and how therefore it might hold the same for you if it doesn't already, then I will have achieved my purpose in attempting this manual. I like to imagine that those with whom I am closest as well as those whom I am meeting now will receive through these pages a reminder of their wondrous worth.
"Tennessee Williams said, 'The only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own volition.' Now there's a writer."
Back to The Writer
|
