Quieter now

I started this day’s diatribe early in the afternoon, after I heard that phone call.  And I dumped it on one of my publishers in the middle of a contract conversation.

She said: It breaks your heart, doesn’t it?  I can barely stand to listen to NPR in the car on the way to work anymore. They have running live interviews with people protesting in Iran and also with the survivors of a deadly collision between two DC metro trains earlier this week. It feels almost indecent, listening in on these poor souls’ pain.

I said: Yes.  It does feel that way.  And yet, I have this odd feeling that we need, in some very important way, to take on some of their feeling and carry it for them.  It’s stupid – of course feeling sympathy or even empathy doesn’t actually relieve someone else’s memory or brain chem – but it feels, still, something like a duty.

When she wrote back, she quoted Author Miller, from Death of a Salesman:

Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

And I say to Mr. Miller, who I’d never bothered before to read:

Yes.