There were no more tourists or day hikers left on the trail. About half a mile later, he came to a switchback, where the path continued unpaved. A sign read ‘Cloud High Trail’. Okay, he was going in the right direction. He continued east on fairly flattish terrain. Not many people came this way; it was almost what was known as a ‘lost hike’.
Lost hikes and lost hikers went together.
He came to the base of the large talus mountain that was the start of Cloud High. He stepped with care on the slippery moss-covered rocks at the start of a trail, and began climbing. The rocks, purple in the afternoon light, some set off by bright green moss, ranged from small and angular to large, round ones that looked like dozing seals. He picked his way through them, wishing he had gloves, happy for the good boots. A few hundred feet above him, he could see a thick cover of scrub, made up mostly of blackberry bushes. He worked his way slowly through the tangle and found himself in a place from where the mountain rose steeply for several hundred feet. He paused a bit, his heart making its urgent presence felt in a different way from earlier.
The way up consisted of a series of barely visible paths, the very top of the mountain lost in cloud. Cloud high, indeed. As treacherous a place as one could be in. One false step, a fall, a broken ankle, the isolation, and the landscape would claim you. He wanted to punish himself, punish his body in the way his mind was punishing him. There was something ruthless about the place, about the beauty of the day with its glassy sunlight and ruinous shadows between rocks, and the silence broken only by the lonely calls of birds. It would take him a while to the top. He was in no hurry to go back into the world. He began to climb again.
Stephanie had been waiting for him at their regular coffee shop. He had got there early but she was there before him. They kissed, she in a disembodied way, he with the urgency of not-knowing. He sat down, and waited. Was it over, was that what she had wanted to tell him? Had she met someone else? He hadn’t slept all night, reliving every moment they had ever spent together, going over everything that he had said and done recently. He couldn’t think what he had done to piss her off. She had sounded so strange on the phone.
‘Okay,’ she had said. ‘There’s no easy way to say this.’
‘What? What?’ he had almost shouted. A couple of people at close-by tables looked at them. ‘Sorry,’ he said, forcing his voice to stay low, ‘I can’t stand it, the not knowing. Just please tell me.’
Her voice was even softer than his. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Fugitive joy sprang in him. He clutched her hand, kissed it, held it against his cheek. She stayed still, looking down.
‘I’m going to get rid of it,’ she said, her voice barely there.
‘No! How? Why?’ he said. ‘You can’t do that!’
She looked up at him with nothing eyes. ‘What else can I do? Where is this even going, Vin?’
‘We can do something!’ he said. ‘I’ll be with you all the way, I promise! Nothing else matters, Stephie, nothing.’
‘Vin, I’m not going to have the child of a married man. That’s what you are. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘No, please, please listen! I’ll explain things to Madhulika, I’ll get a divorce, we’ll figure something out.’
‘No, Vin, I can’t do this. I’m not ready for this. I want a child, but not in this way.’
‘But how did this happen? How is it possible?’ ‘Does it really matter?’
About halfway up the mountain, he stopped. From where he stood, he could see that he had climbed what had once been a huge landslide. Beauty and betrayal lived hand in hand in nature. Also in life, when you thought about it. Easier not to. ‘Stephie!’ he said in agony, knowing no one was there, wishing she were there. Above him was the forest. He kept climbing till he got to it.
It had taken him more than an hour. When he turned back, he could see the Columbia gorge, and within it, the wide shiny river coursing vigorously seawards. His lungs felt as though giant hands were crushing them. A thousand feet. He had climbed almost vertically.
DANISHA
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, ‘THE BIRTHMARK’ AND TONI MORRISON, EXTRACT FROM THE BLUEST EYE
In Hawthorne’s story, obsession with perfection. The woman (Georgiana), tho’ v beautiful, has a terrible birthmark on her face (Is it her blackness!!?). Aylmer (husband) is obsessed with it, wants to remove it. In his dream, the mark on her face goes all the way down to her heart. He tries to take it out, cuts her heart out. Mark on her character itself?
His science experiments all only about removing the birthmark. Finally kills her. She herself doesn’t seem to wish to live if her husband considers her ugly. Internalizes his revulsion.
Don’t we do that, too? All marked from birth.
In the piece from The Bluest Eye, the narrator, a young black girl (Claudia), is a rebel. She hates the white dolls that are given to her as gifts. She wants to take them apart to see where the ‘beauty’ comes from. It’s the same beauty that little white girls possess, which she, Pecola and other black girls don’t. Even the black adults seem to prefer the little white girls.
Ideas of beauty taken from people like Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple. Little black girls made to compete with that even before they are born! So Pecola wants blue eyes. But Claudia hates Shirley Temple. She thinks Bojangles, who is ‘her friend, her uncle, her daddy’, should be dancing with her.
In the end (Prof. says), Pecola goes crazy. Raped by dad. Thinks she has blue eyes.
Oh, Bartleby! Oh, humanity!
Mama won’t let me straighten my hair. She says I should be proud. So no choice but to keep it short. She doesn’t understand. Her hair is not like mine.