I’m here on the park bench. It is a bright fall day, and I am unaccountably smiling at ducks, geese, squirrels, walkers, and in-line skaters. Funny how a little sunshine and a moment of ease can turn one’s emotions upside down and inside out. For the last 30 minutes, I have been considering the quality of humankind as it moves past my vantage point. It is an assessment, aided by associational thinking, that I often make when a procession of my peers passes my judging station. One thought leads to another because, alas, I ponder Hamlet’s conclusion: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
Hmm—seems that the prince is conflicted? He confesses to an excessive admiration of people in general and then reverses his view of the “paragon of animals,” arriving at a conclusion that casts humankind into the trashcan. At the least, he kicks the human race to the curb for the time being. I understand. People are wonderful; people are horrible. People are clever; people are stupid. People are graceful; people are klutzy. People are kind; people are cruel. People have godlike attributes; people are full of the devil. You get the picture. The duality of our nature makes us a living paradox. So be it.
Hamlet did not think too much (what a thought!). He simply made an honest assessment that may have been different had he not been in such a cheerless spot. Consider his burdens: his father had recently died (murdered he soon discovers), his mother was shamelessly carrying on an incestuous relationship with his uncle, and he (Hamlet) had been displaced for promotion to the throne. More, except for Horatio, he had no one, not even Ophelia, with whom he could confide. Not a lot of sugar in that recipe. At the time of his pronouncement, Hamlet was having one of his bad days, which is understandable. Makes sense, does it not, to conclude that heaven is inextricably connected to hell just as hell depends upon the contrast to heaven. We have William Blake to thank for the marriage of heaven and hell, and I suppose Hamlet sees the link all too vividly.
But what strikes me from my view on this bench is something related but indeed dissimilar: the deep-down grotesqueness of each of us, something hideous and secret in all of us, that part of us that links us disgracefully to hell. My concentration shifts away from what is godlike in humanity to the dark side, the repugnant part that apparently is as much a part of us as is our spines, that snakelike construction that is the core of our physical selves. Look at these people. My God! What pieces of work, and I do not mean that in a worthy way. Hard to find delight in these specimens as they pass. One is dressed as the Mad Hatter—at least he has the ridiculous hat and the powdered face. Another passerby, a woman of prodigious girth, wears bib overalls and has a tattoo of a serpent wrapped around her neck. She is followed by a dog pulling a skateboard on which a naked man rides (actually he wears a G-string). These people are either grotesque or are showing off in such a manner that makes them grotesque. Now here comes a swell piece of work, a mid-thirties woman wearing yoga pants and clutching hand weights, an attractive woman except for one glaring flaw: she has more facial studs adorning her nose, lips, earlobes, and eyebrows than the Queen Elizabeth has jewels on her crown. It hurts just looking at her.
Sherwood Anderson underscores the grotesque theme in his portrayal of the citizens in a small town in middle America, a fictitious but nevertheless real place named Winesburg, Ohio, the eponymous title of the book. With the exception of the narrator, George Willard, each character depicts some inner abnormality or distressed emotion: loneliness, horror, isolation, or existential dread. The first story (the book is a series of short stories) is called “The Book of the Grotesques.”
Once we see through the “sweetness and light of people” we must confront the bitterness and darkness that also inhabits each human being. The poem “Richard Cory” comes to mind, as well as most of what Kafka and Flannery O’Conner offer in their fiction. Others (Shakespeare, Poe, Conrad, as well as many more) also find the funny and frightening element of grotesquerie central to their works.
Literature aside, the subjective view from this park bench shows the odd twists rooted in most people. I say most because here comes a guy out for a stroll who appears unremarkable in every way. He wears khakis, a polo shirt, clean sneakers, and has a standard-looking dog (cocker spaniel, I think) on a retractable leash. Average height, average weight, fortyish, symmetrical features, no distinguishable abnormalities, a man we might call a regular, average fella. I narrow one eye as I follow this man’s movement on the footpath and determine his grotesqueness is too well hidden for me speculate at the moment. But it is there. It must be.
I wonder. Does he have a duffel bag full of women’s underwear that he tries on? Perhaps he enjoys poisoning the neighborhood cats? I am sure there is something twisted about this guy. Then it occurs to me that for no reason beyond what I speculate, I am grotesque in that I gather such wild imaginings.
Ah, look at what comes here: a man wearing leather leggings and holding a dog leash to which is attached another man wearing leather chaps and little else.
It is a bright fall day, and I am unaccountably smiling.