The Green Beast and the Gift

Yesterday, I had a very odd experience that I'm not sure I can put into words.

I'll start with something more mundane, to set the stage. Yesterday evening, my advisor--a wonderful, nerdy Bostonian and a killer, ego-free scholar--had a bunch of grad students and foreign scholars over for dinner. Most of my fellow grad students are married to women from the Obscure Corner of the World. I used to joke, in fact, when I was back on the dating market after my divorce that I too was going to marry a woman from OCOW, as it seemed to be a requirement for the field. No one seemed to find this as funny as I did.

So, I began talking to one particular fellow student who just finished his MA thesis, a translation of an interesting but obscure set of legends from the 15th century. He bragged about a certain obscure publisher agreeing to publish his work. The green beast crawled up, grabbing me with its long, fine claws. It began to whisper, "You're working twice as hard as this arrogant idiot and are twice the scholar because you love what you do, not your own fucking ego, and he's getting a book and has a daughter. Grrr, hrrrm, rowl..."

I kindly congratulated my colleague and we started talking about how social anthropological theory proves unhelpful in our field, where so much basic research remains to be done, etc. Or that's what I was saying. He was going on about the lack of scientific rigor and how he was basically too smart for that jive. If I hadn't been so busy with the green beast, I might have had energy to knock the retarded chip off his shoulder.

And his daughter: She's very pretty, but oddly unloved. Oh, I'm sure both parents would declare their love for her, but it's hard to get love from a narcissist, and it somehow gleams in her eyes. Her presence has not made her parents, especially her father, happy. Her care is a duty, not a joy. That's really the dark secret of many parents: They may love their children, but they don't really like them that much. That realization banished the green beast and made me very, very sad for both her and my silly, self-centered colleague.

In my quiet battle with the green beast, I was helped by a very strange experience I had had on the walk over. I was wandering through the professorial ghetto, where the Priuses run free and the yards overflow with towering trees in bloom. Dozens of amazing scents wafted past me on the warm, strong wind: sticky sweet honey, powdery lilac. I suddenly felt an unexpected wave of the most perfect, complete joy, something so light and immaterial, that I felt like I could easily transfer it to anything I touched. I felt that I had been given a great gift, some kind of wild salvation that was always present but rarely heeded, and that it was transferable. I had no idea, and still don't, what exactly this gift is. But it was so buoyant and so...not about me as a selfish individual.

These sensations, recalled in the heat of battle with myself and my resentment of my infertility and my desire for recognition, brought the green beast swiftly to heel. Then my husband arrived, and we enjoyed the rest of the evening together.