Volcanoes and Glaciers Amy Hempel’s The Collected Stories is a work of precision and care. Her writing is sparse yet rife with metaphor and ideas that swirl about the human condition like fog whooshing around a fissured peak. However, only the patient reader will see the fog lift. In When It’s Human Instead of When It’s Dog, Hempel crafts characters that haunt my present thoughts. The protagonist of the story is a maid named Mrs. Hatano. Like many servants of the wealthy, she carries an air of invisibility similar to a coat rack in an entryway—it performs a service but is never in the way. She is a precise and efficient employee: cooks, washes dishes, cleans, runs laundry, then lets her self out of the house. She serves Mr. He is the unnamed owner of the mansion where Mrs. Hatano works. Their cold professional interaction revolves around the carpet stain, a bodily leakage from Mrs., the recently deceased wife of Mr. After her death this stain is the only physical part of her body that remains accessible to Mr. It is as large as a "three-quart saucepan" and is unfortunately located in the most conspicuous and traveled place—the front entryway (75). This stain represents a possible phase change where water can turn to vapor, professionalism to compassion, friendship to love. Yet, Mrs. Hatano and Mr. are bound by their divergent experience and cannot make the transition. In my life, this barrier on intimacy is a stain on my heart. The metaphorical heart is by convention the epicenter of human relationships, of intimacy, of connection, of warmth, of disaster. I am presently feeling the aftershocks of my inability to span the chasm that separates men and women. Emotionality, feeling, and communication are the building materials for this bridge yet they are so hard to acquire. Like Mrs. Hatano, I did my job in the relationship. I did not cheat on my girlfriend, cooked her dinner, tried to make her feel special, and even talked or rather listened on the phone. I am very capable of doing things but feeling and expressing love is foreign. When my ex-girlfriend asks, "How do you feel?" I wrestle to find words to communicate my feelings but it is hopeless. Looking into her eyes, I see that we are light years apart. Mrs. Hatano and Mr. are powerful characters because amidst a scene dripping in emotion they cannot cross over from their programmed roles to share it. Mrs. Hatano is there to clean and performs her duties with efficiency and distance from Mr. Instead of asking him what he wants for dinner, she leaves a note with different meat choices and methods of preparation for him to circle. He is treated like a customer ordering a sandwich at a busy Subway. What prevents Mrs. Hatano from expressing sensitivity towards her employer’s sad situation is business. She was trained in the use of solvents and scrubbers and she receives no compensation or profit by consoling the Mr. This is supported by the feeling of the text where Hempel describes the after dinner interaction.
The tempo of images that Mrs. Hatano loads into the bucket gives a feeling of mechanization. Furthermore, a cold indifference is sensed when Mrs. Hatano leaves Mr. alone at the table to complete her job of removing the stain, his wife’s stain. Is that a character flaw? Mrs. Hatano did nothing wrong, she just completes her task with the tools she understands. I recently visited my ex-girlfriend at her apartment and after helping her fix up her room I announced my impending departure. Her appreciation quickly morphed into sadness then anger. What did I do wrong? I fixed the problem of her depressing and dirty room. Yet I missed the significance of the encounter. Like Mrs. Hatano, I addressed the superficial instead of the deep. It was not the physical help that she wanted; it was the company, the hope for rediscovering intimacy. Intimacy is a rare commodity in our Capitalistic culture. Profit, success, growth, and individuality are the gleaming ideals our society bathes in. Mr. has achieved these goals for he is wealthy. He owns a large home and can pay Mrs. Hatano to perform all the basic human chores so he can focus on business. Like computer programmers, our society only installs software that keeps the system running smoothly. Emotion, empathy, and compassion interfere with the business relationship by forcing us to slow down, listen, and empathize. Despite growing up with a sensitive father, I still lack the skills to communicate and live intimately with my ex-girlfriend. There are a plethora of reasons and excuses for this failure, but primarily it is my unwillingness to sacrifice my individuality for another person. I have things I want to accomplish and I need to do them myself. I fear of losing my "self" in another person’s "self." This prevents me from intimacy. The rigidity in Mrs. Hatano and Mr.’s relationship is a symbol of the fear humans carry about loosing their sense of purpose, role, and individuality. This story alludes to that fear by introducing images representative of intimacy and juxtaposing Mrs. Hatano’s unrelenting attempts to clean and remove them of it. The stain on the carpet, and the dinner note immediately crop up. However, one image stands out as unique. The bed(s) of married couples, whether single or double occupancy are typically seen as a repository of good memories. Children created, love rediscovered, books read aloud; these memories can often be traced back to a bed. However, Hempel’s first reference to the Mrs.’s bed describes it as stripped of its sheets. Metaphorically, the memories of the occupant, her smell, her presence are abruptly removed and waiting next to the bed are clean linens eager to replace the old ones. Again, the stamp of efficiency and cleanliness are all over this image. A week prior it was the Mrs.’s death bed, now it is clean and ready to be remade. Yet in the process of making up the bed, Hempel allows for one semelparous expression of intimacy. After trying in vain to assist Mrs. Hatano in making his wife’s bed, her death bed, he softly spoke "My God." Then Hempel writes, "He stares a thousand miles into the bed." Somehow Hempel achieved complete emotional transcendence in just those two words spoken by Mr. When I read "My God," I stared right into my bare naked bed. I understand now that intimacy is a place of togetherness, a bed. Throughout the two years I dated my ex-girlfriend I never allowed my self to participate in making the bed. That explains why our communication is so one-sided; I have not developed those intimate feelings and therefore have nothing to communicate. She on the other hand did, which explains why she struggles being apart more than I do. By having no real stake in that togetherness, it is easier for me to walk away and unplug from intimacy. Every culture and person has their own unique concoction for cleaning up their stains. My stain is of interpersonal nature, and it is clear in color. Clear because like light passing through glass, intimacy does not reflect in me yet. I have tried half-heatedly to experience intimacy but the barriers still exist. Instead of struggling to lift those barriers I have followed Mrs. Hatano’s example and stuck to what I understand. I deal with my emotional adversity by seeking out natural landscapes. The actual activities have changed or developed over my life but the refuge remains the same. As a young boy on our Vashon Island farm I took to the trees and built tree forts. Eventually I caught onto hiking and sought independence through a dirt track which stretched out before me for miles and miles. A religion teacher in high school introduced me to a Nature Awareness program which helped deal with the many stripped beds of adolescence. Now, fly fishing is the latest pursuit which lifts my spirits and gives me something pure I can pursue headlong without adding to immense well of human discontent. However, I must admit that these pursuits are not done entirely out of altruism or undying love for nature, indeed a certain amount of self-absorption exists as well. Hempel’s writing conveys this self-absorbed method of dealing through the characters she creates. Mrs. Hatano deals with the sorrowful state of Mr. by ramping up her efforts to clean up his wife’s bodily fluid mosaic. However, Hempel is not limited in her writing ability, so it is conceivable that Mrs. Hatano could have removed herself from her job long enough to offer some compassion towards her employer. Yet her character sticks to her own necessities: work so she can live. Furthermore, why didn’t the Mr. make more of an effort to elicit sympathy from his maid? He attempted to help make his wife’s bed, but what a minimalist gesture. Maybe that is Hempel’s point. Like the operating system Windows ME, emotion, love, and compassion are trying to be replaced for they are too slow and cumbersome for the rapid pace of today’s world. If this is the case, then animals could be the only object of love that resists such a transition. This is not say I have given up in interpersonal relationships; I am just waiting till I get a dog before reentering the pit falls of intimate relationships. As Hempel suggests animals with the exception of Afghan’s, are excellent buffers for human relationships. When It’s Human Instead of When It’s Dog is missing this key component—animals. One reason why dogs and other pets are critical in human relationships is that they encourage emotional balance. Before I head out on one of MY outdoor activities, my dog Lady will look at me with those deeply loving brown eyes and ask "Can I come?" She is my trainer, and only asks me to develop a little more compassion and empathy for her needs as well. Seeing this simple request reminds me that maintaining my individuality comes at a cost, usually another person or animal. My dog represents a simple formula for improving interpersonal relationships. It begins with an acknowledgement of selfishness, and then expands into a series of potential solutions the most basic being taking the time to express love. With Lady as my compassion coach and fishing partner, a future intimate relationship will achieve better results. Works Cited Hempel, Amy. The Collected Stories. New York: Scribner, 2006. |