Nietzsche's Valentine
Nashe
came over with a woman we hadn’t met − “This is Rose,” is all he said. She
looked like a Rose, dark-haired but fair-skinned, quite lovely. “This will not end
well,” I thought immediately, then reprimanded myself: “You mean, it isn’t going
to last.” And it won’t, but likely it will
end well. Unlike the movie we
watched, Blue Valentine, a neat
little movie but pretending to be ragged. The ending is the clue. Dean and
Cindy fall apart, though that didn’t need to happen. Only it did: it did need to
happen; the film − I shouldn’t have said movie − demanded it. The film had to
stand there at the end as we watched Dean walking away − the film had to be looking out at us, so that we knew, before it turned
away and let the credits roll,we knew it was serious. “This
isn’t a comedy where all’s well because it ends well. It’s not a tragedy
either; these are not kings and queens, Greek gods or goddesses. This is life;
so I hope you watched and listened. We had something to say about life.”
Like,
it’s heavy, man.
Life’s burdens are heavy . . . if we’re serious about it. And how can we not
be? Life is serious. As the straight man says in those Geico commercials, “Everybody
knows that.” “Yes, but did you know that Nietzsche was happy in his madness and was finally writing what he wanted to all along?”
First, this given: Nietzsche does have to go
mad; there isn’t a story if he doesn’t. But in his madness − in his mind − he’s
not living with his jill-ass sister an exhibit in her Friedrich museum. In his
mind he has fallen for this lovely, big, simple, sweet girl who loves sex and gardening; and she has fallen for him.
He rips up what he’s written thus far, all the crap his proto-Nazi sister has stuffed
into every corner hoping to edit later. He starts a book on root vegetables. Every
afternoon, he and Gretel go inside and nap; every morning and evening they are outside, down on their knees with their trowels. They grow
flowers; they grow corn and green beans; and especially they grow carrots and
parsnips and peas, rutabaga and beets, turnips and potatoes. Everything in Nietzsche’s
mind is beautifully mindless, the lovemaking and the lima beans. Everything
flourishes, and he can see his own death. He has fallen from his knees onto his side, curls up; a warm sunny
day, she is fanning him with her skirt as he falls asleep among the potatoes.
Life was never so serious after all. And
death smells sweetly of sweat and dirt.
t
(bicbw)
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