A Day of Atonement

On my 40th birthday, I watched Atonement and Into the Wild. I had read Atonement years earlier but not Into the Wild, so I had no idea how it ended. Deaths all around. I wept during and after both films as if the disasters had happened to me.

The other day a friend remarked on how much mileage I was getting out of telling friends and strangers about my apartment fire. At the time I bristled, probably because I felt busted. Later, I realized it was because I felt fear – fear of losing the one thing I had left after losing everything else: my story.

And that’s exactly what Atonement and Into the Wild are: they are the what’s left.

In the case of Atonement, the protagonist, Briony Tallis, realizes she must put her writing skills into the service of atoning for her sins. The people she sinned against have all died, but she still has her ability to write her apology. We will never know, however, if Jon Krakauer imagined a reader for his journals because he died somewhere in the Alaskan bush, and his journals were published posthumously. Was his diary a place where he could privately atone for cutting off his family? Or, did he imagine the life he was leading would one day be published as a book in which he could say, “mom, dad, look! I made good on the gift of life you gave me. I lived!” Their atonement, it seems, was to turn his diary into the book, Into the Wild. In it, they are not painted in a flattering light, but they must have believed that publishing his journals would serve as a kind of public apology for not appreciating Jon as he was when he was alive. Atoning was all they had left.

With my own journals, the ones that burned in my fire, I did always imagine a sympathetic audience as I wrote them -- readers who might one day know my inner world. That hope is now gone. But I know it’s not that way with everyone’s journals. Some of us really do need a private outlet, and we might even think we will one day burn our journals in a bonfire of release down the road, with no one the wiser to who we really are...

No matter what fires consume our lives, accidentally or on purpose, what’s always left is our ability to make amends.

This morning I woke up vowing to fast for Yom Kippur (I had already failed after sundown last night – stuffing myself with popcorn and chocolate while I watched a chickflick). At 8:00 am, my vow still seemed possible. By 9:30 am, I had walked around the block and decided that if I were to give proper attention to my atonement process, I would need to caffinate my headache since it was far more distracting than my hunger pangs.

Yesterday, I made a public declaration about taking myself offline and off phone in order to add outside pressure to my commitment. But thoughts of e-mails from friends and hopeful online horoscopes and life-affirming phone calls have been coming as frequently as breath. I keep vacillating between wondering what denial has to do with atonement and registering dismay about my inability to conquer my various addictions. Yom Kippur requires 25 hours of abstinence from food, liquids, marital relations, the wearing of leather, general pleasures and work. After I drank my coffee, I scarfed down a few slices of watermelon, "for health reasons," I told myself. Then I opened my computer and began writing. After an hour of writing, I checked my e-mail. All this before noon. My purity of action had spent itself during the first hour and a half between waking and walking.

And now the guilt is setting in. Which, more than my attempts at fasting and thinking about my sins, is making me feel like a real Jew.

Thanks to a smattering of meditation training, I know that I need to stop letting my id and superego drive. I need to get myself into the observer’s seat. In order to keep pulling my mind back from thoughts of dinner 8 hours away, and the myriad failures of my life – why am I not able to keep my weight down? Why is my career so all over the map? Why I am not marriedwithkids? – I keep repeating, mantra-like, the bigger questions at hand: What are my sins? How can I atone for them? And, since I don’t believe in God, who am I atoning to, exactly?

Not being raised religious, the concept of sin, thankfully, is a tad foreign to me. Don’t get me wrong, I have developed, hopefully, some sort of moral and ethical universe in the absence of a religious one, driving me to right the wrongs I have committed against strangers, friends and family. I guess it all boils down the same thing – “wrong doing” or “sin”, whatever you want to call it, the act and the feeling are the same: bad.

Just after noon, I wrote a letter of admission and apology to a friend whose privacy I had invaded. I read his personal writing when I was not supposed to. The writing was kick-ass publishable, but it was private, and, therefore, not for me to judge, much less read. Far-too-swiftly, via e-mail, came a more-than-generous forgiveness, one I did not feel I deserved. And still I did not feel atoned. The afternoon yawned before me...

As I am writing this, I get a flash of insight: Atonement and Into the Wild provide the best mirrors for my malaise, for why I still feel something is missing in my process today. Both Briony and Jon not only atone in their writing, but they atone through their writing. Not only that, they basically atone through the act of living – Briony courageously carries on while her loved ones have died, and Jon packs about ten lifetimes into one, honouring every moment of his existence, good or bad, chalking it up to experience and gift.

And that's the nugget I have been searching for all day: I am pretty good at atoning in writing and in person, but I often feel I am a waste of my gifts.

What I should really atone for is an over indulgence of feeling sorry for myself. My life is a goddamn gift! This blog has been exceedingly helpful in giving me the space to do SOMETHING; I’ve never been more productive. But I feel more is still required. More work on my book, and on my painting projects. More recognition of how much it tears my parents apart when I am down on myself because what they see is a woman with an abundance of abilities, ones they gave me. Not appreciating myself is tantamount to not appreciating all they have done for me. I must write them a letter...

As much as I want to do more, I am also grateful for all the less I have ... less extraneous stuff I don’t need -- real or imagined or longed for -- thanks to my fire. Truth be told, if what's left is a story to tell, that is more than enough. It’s bloody well everything.