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Still, I often find myself constructing rationales for the beneficial effects of fiction, trying, in essence, to justify the work I’ve been doing all these years.
So, trying to stay perfectly honest, let’s go ahead and ask, diagnostically: What is it, exactly, that fiction does?
Well, that’s the question we’ve been asking all along, as we’ve been watching our minds read these Russian stories. We’ve been comparing the pre-reading state of our minds to the post-reading state. And that’s what fiction does: it causes an incremental change in the state of a mind. That’s it. But, you know—it really does it. That change is finite but real.
And that’s not nothing.
It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing.
Essentially, before I read a story, I’m in a state of knowing, of being fairly sure. My life has led me to a certain place and I’m contentedly resting there. Then, here comes the story, and I am slightly undone, in a good way. Not so sure anymore, of my views, and reminded that my view-maker is always a little bit off: it’s limited, it’s too easily satisfied, with too little data.
And that’s an enviable state to be in, if only for a few minutes.
On April 21, the Council met to make its decision. After perfunctory debate, it approved an ignoble document called Resolution 912. It was a veritable lexicon of diplomatic mendacity. First it proclaimed that the United Nations was "shocked," "appalled," and "deeply concerned" by the bloodshed in Rwanda and was determined "to remain actively seized of the matter." then came the blow. All peacekeepers were to be pulled out of Rwanda, except for 270 whose main job would be to observe the slaughter.
just thought this was hilarious cus it so perfectly sums up my own experience with the UN by way of MUN
During one of his appearances as a witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Dallaire described the evacuation missions that foreign armies launched when the genocide broke out. He explained that soldiers rescued their own nationals but left Rwandans to die and called their conduct "inexcusable by any human criteria."
"It seems as though you regret that," his questioner observed.
"You cannot even imagine," Dallaire replied.
[...] Watching Alex move his eyes over the pile of objects stirred something in Sasha. She put her arms around him from behind, and he turned, surprised, but willing. She kissed him full on the mouth, then undid his zipper and kicked off her boots. Alex tried to lead her toward the other room, where they could lie down on the sofa bed, but Sasha dropped to her knees beside the tables and pulled him down, the Persian carpet prickling her back, street light falling through the window onto his hungry, hopeful face, his bare white thighs.
Afterward, they lay on the rug for a long time. The candles started to sputter. Sasha saw the prickly shape of the bonsai silhouetted against the window near her head. All her excitement had seeped away, leaving behind a terrible sadness, an emptiness that felt violent, as if she’d been gouged. She tottered to her feet, hoping Alex would leave soon. He still had his shirt on.
“You know what I feel like doing?” he said, standing up. “Taking a bath in that tub.”
“You can,” Sasha said dully. “It works. The plumber was just here.”
“Please,” she told Coz. “Don’t ask me how I feel.”
“All right,” he said quietly.
They sat in silence, the longest silence that ever had passed between them. Sasha looked at the windowpane, rinsed continually with rain, smearing lights in the falling dark. She lay with her body tensed, claiming the couch, her spot in this room, her view of the window and the walls, the faint hum that was always there when she listened, and these minutes of Coz’s time: another, then another, then one more.
There was a pause. Yellow light scissored through the leaves. Bennie lifted his gaze from Sasha’s breasts to her face. She had high cheekbones and narrow green eyes, wavy hair that ranged from reddish to purplish, depending on the month. Today it was red. She was smiling at Chris, but Bennie detected worry somewhere in the smile. He rarely thought of Sasha as an independent person, and beyond a vague awareness of boyfriends coming and going (vague first out of respect for her privacy, lately out of indifference), he knew few specifics of her life. But seeing her outside this family home, Bennie experienced a flare of curiosity: Sasha had still been at NYU when he’d first met her at a Conduits gig at the Pyramid Club; that put her in her thirties now. Why hadn’t she married? Did she want kids? She seemed suddenly older, or was it just that Bennie seldom looked directly at her face?
I notice Marty looking over at me kind of hesitant, and I see how this is supposed to work: I’m the dog, so I get Marty. I slide open a glass door and go onto Lou’s balcony. I’ve never seen San Francisco from so high up: it’s a soft blue-black, with colored lights and fog like gray smoke. Long piers reach out into the flat dark bay. There’s a mean wind, so I run in for my jacket and then come back out and curl up tightly on a white plastic chair. I stare at that view until I start to get calm. I think, The world is actually huge. That’s the part no one can really explain.
People will try to change you, Rhea, Lou goes. Don’t let ’em.
But I want to change.
No, he goes, serious. You’re beautiful. Stay like this.
But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache.
The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles. He’s going to kiss them one by one.
I start to cry, I don’t even hide it.
Hey, Lou goes. He leans down so our faces are together, and stares straight into my eyes. He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints. He goes, The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me.
And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.
Structural Incompatibility: A powerful twice-divorced male will be unable to acknowledge, much less sanction, the ambitions of a much younger female mate. By definition, their relationship will be temporary.
Structural Desire: The much younger temporary female mate of a powerful male will be inexorably drawn to the single male within range who disdains her mate’s power.
Mindy in Africa