Right after I finished watching “Blindness,” (the Fernando Mereilles movie), my sister sent me an e-mail casually mentioning this book she just finished and put down, which was “Blindness” by Jose Saramago.  The following day I met a friend for breakfast and a man sat at the table next to us and opened up his book, “Blindness.” This is all probably just the result of successful shilling (USA!). But it’s kind of bizarre when things like that happen.

The movie’s been described as one you either love or hate (the book, too), and I happened to love it.  It’s not a happy place to go but it is one of those great films that poses certain questions and can make for some awkward personal revelations and great conversation. 

It’s days later and Jay and I are still wondering just how we would handle such-and-such, what we would do.  The conclusion I always seem to come to is:  can’t know ‘til i’m there.  I’d like to think I’d be fabulous in every way in some gudawful situation, but, honestly, who can tell?  I fancy I have a pretty cool head in an emergency, but, again--how can you know until you’re in it?  If I’ve learned anything it’s to expect the unexpected, and that I’m not as great as I think I am.  :)

I read “Maus” I and II this week, too, Art Spiegelman’s famous graphic novel(s) about his dad’s experience in Auschwitz and elsewhere during WWII, and the aftermath.  I can’t stop thinking about it and probably won’t for some time.  “Blindness” is still bouncing around in my noggin, too--but they go strangely together somehow.   “Blindness” is fiction and “Maus” is history.  That said, “Blindness” doesn’t cover any repugnant behavior that’s new or unusual to us...

“Blindness,” for all its horror, can’t even come close to “Maus,” horror-wise.  I really wonder what makes a person keep striving through unrelenting, ever-increasing, very real horror. The old Vladek (Spiegelman’s father) breaks my heart. Vladek’s later obsessive behaviors--hoarding, pill counting, penny-pinching--make complete sense, of course.  Ditto his constant anxiety.  It’s his retaining any good will for people or desire to be a part of the world at all--his abiliity to get up in the morning and go--that I can’t make sense of. 

People can cope but what helps them cope in the middle of the bad stuff turns to acid later.  All that clever adrenalin, so handy in an emergency. You can’t just turn it off--it has to go somewhere and it comes out in weird ways when it can’t turn itself anymore to important things like, say, “how not to get gassed/shot in the head/raped/beaten today.”  Adrenalin, when the devil’s been removed, is like a demoted superhero.  But antsy and still industrious.  “Give me something to do, dammit!....”

Maybe I should have said something about the beauty earlier, because both these things are deeply beautiful, “Maus” and “Blindness.”  Can’t recommend them highly enough.