The next day dawned rainy. Julie woke up and looked out the window, annoyed. It was too much trouble to go to the library in the rain, so she decided to study in the dorm lounge. She liked to do ‘light’ studying there—sometimes a friend would come and study with her and sometimes she’d just wind up talking.
Sure enough, her friend Laurie came by. Julie was not completely comfortable with Laurie because she had been trying to get Julie to come to her church with her. But she seemed nice and sincere, and she wasn’t as catty as some of her other acquaintances.
“Hi, Julie, mind if I study here?” Laurie asked.
“No problem. I’m just reviewing anyway.”
“Oh. I’ve got a test Monday, but it’s in an easy class. By the way, I didn’t see you at dinner last night.”
“Rich and I went out for dinner and went to hear some music.” Laurie was silent for a moment. She didn’t wholly approve of Richard. “How are things going with the two of you?” she asked.
“Well, Rich is kind of shy. I guess I am too.”
“Do you like him?”
“I think so. He’s really smart but he’s not obnoxious about it. He’s kind of awkward sometimes, and that seems to keep him from being too full of himself.”
Laurie digested this for a moment. “By the way, Julie,” she said. “I know I keep asking, and I don’t want to annoy you, but do you want to go to church with me tomorrow?”
Julie looked at Laurie. She suddenly felt superior—she knew someone who was actually in contact with the afterlife, and here was Laurie asking her to go to church! “I don’t really need religion or church, Laurie.”
Laurie said, “It’s not religion, Julie. It’s a love relationship.”
“I know, you’ve said that before.” Julie wasn’t really prepared to debate Laurie’s religion with her, and at the same time that feeling of superiority made her almost disdainful of Laurie’s beliefs. Then she was struck by an impulse. “Laurie, do you believe in the afterlife?”
“Of course,” said Laurie. “People go to heaven or hell, depending on what they do in this life.”
“Does everyone go to heaven or hell? What about ghosts and spirits?”
Laurie looked uncertain, but she said, “I don’t know about ghosts and spirits, but the bible says we’re not supposed to try to raise the spirits of the dead.”
“Why not?”
Laurie was stumped. “I guess I never thought about it. Anyway, I’m not about to try it.”
“But aren’t you curious? What if you could communicate with someone from the afterlife?”
“I don’t want to communicate with someone from the afterlife. And anyway how would you know it’s not a demon or evil spirit?”
“Laurie, if you are so afraid of the spiritual world, why should I take your religion seriously? Isn’t religion about contact with the spiritual world? Didn’t you say that you have a relationship with the spiritual world?”
“Yes, but by prayer. I don’t talk to ghosts or dead people.”
“But isn’t Jesus dead? Don’t you talk to him?”
“But he isn’t dead any more. He came back to life.”
Julie was starting to lose interest. This wasn’t getting her anywhere. “Well, anyway, I’m afraid I don’t want to go to church. Sorry.”
Julie was surprised to see that Laurie had tears in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” asked Julie.
“Nothing, Julie. I’m OK, but I just feel sorry for you.”
“What?” asked Julie. Julie was offended. After all, she was smarter and prettier than Laurie. Laurie was kind of frumpish— mostly because of the way she dressed—and she had needed to work much harder than Julie to get into Berkeley.
“I’m sorry, Julie. I don’t mean anything bad. But you are just missing out on something that you won’t open your eyes to. You’re closed-minded and don’t even realize it.”
Julie was getting annoyed. “You think you know so much about the spiritual world,” she said. “But you don’t even know that there really is an afterlife, and spirits, and ghosts. You’re like someone playing around in the shallow end of the swimming pool while others are diving in to the deep water. You’re safe, but you never have any fun.”
Laurie looked at Julie with wide, alarmed eyes. “What do you mean? Are you involved with the occult?”
“I don’t know what you mean by the occult. And I can’t really say anything yet because I haven’t seen anything with my own eyes. But that will change.”
“Julie, you have to be careful. There are a lot of frauds and worse out there. Some people really have contact with evil spirits and even get possessed by demons, or so I’ve heard.”
“I guess that’s what your church tells you, but what do you know yourself? How do you know if they’re evil and how do you know if they are real if you don’t experience it yourself?”
“Come on, Julie. Just because I don’t walk out in front of a car, you can’t say that I don’t know it would hurt.”
“But we don’t know anything about the afterlife. Nobody has come back to tell us about it.”
“Jesus did,” said Laurie.
“Yes, but then he went off to heaven or wherever, right? So what good does that do?”
“I trust him to let me know what I need to know, and I don’t try to find out things I’m not supposed to know.”
“Laurie, you don’t know how that sounds to people who really believe in the life of the mind. You are just closing yourself off to whatever your religion tells you is forbidden. If everyone had been like you we’d still be living in caves.”
“Maybe we’d be happier.”
“Well, I’m not going back to caves and I’m not going to hide from what’s out there.”
“So why won’t you go to my church? Aren’t you hiding from that?”
Laurie had scored, though if she had known it was Julie’s pride she had touched she might not have been completely happy about it. “OK, I’ll come once. But I bet I’ll be bored there. I bet you’re bored there too. Be honest.”
“Sometimes it’s repetitious, but not really boring. And the people are nice,” Laurie said, smiling.
Julie was a bit surprised by the warmth of Laurie’s smile. It reminded her of something. “Do you mind if I bring Rich?” she asked.
“Uh, I guess so, if he wants to come,” Laurie said hesitantly.
She didn’t really want to compete with Richard for Julie’s attention, but she felt duty-bound to encourage people to come.
That afternoon it stopped raining and began to clear up. Richard called and asked Julie to go to the library with him to study. He was having trouble with an English paper and wondered if she could help him. She agreed. Richard picked Julie up at her dorm and they walked down Telegraph Avenue through Sproul Plaza.
Telegraph Avenue was the usual circus atmosphere; craft sellers of all sorts, people shopping and just going places, barely room to walk on the sidewalk. Sproul plaza was its usual self as well. There was a demonstration and a young man was handing out flyers advocating that some conservative politician or other be prevented from speaking at the campus. Richard laughed when he saw that.
“Standing in the home of the Free Speech Movement and trying to prevent free speech,” he said. “That’s just strange to me.”
Julie said, “That’s irony.”
“What?”
“You were asking me about literary terms. Irony is one, and what that guy was doing was ironic. Irony is just combining contradictory elements in a given statement or situation.”
Julie was good at literature. She struggled a bit with math. For Richard it was the opposite. He ate math for breakfast but Julie had to help him with his English class.
Once they reached the library Richard sighed and pulled out his binder. He had to write a paper about a poem, and he’d chosen DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT by Dylan Thomas.
“I like the sound of it,” he said.
Julie smiled. “Dylan Thomas is all music,” she replied. “You have a good ear.”
“Thanks, I think,” replied Richard. “But I don’t get what he’s trying to say.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but I think appreciating literature is just something you’re born with. And I don’t have it.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “People say things like that about math, don’t they? You can train yourself to get it. It’s just not as clear-cut, because human experience and feelings and ideas are not as clear-cut as math.”
“Hmph,” said Richard skeptically. “I still think it’s either black magic or humbug. All this symbolism and stuff they pull out of their hat.”
“Come on, try it. I bet you can do it.”
“OK, so what does it mean when he says, ‘Wise men dying know that dark is right, but because their words had forked no lightning they do not go gentle into that good night’ ?” asked Richard.
“What do you think?”
“Maybe they’re saying that their wisdom didn’t have as big an impact as they wished, so they have a hard time leaving it all behind?”
“Not bad,” said Julie.
“OK, but listen to this gobbledygook: ‘how their frail deeds might have danced on a green bay’. How can the deeds dance on water?”
“It’s a metaphor—sort of a comparison. He’s talking about the deeds as if they were sailboats and we do talk about sailboats dancing on the water.”
“So they are like frail boats that maybe sunk unnoticed in real life but if conditions were better they might have, uh, danced like sailboats?”
“Seems to me like you’re getting it.”
“Now here’s irony, I think. Seeing with blinding sight. Isn’t that irony?”
“No, that’s something called an oxymoron. Irony is more situational than just verbal.”
“How about when he says, ‘Curse, bless me with your fierce tears I pray’—is that irony?”
“No, I wouldn’t usually call it ironic. I don’t really know what to call it. It’s a powerfully dramatic moment. He doesn’t want his father to accept death.”
“So much for the Fellowship of the Daylight Moon,” Richard replied sarcastically. He then took to scribbling in earnest. Julie watched him for a while.
“Hey Rich, will you come to Laurie’s church with me tomorrow?”
Richard looked up. “Church? First astrology, now church? And ghosts? What next?”
“Come on, Rich, Laurie’s a friend, and I don’t want to go alone.”
“Oh, sure I’ll come.” Richard smiled to himself. His policy regarding Julie still gave the same answer, no matter what the situation.
A thought struck him. “By the way, Julie, do you want to walk up where Mike saw, you know….”
“Now?”
“Sure. I think I’ve got a handle on this paper, and I can work on it tomorrow. Uh, what time’s church anyway?”
“Eleven.”
“So I can work on my paper for an hour or so before that. Come on, let’s go!”
“But it’s not dark.”
“Well, it’s four o’clock. It’ll get dark pretty soon.”
“Why not wait ’til later and go when it’s really dark?”
“We could go out to dinner.”
“My treat this time, Rich.”
“Come on, Julie, don’t go all feminist on me.”
“Well don’t go all male chauvinist pig on me. Oink oink. Anyway, Rich, there’s one thing you’ll have to learn about us Chinese. We really don’t like having people pay for us all the time. It makes us feel obligated.”
Richard was not proud. He realized that Julie felt strongly enough about this that she would probably pass up the date if he didn’t acquiesce. “Sure, Julie,” he said. “Your treat.”