The Hills of Iowa

For whatever reason, Iowa  has been a running theme in our course this semester (and, strangely, in my life). Apropos of this, a friend recently shared this song with me:

I’ve never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could,
And I’ve never found a way to say I love you, but if the chance came by, oh i, I would,
But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,
We don’t like to make our passions other people’s concern,
And we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn.

These lyrics pretty much capture for me what it means to come from the Midwest. Those lines just kill me, “We don’t like to make our passions other people’s concern, And we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn.” 

We talked tonight about the experience of “letting go.” Bringing all of myself to these texts, I brought forward, with your help, themes centered around forgetting, forgiving and being born witness. In relationship to being born witness, I talked about the setting of “letting go” as a public place, outside the too-familiar confines of home.

Avoiding all feeling, avoiding moral entanglements, and going back into our homes to burn. Our texts tonight speak to the danger of such an approach, and, alternatively, the healing that can come from forgiving, forgetting and being born witness within a context where we can make public the hurt that resides within.

My first association, when I found out we would be discussing the experience of letting go this week, was the novel by Philip Roth. I read this novel when I was in my early twenties, and to be honest, I can’t remember many of the details. I remember the main characters were grad students at the University of Iowa, that there were messy romantic entanglements, and that divorce and loss were big themes of the book. 

I remember thinking how complicated “adult” lives were. 

Our lives, of course are complicated. Tonight we talked about the toll life takes when we have to admit we cannot live up to the demands that master narratives place upon us. We talked about letting go as a healthy alternative to holding in. 

If the pre-reflective lifeworld surges, it also withdraws.  Continuity and identity, in this sense, are illusions. We have to accept the gifts that come in the moment, and when it is time, we have to allow them to pass so that something new can arise.