“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Shannon looked up from the rock she was trying to pry loose from the hard-packed ground.
“Why not?”
Laurie took a moment to phrase her response. “Cause you’ll make a big hole and someone could trip.”
Shannon smiled.
“Perfect.” She went back to her digging.
The rock was approximately three feet across in all directions, and two feet deep. It was a relatively smooth one, and up until Shannon had started digging it had lain flat in the ground, its top parallel to the ground. It had always been one of Laurie’s favorites to hop from. She would try to jump from it to the next nearest rock without letting even a smidgen of earth touch her feet. It was the largest visible rock in the yard.
“Why start with that one, Shannon?” Laurie whined. Really, she would miss it.
“Don’t you ever wonder what’s under it?”
“No!” Shannon had unearthed more than half of the rock by now and Laurie was starting to feel a little hysterical.
“Shannon, wait just a sec, okay. Please? Please?”
Shannon paused once more and Laurie felt a small surge of hope. Maybe should could talk her out of it after all.
“Shannie, it’s just that I really like that rock, you know. And it’s so close to the house; I mean, couldn’t you pick one out by the fence where no one would see it. It’s going to be so ugly!” Shannon stood and placed her dirty hands on Laurie’s shoulders.
“Laurie, it’s… just… one…. rock.” She said the words very slowly, like she was talking to a person that wasn't completely "there." “Once I’m done, you can put it back for all I care.” She bent down and quickly finished the job. With Laurie watching unhappily, Shannon wedged her fingers under the rock, braced herself, and hefted it out of the ground. She rocked it back and forth a couple of times, her arms taut from its weight, and, finally, hurled it as far across the yard as she could. She turned to look back at Laurie who seemed on the verge of tears and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“It’s okay. It’s all over.” She guided Laurie back into the house and the two spent the next few hours playing games. Laurie could almost forget it ever happened.
_____
A week after Shannon unearthed that first rock, she went back and took a closer look at the hole she had created. She found, much to her surprise, that there were another two rocks whose edges met in the exact center of the hole. She, of course, couldn’t resist the challenge of digging them up too.
______
Three years later, what had started as a spur-of-the-moment whim, had turned into an obsession for Shannon. The ground around the house was nothing but a series of deeper and deeper holes, for she found, as soon as she dug up one rock, many more were exposed beneath the surface of the old one. The rocks were often bigger and bigger as well. At one point, the holes and rocks were getting so big that she had to buy heavy machinery to do most of the work. In fact, at that point, she found that she was not alone in her fascination with rock digging; she found an entire like-minded crew of people to help her.
Shannon and her team felt a real sense of purpose through their endeavors. The thrill of going deeper and deeper was intoxicating and Shannon doubted she’d ever stop. Sometimes they found real little treasures as they dug. Beautiful rocks. Skeletons of many small creatures. At one point, they even started to find seashells. It was all so worth it.
Of course, Shannon did have to get rid of the house at one point, about five years after that first day. There was just so much ground under it. And Laurie was long gone before that happened. Every once in a while she missed Laurie with an intensity she didn’t understand. But Laurie had been completely incapable of understanding what she was doing. In the early days, Shannon had tried explaining what she was doing many times, but Laurie had just never been able to grasp it.
“Look at all the things we’re finding!” she had shouted the day Laurie had moved out.
“Yes, but that’s not why you’re digging, is it Shannon.” Laurie had replied sadly, and shook her head as she walked away.
“Well at least I had the ambition to do something,” Shannon had yelled after Laurie’s retreating back. “All you ever wanted to do was sit around and look at the dumb scenery! You’re so ignorant!” She got postcards from Laurie from then on, and they were always predictably boring.
All those years later, however, she would still hear Laurie’s voice in her head every once in a while.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Well, you’re not me, Shannon would answer the memory, so you’ve gotta do what you do, and I’ve gotta do what I do. And it was true.
Friday, February 27, 2009
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I liked this line: “Yes, but that’s not why you’re digging, is it Shannon.”
ReplyDeleteIt all comes down to motivation, I guess. Why are we digging holes? Does the benefit outweigh the destruction we are causing???
It's interesting. I'm not sure whether Shannon's digging is a bad or good thing to me. It just is. There are some people who are motivated to do things that others don't see as valuable, so where does the value of the action lie? Really within the individual. What is motivating them to do something like that?
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is that she did not factor in her friend's desire to keep thing the way they were. SHe was pretty selfish; her own needs and motivations were more important. Maybe from that angle, Shannon's not doing good things.
This kind of reminds me of the book, "the phantom tollbooth," when Milo goes up into the mountains and the scary blank-faced guy has him try to dig away a mountain with a pin. His motivation is just that he really likes the guy, and wants to please him, so he sits there, fidding away with his pin in a useless task. His motivation is to please someone who has charmed him (maybe could be compared to Obamania... or not. I actually like Obama and think that *some* of the things he is working on are worthwhile).
Anyway, didn't mean to turn this into a political comment, just wanted to say it's an interesting concept. Does the motivation fit the activity? And on the other side of the coin, just because you can't see the value in something another person sees as important, doesn't mean there might not be something there...
Here's my reaction to your story.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the story is about obsession--how it takes hold from seemingly disconnected action, maybe anything--that's why we think of it as an obsession--the preoccupation with it isn't warranted by the nature of what it is or what benefit it brings. Laurie can sense the potential for this and gives her warning (a dominant idea in the story, being the title). [But there is more that this. For example, when Shannon is told someone could trip, she smiles and says "Perfect." Is this just banter or is it more malevolent?]
But this story also sounds to me like more than an exploration of obsession in general. It could be an allegory. Here are some salient features:
Shannon says it's just one rock, then she'll be done, can't resist digging up more rocks.
Like-minded people join Shannon in her digging.
They feel a real sense of purpose and going deeper is intoxicating.
"It was all so worth it" is how they feel (though stated ironically from the perspective of the storyteller).
Because of the digging, the house is eliminated and Laurie leaves.
They are not really digging to find things like small creatures, skeletons and seashells, but just to dig (?).
Shannon characterizes Laurie of sitting around, being ignorant and being boring.
The digging obsession lasts for years, and is apparently permanent, Shannon 'has" to do it.
If it is an allegory, to what could this all be referring? One thing it sounds like is the pursuit of Science. They keep deconstructing things to find out the deeper “why” and in the process, deconstruct things that exist in wholes by nature, like family (the house), relationships (Laurie), aesthetics (the scenery), the magic playful world of a child (hopping and playing on the rocks)--and perhaps other things not mentioned in the story like faith and religion, the human soul and personality. All of reality is deconstructed and reduced to a sterile description of little non-living particles bumping into each other according to mathematical rules--and there is literally nothing more than this. The scientific way is an obsession, where we have to keep going until we swallow all of reality, just because we can, and we do not resist the temptation to do so.
Of course we all know science has proven very useful as well. For example, we have technological miracles all around us, and understand health and medicine better, all of which benefits people greatly.
And actually, Camilla, I don’t think you have a vendetta against Science, so that’s probably not what you have in mind.
[I, myself, find Science fascinating, though in an ambivalent relationship--which makes it even more interesting. The story also struck me as familiar--about myself. Some of my friends have scoffed at me for trying to find the “Secret of the Universe,” the Ultimate. I care about things that others might seem to be “completely incapable of understanding“ in the sense, “Why do you care?”]
Thanks for writing the story and posting it.
I was interested in the comparison between looking at "dumb scenery" and digging up rocks. I sympathize with the scenery watcher even though that may not be the point of the story. I guess a person could be obsessive about any activity.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Shannon stopped caring about people and living life, and started focusing every part of her on this one task- that was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. She wasn't benefitting anyone by digging up rocks, and the people that she was doing it with- she didn't care about them, she only cared that they had the great dream that she did. It sounds like Laurie decided to live her life, and maybe Laurie was able to be content with what she was give (scenery) instead constantly trying to dig for more. I think we often do that- we want things and are unhappy we don't have them, when the big ultimate point is we are given life to be happy, so let's be happy with what were given.
ReplyDeleteIn this example, one of the by products of digging, or the deconstruction of the earth, is the creation of a hole. I think all living things have a natural compulsion to build in some way shape or form, and maybe digging is an introspective reflection of this need?
ReplyDelete