I have two bedside tables. The utilitarian one on the right is solid mahogany and holds my clock radio and my bedside reading lamp, a lovely twist of painted metal bent into vines that culminates in a bulb and shade. The bedside table on the right is an Italian antique, all gold leaf and carved flowers and vines hand-painted in lush colors. An appropriate divan for the latest novel that I’m reading, Anna Karenina. I’ve read it twice before and although there are parts that drag there is also pungent human truth.

Perhaps, because of the present morosity of our nation, a good, long- suffering Russian protagonist is salve for the soul. Tolstoy jumps from vignette to vignette, from character to character, weaving his story . Levin, a main character, speaks to my personal truth.

I stayed up too late watching the five day Star Trek bonanza on TV, and begrudged the half hour of mandatory reading before bed, but the novel seduced my attention. Levin’s brother was dying of tuberculosis. Levin’s new wife, his beloved Kitty, fell naturally into the nurturing honesty that her dying brother-in-law required. Levin anguished between emotionless detachment and bitter regret over his past and unfriendly relationship with his brother, Nicholas. Levin was speechless, afraid any word would add to his brother’s suffering. He envied his wife’s simple religion, her easy words of comfort. He brooded that the modern advances in science had squeezed out the last remnant of his faith. No arm chair was offered from his God to snuggle into until the great silence passed by his house.

How do people do that? Have simple faith? How do they answer the hard
questions when they search for truth? I know just how Levin feels.

(correlates: GiftForFiction, DeathRaysYesterday, SonnetForMyDaughterInLaw, ...)