Persepolis
Note: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is a graphic novel/memoir by Marjane Satrapi about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis is also an ancient Persian city that is now in ruins. Persepolis is also, also the name of a french film, currently in theaters, which is the cinematic adaptation of the graphic novel and its sequel.
So, we went to see it.
Persepolis.
And, it happened again.
The protagonist, Marjane, was being sent to Vienna. Perhaps never to return. Her parents saw her off. Stood by the security gate. Smiled. Waved. Marjane turned around just in time to see her mother collapse. Her father lifting her, limp and lifeless, to carry her from the airport. Those same visions of the so-utterly-powerless Madonna running toward the fallen Christ welled up in my mind. I had to lean forward in my seat to catch my breath. To keep from filling with tears. To stop my eyes from rolling back in my head.
When you give birth to a child, it is like some small glass capsule inside you has burst. Some ancient, sacred part of you has cracked wide open. You are changed in these subtle, monumental ways. Ways you cannot quite explain. As if you are, somehow, eluding yourself. You are swept up by both love and despair. You hang on, steady yourself, reach to find your sea legs.It is like eating the apple. It is both beautiful and devastating. And you can never go back.
Sometimes I think about Silas and begin to choke. Maybe we shouldn’t have brought him into the world, I think. I try to think of myself as a vessel in order to resolve myself of the responsibility. I can’t pretend to know the mystery of birth and death and life, I say. Still, he’s so innocent and the world can be so inexplicably cruel.
Eventually, he will feel real pain. Eventually, someone he loves, or thinks he loves, will not love him back. One awful, earth-shattering day, he’ll look at himself in the mirror and wish he wasn’t so ugly. He’ll lose friends to fights, to distance, to time, to death. He’ll question himself, feel abandoned, not know which way to turn.
It is almost too much.
It is beautiful and devastating and I cannot turn back. I can only, ever, do my unfaltering, impossible best.
