How Time Makes Us Invisible

“The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue”, by V.E. Schwab, is a book I recently finished and need to admit that it has become something of an obsession these past few weeks. For those who have not read it, Schwab’s talent as a writer is on display page after page by her ability to capture and express deep psychological insights with stunning clarity, as you’ll see shortly. And although the plot revolves around a well-worn theme in literature; the inconvenience of time, this particular offering comes with a few nuanced twists, as well as two unique, well-matched characters that made it an memorable read from start to finish. Curiously enough, the story also contains a plot thread that parallels with a personal dilemma that I’ve struggled with recently….. that being a simple question, “who will remember me.” But before offering an eye-roll, allow me to explain.

In the book, Addie LaRue is a 23-year-old woman (girl), living in 18th century France, about to be married off to someone she barely knows, and certainly doesn’t love. In this arranged marriage, as they most often were at the time, she sees her doom, soon to become nothing more than a servant to husband and children, locked into a provincial life in her small village where she will live out her days in a boringly predictable existence. So, in a life-changing rush of ownership, she decides to run away, determined to live life on her own terms, whatever the cost.

She eventually winds up deep in the woods surrounding her village, a place that offered her far more pleasure than her actual home, but while there a dark, shadowy figure appeared, who mysteriously knew of her dilemma and offered a deal that would solve it; the chance to live her life however she chose for as long as she wants. The price tag being that once she had enough of it, she belonged to him. Well, in her frantic state of mind, with the upside too enticing to pass up, she accepted the deal, not quite sure whether it was all some strange dream or not.

Well, with the deal done she no longer had to worry about dying, or even aging…..she simply existed as she was at 23, free to live her life as she saw fit, for centuries if she wished, but unknown to her at the time, the small-print of the deal meant that no one would ever remember her. Every person she meets forgets her the moment the encounter ends.

Not being remembered may sound benign on the surface, but throughout the book, Schwab exposes the emotional cracks and eventual chiasms of never leaving a mark on anyone’s life, which becomes its own private form of torture for Addie. This is when her story began to get personal.

A similar idea has been ricocheting around my mind recently, even before learning of the book. I even mentioned it to my friend recently that I seem to be going through a nihilistic phase of some sort, where fewer things seem to matter. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t care about my conduct with job and family, but simply the realization that “I”, the person writing this sentence, the person who has written thousands of other sentences in the attempt to “know thyself”, doesn’t seem to matter.

This is what I mean, specifically. Consider my great-grandfather, whom I am named after (Monroe)…I know nothing of him. And I know nothing of his wife, my great-grandmother, presumably the love of his life, or even their children really, which would include my grandfather/grandmother. As a child I remember visiting their home a few times, but at that point they were just a category, a type of subspecies…. they were grandparents. I knew nothing of their personalities, nothing of their careers, struggles, what they cared for or believed in throughout their lives. And that is where I came face-to-face with the stark realization that I will occupy the same invisibility within a generation or two. 

Of course, we all know and acknowledge this truth from a safe distance, but my point here has to be balanced against forty years writing. And it’s not only the effort involved, but also how that effort has sculpted a far more nuanced version of me than if I had not bothered. I am speaking of the intellectual growth and emotional clarity that has resulted from spending countless hours attempting to nail down the right word or phrase to an elusive idea, or the wisdom that I’ve soaked up from all the incredible books that have passed by these eyes, or all the other poignant coins tossed into the hat of who I am. So, realizing that my descendants will likely know very little, if anything, of it in fifty years has become something of a sharp object continually scraping against my peace of mind.

Now, with my dilemma properly framed, allow me to circle back to the book for moment. In one memorable line, Addie, now in New York City 300 years later, was about to leave behind her old clothing in a changing stall but would not part with the beat-up leather jacket that she had worn for a generation. For Addie, she treasured the jacket because it showed the passage of time in a way that she could not. This is how Schwab describes it.

“It was new then, but it is broken in now, shows its wear in all the ways she can’t. It reminds her of Dorian Grey, time reflected in cowhide instead of human skin.”

It’s subtle, but that is a surprisingly poignant reference by the author, for Dorian Grey lived a similar Faustian deal in Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece “The Portrait of Dorian Grey”, where Dorian’s aging was reflected onto a painting, just as Addie’s day-to-day life had been reflected onto her weathered jacket. The line struck home, “…. time reflected in cowhide instead of human skin.”

To provide the proper context to what I’m hoping to achieve here, consider this. Addie refers to the shadowy figure as “Luc” (Lucifer) and for me he represents something bordering on the nihilism that I have been feeling, which is the disorienting admission that all of my time and effort spent writing these essays doesn’t matter, because within two generations no one will know anything of them. In other words, the pessimistic “Luc” represents the urge to “just surrender”, which he consistently pressed upon Addie whenever he knew she was struggling to hold on. That has been the voice shrieking from the back of the room for weeks now……the “why do it” question. Why continue to exert so many hours to the effort when our lives are so transient? Just consider the multitudes of dandelion seeds being scattered each and every Spring, blown away on the winds and out of view, never to be considered again. Time eventually turns every life into the same invisibility.

Fortunately, it has dawned on me, with the help of Addie LaRue, that I’ve been framing the issue with the wrong intent in mind. The mistake has been my focus to leave something tangible behind that demarks some level of presence here. Not just that I once lived but that I have done so with intent and passion. My journal has been precisely that desire, it’s the painting of Dorian Grey, or Addie’s leather jacket. It’s a way of reflecting my time here onto something.

This is precisely where Addie’s inability to be remembered came into an acute focus for me, and offered some relief, because her character was forced to adapt to an unnatural way of living and in order to endure the endless years of everyday banality, she needed something to keep her heart and mind engaged and flourishing, to find moments of purpose and meaning that would rise above the drudgery. Addie’s predicament was nicely described here by Schwab.

“There is a rhythm to moving through the world alone……You discover what you can and cannot live without, the simple necessities and small joys that define a life. Not food, not shelter, not the basic things a body needs — those are, for her, a luxury — but the things that keep you sane. That bring you joy. That makes life bearable.”

Then Schwab brilliantly circles back to an earlier story element to drive home this poignant aspect to Addie’s dilemma. Early on, while still a young girl in 18th century France, we were told that her father was a woodworker and skilled with carving delicate figurines, inferring that he was a master at whittling down the wood to only what was essential to each piece.  Schwab then has Addie adapting her father’s talent to her own situation.

“Addie has had three hundred years to practice her father’s art, to whittle herself down to a few essential truths, to learn the things she cannot do without…….And this is what she settled on; she can go without food (she will not wither), she can go without heat (the cold will not kill here). But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things…..she would go mad.”

As if on cue, that was precisely the medicine my disposition has been thirsting for. The simple reminder that I have spent my entire adult life living by those same essential truths articulated there by Addie. Indeed, the vast majority of my essays are nothing more than digressions expressing my sense of awe and wonder, or the passion I feel for the arts, and nature. The exhausting and often frustrating efforts to learn how to write developed into a passion precisely because it threw me into the deep end of the pool with respect to my limited abilities, and forced me to articulate thoughts and ideas that would have otherwise remained nothing but phantoms in my mind.

But there is another aspect to the writing process that I have completely failed to appreciate of late, and that is the deep solitude at the center of it all, which at times works as a type of meditation, where instead of placing all my concentration on the breath, for instance, I focus on finding the right words, then assemble them into sentences. I recently came across this line from Maria Popova, which captures the point perfectly.

“There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In solitude, we may begin to hear in the silence the song of our own lives.”

When seen through all these years of effort, the colors and textures that have been exposed from the effort has been immeasurable, because with each idea clarified, each emotion articulated, a new set optics have been made available that allows me to see the world with more depth and nuance. The decades of effort have effectively produced a different cadence to the way I move through the world — I see and feel subtleties now that I would have never noticed otherwise. And to Addie’s point, the gratification I feel from occasionally writing a memorable sentence or articulating a stimulating thought…..well, that is purely for me and my own enjoyment.

Naturally enough, this essay reminds me of another I wrote a few years ago titled “It’s All In The Touching”, inspired by another book I read, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” The lines below definitely belongs with this conversation, because it captures what Addie spent 300 years attempting to do…..to find ways to make contact with her life.

“Everyone must leave behind something when they die….a child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made, or a garden planted. ………It doesn’t matter what you do so long as you changed something from the way it was before you touched it, into something that’s like you after you take your hand away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have never been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

Of course, life can get complicated and there are other factors weighing on my disposition these days, but at least with respect to writing and the purpose for continuing to express myself, Addie LaRue has been a surprising gift, for she reminded me of something that I was beginning to misplace. 

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who we are”  – Joseph Campbell