Ani Kachbalian

The Awakening of the Sea Cucumber

 

The sea cucumber knows to bury its head in the sand when it must, and I envy it, its gumption, its awareness, the simple way in which it knows to entrench in the darkness when all of the light in the world has gone out. This year, it appears that a lot of light has disappeared from our lives and I am overwhelmed by the poignancy of this creature’s desire to achieve clarity by resting, to achieve clarity by subsiding. That is its sole purpose, whether it understands it or not. 

 

The re-examination of universal human traits has surfaced in my life as of late. I wake up each morning and greet twenty-four students in a British and World Literature examination course. We look at one another on the screen and make direct eye contact, but I realize that my attempts to connect at times, are futile: I’m trying to reach my hand into each of their chests and tug hard at their heart strings, their human strings, but I’m not able to accomplish that seamlessly, or sometimes at all. I call them my kids and it helps me to not feel like there is an ocean between us. 

 

Day one of the course begins with a question: what is the universal and essential topic of all literature? One by one, the students unmute themselves and offer their initial thoughts. Finally, we arrive at an essential conclusion, some type of resolve. Literature is about one thing, the human condition. The next question is asked: why do we write about the human condition? And the answer becomes undoubtedly clear to all of them without them needing my guidance: because we want to know why we’re here. 

 

And even though it might not know or be able to express its purpose, it has one: the sea cucumber has its own condition, its own qualms with the way the world is, and it may not be so different from ours. 

 

***

 

Inspired by the tumultuous and disheartening social, emotional and political climate of the year, I take a leap of faith and muster up the energy and courage to teach Saussure and Derrida to a group of teenagers. I think, if I can structure my class as an examination of the way literature presents us with a dichotomous world wherein we are torn into two frictional halves, constantly at war with ourselves, our beliefs, our blinding ignorance, then I may be one step closer to presenting to them the world, as I see it. To teach structuralism and deconstruction is in and of itself, a dichotomous task. 

 

 I was taught once by a very brilliant teacher, that if we looked at the world as composed of elephants and everything else was a non-elephant, we suffered gravely with acute narrow-mindedness. It is exactly this sentiment that has guided my emotional and moral compass for the last decade and especially now. Oddly enough, in the same way that I teach the overarching theme of British literature as good v. evil and try to expose the dichotomous nature of conceptual relationships, I’ve also indulged in teaching the beauty of the gray area: that place which exists to please those who cannot accept polarizations as the stark and true reality. The truth is, that we do live in a world composed of elephants and non-elephants, of purity and hatred, of inherent goodness and destructive darkness. It seems plain enough to see. Our world, right now, radiates two-ness. And as the sea cucumber navigates its identity as teetering on the edge of being known as the inferior sea rat or the more regal bêche-de-mer, it must know, I think, that duality is the epitome of its condition, of its existence. 

 

It is here in the two-ness of the human condition, that I have come to realize the tragedy that lies within all of us as we navigate the insanity of a pandemic, exponential and undeniable rise in hate crimes and genocidal war crimes, and most devastatingly, the championing cry of hateful and willful ignorance, racism and xenophobia masked as concern for the death of what Richard Dyer called “whiteness.”

 

We can claim to understand the root of the root or the bud of the bud as E.E. Cummings once wrote, but in this tornado of meaning-making and rationalizing so that we don’t have to explain it anymore, so that we can tuck it away in a drawer, is futile. In the attempt to understand what strings us all together, I’ve tried using my students, Saussure, Derrida, elephants and sea cucumbers. In the attempt to resolve the problem of how to navigate the questions, what is the human condition and are goodness and hatred inherent within all of us, I’ve come to a halting stop. 

 

The answer is that there is no singular or universal definition to purpose, essence and condition. The answer is: duality.  

 

We have been in a state of two-ness for about 200,000 years. 

 

We have intentionally otherized and justified our existence based solely on alterity. We have split the atom in ways we didn’t know it could be split. And it is in this act of atom-splitting, that humankind lives in a perpetual dyad where one half relishes in malice and enmity toward grace and goodness as a birthright, and the other half is forced to join the sea cucumbers as they bury themselves headfirst into the sand, acquiescing defeat to the harrowing darkness of life’s dichotomous condition.

 

And although they might never know what they have taught me or that they have taught me anything at all, my students have reaffirmed and illuminated the most important rumination of my life, that it is in the friction that we really come to know the true meaning of the human condition. 

 

Make way for any semblance of light.

 

Bury our heads when the darkness is too heavy. 

 

Ani Kachbalian's work explores the what-if aspect of storytelling. The stories that haunt and linger, leaving the reader unsettled: these are the stories worth telling. Recently, an essay about overcoming grief was published by Past Ten Magazine. Ani serves as the academic director of a private high school in Hollywood, CA and she teaches high school literature full time. She resides in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and 3 year-old son. 

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