The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Salman Rushdie

We are light from elsewhere.

You won't do it. Most of you won't do it. The world's head laundry is pretty good at washing brains: Don't jump off that cliff don't walk through that door don't step into that waterfall don't take that chance don't step across that line don't ruffle my sensitivities I'm warning you now don't make me mad you're doing it you're making me mad. You won't have a chance you haven't got a prayer you're finished you're history you're less than nothing, you're dead to me, dead to your whole family your nation your race, everything you ought to love more than life and listen to like your master's voice and follow blindly and bow down before and worship and obey; you're dead, you hear me, forget about it, you stupid bastard, I don't even know your name.
But just imagine you did it. You stepped off the edge of the earth, or through the fatal waterfall, and there it was: the magic valley at the end of the universe, the blessed kingdom of the air. Great music everywhere. You breathe the music, in and out, it's your element now. It feels better than "belonging" in your lungs.

Death is more than love or is it. Art is more than love or is it. Love is more than death and art, or not. This is the subject. This is the subject. This is it.

We have been here before.
This is a helicopter, hovering just above the broken ground. This is the woman I love, calling to me through the open door. I'm going, then. And I'm shouting back, I can't go. What? Go. Fuck you. What? Goodbye, Hope.
And this is what people are saying when they aren't saying what they mean.
I'm going, then. (Come with me, please, I need you, I can't believe you won't come with me.) I can't go. (My darling, I want never to let you out of my sight again, but goddamn it, you kick me around, you know that?, do you want to see the bruises?. and just this once I'm not putting you first. I'll be there soon enough, this time you can wait for me. If you want me, you'll wait. That's right, a test. Yeah. Maybe it really is.) What? (You bastard?, you think you can hold out on me? Oh Jesus, Rai, don't play games, not now, not today.) Go. (Okay, no games. I love you forever and beyond. But this is my work. I'll be there sooner than blinking. Go. I"m right behind you. I love you. Go.)
Fuck you. (I never wanted you o come to Mexico in the first place fuck you but you came anyway fuck you I guess that proves something yeah but I hurt you anyway I was mad I was wrong fuck you and then you helped me fuck you that really churned me up fuck you so I trusted you I really trusted you fuck you then the earth moved and you abandoned me fuck you you took your photographs I could have been dying I could have been broken and dying but you had your work to do fuck you and now you won't come with me fuck you now when I finally worked out that I need you fuck you I want you fuck you maybe I love you I do love you fuck you Rai I love you fuck you. I do.)
What? (What???)
Goodbye Hope. (Goodbye for a moment, you bastard, but after this I'm never letting you out of my sight. The next time I see you will be the beginning of the rest of our lives.)

I have heard many accounts of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth; love, art, civilization, life, humanity, fate--all these have been it's point. The people who seem to have it all have very little more than you or me. The people who are confident and at peace with themselves have no more confidence than you or me. The great stars of civilization, shining bright, are burning towards destruction just as fast as you or me.
We, humans, people, sons and daughters of God, children of apes, mortals, cousins of the angels, we have a devil of a time trusting each other. Perhaps from our massive ignorance, perhaps from our smothering insecurity, perhaps from our greed, perhaps from anything, comes our inability to trust. And in our lack of trust, we blind ourselves to all that is so similar amongst us. The very friends whose love we doubt, we undoubtedly give our own love to; the very family whose selflessness we cannot see, we continuously give our lives to; the very lovers who motivations we cast in the darkest light, we serve and love and live with in bright shining glorious free-willed choice.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet puts both hands into the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. It digs around in that fertile soil and comes up with all manner of treasures. Calvin and Hobbes recognized that treasure is everywhere, Salman Rushdie recognizes that the treasure is far more precious than we ever could have imagined.
When others do not trust us we are offended and yet we hardly trust. It takes a risk and it takes commitment to trust. It takes a releasing of our hold on the things we call our own (life, possessions, potential, future, fate, pleasure, burdens, freedom, wounds, scars, and our role). Trust is the unclutching of our fingers from all this and the open palmed extension of these things to the person we trust.
Rushdie reacts the Orpheus myth on an epic scale--telling the story of two world-famous rock stars and their love for each other and how it writhes beneath their mutual worry. If ever there were case studies of Jean Vanier's theories about wounding as children, Ormus and Vina are these. Both lovers bear ugly gaping wounds from their childhoods. As these wounds fester we see their pain boiling out into the happiness that seems by all rights to be theirs.
We live, without the blink of our untrusting eye, lives that trust everything but our brothers and sisters. We trust our systems, our mindless constructions that of all things are most likely not to last. We trust our banking establishment, we trust our rule of law, we trust our currency, we trust our utilities, and we trust science. How much better would it be to put our trust in the person sitting next to us?
There are many, many relationships in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, not one of them is characterized by the thing that is most essential to relationship: trust. Every single relationship demonstrates a failure to give full trust which is at heart a failure to fully give the self.
Trust is more than what we think it is. Trust is more than reliance; trust is commitment to another. Trust is more than believing someone will do what we consider the right thing; trust is believing that whatever someone does is the right thing. Trust is more than accepting as truth the words of a friend; trust is seeing a friend as truth. Trust is foolish.
There is some hope though, there is some goodness in Rushdie's analysis of the wretchedness of humanity. For all the trust we don't give, sometimes a character gives a little and that is beautiful.
Without trust we will all be pulled down to hell and the ground beneath our feet will forever be the thin, flimsy stuff of shadows.