Falling Man, You, Me, and Don DeLillo

Who the hell do you think you are?

Can’t place it, the moment or location, but hasn’t just about everyone been asked this question in this precise way some time in his life? Maybe it was in Spanish, in my case. Or maybe it was a rhetorical question, directed by a frustrated elder or superior at not just me but those around me as well, the Captive Collective (e.g., classroom, military barracks, locker room, office, church…).

Who do you think you are? sans “the hell” can appear less accusatory, though I’m betting most times it’s not. How often, for example, have you heard a forthright person earnestly ask another, Who do you think you are?

Completely stripped of challenge, hostility, resentment, accusation? Not often, I wouldn’t think.

So, let this then, possibly, be the first time for you. I ask you (warmly and earnestly, if rhetorically, but with only good intentions), Who do you think you are?

There are teeming hordes itching to answer it for you. You are a heathen to some, an infidel to others. A saint, a pig, a rodent, a luminary. You may very well be all things to all people.

Like Jesus, for instance. What must have gone through his mind as the apostles apprised him of the many identities the speculating populace had ascribed to him.

Jesus asked Peter, Who do you say I am?

Couldn’t control what others thought. But Jesus thought it important for Peter to know for himself who he thought Jesus was.

Important because for some, the answer to that question is the answer to the first question. If you believe Jesus is the Son of God (i.e., one with God the Father and thus God Himself), then you know who you are.

What you believe is who you are, whether you are Christian or not. And if the words you speak are what you believe – if they are an integral part of you, not to be separated from your very flesh – then your word is who you are.

The problem with imposing on someone else a who-you-are-ness, a you-are-a-heathen, you-are-an-infidel, a saint, a pig, a rodent, a luminary, is that you are showing the world a who-you-are in so cross-eyed, unfocussed, and self-defeating a manner that you become lost to yourself.

This was Saul’s (i.e., Paul’s) problem on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians. He got so cross-eyed and unfocused that he went blind, for a time, and became lost. But being lost is not the worst condition, if later found.

If you are what you believe and what you say, and if you say another is this or that, and your word is who you are, then who you are could be a shrill cry, or an angry shout, or maybe even an ass kiss, depending on where you are coming from.

Or at least that is who you are until you take a much closer look at yourself (myself) and find the center that holds everything together and from which all good springs.

Otherwise we are falling men. Still. Paradise Lost and counting…

Speaking of which…

Don DeLillo’s post-9-11 novel, Falling Man, touches the sky and drills down into our well of being and who-we-are-ness with ancient questions about life and death, and whether any of this means anything and whether God is.

This Inescapable Planet where things get hairy, a Vale of Tears to some, the ultimate Cosmic Cruelty to others. Sometimes the world roars too loud and is too big and jagged and rough and who we are is bled down to feeble word-breaths by disoriented, ash-covered survivors: I am standing here. I am standing here. I am standing here.

This Inescapable Irony of people praying God help us kill them and God don’t let them kill us.

Different people, same God. In fact, one God.

DeLillo unfurls the performing artist known as Falling Man:

A man was dangling there, above the street, upside down. He wore a business suit, one leg bent up, arms at his sides. A safety harness was barely visible, emerging from his trousers at the straightened leg and fastened to the decorative rail of the viaduct. He’d appeared several times in the last week, unannounced, in various parts of the city, suspended from one or another structure, always upside down, wearing a suit, a tie and dress shoes. He brought it back, of course, those stark moments in the burning towers when people fell or were forced to jump.

As earnestly as you or I may ask such a reckless, outrageous, crazed, attention-starved man (or is he an avatar? an angel?), Who do you think you are?

Should we?  What happened to Who do we think we are?

We judge, we judge, inescapably…  (Why not accept he is what he believes and is the word he speaks in Silence?)

If I am hearing him right, the Falling Man, Silence is the language we all should master on the off-chance of genuinely hearing one another unencumbered by shrill cries, angry shouts, and maybe even ass kisses, should that be the case.

Tagged with: Don DeLillo • Falling Man • Jesus

Filed under: Authors • Book Talk • God Talk • Just Talk

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