What Really Has Us Respect Ourselves? -- Continuing with "Crossing Delancey Street"

4. What Really Has Us Respect Ourselves?

In the play, Sam sends Isabelle a beautiful grey felt Stetson hat, but not wanting to see the kind and encouraging symbol in it, Isabelle tells Bubbie: Izzy. Bubbie, I'm sorry--he's just not my type. And Bubbie is critical:

Bubbie: Is it my fault if you don't know a good boy when you see one? Some people got eyes, some people don't.....

Isabelle protests, but is affected by Bubbie's criticism that there's something she doesn't want to see. She is also affected when Sam comes to see her at the bookstore and Tyler Moss recognizes him, saying: Tyler. Don't I know you?

Sam. Yes, Sam Posner. I took a course from you at City College couple of years back.

Tyler. You brought in the monologues. Tales from the lower east side kind of thing, right?...You ever do anything with them?...You should. They're charming.

(Tyler exits. Izzy turns to look at Sam.)

So Isabelle is now looking at Sam differently: seeing what Aesthetic Realism makes conscious for a woman, as it was doing for Gillian Ferraro--that she had summed a man up and made him less than he is for her own self-glory. Later at Bubbie's apartment on the Lower East Side, as Bubbie sleeps in a chair nearby, Isabelle sees more of Sam's depths as he tells her of how he thinks about people, how he writes down what people say to him as they buy pickles from him on the Lower East Side. There is a respect for the world he has that affects her deeply, as he says,

Sam. I got customers coming to me with all kinds of interesting lives turned upside down....A memory from childhood, something small that tumbled out of a dream.... You'll learn plenty from...your Bubbie....You should write down what she tells you. These are diamonds she gives you....I keep a little notebook for this purpose. I put it down whenever the idea is clear to me. And questions, too. When they are clearly in my mind, I like to see them on the page....Maybe I talked too much--but I've been saving up.

Izzy. It's a pleasure to hear you talk, Sam. It's the best talk I've heard in a long time....

(He crosses to her and kisses her. It is a short, gentle kiss, but t leaves Izzy spinning.)

Sam: It's all right for me to kiss you like this?

Izzy It's all right.(She falls into his arms. A long kiss.)

Ellen Reiss described in TRO 1200, what I feel Sandler is trying to show here: that love is courageous when body at its most affected is in keeping with intellect working most deeply and keenly; that in being as close as possible to one person, one is authentically caring for the world itself, in its terrific width and its manyness of people, objects, happenings, ideas. Isabelle begins to fall in love with Sam as she feels she's been after the completely wrong thing: that this man has depths she hadn't wanted to see, and he wants to bring out good things in her and in other people. And you feel she can finally respect what she is after with a man--more honest care for the "manyness of people, objects, happenings, ideas."

What Susan Sandler was getting at in a play, women are learning in Aesthetic Realism consultations! In her consultations, Gillian Ferraro has been learning to see a man--and all people--more deeply than she ever did, with more good will than she ever did. We asked if there had been good Carlo ever did? And she told us how once on a date, she had gotten furious when he stopped to help another motorist with a flat tire--"I thought he should be paying attention to me," she said thoughtfully.

Cons. What does that show?

GF. That he wanted to respect people and help them too.

Cons. Yes, he is a human being, with all the complexity and depths of every human being. He is a person, a scientific object of thought: he is trying to put opposites together. Do you think that is true?

GF. Yes, I am seeing it is now.

We were showing Ms. Ferraro that the way we will feel we deserve to be approved of is if we have good will, want to see a human being as representing the world that should be known and liked, and made stronger. We asked Ms. Ferraro: Cons. You want to be scientific. A man was born a baby--7 pounds--and he looked at the world for the first time. Do you think his purpose was to get into a fight with you? It was to see the sun, to smell, the flower, to hear music.

GF. Yes, that is true.

Cons. If you want to use Carlo to like the whole world, you have to see a person as a whole person, not a contest between you and him.

GF. I feel I have not been seeing him respectfully. Thank you!

Miss Ferraro wrote the Aesthetic Realism assignment: 500 words about how a person thinks to himself or herself, to try to get deeply within a person's self--their hopes, their fears. She wrote it about her mother, about co-workers, and about Carlo. She wrote about the opposites she saw in him and the world: Speed and slowness, sadness and joviality, pride and shame, impersonal and personal, fearfulness and assurance; all in all, 17 pair of opposites. And she wrote to us: "I wish to see in men more dimensions. I want to see them more fairly and honestly. Aesthetic Realism is giving me a hope that love can be through the years. I am now convinced that Aesthetic Realism is the only hope for the future--to see the world and oneself with more dignity. The principles I have grasped--it's working!"

Every woman deserves to have the increasing self-respect Gillian Ferraro is coming to have through the study of Aesthetic Realism.

To return to first page of: "CAN A WOMAN RESPECT HERSELF IN LOVE AND SEX?"

CAN A WOMAN RESPECT HERSELF IN LOVE AND SEX? Devorah Tarrow Aesthetic Realism Seminar

4. What Really Has Us Respect Ourselves?

CAN A WOMAN RESPECT HERSELF IN LOVE AND SEX?
Devorah Tarrow
Aesthetic Realism Seminar