She couldn’t sleep for the wind’s tiresome argument with the house. A minor player in the argument, almost a bystander, was the scraping of dry leaves across the field behind the house- it was to Lila Mae that it spoke, recommending a glass of water for her parched throat. Excerpt on page 117 of The Intuitionist, a novel written by Colson Whitehead and published in 1999.
Looking over my previous monthly blogs, you will find that I have enjoyed many of Mr. Whitehead’s novels. Zone One,The Underground Railroad, John Henry Days, Harlem Shuffle and The Nickel Boys, found on my menu and eagerly devoured! If you have an appetite for a master story teller who crafts and weaves his written words into a dramatic historical mosaic, I recommend you give of your time to a Colson Whitehead novel.
As I publish this month, I have not finished reading this novel, The Intuitionist. I will end this narrative in April. There are two reasons why I am a little slower turning to the last page of this book. First, I am, as always, reading before I fall asleep. Lately sleep is an impatient mistress of my moments spent reading. Secondly, the narrator of Whitehead’s novel uses words in his written voice that require me to look up their meaning! I love learning new words!
Suffice it to say,for me, intuition has been a magnet of interest over the last thirty plus years. This month I have a story in my hands about a main character, Lila Mae, who is an Intuitionist in a profession that I have always known about but hardly thought about. Inspecting and certifying the safety of elevators and escalators. I learned about the vagaries of elevators due to the fact that most of the healthcare institutions I was privileged to manage and work at were populated with elevators. Like Lila Mae’s elevators located in a metropolitan city, our elevators had to be inspected and certified on a regular basis. Only one institution did not have an elevator, but it did have a dumb waiter- Nantucket’s, Our Island Home, (a story for another time).
Colson Whitehead’s novel enlightens the reader to the history of the development of elevator’s from Otis’s first invention of the lift over 100 years ago to recent vertical transport systems in the ever reaching construction to the sky(scrapers). This novel highlights two schools of study in elevator review and inspections. Empiricists, inspectors who start with a screwdriver and actually eyeball the mechanics that run the elevators. Nuts and bolts kind of people. And Intuitionists, such as the main character Lila Mae, who believe they can feel the health of the elevator by connecting as they ride the box up and down. I have to tell you, the fact that a city can have inspectors of their vertical lift systems by feeling the ride and listening to whatever they listen to is eye opening.
All right I confess that as open minded (I tell myself) I am I have to believe that the author has a rich imagination and this is a whopper of a story. But the texts his novel references in the school that produces the Empiricists and the Intuitionists deserve a Google search to see if they even exist. I am hooked and will report next month a summary of what I find.
Author Belleruth Naperstak outlines the following in his book, Your Sixth Sense: Parapsychology, researches call psi the knowing and sensing that overlaps logic, analysis and rational thought and just shows up. This is called intuition…..What interests Naperstak is how we get useful information that bypasses normal cognition, perception or logic.
The plot of this novel hinges on Naperstak’s question. Just how does an elevator pass an inspection from an Intuitionist inspector, who has years of perfect inspections, and the next day- said elevator crashes? After I finish this wonderful read in April, I will not share the conclusion. I will not spoil the ending for you.
Mona Lisa Shulz M.D., P.H.D. in her 1998 book titled, Awakening Intuition on page 143 states the following, biology of beginning ….an actual biological nutrient passing between people who live together, eat together, sleep together, a nutrient that has physical and metabolic consequences. When people are together in a communal situation, their biological body rhythms become synchronized and regular.
Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist, cultivates, fertilizes and grows what many consider the third eye or PSI into a delicious story board of a page turner drama!
Sleepy eyed, I finally make it to my metaphorical lighthouse. The moon light is almost as bright as the light beamed through the Fresnel lens pulsating above me. By next months full moon I will have rowed through the remainder of The Inuitionist and another novel by Hemingway awaiting to dock in my eager hands.
Be in peace and joy!
Thank you for reading.
Mark