She toasted to winners.
He said, “So tell me your dream for life.”
“My dream has everything to do with my mountain. It's a famous mountain but most don't know that, for the image they are seeing is not named. So it is both famous and obscure. I've never named it, for I've never found the name just right for it. I want someday to put a cabin on it, with a barn to stock my horses and a buggy in and have a pantry full of food to last me the winter. But right now that cabin is just part of a pine timberline somewhere, hopefully getting ready to be cut, sawed and milled into planks. My mountain, you see, is my own personal dream; a dream of a future reality, and I hope pregnant today within this reality. A seeker of the future I am. Everybody should have a dream and it should seem impossible. Everybody should have a special wish and a special hope. Now I say that we can do without dreams, but also, that they make life worth living the most. And we need a roof of some type, but it need not be a great cabin, so I name the cabin a wish. And we all have to eat, that is the only thing I actually cannot live without, so I call that pantry of food my hope; for without hope, we are all as good as dead. What is your dream, wish and hope?”
“Well. . . I kind of dream of a mountain with a great cabin, wish for a couple of horses and hope for a warm sandwich-bringer. Anything more than that would be superfluous.”
She said, “See? That is a contagious dream, it is.”
He propped his feet on the desk and she propped hers across his shins. He said,
“Since my early twenties I have imagined myself a freshman member of a great literary club comprised of dead poets and philosophers—it has been called different names depending on the whim of the particular and brilliant mind present in my imagination during the first month of the year when it is rechristened. At this moment it is called Studebakers. When it is asked of me I work at Studebakers as a part-time boot black, shoe-shine boy, feet washer, beer-and-wine bringer, cigar cutter and masseuse—and on more than one occasion I have had to clean out the clogged drain in the hot tub after Walt Whitman's facial hair and Hemingway's back hair clogged it up. At Studebakers is where the great masters of art, life and letters, all awarded and considered great by their peers and the judgments of time, converge and discuss their own and other respective works—and the works of the world beyond their own.
“It it is a mighty fine place to learn things one never knew to know. The single most favorite quote I ever heard was a simple one, but it was immortal just the same. The English romantics, Shelley, Keats and Byron were present. There were the Americans Lincoln, Longfellow, Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau; Socrates the great Athenian and Aurelius the noble Roman were present. To round off the dozen was Mr. Bill Shakespeare and president of that day's meeting was Voltaire. It was Voltaire who looked about his company with a gleam and reaching in his pocket, pulled out a dime and flipped it on the table and said, Brilliant minds are a dime a dozen. They all sat quiet a moment, taking a leisurely look at the philosopher's bon mot, then they broke out in jocular fits. Lincoln was soon snorting like a pig. All the Englishman were laughing in proper English tidbits of delight. Socrates was slapping the back of Lincoln, attempting to dislodge the snorting hog out of the rail-splitter's esophagus. Marcus Aurelius was dabbing his eyes gently with a napkin and would give a petite laugh every few moments; very patrician, that Aurelius. Longfellow was writing everything down while attempting not to become addicted with merriment; stone-sober as the Amish cross-bred with a Southern Baptist, that one. It was Thoreau and Whitman who were the worst off. Thoreau's funny bone was being tickled and it was Whitman who was doing it; literally. They were both rolling on the floor, Thoreau trying and failing at getting away from Whitman, who had the fisherman in a funny-bone lock.
“I was thinking we were going to have to pry Whitman off the poor man but he finally let him go. Shakespeare, Voltaire and Emerson were just kind of looking on. Shakespeare had a good-natured smirk. Emerson was wearing a simper and Voltaire had an aspect of complete tongue-in-cheek drollness. He had made the jest so it was not allowed him to laugh at it. After the jocundity died down they all reached in their pockets and pulled out dimes to add to the pool. I made a dollar and twenty in tips that day. It's the only cabbage I've ever pulled in at Studebakers. But that's okay. I did not build this club to win money, but to serve the masters with humility and privilege.
“So I was sitting in the club the other day—resting between shoe shines—and a young man came by, wondering on his fate in the world. He was neck-deep in the perpetual perplexity of the young about it all; he wasn't sure about a damned thing, even who he is. His father had called him a fool jackass on his way to Jackassville—which is a little cow-town in Texas where they are known world-wide for shoeing cows better than any other cow-shoe place on earth—he had wondered out-loud who he is and I said,
“Who are you! How can you possibly know that? You have only just started. I don't even know who I am, even after all this time. Why? Because I'm not finished yet. You have to finish a work before you know what that work is. That's just basic artistic arithmetic, boy.”
“I let that sink in then continued,
“Have you noticed an inconsistent thing about our lives—that as we age, we get younger, so to speak. What do people say about their past selves? That was the old me. So as we get older in body and go longer through time we are allowed somehow to become younger. Our body ages but our mind can, if not grow younger, grow newer, so to speak; and so too the spirit within our minds. We look back in time and that was the old us. We were younger in time and body then, but have since gone through time and become the new us....
“I shook my head at the young man, for he didn't seem to be getting it. But I kept on, hoping he would,
“It is ironic, all that. Very ironic. And I tell you it is a trick to a better life and one of the very secrets to life is in that; that as long as we keep moving forward we can keep getting better and newer. That was the old us. . . . It's magic, boy. Pure magic. It's growth. Or it can be, if we are truly growing and changing. Write down the thoughts of what you believe about things, lock it away and a year from now look at it again and if there is no evolution to it, there has been no growth and all you're doing is getting older. So keep moving forward and you'll find what you are looking for; you will find who and what you are. Took me a long time to understand that and I am giving it to you free and clear here and now.
“The young man had sat and scratched his head. He was fully consternated. I tried again.
“Bottom line is you got to get out there and say hello to life. Why? Because one day, for sure, you are going to have to say goodbye. And you don't want to say goodbye having never said hello. I can promise you that. So learn how to say hello. And say it right. And mean it. Hello, son. Goodbye, son. What comes between those two? Well that's the mystery. That's the invisible river rushing beneath our feet. And you have to discover that river and name it. Time is the river I go a'fishing in, said Thoreau. Well life is the invisible fisherman on the bank of Invisible River that is fishing for us. But we have to grab the hook of life if life is going to catch us; we have to bite the bait of life. So go on now. Get going. Go find yourself. Get hooked on something. And remember—it'll take the rest of your life to know exactly who and what you are—and by then it won't even matter much anymore—so don't be in too big a hurry. But don't dilly-dally too much, either. And wisdom is in knowing the difference between wasting time and dilly-dallying. Nobody knows how much time they have until there is no more time and for some odd reason, when that time comes, too many have a surprised look on their faces and they wonder: Where did all the time go? I'm not ready. I have wasted all the time I had doing what I considered the important things and now I have come to understand I should have dilly-dallied more. I did not do all I wished to do. Or maybe they spent too much time on the dilly-dallying and didn't spend the time on the important things.
“As the boy walked off I said to him—I'll see ya in Jackas
sville, boy. Got to get over that way sometime sooner or later. My beloved Miss Bessy threw a shoe.”
She laughed and said,
“So you have a cow named Miss Bessy?”
“I have three cows named that. But I was talking about my favorite one in specificity.”
He opened two more beers and gave her one and said,
“For me it's been a long work so far, but perhaps time yet to figure out the rest. We all like to believe we are one thing or another; and we all have others who are pretenders to knowledge of us—and pretenders to many other things—but since it is true that far too many really do not know who they are how could they possibly know who any other is? Do you see what is going on? Too many evaluate and label others in antagonistic fashion based on their own myopic view of the world—and too often their judgments are founded on how they actually see themselves—rather than what is to be seen. Imagine that.
“Does all that make sense? No, it doesn't. Welcome to the world. And it is all terribly ironic. Fact is, not enough persons know basic artistic arithmetic. It's something like an algebraic equation; we must solve for X — which is the unknown. That is the entire problem of our lives — solving the unknown mystery of our little lives. Too many run on a pre-programmed auto-pilot identity and were they to be told why they do this or that, why they think this or that, the real reason, they would stand agape in sheer stupefaction. But that is not the problem. The problem is most everybody believes they have the answer, when they don't know the first thing about artistic algebra. Our basic job in life is to figure things out for ourselves, especially the short-lived, ephemeral, temporary being called ourselves; but too many are too busy figuring everybody else out based on second-hand so-called knowledge from third-rate so-called minds. We all have a lot of work left to do. And that's a good thing.”
A Fair Portion of Digits
& Hemingway
After she excused herself to use the powder room and came back, she asked him how he would describe himself. He rolled his eyes at that. He said,
“A fair portion of the ordinary I do possess in my physical being. Too fair a portion, I'd say. I wish I wasn't so ordinary. I wish I was taller. I wish I had my father's blue eyes. I wish I didn't have these writer's hands. No matter how much I work them, they stay skinny. I wish I was this and I wish I was that. But I am just an average of 14 stones heavy, or light. And I am just a little shy of two yards tall or long, depending if I stand or lay. Twenty inches total in length, give or take a hair, of feet. Twenty fingers total on two hands with which to hold my pen. Two legs to walk and run with. Two arms to climb trees and hug my beloved hound. So I will give thanks for the average two of each that I have and the 14 stones that I am. Some have only one of each that should be two—and that is not very average—which makes average a pretty dandy thing. Now what about you, milady?”
She shrugged her shoulders, “Not much to tell, really. What you see is what you get.”
He shook his finger, “No. That is not fair. You have had me write my eulogy and describe myself, now your turn.”
She took a big breath and said, “It has always been natural for me to be gentle with the weak, whether they be so in body, mind or spirit. I have always perceived the possible greatness inherent in all souls, even after I have been shown the worst. Perceiving this possible greatness makes me too critical and idealistic and so I do my best to short circuit both and find a reasonable medium. It took me a long time to be able to perceive the worst—or rather, to admit to the perception. I wanted to see only beautiful things, in life and souls—but that didn't turn out well. I now see that people hide their worst, like a child would hide something behind their backs. But they hide their best also; they hide the beauty they feel and know and by doing that, kill it directly and slow. But their true selves are just as visible as their public persona. It's nothing anybody can hide, whatever they are. All give themselves away, especially those trying to hide something. If you look and listen close you can't miss the beauty and the ugly, the light and the dark, in a person. I wish I would have been more practical about the worst, relative to my wishing for the best, among a number of persons. But those are good lessons for a fool. I have taught myself a great patience with fools, for I am one myself and know it is the natural human condition to be so. On the other hand, there are limits to everything. I detest fighting, physical or otherwise”
He threw her another beer and they toasted to limits and he said,
“I detest fighting also—physical or otherwise—and I suppose, at least half the time, I am able to prevent it in or around my person.”
She turned up her brow. He said,
“You don't think fifty-percent is a successful ratio? Have you been out in this world? If you aren't fighting about something, you are either a joiner of all the clubs or a turner-of-cheeks past the point of a respectable sainthood. And besides, all saints were street-fighters. It's what got them up to their necks in hot water. Joining all the clubs is no way to live a genuine life. I believe fighting is the failure of men to be man. But then again, not all men are really men. So there is that. Sometimes the fight is simply required, if anything means anything at all.”
They toasted to not all men really being men. She said,
“They say it takes two to start a fight. I first heard that from my mother. And I scratched my head and said to her, 'Yes, mother. It takes one to hit and one to get hit?'”
He laughed and said,
“I said the near same exact thing to my mother. Only a coward or a broken soul will turn more than two cheeks, otherwise the Hebraic God would have made us with three or four or however number of cheeks the Divine Pastor thought it would be fitting to turn before allowing us to turn mad-dog-angry-as-hell about it.”
She smiled and toasted to mad, angry dogs. He continued,
“No ma'am. In this world and at this time in the history of man it does seem to be all about the fight. Why this aggression so prevalent in the race of man? Because humanity seeks for something. In the energy of every soul there is a seeking and it's not being found so the race is frustrated. I could understand when we were in caves. But what about now? It doesn't make sense to continue with not only the same aggression, but a far greater aggression. In all souls there is an inherent emptiness that can only be filled by one single thing. But they fill the emptiness with the other things; the meaningless things; mostly that which brings quick pleasures. And so they only make the emptiness greater. And then aggression—the dominant symbol of frustration—rears its ugly head. And the more we, as a race, make more easy pleasures that fill the prescription of the one thing we seek, seems to be in equal measure to the maturing of our inherent emptiness and its subsequent aggression—
She interjected,
“Okay, but what is the one thing?”
“The purest energy in the universe: wonder. True, pure wonder. But wonder is too difficult. It takes an artist of life to discover that within themselves. So they do and become the things that pass for wonder, but are only cheap and destructive. The easy things. The cheap sex with people they don't give two shits about—whether it be with their spouse or with some other. The drugs that give highs but ends up taking them many times as low. The powers that sate the ego but die the soul. They make the easy livings but not the best and true living. It is wonder or it is a living death. Wonder takes the hard work of the artist. It takes a lifetime. So it is a sure thing for many they will choose not to become artists of life.”
She said:
“What people do is simplify things by asking the simple questions: Can I suck, screw or eat it or will it suck, screw or eat me? Can I find an easy pleasure here or something that will add to my own power? Can I get high off it? And if those questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, they move on. One bird in the hand thing. What describes men in the simplest way? They like things to be quick and hard, except for that one thing. What describes women in the simplest way? They like things soft and easy, ex
cept for that one thing. Bottom line is a person chooses to either be an artist with their life and seek the wonderful or they choose all the other crap. There is no middle ground. And it doesn't take a genius to look around and see a whole lot of them are choosing all the other crap.”
She asked for another Pabst. It felt good to be drinking a victorious beer. He threw her one and kept one for himself and said,
“Won't get any argument from me on all that. Now we were talking about fighting. I tell you there are noble things to be discovered in a fight. A great fight—that is lost—can make a man of one who is not yet so. And a great fight can be a great story. And in the end, who can't help but say that life is either one long street-fight or the most boring use of time in the universe? Maybe that is stretching it? Yes. It is stretching it. But if you have never at all had a great fight, then something elemental will be missing when you are ready to truly live—and ready to die. And until you have had that great struggle, how can that time to truly live come at all? And maybe the greatest life is the one with the greatest struggle to it? To really enjoy the time to live one has to have gone through some death. And a great death can make a great life. Truth is, there is no more distinct a feeling of living than there is in a genuine and honest struggle; a dream many times your size that seems impossible to make come true. Maybe more boxing matches in our world would bring more peace and, ironically, less fighting. It would take some of the natural ignorance and aggression out of men; that inherent aggression that seeks to fill empty parts.”
The Star Fisher Page 9
