“Death is when the magic disappears. But what disappears does not necessarily go away. Perhaps death is the buoy that is pulled to the sea bottom. It may pop up somewhere else. Who truly knows one way or another about this? The last earthly evidence of a life exists in the last tear dropped by one for that other. Then the last vestige of a being dries up and is quit of this earth. A cried tear—one single drop of water—is the epitome of material life and the historical proof that a life mattered and is done. Perhaps it is the loss of something material that makes the material-minded denizens of life refuse to drop these tears. All the concealed and chartless charm of life is in that drop and to the materialist to drop it is to give away materials. Even if they were to own the entire earth, they have little and get to hold and call it their own for just awhile, so to give away even a tear drop is galling. Or maybe it is that there are two kinds of sentient beings: the materialist and the sentimentalist; and they are as different to each other as a rock is to a star. Now you tell me what life is.”
“I have thought before that no parent pays attention to the last time they hold their child in their arms. It just happens one day, unknown to either of them; they set the child down and they don't think about it again until one day they realize, their child has grown too big to hold. That defines best for me what life is. It is something we hold and cherish—yet also take for granted—and then, one day, we realize we are not able to hold it any longer. And we miss it.”
He looked at her and brushed his hand across her cheek and said,
“That is the most beautiful description of life I ever heard. You just achieved in few words what I can't achieve in a book of them. And that is why you are famous.”
She grabbed his hand and held it in both of hers and said, “Give me your greatest advice.”
“Advice about life is like telling a cook how to cook or a writer how to write. Maybe it is necessary and other times it just spoils a spontaneous, tasty and novel work. Takes a rare wisdom to know when advice is needed and when it isn't. Most times the advice-givers are the ones needing advice the most, to shut up. The so-called fool will not take it for they are not about doing what is considered wise, but what is necessary for their further development. If all the great events of the world had followed wise advice, we would all be living in caves yet. And if all were wise all the time we would just as well be rocks. If everybody had waited, on good advice, to marry and procreate with their best mate, the population of the earth would be about ten-thousand. A perfect world would be imperfect by its perfection. Whether it's good to be a fool sometimes is debatable, but the fact is, we are born to be fools one way or another. It is unavoidable. Most of us live our entire lives in some form of foolishness that we redefine as something else, to make it livable. What is wise today may be foolish tomorrow and vice versa and no man can truly know what is wise about most of the things we put value by with that term.
“But one piece of advice is good for all and it is this: I would counsel the magical beings, wise or fool—and all of us are both—hurry now, before the magic drops, dries and disappears. But don't hurry too much. Go with patience and go with haste, depending. And cry every once in awhile, to see how strong you may become and know how weak you yet are and by this tear dripping, know best the magic you have been a part of. And wet your finger with the tear and gauge the direction of the wind by it and know then where you will go next.”
She said, “Advice seems to be no more than a competition between one man's way of life versus anothers. We have had two world wars in this century so far; and a third one seems close at hand. And it has all come from given advice. Man's predilection for taking advice is the thing that has made him, and may unmake him. What do you think?”
“That is the best definition of the ulterior motive behind advice giving that I have ever heard. Philosophical competition. They take it too far and make it unreasonable. Southern people seek to prove they are greater than northern people. Norther people seek the same proof against the south. Same with west and east. Blacks seek to prove they are greater than whites. Whites seek the same against blacks. As for world-wide war, it all comes down to the ability of the masses to be brain-washed. That is all random-fandom is, a brain-washed mind-set. I've never understood random-fandom. I get it on a psychological basis, but I just can't put myself into the required mindset to really understand how a person can love one team or one whatever, over another team or whatever, when the team they love has no reality in their lives. It is all arbitrary. And if they reasoned out their thought, they would think the same about most all, relative to most all other.
“Competition is mostly a useless war of hypocritical and ignorant creeds. The eternally-recurring revolution that rises in hearts and souls during various ages is like a hangman giving mercy by tying on a longer rope. It only delays. Most war is simply competition between factions vying for supremacy for no reason other than power and money. When if they cooperated, all would be wealthy and powerful, and if they were really good and wise, they wouldn't need all that power and money, or would not place such importance to it.”
He stopped on his thought a moment, then asked,
“You think man will ever enter into the age of wonder?”
She said, “I hope so. Maybe we are now entering into such an age? The true wonderer has to believe the age of wonder is now, or it never will be. We have to believe we are such hearts and souls that will make the greatest of tales and stories and days by which the future world will be inspired.
He replied, “My story is a story of teeth-gnashing failure. I have broken my teeth on the rock of this world. That failure word is indispensable relative to me and my life, and the days I have lived. And by the base standard of a material poverty is how I am judged a failure. But against that failure I have writ anyway. I have tried to equal, then prove, the wonder within, against the base standard of despair. As a man, I am a failure in the eyes of all who judge worth by material means. But that is the exact story of mankind, that they fail, yet they do not fail. And maybe that is what the great, cool, Hemingway meant.”
“You make me angry when you say that. You are no failure.”
“I just speak what is true of most opinions. Which does not necessarily count for truth, if one pays attention to opinions relative to truth. In the eyes of most, I am simply a failure because I have few material things. To the busy-body, who spends all their days in the getting of things, that is the precise and simple definition and meaning of life: to get things. If things have not been got what will there be to do and be by? Getting things is the zeitgeist of, not the age, but the spirit of man. We are material beings and judge according to material things.
“On looking back, my material life in the world died a very long time ago and since then it has been a long work to make something materialize of wonder. I could complete the dying and have some well-deserved peace if I was smarter but I am slow as a turtle. And so this long drawn-out affair between my flesh and this world. But I have patience. I used to think I was mostly alone in this idea that life was not exactly present within me and then I realized, most are not present in life nor is life present in them. Most have never known a great experience of wonder. Most never knew wonder to ever miss it. Many are sad that way and do their best to fill up the time anyway and not pay heed to this lack of wonder within. What about you? What do you say of wonder relative to your life?”
She drew in a big breath, and said:
“The wonder of life has died in me many times. Many have been the days I have viewed each new day as one I am not alive in, yet there I was, and here I am. But the fact is I was alive, and able to effect change, to be of use to some other, and to me, however small the use. Pockets of time and place will give one the experience of wonder again, if they will seek them. But ephemeral are these pockets when one is depressed. It is, can surely be, a constant struggle.
“This depression, this death while living, in its various forms, takes one, if they will
go there, to the epitome of humility and makes the miracle of life that much more poignant. That is what the feeling of death-while-alive has taught me, a great humility and also knowledge of life. I have spoken for a long time with the dead. Maybe there is no real death, but the death of the living here is just the means to teach us the value of life everywhere and that is why children are so full of life, they have just come back from a place of, if not death, at least a place that is not like this life here. Maybe being born into the world is like being born from, if not death, then a non-beingness. I find humility and the knowledge of death easy tasks to accomplish. I work to be extra-ordinary in one regard—that I can be something of a help to life and to wonder and to those who need more of both. To those who are poor in spirit, my little help may help. For that is the struggle of all, overcoming constant breaking of the spirit. Over what is death, despair and weak within the soul of a man, I have a great understanding, for I have walked, and walk yet, through all these. They do not go away, we just outgrow them, for moments, and then they grow back around us, and we have to outgrow them again. If we will grow, we will. Depressive thoughts are like the vines around the oak. Grow as they might, they cannot out-match the eventual growth of the oak. This be sure: the spirit of man is made for growth, and that growth cannot be stunted by any force outside of that one who will choose to grow, despite all.
“Mankind has operated from the beginning under the suicidal delusion that it is the stronger over the weaker that wins. But what do they win? A false victory over what is weaker? By this improvident thought they do not win what is noble. They do not win life for all. They do not win a further evolution of life on this or any other planet. What they win is further propagation of the Same Old Thing. And as the last ten-thousand years of man's history proves, there must be a righter, wiser, greater way. Open hearts and open minds; true cooperation and not just false shows of it. There are no self-made men. There are only self-directed men.”
“Every dreaming soul is engaged in the great endeavor of the ages: whether that life and its dream may make a story worthy of inspiration for other dreamers. In the end that is the great meaning of any dream and dreamer. If one has lost their inspiration to become inspirational, then back to wonder they must go. Back to their beginning. Back to the acorn within the oak. All life begins in wonder. And it need not end in despair, no matter what the circumstances. Each life and each dream can find its redemption. Each soul can find its source of being. Failure upon failure, decades of it perhaps, need not be the final answer to any soul. The wonder of wonder is that it may be rediscovered eternally.”
He scooted her to the end of the swing, then layed his head in her lap and looked up at her and said,
“Of all the great, you are the pinnacle. And of all the famous, you are the supreme and singular exceptional.”
The Scoop on Coolness
They met the next morning at breakfast. She wanted to finish discussing something they had touched on before. He met her at the door and whisked her inside, while asking,
“Would you like some pancakes and sausage? Cooking some now.”
She replied she would love that, then said,
“You know something I have noticed? It is always impossible to gauge properly how much syrup you are going to need for your pancakes. I always put too much or too little. I have never got it right, not once.”
He laughed and said, “I thought I was the only one who had that problem. With syrup I never put enough, even though I tell myself to put more the next time. And what about ketchup? I always misjudge how much I need with that. I never put enough of that, either.”
“Ha! That is true. I do the same thing with ketchup.”
He walked into the kitchen and went to the stove, where pancakes and sausage were cooking on the top. He said,
“And here is an odd thing I noticed the other day. I can snap my fingers on the right hand, but not with the left. But I am lefty. What do you say about that? Try it. See if you can snap your fingers with both hands.”
She snapped with her right and then with her left and he threw his arms in the air in pretended exasperation.
“I suppose I am not an ambidextrous finger snapper.”
“You just need to practice more is all.”
“What do you think I have been doing this past week in my spare time?”
He laughed and asked,
“So what will we do today?”
“I wanted to discuss the cool factor. I think it an interesting angle. And I think you are wrong about not being cool. I think you are very cool and would like to know your thoughts about it. And I brought something to help bring out those cool thoughts of yours.”
She pulled out of a brown sack a six pack of Blue Ribbons.
He smiled then pulled out a ribbon and popped its top, handed it to her then took one for himself.
“Beer before noon. We better be careful. We might have to find a wagon somewhere to fall off of. Or is that jump on the wagon? I never figured out which. Two blue-ribbon days back to back. Why not.”
She said, “I think it would be jumping on a wagon, and you fall off when you have started drinking again.”
He said, “That sounds about right. We shall find us a wagon after this six-pack, but not before.” He bunched up his forehead in thought, then asked,
“Question: where is this wagon supposed to be going to? Because I don't want to be going on any wagon trip that might take me to where beer is outlawed.”
“It's really more of an imaginary wagon, so you shouldn't worry. And anyway, you can fall back off any time you wish.”
He said, “You know the religions say that drinking is bad, despite the fact the Bible itself instructs to give drink to the dying man and to the man who is sad, to bolster their spirits.”
He held out his Pabst and she tipped hers to his,
“To getting on and falling off wagons; and to our sad and dying spirits. May they be happy and continue living.”
“Hear, hear.”
He flipped the cakes and set them on plates. There was enough for both of them to have two a piece. She ate one and gave him the other. They ate and washed the cakes down with the Pabst, then he asked,
“Shall we adjourn to Studebakers?”
She replied in the affirmative. They sat in their seats and he tossed her an Arturo Fuente, which he then lit for her. She noticed her reflection in his eyes and quickly looked away.
He then lit his own cigar and opened the window to let the smoke out, then asked,
“Do you read much?”
“Oh yes. I have been a reader since the earliest days. I can still remember when I finally learned how to read; when the words finally made sense to me. I was so happy about it.”
“Me, too. I devoured the Horatio Alger stories. Always on some adventure. As for what constitutes true coolness; in my opinion, besides writing, reading is the single coolest act a truly cool person can do in life. There's really nothing much cooler than a reader reading. Readers are hip and informed. And critical readers are the coolest of the cool. But on the other hand and then again, some do take this critical capacity a bit far and become annoying nerds. A hyper-critical capacity is not a symptom of coolness but of coolness' opposite, which is simply uncool nerdiness, and nobody should go through life like that. Grammar and literary aficionados should watch some football, let their hair down and get their own feet out of their own rear-ends. But we are not here to discuss nor contemplate the negative chance of becoming grammar nerds, but the positive eventuality of being and becoming cool.”
She nodded her head in agreement and drew from her Arturo Fuente as he continued. His voice was soothing and deep; probably like Hemingway's was, except there was no hint of asshole in it. He started on his second beer and she chugged hers to catch up. He was in a good mood, she could tell by the smile in his eye as he spoke with a mock-serious, professorial tone:
“So you see, milady, the cool readers are leaders—of life, heart,
mind and soul. Without cool reading, we must rely exclusively on our own imagination for our cool thinking and wondering, and no mind has ever been that cool. If a person is, deep down, bored at all with this thing called life, it's because they have not been exposed to enough coolness by which to infuse in themselves this coolness that refreshes and rejuvenates. In a word: it's because they haven't read enough. So it's very good you are a reader. Those monks in the Far East, who sit in caves for a lifetime, seeking mystical wisdom? They call it seeking wisdom, but all they are really attempting to do is reach an infinite state-of-coolness. I am quite sure (though do not know anything about it personally) but I believe being cool is a way of life and a habit. And I think it comes best by learning from others. . . how to be cool. I had such a desire to become cool myself (and such a long way to go with it) that I sat down and read ten-thousand books on how to be cool when I was young. I was like a monk in a cave. And I will be direct: all that eventually made me, if not pretty damned cool, at least cool about not being too damned cool.”
She said to him, “No. you are cool. That is sure. Get that through your head. You are extremely cool. Say it with me now. . . I am?”
“I. . . am. . . I just can't do it. I can't say I am cool. Isn't that supposed to be something other people do?”
The Star Fisher Page 12
