Sophia paused, the look of nonsense twinkling in her eye like an octopus dancing with a pair of polyester slacks in front of a fun house mirror. “Do you mean to say that you say what you mean?”
Blip directly rejoined. “Did you dream today what tomorrow you’ll seem?”
Sophia was unflappable. “Can a rhetorician retort?”
“Is a magician a wart?” Dandy snickered hysterically.
The matter settled, we fell silent once again and returned to our fruit.
118 Much to the delight of Blip and Sophia, Dandy was in the habit of playing with her food. She amused herself that afternoon by carving a smiley face out of her second pancake. Before the grin was complete, she set her fork down and made as if to speak, but paused, as if hesitant to blow the bugle that would bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down. At last, she delivered her doomsday query and demanded to know why aren’t apples called reds, since oranges are called oranges, and also why aren’t lemons called yellows.
Despite her misgivings, the walls of civilization were quite sound, and society chuckled through its adults. Ah, children! If they only knew how trite this question and others of its ilk really are. When it inevitably dawns on a child, they ask it as if they’d just caught grown-ups in a lie. In fact, the less socialized have just discovered one of their first of far too many inconsistencies and contradictions in our culture. This is not the explanation given, of course. If it were, Why aren’t apples called reds? would not have become the self-important bachelorette borne of centuries of involuntary virginity. Instead, we sigh and pat their heads, smoothing any rebellious wisps of hair back into place. How could they know, after all, that this is a question that, in one form or another, has struck everyone weaned on the wonderful but decidedly unparallel English language?
Still, the presence of this question serves as a troublesome reminder that there remains a loose end out there, tickling our curiosity like unwelcome gropes from an ex-lover. This matter of the color of oranges, the riddle of the citrus, continues to elude us despite our technological fantasticry. The question is common, but the answer is as rare as an orange apple. Is it really possible that a question every child with any sparkle has considered has never been answered? Could it be that through centuries of linguistic evolution no one has answered it adequately, or if they have they’ve kept it to themselves? And if so, why?
Why aren’t apples called reds? She had certainly made her rounds across the generations, yet invariably her presence was insulted with various answers of the ignoramus persuasion presuming to present themselves as potential suitors. Finding its other half is all any question wants out of its utterance and contemplation, searching for union like everything else. Sadly, most of her contemporaries had long since graduated into the realm of fact and trivia, dancing around their other half and hooking up with other couples, a swinging nexus of questions and answers realizing ever further connections in the gigantic jigsaw of cogitation. Newer questions, such as Why are our children using drugs?, provided her no companionship, for they were much too academic and urbane for her country-girl sensibilities. So, Why aren’t apples called reds? pined for her answer in shining armor, occasionally gossiping with the enigmas and quacking with the quandaries, and forever heckled by the raving paradoxes, that breed of boastful loners who have gone quite mad thinking that they’re better than the masses of romantics. “You’re a stupid question, and you deserve a stupid answer!” The paradoxes taunted our heroine heartlessly.
To be perfectly honest, Why aren’t apples called reds? was quite attracted to another question, the ponderous hallelujah known as Why are we here? They never had a future, of course. That would be homoquestionality. (All literal parallels to human sexuality must necessarily cease at this point, if only for the sake of rhythm, which is, after all, what sex and love are all about anyway, no matter your politico-sexual persuasion. The important distinction is not so much male and female as it is compatible opposites, that is, questions and answers.) Why aren’t apples called reds? sighed and meekly bore her share of the consequences of the Adam and Eve fiasco, dreaming unmentionable dreams.
“Why aren’t apples called reds?” Dandy’s singsong voice interrupted the homoquestional fantasizing of Why aren’t apples called reds? Though she would have liked to ignore it and begin her masturbatory daydream anew, she had no more control over when she was spoken than we do over when we are born. But as soon as she saw the humans gathered around the latest incarnation of her vocalization, she quickly straightened herself and thrust her chest forward, hoping to attract her long-lost answer, daring to believe that these strange people might be the ones to introduce her to her soul mate. These people were different, full of nonsense and kindness. Instead of hurling some cop-out about not all apples being red back at their daughter (and she was so weary of finding excuses not to go out with that buffoon), they paused, pondering her as if she really deserved contemplation.
“It’s about time you asked that,” Sophia smiled at Dandy, reassuring her that the walls of society were quite sound. Why aren’t apples called reds? held her breath and checked her reflection, and for a moment thought she saw her other half gazing back through the looking glass, serpentine eyes gleaming like the Hope Diamond. It appeared he was a Victorian prude turned dreadlocked Rastafarian, wild but uneasy, a know-it-all, for after all, he was the answer to Why aren’t apples called reds? If nothing else, he was what everyone was curious about. At least he had that, and he clung to it, protecting his virginity (he did everything but) even though he was spoken often, though never in the right manner. He guarded his secret, and he wasn’t about to give it up just because every five-year-old thinks they’ve thought of something that’s never occurred to anyone else and every forty-year-old is too lazy to give them a straight answer. But come the right people, asking the right question, at just the right time, and reunion will occur, an orgasmic act of originality borne on the stale winds of interrogative banality. Such is Creation, sticky, slick, slimy, and wonderful, birthing contentment, answering all questions, for a little while.
But wait. Maybe he should think about this. Perhaps she wears too much makeup. Perhaps Why aren’t apples called reds? is misrepresenting her own true question. Perhaps she does not know her true nature, her true question. Perhaps she feels a homoquestional attraction to the ponderous Why are we here? because it is the real question, the only question, the Source of all questions. Perhaps Why aren’t apples called reds? only exists because of what we are afraid to ask ourselves. Perhaps we shall soon see.
119 “Why aren’t apples called reds?” Dandy repeated, patiently awaiting the mastications and ruminations of her parents. I couldn’t help but chew on this dilemma as well as I munched my apple wedges and sipped my cider.
“What are you really asking?” Sophia calmly asked her daughter. Why aren’t apples called reds? hesitated, wanting to flee, afraid of what lay ahead. Destiny, however, had its own ideas, and she was but one of them. The time for resolve had come. Dandy’s mind was already racing with possibilities, peering into secrets Why aren’t apples called reds? wasn’t even aware she held. For a moment, Why aren’t apples called reds? took exception to this penetration. This was not at all how she had fancied it would be, but moments that matter seldom are. Regardless, exception turns to acceptance in the hands of innocence, and Why aren’t apples called reds? felt herself deepening, her perspective widening, her true question tossing off illusion and confusion like an anonymous lover the morning after a masquerade ball. Why aren’t apples called reds? blushed.
“Good question,” Blip complimented Sophia. After countless centuries, it appeared that all that was needed was a little encouragement, nudging Why aren’t apples called reds? in the right direction, and allowing ourselves to be nudged in turn. Such simpletons we seem.
Dandy irrigated a canal through her applesauce. She fortified it with apple wedges before opening the levee and dripping her apple juice down the slopes of her smiley face pancak
es. The sweet liquid must have turned the wheels of her mind, cranking out a smile as if she were creating the land flowing with milk and honey right there on her plate. With a lick of her finger she pronounced the true question of Why aren’t apples called reds?
“Why don’t we call things what they are?”
120 “Why indeed,” Sophia mused. “Why do we call red red?”
“What else would we call it?” Dandy was again concerned about the structural integrity of the walls, which shuddered from the force of the calmness beyond. Declawed and housebroken cats are we, terrified of the enormous space beyond the doors, aware of it, even curious, but wary nonetheless.
“How about rojo?” I answered, always pleased with myself when I could contribute. “That’s how they say red in Spanish.” Why aren’t apples called reds? was swollen, tumescent, but each step closer to union seemed shorter than the last, slowing, slowing down, yet still advancing toward the inevitable incredible.
In truth, everything was moving much faster, vibrating to another level, leaving time behind like a never-before-noticed blindfold, astonished at how nice things could have been but now are and always were. We know this much: The faster we go, the slower time becomes, courtesy of one called Einstein (though it’s said his ex-wife had a hand in it as well). Reality is relative. It sounds very interesting, it even makes sense somehow, but we never really accept such a perception of everyday experience, unwilling, perhaps, to venture where really necessary. Why aren’t apples called reds?, if she could say anything other than “Why aren’t apples called reds?” might have advised us to just go with what feels right and let things happen for themselves. Enjoy the tranquillity, relax, leave everything behind, and drift into the fourth dimension. But she could care less about us timid apes. The deepest parts of us are already there anyway. Who are they? Who am I? I am I, and that goes for you, too.
“Rojo?” Dandy asked, perplexed. Rojo. Latin lover or not, Why aren’t apples called reds? did not think she could endure much more of this teasing foreplay.
“Sure,” said Blip. “And it’s called a hundred other things in a hundred other places.”
Dandy looked to her mother for confirmation. “It’s true,” Sophia nodded. “If you want to come up with something else to call apples or oranges or reds or whatever, let us know. Or, if you can think of a better way to organize things,” she pointed haphazardly around her, “that would be wonderful.”
“This,” Blip gestured every which way, “is just the best we’ve come up with so far. Grown-ups are just children, too, remember, though most of us try to convince ourselves otherwise. The major difference between children and adults is that adults have forgotten that they’re just pretending.” He paused to sip some warm applejack from his handleless teacup. “There’s an old Zen proverb that tells us not to mistake a tree for a tree. ‘Tree’ is just what we call it, but words don’t begin to capture what the tree actually is. Forgetting that is like forgetting that the map is not the road.”
“Does that answer your question?” Sophia asked. Dandy nodded happily. Her belly was full, her questions were answered.
“So why aren’t apples called reds?” Blip quizzed her.
Dandy, grinning like an apple wedge, replied honestly and not at all sarcastically. “Because you say so.”
121 Why aren’t apples called reds? and her answer were cavorting in the next room, paradoxes peeking in, making fun of the way they looked, blind to themselves. She could not believe what had happened. It seemed far too simple, yet undeniably right. Because we say so. Tough, sexy, a gentle truth hidden beneath an arrogant exterior. Her answer wasn’t what she thought it would be, but then she wasn’t who she thought she was. Embarrassingly simple, yet she had no cause to be flustered. I quote Blip: “Do you want your questions answered or your answers questioned?”
Amor becomes agape, ad infinitum. The embrace of Love knows nothing of individuality. Love is the commonality, the community. Why aren’t apples called reds? and her answer were never separate from each other in the first place. Come to think of it, their union was not separate from any other. A ménage à trois had formed here, a trinity of divinity, between a question, her answer, and the ambidextrous Why are we here?, who was, it turned out, present at every act of creation, linking the body and the mind with the soul. The homoquestional urges of Why aren’t apples called reds? were not so deviant after all.
Why aren’t apples called reds? Because we say so.
Why are we here? Well, we’re peeking up the skirt of the ineffable now, and the answer is hidden by the poetic panties of language. We can’t formulate an answer because the question is its own answer. What’s going on? What’s going on. She doesn’t need us for anything. She is us. We are us. Existence exists. Division is a false dichotomy. Why does the universe exist? Because that’s what it does. It exists. It’s like asking why words mean anything. Because that’s what they are, what they do. Because we say so. Why is the universe here? Because it is, because it says so. It is what is. I am who am.
Why are we here? Look now, what are we doing, wailing our dirge of needless despair? She pauses, patient as the hundred trillionth person utters her as if no one else has ever considered it, arrogant morons every one. She wants to shout, “You’re closer to the answer before you ever ask it!” but instead she smiles. “I can only ignore the question posed,” she thinks with parental compassion, “for in truth, it neither tickles my nickels nor twists at my nipples. Content is secondary to presentation. Tell me about nothing, good human, but do it in style, and style is what it is, my friend, how it’s done, where it’s at. It’s what’s properly occurring between the perceiver and the perceived, the subject and the object, the giver and the taker, to get it in tune, to get it in sync, to get it going on. What can I say but to live for today? Play as you pray, and gather together one another as lovers, sisters and brothers, miscellaneous others. Style is a smile, a four-minute mile, a jump rope of awareness presuming to dare us, spinning and grinning, faster and deeper and further and longer, till we break through and sing of ridiculous things, for who’s left to question the laughter of children, the hilarity of love, the rhythm of coincidence, the happenstance of circumstance? If you can speak you can sing, if you can sing you can dance, if you can dance you can prance, and if you can prance you can ponder. ’Cause if you’ve got style you’ve got rhythm, and if you’ve got rhythm, you’ve got it all . . . all or nothing, and all together.”
THE BOOK O’ BILLETS-DOUX
Rosehips: Here’s a point to consider. If the shortest distance between two points is a line, then what is the point of this line?
Sweetlick: From my vantage point, the line itself looks like a point.
Rosehips: See now, here we have written at least two points, yet there is no conceptual distance at all between them. So, how can we distinguish between points in time and points in space, and, most important, points to make? I have a point, and I still wish to make a point, and yet I can’t see the point of it all.
Sweetlick: The point of existentialism is that there is no point, but the point of Zen is both pointness and nonpointness.
Rosehips: Perhaps this points the way to an entirely new ethic, wherein the sage advice is not that it’s impolite to point, but rather that it’s simply an impolite point.
Sweetlick: I think I see your point, but I’d like to point out to you that in pointing out your point, the point has become lost in the pointing.
122 Still breathless with the climax of her colloquy and flushed redder than any apple had ever been before, Why aren’t apples called reds? hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and closed it, but not before mooning the paradoxes with her scarlet derriere. I too must turn away from my voyeurism of their verbal intercourse and allow them the privacy of a postcoital embrace. May God bless them.
Back in the realm from which I have retreated and to which I am reluctant to return, General Kiljoy, Tynee, Miss Mary, and I were down with stomach flu for three da
ys. Combined with her nicotine withdrawal, Miss Mary may well have shaken herself to death. Luckily for her, Ratdog sniffed out a few cases of stale cigarettes stashed in a cabinet behind the bar. I watched from across the room as she blissfully blew the by-products of her addiction into our atmosphere. Only a few moments passed before the stench clenched up my nostrils. She smiled insipidly, then malevolently. I sighed a shallow sigh, rolled over, and considered that as quickly as her exhaust had reached me, so could have the Pied Piper virus.
The Pied Piper virus. What’s that renegade ribbon of ribonucleic acid up to? Whistling for the children to follow him toward what lay beyond the city walls? Not quite, for the walls had been thrown up farther outside the city. Just as planned, a massive blockade was in effect along the city’s outerbelt. General Kiljoy informed us of this soon after he established a communication link with the authorities up above. Eventually, we even had some video footage on the monitor, though no audio.
Quarantine was enforced on the city, laying siege to the sprawling metropolitan area. The three lanes of the outerbelt (five with the shoulders) were a no-man’s-land. Razor wire and heat-sensing automatic weapons greeted any source of infrared radiation, so that even with the freeway shut down, groundhogs and rabbits continued to be killed right on schedule. They were soon joined by stray humans. At first, only separatist militia types living in the hinterlands of the city attempted to make a break for it, but eventually this dwindled down to the occasional stray suburbanite wandering about confused and unable to understand the warnings from the loudspeakers or even what the commotion ahead implied. Lacking these social faculties, curious people would amble ahead, typically skipping and snickering, and quickly become so much goopy roadkill. TV has become more violent lately.
Just a Couple of Days Page 25
