Brody awoke to the oddly metallic taste of numbers on his tongue. At first he believed it was blood -- this tangy, tart sensation that reminded him of the time he had fallen head-first down a slide during the distant but potent days of his childhood, around seven or eight, his nose bonking the edge of the curved metal and his mouth gargling the foaming red nostril spray that, secretly, despite the resulting, obligatory tears and snot-fuelled sobs, he found sweet, almost comforting.
Now he was an adult, and he did not want to taste blood. It hinted at all that was yet to come. But this particular taste, on this specific morning, was one that he rolled around in his mouth while his eyes still adjusted to the weak, almost timid morning light that gradually snuck its way between the blinds, like a shy girl sticking out her tongue in the general vicinity of her class crush.
I can taste a seven, he thought, spry and lively. That's at the edge of my mouth, the right hand side, just above the tooth that I think I'm going to have to get yanked soon. And four -- I can feel you, too! At the tip of my tongue, balancing on the edge, cool as a November night after six. Ah, and nine! You taste like someone has sneaked some rum into my coke! Right on the underside of my tongue, a hidden gem that will leave a spry, mournful aftertaste.
None of this made sense, of course. Morning thoughts never do. But in this nonsensical assemblage of numbers and tastes, thoughts and sensations, he found a clarity that had been missing for months, possibly years. Some secret of the cosmos had chosen itself to be revealed to him here, at this time, in this frumpy bed. All those mathematicians jumbling numbers around! Numbers only! Don't they realize the connections that exist between the most unlikely of allies?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
AGAIN, ALWAYS, FOREVER
"Woe unto him who seeks to please rather than apall."
-- Herman Melville
The writer's role is to spit snot into your face and make you think that by the time it trickles down your face and touches your lips you're tasting taffy. Or, put more delicately, the author's responsibility is to pour fountains of Mountain Dew over your head on the hottest day of the year, and gradually make you realize that the sweet, piercing goodness that tantalizes your tongue is also slowly, intently dehyrdating you of your spiritual essence.
Either definition will suffice.
The problem becomes that our essential nature as human beings is that we are not defiant. We long for comprehension. We seek the simple solution because that is the most palatable one. Perhaps the neurological railway routes that line the grey and fleshy pockets of our brain tissue are physically built that way, inborn. The easiest way to comprehend is by finding a way to agree. Oh, to be certain, we are rebels; that is our novice, initial reaction. However, after a moment, a month, a year, a decade, a life, we acquiesce. (Giving way is so much more conducive to relaxation than uprising against invisible, ultimately unimportant ideological foes.) Somebody hands us a pamphlet. We nibble on an extra-spicy chicken, ignore the saucy red drool dripping down our chin, and eventually decide that whoever wrote this baby had a pretty good point. Fold it, trash it, back to the tube.
The novelist's role is to light off tiny little cherry bombs inside of our skulls and patiently stick around to see if, and when, they do their little damage. This does not mean that provocation is an end in and of itself; rather, that tiny expolosions of disturbance, couched in insight, eventually can lead to a bigger bang of comprehension. We read to escape loneliness and instead are faced with a greater threat than mere solitude. The larger issue becomes: We are alone, and not only are you not correct in your assumptions, but the answers are nowhere to be found, and your friends cannot help you, and may, in fact, be the true source of your isolation.
Such is one means of assault.
The other tactics employed by the most skillfull of scribblers are ones that would be not unwelcome in the most dingy of massage parlours, those places where rubs and smacks are but preludes to a longer, seedier embrace. You are coddled and made to feel enveloped by means of tactile, fleshy fingers that probe and pinch. (And what can more be heartening and alienating than the hug of a stranger?) The world is nasty, yes, but a refuge is to be found, such hands seem to be saying: You can stop here. You may rest here. The universe is aligned only with you and your psychic pain, and for that I have a cure. No unwelcome shocks or lightly tossed grenades.
And so one is gradually seduced into a view of the world that reaffirms one's own sense of self. A chaotic, uncertain realm still lies mere metres outside the oriental curtain, but an order to one's body has been restored. One can face the world head-on, like a wrestler entering the ring, confident of success because the end result has been preordained long before the lights have been raised and the great gates opened. [
It is only later, at home, resting in bed, remembering strange hands touching familiar places, that a certain pain sets in. An ache here. A sting there. One has become acquainted with physical discomforts that emerged only from the most tender of touches. Pain and pleasure are intermingled to such a degree that one can not discern which is stronger, or more likely to last well into the night.
That need to comprehend, to relax, to crash out on the couch, has been subverted in the most clever of ways, by means of an insincere sincerity, or a sincere insincerity, I'm not sure which. We are either exploded into another level of comprehension, or eased into a supple state that hides a firmer, creakier truth.
When I read a book and don't know what to make of it, or feel a strong sense of unease at the pit of my stomach, where last night's dinner waits to arise, or think thoughts that make me wonder if know anything at all, or ever will, I feel oddly elated and disgusted, and long for such a reaction again, always, forever.
-- Herman Melville
The writer's role is to spit snot into your face and make you think that by the time it trickles down your face and touches your lips you're tasting taffy. Or, put more delicately, the author's responsibility is to pour fountains of Mountain Dew over your head on the hottest day of the year, and gradually make you realize that the sweet, piercing goodness that tantalizes your tongue is also slowly, intently dehyrdating you of your spiritual essence.
Either definition will suffice.
The problem becomes that our essential nature as human beings is that we are not defiant. We long for comprehension. We seek the simple solution because that is the most palatable one. Perhaps the neurological railway routes that line the grey and fleshy pockets of our brain tissue are physically built that way, inborn. The easiest way to comprehend is by finding a way to agree. Oh, to be certain, we are rebels; that is our novice, initial reaction. However, after a moment, a month, a year, a decade, a life, we acquiesce. (Giving way is so much more conducive to relaxation than uprising against invisible, ultimately unimportant ideological foes.) Somebody hands us a pamphlet. We nibble on an extra-spicy chicken, ignore the saucy red drool dripping down our chin, and eventually decide that whoever wrote this baby had a pretty good point. Fold it, trash it, back to the tube.
The novelist's role is to light off tiny little cherry bombs inside of our skulls and patiently stick around to see if, and when, they do their little damage. This does not mean that provocation is an end in and of itself; rather, that tiny expolosions of disturbance, couched in insight, eventually can lead to a bigger bang of comprehension. We read to escape loneliness and instead are faced with a greater threat than mere solitude. The larger issue becomes: We are alone, and not only are you not correct in your assumptions, but the answers are nowhere to be found, and your friends cannot help you, and may, in fact, be the true source of your isolation.
Such is one means of assault.
The other tactics employed by the most skillfull of scribblers are ones that would be not unwelcome in the most dingy of massage parlours, those places where rubs and smacks are but preludes to a longer, seedier embrace. You are coddled and made to feel enveloped by means of tactile, fleshy fingers that probe and pinch. (And what can more be heartening and alienating than the hug of a stranger?) The world is nasty, yes, but a refuge is to be found, such hands seem to be saying: You can stop here. You may rest here. The universe is aligned only with you and your psychic pain, and for that I have a cure. No unwelcome shocks or lightly tossed grenades.
And so one is gradually seduced into a view of the world that reaffirms one's own sense of self. A chaotic, uncertain realm still lies mere metres outside the oriental curtain, but an order to one's body has been restored. One can face the world head-on, like a wrestler entering the ring, confident of success because the end result has been preordained long before the lights have been raised and the great gates opened. [
It is only later, at home, resting in bed, remembering strange hands touching familiar places, that a certain pain sets in. An ache here. A sting there. One has become acquainted with physical discomforts that emerged only from the most tender of touches. Pain and pleasure are intermingled to such a degree that one can not discern which is stronger, or more likely to last well into the night.
That need to comprehend, to relax, to crash out on the couch, has been subverted in the most clever of ways, by means of an insincere sincerity, or a sincere insincerity, I'm not sure which. We are either exploded into another level of comprehension, or eased into a supple state that hides a firmer, creakier truth.
When I read a book and don't know what to make of it, or feel a strong sense of unease at the pit of my stomach, where last night's dinner waits to arise, or think thoughts that make me wonder if know anything at all, or ever will, I feel oddly elated and disgusted, and long for such a reaction again, always, forever.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
GIVE US THIS DAY
Give us this day our daily dread...
Surely even the most diligent and noble-minded of teachers has found himself muttering this incantation on many a gloomy Monday morning of the soul. Especially on those days when one feels not only like an imposter, which is a benign sort of benediction, for who among us does not feel like a fraud at carefully staged points in one's life? No, the shame comes not from the certainty that one is wearing a mask that all will recognize as little more than a novelty-store goof, but from the fact that one is not succeeding even as a charlatan, that we cannot fake it as well as we used to, that the jig is up, that they are all on to us and none too happy to boot.
For if we were honest imposters, master fakers, the students sitting before us behind foldable desks would wear eager grins of anxious, almost sweaty anticipation -- for who does not love a carefully staged con, even when in on the facade? (As every magician could testify.) What the teacher fears most is not failure but success. If we succeed all too well today, then tomorrow more will be expected of us. The magician will not only be asked to extend his run, but the same customers will come back for show after show, until they slowly, almost surprisingly start to realize that there is nothing left to discover, and discounts are not within the realm of access. No money back for this particular show, ladies and gents. You have seen all there is too see, the Wizard of Oz has been revealed as the red-faced fraud behind the tacticle curtain which is the cough-drop green of the chalkboard, and guess what? Another half-semester remains! Please watch the steps on your way out the door.
An unnatural occupation, one would think, despite the fact that Socrates and his ilk practiced such an art mere millienia ago. A not-so-distant past, in the grand arc of time, so certain traditions, modus operandi, or, at the very least, schemes, should have been passed down for us plebes to copy and mimic.
But every day starts anew. You build the trust from the afternoon before, brick by brick, hoping it holds, and then mold it in place once again from today's first bell, even though the foundation itself is already looking shaky, ready to topple. The buzz of phones and the smack of gum against unbrushed teeth and the glazed eyes that are testimony to a night spent staring at a colgate-white screen are the landmines that await your every step.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
How often those explosives ignite around the edges of our lessons! Flecks of jagged metal slicing only ourselves, never the students, who wander aimlessly across the battlefield, oblivious to the carnage being inflicted upon their captain!
Even Mr.Kotter, that most illustrious alumni of the Sweathogs, must have felt literally at war with the motley sitcom morons that populated his sitcom class. They welcomed him back but loved him in return, with the kind of earnest, witty love that only twenty-two minute bursts of fictional sideswipes can spew forth. I could live inside the goodwill of that classroom, I sometimes think. The Sweathogs would see me as one of their own. I could lead them to a higher place, perhaps even a one-hour drama, should all work out.
And should my most earnest efforts fail, Howard Hesseman, always standing so firm and wise in his middle-aged mullet at the head of the class, would certainly welcome me into his fictional world, would he not? A class full of wisecracking geniuses, ready to rumble? I could handle such a group. I could be the student teacher who fumbles his way hilariously up the big-time world of homeroom teacher. A possible spin-off after two, three seasons. My own Al Gore, waiting patiently in the wings, to Hesseman's grander, more genial Bill Clinton. I think I have it in me.
Mere fantasies, I know.
For now, I must make do with where I am and what I have.
The dread is always there, at the bottom of my stomach, unseen mud beneath the surface of the puddle.
And yet, at certain moments -- rare, but there -- the cell phones go silent, the gum stops snapping, the teeth seem whiter, and the pupils of the pupils grow wide, almost against their will, as if they've suddenly seen something, if not enchanting, at least intriguing.
Surely even the most diligent and noble-minded of teachers has found himself muttering this incantation on many a gloomy Monday morning of the soul. Especially on those days when one feels not only like an imposter, which is a benign sort of benediction, for who among us does not feel like a fraud at carefully staged points in one's life? No, the shame comes not from the certainty that one is wearing a mask that all will recognize as little more than a novelty-store goof, but from the fact that one is not succeeding even as a charlatan, that we cannot fake it as well as we used to, that the jig is up, that they are all on to us and none too happy to boot.
For if we were honest imposters, master fakers, the students sitting before us behind foldable desks would wear eager grins of anxious, almost sweaty anticipation -- for who does not love a carefully staged con, even when in on the facade? (As every magician could testify.) What the teacher fears most is not failure but success. If we succeed all too well today, then tomorrow more will be expected of us. The magician will not only be asked to extend his run, but the same customers will come back for show after show, until they slowly, almost surprisingly start to realize that there is nothing left to discover, and discounts are not within the realm of access. No money back for this particular show, ladies and gents. You have seen all there is too see, the Wizard of Oz has been revealed as the red-faced fraud behind the tacticle curtain which is the cough-drop green of the chalkboard, and guess what? Another half-semester remains! Please watch the steps on your way out the door.
An unnatural occupation, one would think, despite the fact that Socrates and his ilk practiced such an art mere millienia ago. A not-so-distant past, in the grand arc of time, so certain traditions, modus operandi, or, at the very least, schemes, should have been passed down for us plebes to copy and mimic.
But every day starts anew. You build the trust from the afternoon before, brick by brick, hoping it holds, and then mold it in place once again from today's first bell, even though the foundation itself is already looking shaky, ready to topple. The buzz of phones and the smack of gum against unbrushed teeth and the glazed eyes that are testimony to a night spent staring at a colgate-white screen are the landmines that await your every step.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
How often those explosives ignite around the edges of our lessons! Flecks of jagged metal slicing only ourselves, never the students, who wander aimlessly across the battlefield, oblivious to the carnage being inflicted upon their captain!
Even Mr.Kotter, that most illustrious alumni of the Sweathogs, must have felt literally at war with the motley sitcom morons that populated his sitcom class. They welcomed him back but loved him in return, with the kind of earnest, witty love that only twenty-two minute bursts of fictional sideswipes can spew forth. I could live inside the goodwill of that classroom, I sometimes think. The Sweathogs would see me as one of their own. I could lead them to a higher place, perhaps even a one-hour drama, should all work out.
And should my most earnest efforts fail, Howard Hesseman, always standing so firm and wise in his middle-aged mullet at the head of the class, would certainly welcome me into his fictional world, would he not? A class full of wisecracking geniuses, ready to rumble? I could handle such a group. I could be the student teacher who fumbles his way hilariously up the big-time world of homeroom teacher. A possible spin-off after two, three seasons. My own Al Gore, waiting patiently in the wings, to Hesseman's grander, more genial Bill Clinton. I think I have it in me.
Mere fantasies, I know.
For now, I must make do with where I am and what I have.
The dread is always there, at the bottom of my stomach, unseen mud beneath the surface of the puddle.
And yet, at certain moments -- rare, but there -- the cell phones go silent, the gum stops snapping, the teeth seem whiter, and the pupils of the pupils grow wide, almost against their will, as if they've suddenly seen something, if not enchanting, at least intriguing.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
JUNE MORNING IN A GREY CITY
I shut my eyes against the bright morning light that kept poking at my dozy awareness like a pin pricking skin. Darkness, I decided, would give me a hint of rest. Possibly a slice of cold solace. The sounds of the train would still be rackety clear, but at least the blackness would allow a moment or two of restless, indifferent sleep.
But with closed eyes came a closed conduit. Blackness was not getting in. Instead of dark I saw bright, magnetic red, the shade of blood, of ripe apples, of cherries freshly picked from trees higher than most. That dizzying effect that comes when various shades of light blend and merge with one another. Soon the redness allowed in other small, precise holes of green and blue, purple and green, each tone fighting for attention. I could open my eyes once again and allow the light to be the wide yellow of a Japanese dawn, but I wanted to watch these colours do their dance. I desired some gravity and grace to my workday blah.
Soon that old saw began grinding back and forth across the easel of my brain, the notion that the dream life is the true life, and the waking realm the false facade. Why were the lights behind one's eyelids so strange and mystic, almost independent creatures colliding in misshapen blobs of attachment and separation, whereas the light of the sun so often seemed so blunt and aloof? If sleep life is real life, perhaps the colours it creates also have a validity that we can only imagine, then dismiss, in the cold, blunt blue of a June morning in the grey city.
But with closed eyes came a closed conduit. Blackness was not getting in. Instead of dark I saw bright, magnetic red, the shade of blood, of ripe apples, of cherries freshly picked from trees higher than most. That dizzying effect that comes when various shades of light blend and merge with one another. Soon the redness allowed in other small, precise holes of green and blue, purple and green, each tone fighting for attention. I could open my eyes once again and allow the light to be the wide yellow of a Japanese dawn, but I wanted to watch these colours do their dance. I desired some gravity and grace to my workday blah.
Soon that old saw began grinding back and forth across the easel of my brain, the notion that the dream life is the true life, and the waking realm the false facade. Why were the lights behind one's eyelids so strange and mystic, almost independent creatures colliding in misshapen blobs of attachment and separation, whereas the light of the sun so often seemed so blunt and aloof? If sleep life is real life, perhaps the colours it creates also have a validity that we can only imagine, then dismiss, in the cold, blunt blue of a June morning in the grey city.
Monday, June 14, 2010
A-TEAM: IN THE END, ALL A SIMULATION?
Another A-Team adventure finally blazes its away across a silver screen (a cinematic one, this time, as opposed to the television jewel that last gave grace to the motley team of adventurers), and while the child in me is wondering what the hell took so long, the adult in me is asking: At what point does the death of childhood begin? Does it happen in slow, seductive waves, like an ocean current that swooshes us away before we even realize we are caught in its wet, seductively benign sweep? Or is it more like an IED, a random Coke can lying by the side of the road that we kick out of boredom only to discover a blunt-force blast that lifts us out of ourselves and into another, larger world, where the sky is gray, not blue, and the gentle touch of grace on our shoulders is ash, not snow.
For what is one to make of a TV series that captivated the weeknights of one's prepubescent youth and now returns, twenty-five years later, to attempt another awkward grope, this time as an adult (albeit a cinematic one), graying and cranky, almost barren, yet still trying to cop a lusty feel at whatever the cost. Is it the media-equivalent of a child molester who comes back haunt his former victims?
As a youth, I adored much, and The A-Team was at the top of my hand-written list of fictional idols that occupied their own Olympus in my skull. The Marvel comic books adaptation of the show, check; handheld action figures, check; larger-than-handheld size Mr.T figure, check; the team van, check. I can see that cover of the first A-Team comic-book even as I write these words, and I can remember a wintry night returning from a neighbour's house with another copy of the comic book in my hands. They were tough and funny and bizarre and resolute, these dudes were; they found a way to help the helpless and smear the corrupt. (Even if it involved a contraption that shot cabbages like cannonballs.) There was a simple joy in their audacity, perfect for an eight-year old mind that craves a bold new solution to life's problems that will be clever enough to find fulfillment in it sixty-minute doses (plus commercials). Eventually, I left the show behind (much as I would leave behind The Dukes of Hazzard and C*H*I*P*S* and The Fall Guy and Knight Rider), soon after the team itself abandoned their role as outlaws-on-the-perpetual-run and, instead, found themselves in the unlikely position of working for the United States government itself. (Such confusing defections are enough to torment a young, unforgiving mind.)
And now here they plunge once again into the pool of our collective, nostalgic memories of all things creased, folded, dropped and shredded. For surely this is a show that one has put behind oneself, no? Looking back, objectively (if such an act is even possible when examining one's own youth), the show was, I am certain, terrible. I have not seen it in a quarter-century, but rarely do the joys of one's childhood captivate the grown-up being we all, reluctantly, become. That is neither here nor there, however -- this evaluation of The A-Team's aesthetic worth. For a good portion of those years when my bed-wetting days were still not a distant memory, this was a part of the universe that invigorated my psyche. It allowed me to dream. It humored me. These are not benedictions that one should casually throw aside like 7-11 receipts. Much of life, perhaps most of life, is horrendously dull and vacant, and so to betray that which once filled you up with a primitive sort of joy is almost obscene in its reckless arrogance.
So, no. It is not The A-Team itself that I am dreading, but these new characters, these present charlatans, filled with actors looking for a quick paycheck funded by a studio desperate for a short-term hit. All valid rules for living. Life is what it is. (And was the original series made for any less bottom-line motives?)
But my heart tells me that nobody making this movie had any particular love for the original series, and it seems all too clear that when love is absent, other, less noble qualities will inevitably emerge (like the Creature from the Black Lagoon) from the muck of life. It could very well be an entertaining rush, this movie. It might even bring back fond memories, psychic mementoes that will take me back to another time. Such small thrills are possible.
Yet again I ask: at what point does childhood die? When can we let it all go? If our past keeps belching itself up at twenty-year intervals in increasingly louder, more plastic mutations, can we ever put the old comics away, switch the black-and-white TV off for good, and find something new, something present, to simulate those old feelings we once felt so much? Or is it all just a simulation in the end?
For what is one to make of a TV series that captivated the weeknights of one's prepubescent youth and now returns, twenty-five years later, to attempt another awkward grope, this time as an adult (albeit a cinematic one), graying and cranky, almost barren, yet still trying to cop a lusty feel at whatever the cost. Is it the media-equivalent of a child molester who comes back haunt his former victims?
As a youth, I adored much, and The A-Team was at the top of my hand-written list of fictional idols that occupied their own Olympus in my skull. The Marvel comic books adaptation of the show, check; handheld action figures, check; larger-than-handheld size Mr.T figure, check; the team van, check. I can see that cover of the first A-Team comic-book even as I write these words, and I can remember a wintry night returning from a neighbour's house with another copy of the comic book in my hands. They were tough and funny and bizarre and resolute, these dudes were; they found a way to help the helpless and smear the corrupt. (Even if it involved a contraption that shot cabbages like cannonballs.) There was a simple joy in their audacity, perfect for an eight-year old mind that craves a bold new solution to life's problems that will be clever enough to find fulfillment in it sixty-minute doses (plus commercials). Eventually, I left the show behind (much as I would leave behind The Dukes of Hazzard and C*H*I*P*S* and The Fall Guy and Knight Rider), soon after the team itself abandoned their role as outlaws-on-the-perpetual-run and, instead, found themselves in the unlikely position of working for the United States government itself. (Such confusing defections are enough to torment a young, unforgiving mind.)
And now here they plunge once again into the pool of our collective, nostalgic memories of all things creased, folded, dropped and shredded. For surely this is a show that one has put behind oneself, no? Looking back, objectively (if such an act is even possible when examining one's own youth), the show was, I am certain, terrible. I have not seen it in a quarter-century, but rarely do the joys of one's childhood captivate the grown-up being we all, reluctantly, become. That is neither here nor there, however -- this evaluation of The A-Team's aesthetic worth. For a good portion of those years when my bed-wetting days were still not a distant memory, this was a part of the universe that invigorated my psyche. It allowed me to dream. It humored me. These are not benedictions that one should casually throw aside like 7-11 receipts. Much of life, perhaps most of life, is horrendously dull and vacant, and so to betray that which once filled you up with a primitive sort of joy is almost obscene in its reckless arrogance.
So, no. It is not The A-Team itself that I am dreading, but these new characters, these present charlatans, filled with actors looking for a quick paycheck funded by a studio desperate for a short-term hit. All valid rules for living. Life is what it is. (And was the original series made for any less bottom-line motives?)
But my heart tells me that nobody making this movie had any particular love for the original series, and it seems all too clear that when love is absent, other, less noble qualities will inevitably emerge (like the Creature from the Black Lagoon) from the muck of life. It could very well be an entertaining rush, this movie. It might even bring back fond memories, psychic mementoes that will take me back to another time. Such small thrills are possible.
Yet again I ask: at what point does childhood die? When can we let it all go? If our past keeps belching itself up at twenty-year intervals in increasingly louder, more plastic mutations, can we ever put the old comics away, switch the black-and-white TV off for good, and find something new, something present, to simulate those old feelings we once felt so much? Or is it all just a simulation in the end?
Friday, June 11, 2010
GIVE ME
Give me your poor, your broken-hearted, your destitute and your damned. Give me the young woman on the train with the metal stubs in her lips and the sun-burned bruises on the back of her thighs. Give me the sleeping salaryman beside her, suited up for the day, although it's already lights-out at five in the morning, his time. Give me the homeless man at the station, who lives nowhere else but at the bottom of the steps to a place that leads somebody other than himself anywhere and everywhere. Give me the skinny Nigerian woman who slowly hauls her way out of the African bar at two-forty in the morning, lugging crates to the back of the restaurant. Give me my students, hundreds of them, feeble-minded and almost brilliant, energetic and lethargic, harbingers of a new age and dim, potent signals that barely light the present one.
Give me all of them. I shall not make them free, but I can possibly give them a slanted voice that, if not true, at least might be heard.
Give me all of them. I shall not make them free, but I can possibly give them a slanted voice that, if not true, at least might be heard.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
ALTERNATE ROUTES ON THE HUMAN MAP
Fortune may favor the bold, but surely such a fickle fate has its own heightened sense of humor. Fortune may just as well favor the ridiculous, the sublime, the bored, the indifferent. Occasionally even the mortal, electronic gods at Yahoo pick up on such flavors in the celestial air, giving us a scent of the absurd but intricate designs that govern our lives. (Or appear to, at any rate.)
There may yet be a means by which we can diminish how fortune and fate plot our perils; alternate routes in the human map may be detected if we look at the map with all of our might.
The other day a story appeared that told the unlikely and amusing tale of a wife browsing through old photographs with her husband of a trip to Disneyland taken long ago, in childhood. The husband noticed somebody suspiciously, intimately familiar hovering in the back of the photo, an extra in the movie of his wife's life. Only that extra happened to be his own father.
Can such a coincidence be any more contrived? In a film, a play, a book, or even perhaps in the hidden safety and carefully obscured nook of our own nighttime dreams, we would not readily accept such a concoction. Life, however (or what we recognize 'life to be), needs to construct no such shields against the impossibility of circumstance. People wander in and out of each other's photographs, and, decades later, are brought together once more by matrimony.
It's all too simple to let fate get off easy in such a scenario. We can barter around empty words and familiar phrases like 'incredible', 'what are the odds', 'it just goes to show you', 'you never can tell', and comfort ourselves with the odd, innate bizarreness of the lives that we live, never pausing to acknowledge that although we may very well be the captains of our own ship, the possibility of us being players on someone else's stage, spouting lines written by our own, unknown creators.
That, too, is an easy out. The gods may very well be pushing us around as blithely or intently as we move a pawn into its next position on our chessboards, but such a possibility allows us to be the passive creatures we long to become, the fish that are gently removed from the hooks of the rods of disappointed children and tossed casually back into the water to swim another day.
Perhaps we nudge our fates in manners we cannot assess. Perhaps this woman, this wife, long ago, as a child, beamed brightly at her future father-in-law out of the corner of her mouth as the picture was being snapped. He smiled back, thinking to himself: What a grand and sweet gesture, to be smiled at by a child on the first day of spring. For days, even weeks afterwards, he felt warmed in a way that he could not explain. He was nicer to his own wife and children. He tossed the ball with his son and played Barbies with his daughter. Goodness rippled forth from his every action. The son felt loved, gained confidence, became humane in interior places where before he had been but a boy. Years later, his future wife recognized such humanity in his tone and fell for the man she sensed he might become, given time and a certain tilt on her part. Not knowing that she had started the whole cycle in motion as a child. (Are not most children indifferent to the sorrow and joy they engender in others?)
I'm tempted to take a camera, any camera, any size, and prowl the streets by day and by night, snapping random shots of ordinary people, hoping that something human in the air will somehow shift to a larger, cosmic benevolence by the click of a lens. Perhaps someone will sense what my pursuit entails, even if I can not articulate it in words. The photos will capture a spirit and, instead of diminishing or destroying its essence, as inland tribes still believe (or so I'm told), the stolen image will flash their very beings into a higher form of connection.
We wander in and out of other's photos, usually hiding ourselves, not wanting to ruin someone else's shot. In the forefront of our own existence and the backgroud of everyone else's. Should a camera lens be wide enough to capture the entire planet in one glorious, panoramic backdrop of smiles and waves, everyone a star, no one an extra, would that be enough to banish coincidence's frustrating, perplexing hold on our lives to a distant land where it would haunt us no more?
There may yet be a means by which we can diminish how fortune and fate plot our perils; alternate routes in the human map may be detected if we look at the map with all of our might.
The other day a story appeared that told the unlikely and amusing tale of a wife browsing through old photographs with her husband of a trip to Disneyland taken long ago, in childhood. The husband noticed somebody suspiciously, intimately familiar hovering in the back of the photo, an extra in the movie of his wife's life. Only that extra happened to be his own father.
Can such a coincidence be any more contrived? In a film, a play, a book, or even perhaps in the hidden safety and carefully obscured nook of our own nighttime dreams, we would not readily accept such a concoction. Life, however (or what we recognize 'life to be), needs to construct no such shields against the impossibility of circumstance. People wander in and out of each other's photographs, and, decades later, are brought together once more by matrimony.
It's all too simple to let fate get off easy in such a scenario. We can barter around empty words and familiar phrases like 'incredible', 'what are the odds', 'it just goes to show you', 'you never can tell', and comfort ourselves with the odd, innate bizarreness of the lives that we live, never pausing to acknowledge that although we may very well be the captains of our own ship, the possibility of us being players on someone else's stage, spouting lines written by our own, unknown creators.
That, too, is an easy out. The gods may very well be pushing us around as blithely or intently as we move a pawn into its next position on our chessboards, but such a possibility allows us to be the passive creatures we long to become, the fish that are gently removed from the hooks of the rods of disappointed children and tossed casually back into the water to swim another day.
Perhaps we nudge our fates in manners we cannot assess. Perhaps this woman, this wife, long ago, as a child, beamed brightly at her future father-in-law out of the corner of her mouth as the picture was being snapped. He smiled back, thinking to himself: What a grand and sweet gesture, to be smiled at by a child on the first day of spring. For days, even weeks afterwards, he felt warmed in a way that he could not explain. He was nicer to his own wife and children. He tossed the ball with his son and played Barbies with his daughter. Goodness rippled forth from his every action. The son felt loved, gained confidence, became humane in interior places where before he had been but a boy. Years later, his future wife recognized such humanity in his tone and fell for the man she sensed he might become, given time and a certain tilt on her part. Not knowing that she had started the whole cycle in motion as a child. (Are not most children indifferent to the sorrow and joy they engender in others?)
I'm tempted to take a camera, any camera, any size, and prowl the streets by day and by night, snapping random shots of ordinary people, hoping that something human in the air will somehow shift to a larger, cosmic benevolence by the click of a lens. Perhaps someone will sense what my pursuit entails, even if I can not articulate it in words. The photos will capture a spirit and, instead of diminishing or destroying its essence, as inland tribes still believe (or so I'm told), the stolen image will flash their very beings into a higher form of connection.
We wander in and out of other's photos, usually hiding ourselves, not wanting to ruin someone else's shot. In the forefront of our own existence and the backgroud of everyone else's. Should a camera lens be wide enough to capture the entire planet in one glorious, panoramic backdrop of smiles and waves, everyone a star, no one an extra, would that be enough to banish coincidence's frustrating, perplexing hold on our lives to a distant land where it would haunt us no more?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)