Dante's Grasshopper

The Old One spoke. "It's an old trick of the Bolsheviks and the Postmodernists. I call it their 'Just-So' story. This is the query that illuminates all their tales: 'What if everything natural is actually artificial, and everything artificial natural?' So, for example, runs all social constructionism. Everything that is natural is artificial, and the self-destructing artifice they consequently built is more natural than nature.

"Ah, but I can't really blame them. I think, perhaps, those ideas come at us from all sides everyday. It is, after all, the Medieval World View, isn't it? It's the thought process that the scientific method unintentionally counter-acted. Newton had no idea of the forces that were driving him. It was a natural force, though he undoubtedly did not know just how natural it was.

"And so, here we are, in the present day. The artifice of paint is mistaken for the real thing, while the real thing, the ones free of paint, are the suspicious characters, and not to be trusted. Try as we might, young man, you'll never be free of the topsy-turvy for as long as you live. It has a vast establishment apparatus behind it, to prevent you from inquiring."

 

*

 

When I got that job at the restaurant, and was being given the grand tour of the dining room, kitchen, and bar, I couldn't help but notice it. At the far end of the bar, protected under a glass dome screwed down to the wood, was a dirty pint glass, and in that pint glass there was a penny. Naturally, I asked about it.

"Ah," said the restaurateur: "That's the Rockefeller Penny. You see, a hundred years ago, John D. Rockefeller came into this place. He was impressed, so the story goes, and the waitress, Mandy, was pretty fetching back then. So, Rockefeller put a penny in his empty pint glass and said to Mandy: 'If you can get the penny out of that glass without touching the glass, I will give you five million dollars.' Then he left. Mandy and everything puzzled through the problem for weeks. Finally, it was decided to leave the glass exactly where it was, protected. It's been there ever since, and there's no way we're ever going to do a thing about it."

"Why don't you just ... give up?"

"What, and spoil our equity? That penny is worth five million bucks. Equity! Equity!"

 

*

 

The Old One spoke again. "You've been wondering this all your life, haven't you? You've spent so much time, which is time you'll never get back, about how the space aliens knew so much mineralogy to know what to put in the mountains, and where to put the mountains such that smooth flowing waters could run to the seas. 'What advanced mathematics did they possess?' you've wondered.

"Now is the time for you to get your head straight. The natural is not cultural. Yes, you heard me right. The space aliens didn't have a hand in the creation of the mountains and streams. The mountain and the streams are natural, not cultural. The space aliens had nothing to do with it. When they arrived, that summer day, the natural world was already in existence.

"'So,' you're undoubtedly wondering: 'Why did they come here at all?' That's a normal-enough question. Why travel all that way for nothing? Did they build the pyramids? Did they have anything to do with that old obelisk? Now these are meaty questions. And the answer is, almost certainly, that the space aliens built both the pyramid and the obelisk. Nature was here; culture completed the mix."

 

*

 

According to the clocks within visible range, we had less than six hours to extricate our man in Kabul. A diversion was needed. Diversions are always needed.

"Maybe we could ... blow something up," Hank offered.

"No time to get the charges in," I replied.

He thought for a moment. "What if we go faster than light?"

I hadn't thought of that. You can do many amazing things when you travel faster than light. Perhaps it was time to try it.

Once we got travelling faster than light, all things seemed possible. We went back twelve hours, to give us plenty of operational wiggle-room, then we searched everywhere in Kabul for our man. We found him (who seemed to be in a frozen state to us, for such is relativity), scooped him up, and returned to H.Q.

He had caught up to us by then. "You got me out," he said. "How did you do it?"

"Science," I said.

"Can we use this science to take revenge upon my pursuers?"

"Easily."

We found the grandfathers of his pursuers and eliminated them. Though that was an unorthodox and unsporting operation, it achieved the objective. Vladivostok no longer had anything to fear.

 

*

 

The Old One continued. "Do you believe me or not? Why would you do either? What are you looking for? Do you think I am anything but a mirror? Do you believe anything I can say is something you do not already know?

"You, Grasshopper, had a set of beliefs you had a long time before you came to seek me out. Depending on those beliefs, you are either hearing me agree with them, or you are hearing me not agreeing with them. There is no middle to this ground.

"If you find my opinions accord with yours, you are saying to yourself: 'What a wise Old One!' You will smooth over the spots where there's some dissonance; in fact, you probably won't even be aware of them. Such is the way of the soul.

"However, if my opinions do not accord with yours, you will tear what I am saying apart, predominantly at the level of language. You'll hear some phraseology you will call hackneyed, old-fashioned, or, worst of all, clichéd. Then you'll be able to dismiss it all tout court. See what I did there?

"Your beliefs will not change, nor will mine. In that, we are equals."

 

*

 

Dear blog: It was a very dramatic evening with the school board. After we got through the boring stuff about budgeting (gag!) we got down to the important stuff which was about what to do with the John A. Macdonald Pre-Kindergarten School's name.

"This has to be given careful consideration," said Marcy delaRondo (Microsoft Human Resources Agent). "Obvs it has to change, for reasons, but to what?"

Janice Neutral (Disney Human Resources Agent) said: "It'll have to be above reproach, obvs."

I said: "How about Mao? I don't think he did a wrong thing in his entire life."

Mitch Neutered (Coca-Cola Human Resource Agent) asked: "You've studied his life thoroughly?"

I said: "Yes. I saw a thing on HBO about him."

Mitch, who seemed to think he could speak at any time whatsoever, said: "'The Maoist School of Politically Correct Thought Pre-Kindergarten School.' Only Fascists could object to that."

"And if someone objects, we can call him a Fascist, and that's that."

Mitch, amazingly enough, said another thing. "We can call them a Fascist. Please."

Meeting ended. Something was bothering me.

I think I'll call the police. I'm pretty sure somewhere in there he mis-gendered me, and that's a crime.

 

*

 

That Old Wise one kept on. "Even if I'm drunk, here in this basement tavern, with this girl bringing me pilsner after pilsner, there's no way my opinion's going to change. So whats I'm fucking drunk. How can we live? What can we do? These are. ah, much more important questions.

"As it turns out‑are you listening?‑the only worthwhile guy to read is Poe. I read his stuff when I was a teenager and stupid, but then a couple years ago everything I read again, Library of America edition.

"Sometimes all we got is drinking and things adjacent to drinking, like gambling or some such. I used to be quite the gambler, I'd like you to know. I think I must have won and lost a condominium or two in my days. Gambling teaches you things about people. I gave it up once I'd learned enough about people to quit.

"So that's about it: Edgar Allan Poe, drinking, and gambling. I can't think of anything else at the moment. Okay, enough drinking for now. I'm going to think myself sober. I bet you didn't know that was possible, but it certainly is. I feel I could lift a truck bare-handed."

 

*

 

One Tuesday night, I was informed of the existence of a subpoena, which was hand-written and hand-addressed. It informed me I was required the following day at a proceeding involving one Y.G., a woman whom I hadn't seen for at least five years. The trial was to take place in Hamilton, at ten AM.

I couldn't get out of it; my absence would be noted, and I would probably wind up jailed or fined. So, I stuffed the subpoena into my back-pack, and set off west early the following morning.

The courthouse was terribly crowded. What possible investigation could be going on for Y.G.? It was like being in an airport, so crowded was it. I found someone who looked in charge, and I told him: "I'm here to I think be a witness."

"Do you have your summons?"

I fumbled through my back-pack for quite some time. It was a small letter, and it had gotten lost among all my school stuff. I unpacked it all on top of a handy trash can. Books, notebooks, pens, small books, loose notes, and some rulers I piled up. The subpoena was gone.

"You lost government property," he said. "You're under arrest."

 

*

 

You-know-who continued. "You're going to wake up in the middle of the night and you won't be able to get back to sleep; you're going to inventorying your body's aches and pains, and also your mind's aches and pains. (Unless you've already started doing that, heh heh.) You will have such trouble getting back to sleep. You'll be going over your whole life, wondering why it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to; even though you may not have any idea what you were meant for. Yes, you won't know how you ended up in that bed, in that room, alone or with someone else.

"Even if you have the wisdom to realize that everyone is eventually in the same boat, that everyone in the world experiences the same midnight mood, it won't change anything for you. You'll still be lost there, lying awake, eyes open and staring upwards. There's nothing you can do about it, Grasshopper. Not even Napoleon was free of this problem of consciousness. Believe you me, he had his sleeplessness events, no matter where he was sleeping at the time. There's always so plenty things left undone, they dwarf the done like an elephant."

 

*

 

Before I go on, Mother, I should describe the bus trip. Elder Brother and Younger Sister were not encouraging me in my courtship of the Lily Widow. I had to pay for her ticket out of my own pocket, despite Father's instruction to us to fairly share all expenses. Thus, at the ticket agent, I found I suddenly had only two coins left in my pocket, which was only enough to buy two box lunches from the lunch-man.

We knew the road would be rough, so the four of us tried to get on the bus first. However, since nothing always turns out right in the world, I was delayed due to a near-miss with shame. Consequently, I was the last to get on the vehicle, which was of course open-topped and benched along the sides.

A certain amount of bustle occurred as the driver was starting up. I wanted to sit beside the Lily Widow, naturally, but I could not find her, then, when I found her, the seat beside her was occupied. The bus started, at high speed, and down the mountain we went. I stumbled badly, falling this way and that, before finding a blessedly empty seat.

 

*

 

He continued fervently: "It's not all bad, though: death. Your troubles will be over; let others take care of the paperwork. Boy, is there ever a lot of paperwork! It'll take months and months for it to all be sorted out; maybe even as long as a year. And all that time, you'll be silent. You won't even be able to laugh about the mess you left behind. You'll not be thinking at all. Ah, but I know greater poets than myself‑slightly greater, albeit‑have covered this in greater detail elsewhere."

There was no stopping him. I thought my head was going to explode.

"Oh," he continued, "I can see we've just about finished with that aspect of reality. Let's move on to the great cultural suicide. We're in the death throes, you know. When was the last time there was a good book, a good movie, a good song? It's been about thirty years now. Pile on painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, dance, theatre, and what do you have? A whole generation-and-a-half that has accomplished absolutely nothing. Do you think there's a way to turn it around? I have grave doubts. How can you jump-start culture? It's not a battery, Grasshopper."

 

*

 

One morning, an older man, entirely unknown to my mother, came to our house. (I was probably at school that day.) He introduced himself as her husband's father: "His real father." Now, my mother didn't require that adjective, since she knew her mother-in-law's second husband‑the one called Skaife‑was dead and buried. Yet, she knew nothing of this real father. She didn't know much about him at all.

She invited this man‑my real grandfather‑in for coffee, explaining her husband was still at work and wouldn't be home till evening. He told her was passing through, on his way from Kingston to Detroit, and that he'd used a phone book to find our house. In any case, he had to be on his way. He had to be home before midnight.

He went on his way, he got in his car, he drove away. "I'll drop by again, someday, if I can."

In the evening, my mother told my father about this visit. My father, once he realized what it had all meant, broke down. Once he was able to talk again, he told his wife: "My mother told me he was dead."

He never returned.

That happened in the early '70s.

 

*

 

"I have to say, the space program, what with landing on the moon, that was pretty exciting. It was certainly the highlight of my life."

My attention to the Wise One was regained. I asked: "Seeing it on television?"

"No, my boy, not on television; doing it, landing there, walking around! Oh, but I suppose all of this is not common knowledge: much worse! If you tell anyone about it, you're likely to get yourself killed.

"It was all hush-hush, back in January 1961. There was a rocket and all the other stuff involved, and me and a couple buddies got launched out from in the middle of the Mohave Desert. The scientists gave us a five per cent chance of survival, which seemed about right.

"It took days to get to the moon. We landed, walked around some, got back in the rocket thing, back to the orbiting aircraft. A couple days later, we splashed down in shark-infested waters. That's when my buddies got it. I was the only survivor. The eggheads were in raptures. That was why Kennedy had to vow to get to the moon. All because it had already been done. I'll tell you no lies."

 

*

 

A family in a fishing village. A mother, a father, and four daughters. One ordinary morning, in their two bedrooms, the daughters awake. Their beds have shrunk. When they swing over to arise, their knees are too high, the windows too low, the ceiling too near. Their clothes no longer fit. They have to bend over to get out into the hall and down the stairs likewise. Down below, their parents hear a tremendous amount of creaking, like the steps are going to give way. Their daughters appear: they are all eight feet tall or so, and very ashamed.

The parents, of course, pretend there is nothing wrong. It could be a passing phase! The daughters can't go to school, naturally; it seems they've all come down with the croup. The day is spend making new clothes, as if this were an ordinary task.

Tanizaki's The Tall Girls was his fifth book. A satire of small-town conventions in the Meiji period, it brought him his first taste of international recognition beyond the Japanese shores, is now being published for the first time in English in its original dimensions.

 

Junichiro Tanizaki, The Tall Girls, 402p., 11.21 x 3.11 x 72.09 cm.

 

*

 

"I've lived a very long time, you see. Way back then, when I was a boy, we had these devices called radios. Can't remember the last time I saw one, as a matter of fact." He seemed to be rambling pointlessly. "People used to broadcast sounds, through the air, believe it or not, not like you're hearing me now, but rather in an electronic form. There'd be a transmitter somewhere, some place high on a hill, and our radios would receive these 'radio waves' and convert them into sound."

I ventured: "What kinds of sounds would these be?"

"Oh, all kinds of sounds. You could hear news reports of distant lands, and sports events happening far away, and there were advertisements; but the most important thing was the music. Endless bunches of songs three or four at a time, all seamlessly blended together. It was our primary method of learning about things outside of ourselves and about how to do them ourselves, things like love and sex. We learned all about love and sex, and everyone picked up on words and phrases that worked like magic spells on one another. I don't know if there's any substitute for it nowadays."

 

*

 

It's funny how Las Vegas brings people out into the light. A while city built on a ruthless concept of freedom shows people who they are, and also shows the same to those on the outside of themselves.

My boyfriend and I went down there last winter. We'd never been there before. We were in the hotel, with its heated bathroom floor, when he said to me: "I want a prostitute."

I couldn't think of a way to stop him, Las Vegas and all. We agreed on giving it a rest until the day after tomorrow.

Two days later, he said: "I'm going off to find a prostitute now."

I said: "Well, I can't stop you."

After he'd gone, I went down to the hotel bar, met a half-way-decent-looking stranger, talked for a spell, then went back to the hotel room. It was good.

I got rid of him easily enough, and took a nap.

My boyfriend woke me. He had his prostitute with him. He said: "This is my prostitute."

"Hello." "Hello."

"I think I'm going to propose to her."

The prostitute said: "Hang on a minute. That's not in the cards."

"How's that?"

"You're not Catholic. So, no."

 

*

 

The walls were plaster, crossed all over with horizontals and verticals of wood that might have been oak but was more likely just filthy. Oh, he was still talking. I turned my head.

"I never was one much for the names of people. Part of it's because I always had the hardest time thinking I could actually know someone well enough to care to remember his or her name. Animals, on the other hand, I always remembered their names. I could relate to them very well. Their psychologies were well-known and non-threatening. Of course, I'm generalizing a great deal; I discovered some things about one psychology in particular, and that belonged to my wife.

"I remember once, we were hunkered down during the Phony Plague. Maybe you don't recall that; it happened about five years before the Great Plague, the biological warfare one. Anyway, we were keeping track of a robin out back who came day after day. However, I thought this bird changed its character from one day to the next. It was the damnedest thing. How can one bird behave so differently day-to-day? Turned out: there were two robins who did shift work."

He laughed long and hard.

 

*

 

I myself an, not who was how had there. Into food, at airport, what seemed be. Women ahead me, talking. I say was attracted both them. Any, down the court, noticed was line, nobody, the food I looked to. A stand, however, operating. Guy selling. I him: "I one cream, some, maybe onions?" Said: "Don't make that, but, sure." Was the when asked: "Big the of be?" Said holding a pinched: "About big." Finished, wrapped up, handed over.

Sat at plastic. A later, two I seen the sat right me. Had with of on. They'd over me, smile, they see or see, and generally strange. One, blonde: "Are coming going?" Said: "Not sure. I've my." The said: "Do have plane?" I my and an piece heavy. I it the. "I know end at." Looked over said: "At destination. Guess home." "Am? I know to." "Then home us."

Thing remember were in, and was. The smelled with. I snuggled the, and brunette snuggled me. Wondered they told their at point. Rolled my. My was, but didn't what do it. Signs we'd done, but didn't what. Felt everything to again. Brunette have awake. Put hand my, then took away. Everytime's on master.

 

*

 

"Last call for beverages! Last call for beverages!" That was the waitress in a loud voice. We all looked at one another in shock, as if a hotel alarm clock had rung us away from a tryst. The Wise One smiled and laughed at us. "There's an end to everything, no matter how gratifying it may be. Time devours all things. I read that somewhere. I can't recall where.

"Oh, when I was young, it seemed like poetic language was falling all over around me, like passenger pigeons after a blunderbuss's fusillade. I once spent a whole day alliterating, to no purpose. I figured I had plenty of time to attend to important things. Later, I regretted my mis-spent youth; but now I realize I used it exactly to its purpose. Evil unto the day and so on and so forth.

"I tried whole-heartedly to talk in funny language, all the time. It attracted the chicks! There was once this beautiful actress named Marilyn Monroe who married a homely playwright. 'Why?' all the newspapers asked her. You know her response? 'He's funny,' she said. 'If a man can get a girl to laugh, he can get her to do anything.'"

 

*

 

I'm wondering: Where are you now?

Which of the continents do you grace with your presence? Have you returned to Africa, assuming you've been there already? Europe: Prague? Can I can picture you in Prague, peering at knick-knacks in a junk-junk shop?

Are you sleeping now? Are you on a straw mattress, or on something finer? Has anything important happened to you in the last six hours? Have you been with someone you love more than you love me? Are you wet down there, wet with someone's cum?

Have you been thinking, say, in the last year, about that day in the park when we ran out of wine? Did I that day tell you I ran down a hill, faster than I'd ever gone, to get us another bottle? Do you think it was all just a waste of time?

Was I so terrible to you? Why weren't you so terrible back? Did you think we could get along? Was I a 'prospect'? Did you even possess that term in your argot? How impossible is it to say: "I would have been happy if things had turned out differently"?

Me? It's 9:52 here. June 4. The weather is parkish.

 

*

 

END OF THE LINE, ON THE STAIRS

 

As we were going up the stairs up from the basement tavern, the Wise One stopped, and turned, to leave me with a couple more pearls of wisdom. "There's going to come a day when you're as old as I am now," he told me. "When you reach that age, you'll be wanting to bend the ear of someone as young as you are yourself now. And you know what you're going to tell that Grasshopper? You're going to tell him pretty much everything I've told you tonight, only using a fancy kind of future language.

"And that's because you're going to go through everything I've gone through. Some of the details will differ, but no detail will be significant. And going through everything I've gone through, it'll leave the same marks on you. When I was a child, no-one died; now it seems like everyone I know is dying or is dead. You'll get there too. There's no doubt about it; it's unavoidable. And then you'll reach your own late days, in which the odds of dying on any particular day are....

"I could tell you you'll figure it out. You won't."