Monday, February 2, 2004

The Phoenix and I, continued.

The old man sat nestled close to the fire. His parted lips, dumbly gape, still stood in their usual placement. His eyes—his maddening, dumbing eyes—still looked the same. In the fire his eyes glew with even more atrocious madness. I could only see the sides of his eyes. The fire was in them, making them sparkle, making his whole face glow.

"The fire, uh. The fire. It's, warm," he said. It was still in a small lull—a low voice that sounded as if he were only talking to himself.

"Yes," I said, feeling uncomfortable, but wanting to say something all the same. "Yes, it sure is." I looked at him as I said it, and when he spoke again, his eyes did not falter, his gaze did not move away from the flame. My mind was battling with the idea of this man being mad. Was he really mad? What had made him mad, and if so, had he always been mad?

The senile old man lulled up again.

"What's your name? Uh, my name's Walter. Walter, uh, Walter Price."

My name's, uh. My name's uh Seymour, uh. Seymour, uh, Mont, I wanted to say. I had to hold back boisterous laughter. I could just hear myself saying that in my mind—it sounded exactly like this man's, Walter's, voice. With the uhs in it—that dull croak to it—an old man's speak—it sounded just like it. Somehow, the thought took my mind off this man's inherent craziness for the moment. A smile on my face, the arrest of laughter, I said, "My name's Seymour Luxus Mont. Just Sy to my friends, which are few and far between, it appears." He was still gazing into the fire, encaptured by it. "By the way, Walter, is it okay if I call you, perhaps, Walt? If you want an equal exchange, you could most certainly call me Sy, if you wanted."

Walt. My thoughts turned to that transcendentalist Walt Whitman, and again my mind was at work using humor to lighten things up—to kill away how crazy this man seemed, how lost and cracked. O captain my captain, that one poem went. I wanted to shout it out then and there—wanted to yawp—and bust out in song and poetic demur. Again I smiled, fighting off and arresting my laughter. No Laughter, that's a bad boy, a very bad boy. You're under arrest, and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. And there the handcuffs would be pulled around Laughter, and my vocal cords—which were straining to crackle with Laughter—and to jail, behind cold steel bars Laughter would go. Three square meals a day of bread and water and rocks. A hard bed with broken coils, and a tempting window which would show light—the light of freedom, and what could—what would've happened—if laughter hadn't been such a bad little boy.

My thoughts were trailing again. So much that I was starting to think I was mad, and that I was only seeing this Walt's madness because I wanted to see it. But I do suppose humor is the logical response. It's the way I have always been. In the face of pressure, of danger, of death's eye, I was always wittying myself along in my own way. And maybe this old man—this crazy-looking, senile man—maybe he and I weren't too different at al. Maybe I looked just as crazy to him? I certainly would never know. He was urbane—polished and keeping his composure. His face told me nothing of what was going on in his mind. For being so crazy, my mind joked, he sure is reserved and composed, quite sane. How can someone reserved and composed by mad? Oh wait, that's because you're mad, isn't it? You're the one that's insane.

I think my thoughts gave new meaning to that crackerjack term for the insane asylum: the "funny farm." Thinking this, I almost laughed again, and I arrested my laughter again, as if Laughter was as much as disease as Alcoholism. It seemed I needed to keep reminding myself to get rid of my compulsion. Time to go to Laughers Anonymous, Sy. Time to get a hold of yourself, be around your kind, and tell your sad little story of how mad you felt a man was one cold Winter's eve. Anything's better than the funny farm, right? Anything's better, even that.

It seemed I had been sitting there the longest of times, my thoughts trailing, my mind reeling; and then the old man finally spoke up again. He was still looking at the fire, as if he were fire itself incarnate, as if he was staring it down. He intended to stare it down until he won, it seemed. "Uh, you can call me Walt—it's, uh, fine." He paused. "I, uh, remember. . . remember when, uh, we'd need coal, when, uh, it was so cold. During the, uh, the uh depression. . .funny how, uh, developed things are now. You've got your, uh, electricity, your natural, uh, gas heating." I nodded and nodded and nodded—it was all I could do, all I knew to do. There wasn't much I could add—the man was talking about the 1930s, for crying out loud. I was about negative thirty years old then. And that's young. Much too young to remember. I had what pictures I'd seen, what I'd learned, but it didn't go to the depths this man was talking about now. "Uh, yeah it was a lot different back then. Times were, uh, hard. . .harder than they'd ever been."

"My father, uh, he was a farmer. Farmer's, uh, they had it bad."

I nodded. I knew about it. "Yes, I know," I said, "it even got so bad they destroyed their own crops, even slaughtered their domesticated animals. Burned crops. Also, there was the dust bowl, wasn't there? The drought."

"Uh yeah." Still looking at the fire, his eyes still glowing, his face still dancing with its light. Can't you look away? my mind screamed. Can't you look away, talk louder, and get rid of the dumbstruck gape and eyes? "I remember, uh, watching my dad do it, too. . .I had this one horse, I uh, loved him. I'd uh, named him Babe, after, uh, Babe Ruth—he was big then, uh, he gave me. . .inspiration. My dad took the gun. . .and. . .and." He grimaced a bit, the first noticeable change in his composure. And his eyes had this fragility that went past his senile appearance. His voice came to a low murmur, then in a whisper he said, "And he uh killed Babe. Killed him right then and there—and his blood, oh, his uh blood."

My mind saw it—but didn't want to. Looking grave, feeling compassion for this man in an off-hand way, I said, "I'm sorry." And added, "I guess we do have it pretty lucky now, don't we? Go to school—get a good education, a good job." I sighed, a long sigh. "Then just. . .live." Living—it was all you could do, really, wasn't it? "It makes you wonder, seeing how much things change. How fast we got our electricity—our heating—it makes you wonder what the next level is. What's going to happen next, what we're going to create—what we're going to discover, find, understand.

"With the advent of the human genome project, and the advent of our understanding of genes. . .eventually we'll be able to control our own appearance, how we look when we're born, what sex we are. It's a scary thought. . .a very scary thought. You know, Einstein was known for saying, 'Even God doesn't throw dice.' Well, eventually we'll be a God, and we won't be throwing any dice any more. It's a scary thought, knowing that we could control all that. . .governs us. All that makes us. And fundamentally, I think that will destroy us. . .our knowledge and the way we use it, some use it, will destroy us." It all came back to the fire again, and what it meant—fire, burning strong, living off its oxygen. But without the oxygen, it fades, it flickers and dies. And when it grows too much—when it is allowed the right conditions to adapt, to feed, it will burn everything in its path—will scar everything it touches and make it to ash and ember—will kill the trees which take the carbon dioxide and turns it to oxygen. And because the fire no longer will have enough oxygen to sustain its uncontrollable nature, it will die. And the Phoenix and man, the Phoenix and I, will arise again.

In the end the nature will rule. And it's right that way. It's good that way. It's meant that way. It should be that way, it shouldn't be any other way at all. Simplicity overtaking complexity. In the simpleness of nature there is the complexity to harness it. And once harnessed, once warped and emulsified to man's own will, the complexity is penetrating and arresting—detaining and lifeless, apprehending, limiting. And so complexity cannot last. In bondage, detained, one will seek to crack his metal cuffs holding his hands, will seek to escape.

And those who don't seek to escape will be victims of their own humanity—of what they are. Selfish, self-sustained, wanting it all, they will not be able to control what they have harnessed. And uncontrolled, complexity will deviate to simplicity. And the stark wonder that is nature will prevail—the nature that is unchanged and undefiled earth, and simple life.

That man Walt and I, we talked over this most of the night. He still seemed mad to me—but it seemed to be becoming less and less, I seemed to be a lot like this Walt.

I still found it funny how the conversation had began with farms and farmers, when I'd just thought of that crackerjack term for the insane asylum: the "funny farm," moments before.

Walt still had the crazy look in his eyes, the dumbstruck part of his lips. But it no longer seemed insane, no longer mad, it seemed like him; it seemed like him more than anything now. As we drifted off to sleep, my mind felt, for the moment, at rest. A rest that was comforted in security, in serene simplicity—in the starkness of how I was thinking, of how simple things really could be, and should be.

I was thinking a long time. The fire was out by then. Had died from lack of anything to burn, even though it had plenty of oxygen. The ash glew dully. I made a tired little smile, a playful one. And I became a drifter in the thin wall of sleep. That thin wall that can so easily be broken and seem like reality.
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