Dispatches from Terra Incognita: Part 2
Fragments from the Estranged Mind of an Old Guy Trying to Make Sense of an Extremely Confusing World
Saturday, cold as a witch’s you know what, and I’m at the Lab to give a urine sample.
No one there but a muscular woman, about forty-five, with long black hair tastefully streaked with a touch of grey. Not a beauty parlor job, but a look gifted to her by the Author of All Things Cool.
She leads me to a room with 60s hard rock music playing loudly. She examines me as if she’s going to remove my appendix instead of draw some blood. She seems happy, probably one of those glass-half-full people I’ve always wanted to be.
“You don’t look like you’re 72,” she says.
“I take care of myself,” I say.
“Is the music too loud?”
“No, I grew up with it. I saw Zeppelin and James Gang in 1969 at a place called Kleinhan’s Music Hall in Buffalo, NY. Philharmonic halls have amazing acoustics.”
“Who else did you see?”
I begin to offer the obligatory old-guy litany but then say, “What does it matter?’
“You’re kidding right? If you told me I could see Zeppelin’s first tour if I killed my husband, he’d be six-feet underground tomorrow.”
She laughs very hard, then noticing my expression, says,. “Relax, sweetie, I’m just kidding.” She hands me my plastic cup, and on the way to the toilet I think about her husband. He’s buried in the woods somewhere in NH, the tip of his black leather boot poking out from a hastily dug grave. Meanwhile his wife’s in Buffalo, wearing bellbottoms and a tight white halter top, listening to “Dazed and Confused,” genuflecting before the whine of Jimmy Paige’s 1959 Fender Telecaster.
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The atheist and misanthropist E. M. Cioran, wrote books with upbeat titles like, The Trouble with Being Born, A Short History of Decay, Drawn and Quartered, and On the Heights of Despair. He also championed some interesting arguments for and against suicide. His reward for delving into such difficult topics. God, and I’m talking about my God, the Guy who happens to have a sense of humor an irony, condemned Cioran to live until he was 84.
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Anything I need to know about philosophy or human nature I can find at the zoo.
I really believe that.
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Another Angry White Guy:
In a world full uncertainty, a universe of random quirks of fate and diabolical interventions from demons impersonating human beings, one certainty in life is that everyone at the YMCA pool doesn’t want to share a lane. So imagine my glee when I discovered myself gliding solo, as happy as an overfed goldfish in his own private aquarium. It’s early dawn, the sun filtering in softly from plate glass windows. Having only two laps left and being an extraordinarily thoughtful person, I tell a guy with a red swim cap, who’s sharing the lane next to me, that he can have my lane after I finish my last sprint.
“Thanks, he says “but I’m doing just fine in life without you offering your assistance.”
I notice his nipples, dark and red as ripe cherries. Two oversized blazing eyes, seeming to taunt me. It’s a secret weapon of sorts. I decide I will name him Mr. Red Nipples because that makes me laugh, and it’s always better to be happy than sad.
But how do I respond to him?
My desired response: “Actually,” I would like to say, “your comment suggests that you aren’t doing fine.” To which he would respond, “What did you say?” To which I would respond, “I said to go fuck yourself.”
My actual response: “Yeah, maybe you have a point there.” And then I go back to swimming, noticing that in spite of his stupid comment, he’s waiting for me to finish. Maybe he just felt the need to act tough and thought insensitivity might work.
My normal lap routine has tired me in a good way, so I should head home, but, thinking of Mr. Red Nipples’ asshole response, I keep swimming. Even when he interrupts me a few times to ask if I’m done, I keep swimming, and swimming, until a hefty woman who tends to do backwards angels and is therefore dangerous in a lap lane, joins me, whereupon I lift myself onto the edge of the pool and head for my swim bag. Just as I’m leaving, the person who is the lane with Mr. Red Nipples leaves, which means he will now have his own lane.
This does not seem fair to me. In fact, I truly believe his good fortune may in some way upset the balance of nature.
I throw my towel over my shoulder and head toward the showers. A woman , a regular, with an cherubic face, who also specializes in backward angels is exiting the women’s shower and approaching. She has her choice of three lanes where only one person is swimming. So I point to Mr. Red Nipples. “The guy with the red cap is really easy to swim with,” I say. “He stays in his own lane. I mean, you could even do angels in that lane if you wanted to.” “Thanks,” she says, and I head to the showers.
In the Y parking lot, I notice some roadkill. It seems fresh, maybe a squirrel, and I feel bad for the poor creature. Unlike Mr. Red Nipples the creature deserved a better fate.
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People can’t accept that life is messy. And who can blame them? In a messy universe, your Truth can’t always be the “right” Truth, because acceptance of messiness means that other people have Truths, too. Which would mean that Real Life, which is of course messy, would involve everyone bringing their respective Truths to the table and, through mutual cooperation and respect, discovering a “truer” and more authentic Truth.
Unfortunately, this takes time, and there is so much to do: watching television for example, or constantly toying with one’s cell phone on one’s lap so that, in a venue like a packed movie theater or lecture hall, everyone appears to sitting and playing with themselves.
In a similar vein, the poet Charles Simic writes of people’s love of the absolute as follows: “First you simplify whatever is complex, you reduce reality to a single concept, and then you start a church of some kind. What surprises me endlessly is how every new absolutism, every one-sided world view is instantly attractive to seemingly so many intelligent people.”
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A little prose poem about how people always feel happy and in control when they can give a name to something that is unnamable.
“Synchronicity”
It has come to my attention that the world is falling apart. But let’s talk about my favorite end table that inexplicably collapsed on our sleeping black pug, or the leaky roof that could use a therapist since no carpenter has been able to deconstruct the problem. Of late, I’ve been feeling very cosmic, a word that would make even the most earnest pointy-headed alien blush. What I’m saying is that for brief moments, I’ve been privileged to see the Big Picture, to make connections between those many and varied God-given signs portending the end of this viral world. Like when your doorbell rings and you’re face-to-face with a little fat boy wearing shoulder pads, or a prepubescent girl in a tutu chaperoned by her agitated anorexic mom—both of them wanting a donation, the payoff being a plastic card that promises you 10% off local restaurants that, for good reasons, no one eats at.
Synchronicity is what the great thinkers call a day like this, because having a name for such common-place incongruities often makes it bearable.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the free PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+