GH O TI
f
i sh
Issue No. 2
Leisure
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The ache in
his tooth aches like no other ache he has ever felt, and in fact, the ache
isn’t even an ache, more like a tug, a pullboat or
trawler that trolls inside his gums and jaw for pain, a pain that comes in
bursts, in Alexander Calder vividness, in crimson spurts that ache or tug. He always
thought history advanced in a straight line, perhaps meandering, wavering,
halting, pausing, but always more or less straight in a crooked manner,
nevertheless advancing to the beat of a timpani, with rotating rounds of
piccolo and oboe in accompaniment: but recently he realized this is not so. “Because
wholeness is what man strives for, the power to achieve leisure is one of the
fundamental powers of the human soul.” Today is an
aviary day, one of the three days when he must attend to the Egrets, and the acadia flycatchers, His mother
used to say if he wasn’t working more than forty hours a week, he wasn’t
maximizing his potential, as his worth is quantifiable, as he was to be
productive and reasonable, and reproductive, and rational: he wonders
what she would make of him now, not that he would change regardless, or
could—not that he is in any way remarkable in his own eyes, or that these
thoughts stick with him like the thumping ache of his tooth. The tooth is
one of the back teeth, which he thinks is a molar (perhaps he is wrong), but
he will live with the pain rather than go to the dentist, for dentists spend
all day with their hands in people’s mouths, and who can respect a man, or a
woman, who would chose to spend all day with their hands in people’s mouths?
Not that his
line of work is superior (clearly it is not), and he doesn’t think of it as a
line really, but just something to divert him from his usual activities—plus
he likes the birds and the cafeteria does offer him free hotdogs and
pretzels, as many as he wants. He must wake
up since the alarm has gone off ten times, and ten times he has hit snooze,
and he’s supposed to be there at nine thirty and already it’s eight forty
five which will leave little time for a frozen bagel and/or instant coffee. “The
religious value set upon constant, systematic, efficient work in one’s
calling as the ready means of securing the certainty of salvation and of
glorifying God became a most powerful agency in economic expansion.” History
advances, if “advances” is the right word, in a figure eight, looping back to
its origins, and then back around to it’s opposite. The birds help
him realize this. He has a
feeling of fainting, though he is still lying in bed, but still the feeling
continues, as if he’s falling though the bed, into the box springs, through
the box springs, under the floor, under the bedrock, into the mantle of the
earth, and melting in the flow. Then the
feeling passes. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Eleven. He thinks of
connectivity: the soul of the alarm clock, the soul of his mother, the
soul of the Ex-lax, the soul of the Jell-o, the soul of the credit card, the
soul of the Dixicups, each one with its own soul. These are
overwhelming thoughts that, at times, precede the fainting, and at other
times inspire him to retreat into himself where he can connect with the souls
and sift through the connectiveness. “Leisure, it
must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude—it is not
simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of
spare time, a holiday, a weekend or a vacation.” The
roadrunner is sick with something he should bring to the attention of the
zookeeper, but he wonders if the zookeeper will question him, as he usually
doe by saying: “Why didn’t you bring this to my attention earlier?” The soul of
the roadrunner is unique, and independent, which he can feel more than see,
and which feels like a cat’s whiskers on the back of his thighs. Perhaps the
figure eight doesn’t truly loop back around, since a gap may exist somewhere
along the loop, and if this is so, how do events connect to one another or
cause one another at all? You can’t understand these things just by
reading, he thinks. The feeling
of fainting comes to him when he is stressed, which is what he tried to
explain to his mother, but she wanted him to see a doctor for this, which he
couldn’t do as a result of his many feelings of anxiety and remorse, though
his mother wanted him to explain these matters to her, which he had a
difficult time doing. The tooth
ache is no longer a tooth ache, but a jaw ache, a face ache, a skull ache. Vibrations
ripple through his jaw, and face, and skull as the alarm goes off again. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Twelve. “Compared
with the exclusive ideal of work as activity, leisure implies (in the first
place) an attitude of non-activity, of inward calm, of silence; it means not
being ‘busy’ but letting things happen.” He thinks of
the soul of the zookeeper, the soul of his tooth, the soul of erector sets,
the sun, blenders, grass. He thinks he
should now get up, for if he doesn’t he might be fired, and if he’s fired he
will not be able to take care of the birds, and if he’s not able to take care
of the birds another soul will, a soul that may or not be as attuned to the
souls of birds as he is. If the
figure eight doesn’t loop back around and connect—which he is more and more
certain it doesn’t—then events are just events, and are flat and drained of
meaning: and if this is so, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet is a philosopher
for soaring above the conifers of Alaska. “In his
well-known study of capitalism Max Weber quotes the saying, that ‘one does
not work to live; one lives to work,’ which nowadays no one has much
difficulty in understanding: it expresses the current opinion.” Yet when he
verbalizes this to his other half, she tells him his mother was right—he is
depressed. Yet he has
never abused drugs and/or alcohol, and he has a sunny disposition. Can people
with sunny dispositions still be depressed? Perhaps this
has something to do with his tooth. He thinks he should now get up because it
will feel nice to have warm jets of water rushing over his body. He unplugs
the alarm clock, thinks about trying a mental approach, and then he feels as
if he might faint again, but it passes, though the skull ache persists like a
xebec over the rough waters of the The
apartment is still warm from yesterday, and even naked, he begins to
sweat—which is another reason to His other
half has left one wet towel on the floor, a green one, the faded green one
the color of baby lettuce. He steps
into the hot jets of water and sighs. He wonders
if the shower has a soul, then he feels it; then he wonders if water has a
soul or each particle of water has its own soul, but he thinks it is just
water, all water. The
roadrunner will be happy to see him, happier than the most
needy lunatic child. History is
an oxymoron, he thinks, an artificial projection of meaning onto what truly
is chaos. He thinks of
the soul of his other half, which he is unsure about, and the soul of the
timpani and Alexander Calder, and ‘God Bless America,’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’ if
songs have souls—which he thinks they do. Perhaps the
dentist isn’t such a bad idea. He dries off
with a pink towel the color of penicillin. “Man, then,
is limited by his environment in exactly the same way as an animal, that is
to say, he is limited to a selected environment assembled, as it were, by
natural selection and biological necessity; he is incapable of apprehending
anything and, even though searching for it, of finding anything outside his
environment—like the jackdaw that cannot find a motionless grasshopper.” Or a frozen
bagel, since his other half cleaned the refrigerator. But the
happiness of the roadrunner isn’t happiness, he knows. His mother
used to wonder if he could find contentment, but he would always tell her
that contentment isn’t there to find, that contentment finds us. Instead he
eats a piece of ice chomping it into bits, letting water dribble down his
jaw. This doesn’t
help matters. And if
history is an oxymoron, then forget the aviary, though there are consequences
that will have to be attended to. Perhaps
he’ll go to the park instead, though if he goes to the park instead of the
zoo perhaps he will not eat anything all day, which will not do since like
the Western Grebe, we have to eat. His mother
probably thought he was an odd child. He decides
to go to work, and decides to dress, as the children may be startled to see
him naked when he tends to the birds. “Whatever
the laxity of the law, the Christian is bound to consider the golden rule and
the public good.” If it were
only so simple, he thinks, my life would be much easier. Yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes. He opens the
door, and locks it behind him, thinking of the soul of the ice cube, and the
soul of the doorknob, and his shirt, and the birdshit he will scrape, the
seed he will offer, and how these things are all as interlaced as a basket, thatchery. |