If I remember anything it is because it is worth remembering. If ever I forget anything my ears have heard, eyes beheld, body has felt—the great, the terrible, the seemingly mundane and trivial, all injuries and kindnesses—it is because I am an idiot. No greater stupidity exists than the thoughtlessness of failing to recall the good that was ever rendered us, or the unwholesomeness that we had a hand in breeding, or ignoring.
I have made a habit of repeating in my mind a jaded mantra—that my lives have been the comedies I never took serious enough, and the tragedies a sensitive ego was never man enough to laugh at. I want that to change. So now I write to recall and reinforce what I am able, to redeem myself in a way by recognizing and reviewing what I have done and failed to do, learn from action and inaction, and attempt to untangle certain knots of fate in order to avoid the winding Möbius strip that leads my feet walking infinitely nowhere.
Every moment we can write for ourselves a better story, a nobler autobiography. But we can never rewrite one. Otherwise it would be untrue. Every day is an enfolding discovery where we slowly learn what is truthful later reveals itself as false—a source of both disappointment and consolation. Heroes become villains, adversaries allies. We can never take back what has been done. Only edit our tales so they become worth telling.
This is how mine originally began:
“I honestly thought you would have judged me more harshly,” I exhaled.
“Why should I have?” asked the angel. “You’re only a mortal man, a pitiful product of your instincts. You never asked to be born with such base desires. The only clear instruction given to you was bestowed by fools, not unlike yourself, that had already walked into the same folly and never realized it or choose never to admit it. The only reward for either ignoring or rejecting their instructions and these desires was the grand gift of their resentment and a bland life. Truth is, in most regards, you were only granted a simple mind and forced into a world that was far from simple. You thought (and I don’t blame you) happiness could be achieved by the acquisition of desire, but then became unsatisfied because like many you sought after the wrong things, or had no clear idea of what you really wanted. With so much sorrow laden tragedy, and distraction, and diseases of mind and body there to destroy you and those you love, it is no wonder that many people when they witness a person truly happy believe he is either half-crazy, or lives in a state of ignorance, a virgin to the experiences and misfortunes of the world, like some ghost just passing through. But ignorance is not bliss. What an insidious falsehood that maxim has always been. Ignorance is not bliss. Those four words should be hammered into the marrow of every babe that dares shows its face in the world. Ignorance is merely the absence of the awareness of suffering; if not a person’s own, then another’s. If you sweep dirt under a rug, is the house clean? Ignorance is the absence of empathy. The bliss in ignorance is a false cheat. It eventually catches up with you, then you are ill prepared for it, never having learned how to steel yourself against suffering or how to ameliorate it.”
I had much to think about, but finally managed to say, “Even so, I guess I was a bit of a bastard, then.”
“I have witnessed many a more bastardly deed than any of your own.”
“So you never really expected much out of me?” said I, both relieved and ashamed.
“Can you blame me?” he asked, wryly smiling. “The only course of action that could be reasonably expected of you was that you would chase after pleasure in pursuit of happiness.”
“Not exactly a noble destiny.”
“It is always the noblest. And always the basest.”
I looked down. Then he spoke again. “Do you wish for a short cut to happiness?”
“Short cuts make for unexpected delays,” I retorted, but thirsted to hear it.
“First, suffer greatly. All is relative. And may your passions never die.” He paused. “That last statement is not so much a prescription as it is a blessing.”
“But Buddha stressed, as do most religions in some manner, the renunciation of desire, and yet, one must first have a desire to achieve the absence of desire. This is like trying to put out fire with a flame. And further still, whenever I let myself let go of desire, I felt like I was lapsing into the indifference of apathy. However comforting this was, I felt it to be wrong, like I owed my friends and the world much more—the path of the bodhisattva haunting my heart. So what should be our destiny, heroism or happiness? Or should we seek to reconcile the two?”
He stared at me. I began to become uncomfortable. So I said, “Alright, desire then. What should I most desire, and should I seek after it, or just hold it in my heart and let it happen naturally?”
“Reconcile? You may as well say weaken. Let them be and exist as paradox And, correct desire, correct passion, to be more accurate. This at least, is one of the ‘secrets’ or methods to what you call happiness. Everybody is different, and must seek happiness in a manner according to their own gifts and in accordance with the fortunes or misfortunes that are flung across their path. But I might suggest for you, and a good many, that you should seek after what is most good and pure, and to help others find these things as well. If anyone or anything ever tries to deny you this goodness and purity, fight them with all your soul. Take on Hell and Earth barehanded and single-handed if you have to. Find happiness by taking great pleasure in the battle. And always try to find excuses to laugh. Do not be cynical either, no matter what.”
“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, sounds like,” he agreed, repainting my compliment with sarcasm. “But I don’t always follow my own advice. That is why I am here having to greet you bums, never having set my sights for anything higher. Just lazy I guess.” He paused. “But not half as lazy as your kind. So, does this sound okay to you?”
“Uh, sounds like a lot of work.”
Suddenly I heard his voice from behind me. “Then, boy, you better get started!”
During this exchange I did not know if I had ears or mouth with which to hear and speak as my greatest tactile sensation (or lack of it) was one of disembodiment, but certainly, I possessed some form of ass because I felt a dull thud that made one of my cheeks go numb as the angel planted his foot against it. I managed to spin around as I fell off the cloud and hang on with my fingers. I looked up at my friend and asked, “You ever heard of the scientific method? Better known as walking where your words have been talking. Leave off your ivory tower and visit the vale of tears sometime.”
“Ha, ha! Are you crazy? They’ll eat me alive down there. I don’t know how you can stand it, or how anyone can manage to get through life without quitting. Organic life is one tough S.O.B. (begging your pardon, Mother Earth).”
I felt a little proud at hearing him say this. I also felt a crushing pain in my fingers as he stepped on them.
“How can I let go until you lift your foot, you fool?”
“Oh yes, duh,” he acknowledged and lifted the offending foot.
I let go.
“One other thing,” he flew down beside me as I fell through the air. “You may seek for this thing your whole life and not even achieve it until your last dying moments, or then realize you had it all along, never knowing. Life’s a bitch. But that doesn’t mean you have to act like one. You’re going to suck at a lot of things you try to do, and piss a lot of people off along the way attempting to please them. Just try your best, always. That’s all anyone can justifiably ask from you.” Then added, “And you know what? It won’t be enough. Never.” Maybe it was the onrushing air from the fall, but his eyes looked teary. “You can be damn sure of that. But do it anyway.” He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Just for kicks.”
“What can I really accomplish though? What will happen if I make mistakes and fail?”
“As for that worry, here are two of the greatest and defining desires that we must perpetually choose between. What do you crave most: valid excuses for giving up or reasons to keep trying?”
The interplay between this angel and I is both false and true. It never happened. But I wish it had because of the verisimilitude and integrity of his words. If such an event had transpired then my life from that point on might have taken a better turn. Might. We never know how much better or how worse our lives may turn out at each divergence of the stream of time, but one fact is certain—we all at some point are haunted by the sensation and belief that we have been cheated or shorthanded. We pine for justice, for friends. And sometimes we get them. In strange and fantastic ways.
If this exchange between the angel and I had actually transpired it would have ended with these last words of his: “One last thing before I go. Wake up!” sounding like someone turned each of my ears into a belfry and pulled the rings of bells as mercilessly as possible. I woke with my head pounding upon a table. More accurately written, my head was not actually pounding the table. I had only passed out. I was not suffering from a seizure or anything like that. Fortunate that I did not. The table was hewn from stone, not wood. My splitting headache would have been made more than metaphor. A desiccated throat felt like it could drink a river of water and an eye roamed for a source, but only saw a dirty bottle of dark liquor half emptied. In a roguish way I was somewhat proud of how much I thought I had consumed. I must be getting tougher, I thought, never knowing how tough I would have to become.
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I always held the belief that sheer willpower, rabid determination, and undying passion can carry a man far as any inborn talent; then, just as often, lament with great regret that the Universe does not share my sentiments. Abstaining from details, let it suffice to say that the angel’s words, imaginary as they are, proved true—I did end up failing at a lot of things, never able to shake the suspicion I was designed for a different world, maybe born into the wrong time and place. An old soul of sorts. I do not know. I guess life just was not my thing.
Yes or no, death took it all the same. I am not ready to write of that event, or the life preceding it. And neither is this written work devoted toward either one. In another volume, perhaps. The chapters of this book owe their allegiance to the here and now. At least as often as the sweet persistent stabbing of nostalgia will allow me.
“Grandpa, read to me again how you built the Bridge, and how you made friends with people you never thought liked you, and dreamt of the Sun. And why our house bears a crest with a crow.”
It is too much to hope to hear such a darling demand spoken out loud to me one day by progeny not yet created (though often it seems the case that I could easily have been a great-great-grandfather long before this tale and its writing were completed). But if by some rare miracle it is, I will have to edit this or write a different book for such little ears. Not to shield them, but so that they may better understand this one. And why their grandfather wrote what he did.
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A wraith of a figure, a crimson dream, a someone growing towards tangibility was leading me down a stone pathway into an enormous foundry where power hammers rang, arms swung, steam rose, and the blasting of coal bit the air with a sulfur edge as metal underwent purification. If I was beginning to comprehend where I was, I did not wish to.
Is this now home? And yet, the heat was hypnotic, the warmth of lethargy one finds stepping from a cold winter night into a cabin housing a smoldering fire. If suffering existed in this surrounding a sensation of numbing resistance inexplicably pervaded my own personal body. Not exactly in a hands on the hips, Ha, ha! heroic, Norse or Greek god sort of way. More similar to the imperviousness of a gray ghost, neither effected nor effecting. The red glow was a strange comfort. I thought of cheery cheeks and half-remembered kindnesses rendered to me from days past, and wished those people were here to comfort and look out for me. A selfish thought.
My guide. A lithe angelish figure. I write, angelish, because angelic (and my face cannot help but break a smile as I write this) is an adjective that not only falls short of accuracy, but also fails to capture the dynamism of this character. His appearance suggested he had half a devil in him. His skin was pale, his head held streaks of auburn and crimson hair framing amber eyes and eyeteeth curved like a cobra’s. His cheeks were stained with carmine tears (or so his sparse freckles appeared to me) and his attire was russet and burgundy. If those were wings, they were feathered, but each feather looked a rough leathern scale, the color of dried and clotted blood. I suddenly forgot about my own sorrow for a moment after seeing his face plagued by a sadness that barely surfaced, a mask that both hid and revealed; his eyes, wells that were done with crying. And yet, the strange thing was he had wincing smile. That struggling smile you see on people that comes so naturally. The upside down frown. So much can be robbed from us, but anything short of cutting off our lips, and we can always choose to crease our face. The upside down frown.
“Why are you here?” I asked. My first words.
He looked down and made a silent laugh. His face had a sheepish look. I believed I was able to read him with a deal of clarity, maybe only because he reminded me of somebody. But my impression of him was this: He seemed to me self-confident, but humbled, a rogue who was embarrassed of his past deeds and no longer had any pride or cared too much what happened to him because he figured he had it coming. Someone with a self-destructive behavior that was mainly limited to only hurting himself, or ignorantly thinking so. But there was also a loyalty in him when he had any desire to give it, placing his friends on equal status with himself, not forgetting a good deed rendered or kind word said—when he bothered to remember such things (now I seem to be writing more based upon my later experiences with him and how he inconsistently proved my descriptions true). He loved those people who were just and kind, and pure of thought and deed (if any could be found here). These he respected and gravitated towards, but felt alien to such concepts and people, believing he lacked the wisdom to see past temptation and the present moment, like some person watching another play an instrument, wistfully knowing he could never accomplish such a thing, but feeling a respect and an affinity for the ones who could. Having deeply experienced many things, but also childlike in his search for something he knew not what. Too embarrassed and uncomfortable to walk in better circles, and feeling restless and unworthy when he did.
I felt that we were very, very different from one another—the real testament of friendship, the driving force of character. I followed him, having nowhere else to go, almost like a duckling imprinting itself on the first creature it sees.
“Let’s just say I was looking for a home,” he began, smiling with the same chagrined look on his face, rubbing the back of his neck. “It even happened after that one Autumn.”
I later found out that “Autumn” was the euphemism used for a certain fall from grace. A war lost.
“You’d think I would have known better, or would’ve been smarter about it. Not that it would have made a difference, though. I didn’t really fit in there anyway.” He looked up at me from where he stood lower on the path. “No one knows how you got here. Even I don’t look as strange as you. You’re in real deep you know? You don’t. The lowest ring, according to old maps.” He caught what must have been an anguished look on my face. “I was only speaking about your geographic state. Your particular location. You got nothing to really worry about.” I felt a mix of graciousness and envy vying in his voice. “You’re lucky.” He gestured with his face, tilting it up towards mine, though we were nearly the same height now that I joined him. “You got a nice job lined up.”
“Oh?” I inquired. “I have no recollection of submitting an application.”
In my semi-consciousness my was moving with both the rapidity and sluggishness akin to inebriation and dream. What was transpiring appeared so surreal that the shock of my situation and who or what I was conversing with yet failed to register properly. I was acquainting myself with him in slow gradations. Otherwise, I should have panicked long before and fled instead of making the retort I did. He continued in his gravelly voice.
“How you even got in is what’s so ridiculous. Even I know how I got here, mostly. I don’t know how you could have survived the fall. Those who have a more philosophical bent say that the reason why this is the deepest level and the one most impossible to ascend out of is because things aren’t so bad here. There’s nothing down here to motivate us. No drive. The hottest parts, which they are at least right about, are the higher planes. Something happened with my own memory—a bad trip, but I did see it vaguely on my way in. Felt it even. So they say whoever is up there suffers more acutely, but less chronically, having a lot of energy, and getting burned by their own self made fires. Less self-control, I guess they mean. And that hatred, anger, lust, or whatever, however much they can injure, still have a lot of energy as their basis. Misguided energy going in the wrong direction maybe, but energy still. An energy that can burn away the bad.” He shook his head. “Apathy is so much harder to cure. You have no idea.”
Actually, I did. I pictured a large iron ball as big as myself rolling, and how easier it would be to keep pushing it sideways until it wound up rolling in the opposite direction than to try to move it from a stand still with no momentum.
“I don’t know if what’s said is really true, though.”
“Do you believe it?” I asked.
“Who knows? This place is funny. Not many really believe in a whole lot down here. We didn’t have reason or desire to believe in much of anything in the first place. I guess that’s why a lot of us came here.”
“You guys seem to moving around a lot. If this is apathy, you got me fooled,” I observed, peering through pockets of steam and shadow.
“They heard you were coming. Something new. Gives us a little hope, or at least breaks up the monotony. You should’ve seen some earlier. Corpses move more than they did.” He surveyed the cavernous foundry from the winding stone ramp we were on.
“So you decided to show off all on account of me?” I asked incredulously, certain he was being facetious to build me up for a joke.
He did not answer my question. Or at least not directly.
“The bosses say we need someone to light a fire under our asses. Give us a reason to get out of here. See those crucibles and those floodgates up there. We’re supposed to use the molten metal to build ourselves a bridge. They want you to use it while it’s still hot and flowing to pour down our backs.”