A Fool Such As I

“Is it time?” The furtive whisper sprang from the darkness like a cannon shot.

He sighed. “Don’t do that to me.”

“Do what? I was quiet as I could be.”

“Too quiet. You made me jump.”

“Better to jump than to die, which is what just happened if I was a bad guy.”

“I know. That’s why I jumped, more than anything,” he admitted. “Sorry, I’m just jumpy.”

“Literally,” said his colleague, and they both chuckled.

This won’t do, thought the wannabe creator. A random scene between two whatever-they-ares on a quiet night. Who are they? Why are they skulking? Do I even care?

“Meaningless,” muttered the panicked writer. “Everything is meaningless.” He heard a bird sing through the glass. He had questions but did not know how to form them. He needed something he did not know how to define.

A smiling, cheerful somebody strolled by.

“Relax,” the somebody smiled. “Just relax. The world will neither rise nor fall as a result of what you produce today.”

“I just said that,” the morose creator said. “Everything is meaningless.”

“You said that, I didn’t,” said the smile. “The heavens declare the glory of God, who said ‘Yes’ to your question.”

“I didn’t ask a question.”

“And yet the answer is ‘Yes.’”

“What if I had asked if I am a fool?”

“Yes. But he uses the foolish of the world to confound the wise,” the smile smiled. “You believe you are the fool, and they think they’re wise guys, and yet you are closer to the truth.”

“The truth that I’m a fool?”

“No, silly. You’re not as foolish as you think, and they are nowhere near as wise as they think.”

“How does that help me?”

“For one thing, you’re willing to learn something you don’t know, and they think they know all they need to know. That makes you wiser than any of you can imagine.”

“OK, so teach me something, smart guy.”

“It’s not up to me to teach” — that smile again — “It’s up to you to learn. All that a so-called teacher can do is lead you to the water. It’s your decision whether you are thirsty enough to drink.”

OK, mission accomplished, thought the wannabe creator. This ought to make an interesting anecdote for tomorrow’s offering.

The smiling cheerful somebody looked up from the page. “You think you’re done? This is just the warmup exercise. Playtime is next.”

“What’s the game?”

“That’s the fun of it! You’ll learn as you play along.”

“What are we waiting for?” the two skulkers said in unison, which made everyone jump.

Further along

What if I keep drifting “gently down the stream”?

A bend in the water’s path brings me to a little house along the water where a widow lady tends her sheep.

No, her name is not Mary, but it might be with her yard full of little lambs. It is not a savage country, but it might be given the right circumstances. Weather can be a cruel trickster. Her land has been mostly spared tricks over the years, but it does not hurt to be ever vigilant.

Forest lurkers find places to hide while they wait. They leave the widow alone this year, but conditions do change and needs do arise.

Now here is a team of heroes standing all in a row — the flawed but sincere leader, his lifelong companion, his best friend and her baby brother. What a fantastic combination!

And in the next stall, a man who gained amazing powers after he was bitten by a radioactive golden retriever. No, that scenario is too crazy; golden retrievers do not bite.

How many stories are The Odyssey? A person departs, somewhat reluctantly on a mission to a strange land, where she encounters new and at-first-mysterious friends who enhance the adventure and assist and guide her until she finds her way home.

Superheroes generally begin with an origin story — where did s/he come from, how did they gain their unusual abilities — but do we have to know? At some point, yes, I suppose we do. “Where we came from” is an essential part of our story, not as essential as “where are we going” but one of the keys to the mystery of “who we are when we meet.” And the climax of a story answers “are we there yet” in the affirmative.

The reader also needs to know that the powerful human with extra-human powers is, in fact, still human. He may detect brilliantly, he may even be the best detective in his world, but mistakes are made, and he still needs to sleep. Someone who broke his heart or disappointed his expectations still haunts his memories. Superman is boring if he can do anything or nothing disturbs his calm. But Superman is not Superman if he turns dark or yields to temptation — the Fantastic Four are not the Fantastic Four without those four fantastic humans — for a long time Spider-Man would not be Spider-Man if he got the girl, but then Mary Jane/M.J. came along, and yet his everyday troubles/concerns/foibles continue. He needs to pick up milk on his way home from defeating this month’s villain.

Could it be that every story is The Odyssey when broken down into its components? Perhaps, but not consciously or at least not obviously. I think, with a little surface-scratching and digging, I may have just revealed to myself a little pebble of understanding.

This stream I’m gently navigating is helpful because it encourages me to find interesting people along the banks. I may just drift along for awhile in search of my next stories.

Gently down the stream

What do I see in my mind’s misty eye? An outpost in space. An ocean creature with a sense of humor, but if not an octopus, what? A crumbling empire and a feisty rebel — where have I heard THAT before?

A wanderer armed with nothing but a guitar because weapons never brought him peace. Why is he wandering? Are his loved ones scattered to the winds? Perhaps his sisters and brothers are wandering, too, all of them seeking the others, or seeking a talisman of some sort, the Hitchcockian maguffin that will restore sense to the universe and reunite the family that was.

As for the storyteller, so are his tales scattered to the winds. He remembers bits and pieces, but they refuse to coalesce into any perceivable order. Here is the tailor, and there is the seamstress, but they have no whole cloth and nothing approaching nine yards. The tinker and the almost-princess stroll along the road to the village, each unaware that the dog is trying to tell them something. And the cat is the key to everything, but it is distracted by a family of chipmunks living under the driveway.

The flower blooms for a day once every three years, and she missed it and so she is inconsolable. The photographs show her what she missed but cannot capture every angle or the fragrance or the crowd’s quiet awe, and that is when she becomes obsessed with inventing something better than a camera.

The road is rockier and steeper than he remembers, and he may have to get out of the car and walk, unless he can coax the old beater up one — more — hill — but no. And so the hike is begun. This will add days to the journey, and all he has is hours. Now what?

Am I still in space, or have I been under the sea this whole time? My mind’s misty eye thinks it saw a desert, but then the car was in a mountainous forest, and the brothers and sisters were in every place.

For 1,001 nights the prisoner must tell another story or suffer the ultimate penalty. “Here I am, entertain me or die.” The prisoner loves the challenge and hates the ultimate consequence.

Of course a prehistoric monster rises from the sea, the result of insane testing of weapons too awful for the imagination. What other result could be possible? And of course the spies and their special team are forced to kill one or two dozen guards and miscellaneous underlings.

“You may have seen me in last summer’s No. 1 blockbuster,” he purred to his beautiful companion. “I was Underling #4, the guard who shouted, ‘They’re here!’ before being dismembered by the heroine.”

Somewhere down the beach, she thought she heard an animal howl. It was not a cry of pain; rather it seemed to be a primal cry of ecstasy, as if the creature knew that its mission to maintain and perpetuate the species had been accomplished with the release of the most joyful energy it had ever expended.

All of this passes before my mind’s misty eye, and I thank God for the burst of imagery and music and emotion. For a few moments the anxious feeling had been tucked away and all I could see was what I saw. Which of the sights was real and which the stuff of dreams; who was an authentic friend and who the actual villain?

I sit down with a pack of cards and a roll of dice, and it all begins to unfold in real time — as if anything about time can be described as real.

“Is this the beginning, the middle, or the end?” I ask and am astonished by the answer.